Opinion: Colorado’s affordable housing projects often face an obstacle — litigious NIMBYs

Everyone likes the idea of affordable housing until it impacts their picture window view. Affordable housing, except in my backyard (AHEIMBY) is the new NIMBY.

In Boulder, the Colorado city with the most per capita “In this house we believe…. kindness is everything” yard signs, a group of residents are opposing the construction of a modular home factory near their neighborhood.

It’s not just any factory. This unique collaboration between the Boulder Valley School District, Flatirons Habitat for Humanity, and the City of Boulder will build up to 50 affordable homes a year. Modest in size, only 15 to 20 workers will be on site, including volunteers, employees, and students in the school district’s Technical Education Center hands-on career programs.

Boulder’s Ponderosa Mobile Home Park will receive the first homes since many current units are flood-damaged, old, unsafe, and energy inefficient. Low-income buyers will receive subsidies to ensure house payments do not exceed a third of the family’s monthly income.

The city and partners examined multiple locations and determined that the current site was the best option to integrate students into the school district’s adjacent Technical Education Center. Other potential sites had more challenges. The city has taken steps to allay concerns about noise, traffic, air quality, and nighttime light pollution. Construction is set to begin this month.

The project checks all the “kindness is everything”  boxes: it helps people who cannot afford Boulder’s high-cost real estate; it helps the poor; it helps students; and it helps people who live in dilapidated mobile homes.

Residents in the nearby Reserve neighborhood, where the median home list price is $1,882,500, oppose the affordable housing project. They say it will impact the nearby Sombrero Marsh despite city assurances. Seems the neighborhood is appropriately named. Meanwhile, two people have filed a lawsuit to stop the factory from being built, alleging a zoning violation. Achoo, AHEIMBY.

Boulderites are not the only ones to oppose affordable housing projects in their backyards. In Aurora, residents of a gated golf course community sued to halt the building of a nearby apartment complex because the buildings will be four feet higher than the zoning code allows and other minor issues. The developer and residents reached a deal this week, and construction will soon begin.

In Littleton, when the city council approved a plan for mixed-use development of the Aspen Grove shopping mall, which would have added 2,000 housing units, opponents put a measure to repeal the plan on the ballot. Facing defeat, the council then approved a much smaller number of units.

Redevelop an ailing strip mall into a center with a quaint café, farm-to-table restaurant, boutique, and yoga studio, and everyone applauds. Propose something that will actually increase affordable housing stock, and nearby residents start picking through the zoning code to stop it. When elected officials and their appointees don’t do what these residents want, they circumvent the process through lawsuits and ballot initiatives.

That’s unfair. Councils and planning boards have processes for evaluating proposals, balancing competing interests, holding public hearings, and approving, amending, or rejecting proposals. Every resident has the ability to weigh in through the hearings and by exercising their vote.

Rich or poor, each resident can cast a vote for city council candidates who represent their interests. It’s not perfect, but it is democratic; everyone gets a vote.

Circumventing these processes, however, using wealth and resources to file lawsuits is anything but democratic. Only those with means have the resources to hire lawyers and launch ballot measures to get what they want. In this way, the haves ensure home ownership stays reserved (pun intended) for the wealthy while the have-nots continue to have not.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer

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