Solving Denver's Housing Crisis: Why Measure 2R Matters for Everyone

Whether it’s workers who can no longer live in the city they serve, small businesses that can’t afford the cost of labor, or families with generational roots that are being pushed out, we have seen Denver become more and more unaffordable. It couldn’t be clearer to us that the time to act strategically and decisively as a community is now. That’s why we are calling on Denverites to approve ballot Measure 2R and make a critical investment in housing for our communities, our workforce, and our families.

Across the city, Denverites from all backgrounds – whether born and raised here or recent transplants in search of new opportunities – are struggling to keep up. Over 30 percent of all Denver households and over 50 percent of all Denver renters pay more than a third of what they earn for housing. Many are paying more than half their income towards housing, making it harder to pay the other bills stacking up on their kitchen table. A recent report from Zillow says it takes an income exceeding $170,000 for a renter to afford to buy a home here. Altogether, Denver ranks in the top 15 percent of metro areas with the most housing cost-burdened residents.

New data released by the Denver Regional Council of Governments shows that unless something different is done, over the next ten years Denver will be short 44,000 units of affordable housing that residents desperately need.
Rampant unaffordability isn’t just impacting residents, it’s hurting our economic competitiveness as well. As housing prices soar, Denver’s homegrown talent is being forced to move to markets with a lower cost of living, and some businesses and employers are following suit.

The longer we wait to address this need at scale, the more difficult and more expensive it will be to address in the future. That’s why Measure 2R, the “Affordable Denver Fund,” is the right plan for this moment. This new ballot measure would generate $100 million a year through a 0.5 percent sales tax increase to expand and preserve affordable rental and for-sale housing. The proposed strategy includes a balanced approach of directly building new units, using deed-restriction to ensure housing that is currently affordable remains affordable for the next generation, and using rental support to prevent evictions and keep families in their homes.

Denver’s affordable housing crisis should concern all of us. Denver now has one of the most expensive housing markets for a non-coastal city in the U.S., and as we look at cautionary tales across the U.S. of communities that did too little too late to address affordability, we know this is not a path we want to go down. Doing nothing means that families who have been here for generations, families who built their neighborhoods from the ground up, could be forced to leave because they can’t afford to live here. It means that Denver would lose the character, vibrancy and diversity we’re known for. It means your kids who want to return to Denver after college won’t be able to; job markets will shrink as businesses move elsewhere to find workers; and it means that residents who are working hard in our schools, coffee shops, restaurants, hotels and non-profits would need to uproot their lives to move to a place where they can actually make ends meet.

The current plan lays out requirements that the city invest in the full spectrum of need – from those exiting homelessness to middle-income nurses and teachers to working-class families. It will increase the supply of income-restricted units, expand rental assistance, enhance down-payment assistance and create new affordable apartments and single-family homes. It will provide much-needed help for the “missing middle” – those who are working hard, yet still barely scraping by because the cost of living has outpaced market wages. It’s also critical that as we move forward, all factors that impact cost of living be examined, including the overall tax burden.

We are incredibly grateful to Denver City Council for referring this measure to the November ballot and urge Denver voters to give final approval of Affordable Denver so we can build a full spectrum of housing options to ensure that people across the city’s entire income spectrum – nurses, servers, teachers, artists, groundskeepers, first-responders, retail workers, seniors, families– can afford to thrive and flourish in our city and stay here for generations to come.

Jonathan Cappelli is a fourteen-year Denver resident and the executive eirector of the Neighborhood Development Collaborative, a coalition of metro-area affordable housing and community development nonprofits.

Kourtny Garrett is the President & CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership, the place-based economic development organization that drives the vision for a dynamic, connected, economically prosperous center city.

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