A long-standing effort to slow the pace of new home construction in Lakewood got a big boost this week after a judge dismissed all challenges to a proposed ballot measure that would limit new home permits issued by the city to a 1 percent annual increase.
Jefferson County District Judge Diego Hunt issued a ruling late Wednesday that clears the way for the measure, dubbed the Strategic Growth Initiative, to either be approved by the Lakewood City Council at its first meeting of the new year or get sent to voters in a special election, likely to be conducted in the spring.
There’s also the chance that forward progress on the measure could once again be stymied if the man who first challenged it more than a year ago, Lakewood resident Steve Dorman, appeals Hunt’s ruling to a higher court.
On Thursday, Dorman’s attorney told The Denver Post he intended to take the case to the Colorado Court of Appeals.
The fight over the Strategic Growth Initiative, which was first proposed in June 2017 for that year’s November ballot, encapsulates the larger issues metro-area communities have struggled with in recent years as the housing market has exploded with unprecedented price appreciation and rent increases.
Several cities already had taken steps to limit new home construction. Golden put in place its own new housing cap more than 20 years ago. However, an effort earlier this year that called for a 1 percent growth cap across 10 metro area counties fizzled out before making it to the ballot.
Amid this backdrop, metro Denver continues to grapple with a chronic housing shortage that the Colorado Futures Center at Colorado State University concluded earlier this year may take a decade to address.
Cathy Kentner, who is spearheading the effort to get the Lakewood initiative passed, decried the months of “unnecessary delay” in getting the measure a citywide hearing and said all voters in Lakewood “now will have their say on the future of their city and its character.”
“The importance of this going to the ballot is more than just about growth — it’s about people’s constitutional right to go to the ballot box,” she said Thursday.
Kentner said Lakewood largely has been greenlighting higher-end multi-family projects, which has had the effect of dragging up prices for all housing stock in the city. The initiative, she said, would not only limit the construction of new units to 1 percent of what exists in the city but would require that City Council approve any apartment projects that have 40 or more units.
It would also allow the council to stipulate how many of the new homes approved in any given year should be affordable, she said.
“We’ve had 25 years of growth without mitigating concerns over infrastructure and public safety,” Kentner said. “The Strategic Growth Initiative provides oversight.”
But Lakewood Mayor Adam Paul said the city is already dealing with housing challenges and doesn’t need a blunt measure with “artificial growth caps” to guide a process that needs more nuance and flexibility. He said a newly formed ad hoc committee on development has been discussing Lakewood’s housing issues at a detailed level for months and is getting ready to make recommendations to the City Council in 2019.
“To use a blanket approach for a community of 155,000 people using a structure designed for Boulder and Golden, which are much smaller communities, is not the best way forward,” Paul said. “There are better ways than a mandate.”
In his ruling, Hunt said Dorman had not proved that he would be directly harmed by the proposed initiative, thus his “takings claim” is not “ripe” for review.
The judge also dismissed Dorman’s contention that limiting housing stock in Lakewood would lead to increased home prices in the city, thus disproportionately impacting low-income residents. He characterized the claim as speculative because the measure hadn’t passed and had yet to take effect.
“The court agrees with Defendants that Protestor alleges no sufficient demonstrable impact other than speculative reactions from investors, and general arguments stemming from the economic theory of supply and demand that have or continue to affect property owners generally,” Hunt ruled.
Steve Glueck, community and economic development director for Golden, said the city’s 1 percent housing cap has been adjusted over the years and now stands at a 0.9 percent limit on new construction. Proponents of the limit were largely prodded by concerns about single-family neighborhoods planned for the city in the mid-1990s, he said.
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A feature of the law that allows developers to “bank” unused housing permits over multiple years smooths out construction flow in the city across boom and bust years, Glueck said. But it’s hard to say whether the cap has had a “dramatic impact on the footprint and the mix of housing” in Golden, he said, because the city was already hemmed in by built-out neighborhoods on the east and the foothills to the west.
The measure did encourage developers to build subdivisions to Golden’s north in unincorporated Jefferson County, rather than annex into the city so as to avoid having to deal with the cap, Glueck said. There’s no doubt, he said, that the metro area’s runaway growth of the last few years is behind measures like Lakewood’s.
“I think it’s something that would have been much less likely submitted to voters 10 or 15 years ago,” Glueck said. “Change makes people nervous.”
Lakewood’s initiative gained more than 7,600 signatures in the summer of 2017 — enough to make the ballot — before it was challenged in court.
