You can build a house almost anywhere in Colorado.
You just can’t build one that most people can afford.
That’s the stark takeaway from a landmark zoning report released last month by the National Zoning Atlas, a group of researchers who have spent the last two years conducting a first-of-its-kind study of land use codes across 334 Colorado cities, towns and unincorporated areas.
The group found that on the vast majority of land, in the vast majority of Colorado communities, it’s not just difficult to build housing the average household can afford — it’s outright illegal.
Local zoning codes in Colorado overwhelmingly prohibit duplexes, townhouses, condominiums and apartment units, as well as single-family homes on small lots, effectively outlawing the types of housing that real estate experts say are most affordable to build.
“Colorado is, sadly, typical of states across the country, which use zoning to thwart the production of housing, and — whether intentionally or not — use zoning to make housing more expensive,” Sara Bronin, the president and CEO of the Zoning Atlas told The Colorado Sun in an interview. “There is a huge affordability gap — in part maybe due to supply, but also in part due to the fact that the places where people would most want housing are the places that are not providing it.”
Land use has dominated Colorado politics over the last three years, as state leaders grasp for solutions to the affordability crisis.
Colorado has the fifth highest home prices and third highest rent in the country, according to a Zoning Atlas analysis of American Community Survey data. Over half the state’s 800,000 renter households spend more than 30% of their income on housing, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. As of 2023, the median household, making $63,000, couldn’t afford the median rent.
Gov. Jared Polis and the Democratic majority in the state legislature have passed a spate of new laws to relax local zoning restrictions and encourage denser housing development — often over the objections of local officials, who view it as an attack on their ability to govern.
But the tug-of-war over who should dictate housing policy in Colorado has largely occurred without a clear understanding of how restrictive local zoning codes actually are.
“Zoning is almost like the plumbing of our housing system,” said Luke Teater, a principal at Thrive Economics who worked with the governor’s office on its housing agenda. “It’s intentionally invisible. You don’t think about it until it breaks, but it kind of shapes everything else that comes out of our housing system. It’s just very obscure and opaque and exclusive.”
Like in most states, Colorado has no centralized hub for the dizzying array of local zoning rules that have proliferated across communities big and small. So last year, Housing Colorado contracted with the Zoning Atlas, a nonprofit headquartered in Washington, D.C., to sift through over 53,000 pages of land use codes and turn them into an interactive online map of residential zoning across the state.
Even then, they didn’t quite manage to cover every county.
“The fact that we, as a professional organization that does this day in, day out, couldn’t obtain 16 zoning codes from these 334 jurisdictions, I think underscores the opaqueness of zoning for the common person,” Bronin said.
The study was provided to The Colorado Sun in advance of its formal release this week. Here’s a few of its key findings:
Large lots reinforce high prices
There’s no shortage of places to build housing in Colorado; 98% of all the zoned land in the state allows residential construction in some form, the study found. But local governments typically require a lot of land to do it.
The study found that 86% of the land zoned for single-family housing requires a lot size of at least 2 acres — enough to fit a football field and still have more than half an acre leftover. That figure is heavily skewed by rural areas, which make up the majority of state land, but researchers say lot size mandates are unusually large even along the Front Range.
In Aurora, for instance, 46% of residential land has a minimum lot size of at least 2 acres, while in Littleton 39% does.
“I think what most surprised the team is the fact that minimum lot size mandates were prevalent even in the Denver Metro area and in other metro areas across the state,” Bronin said.
“They were also very, very large,” she added.
Colorado had the largest lot size requirements of the 10 states the Zoning Atlas has studied so far, a group that includes places like Montana and Texas that are known for their open spaces and sprawl.
Large lot sizes drive up construction costs, because developers need more land to build fewer units. That, in turn, leads to larger homes that require more concrete, more lumber and more labor to build.
Bronin said her group hasn’t analyzed the demographic effects of such policies in Colorado, but in Connecticut, a joint study between the Zoning Atlas and the Urban Institute found that large lot sizes and restrictions on multifamily construction led to higher levels of racial and economic segregation, excluding people of color and lower-income residents from neighborhoods with more restrictive housing policies.
Parking requirements have similar ripple effects — but they, too, are prevalent across Colorado communities. About 85% of residential land in the state is subject to minimum parking mandates, the study found — most commonly, at least two spaces per housing unit.
Long considered a best practice among transportation and land use policy professionals, urban planners have turned against parking mandates over the past decade, and the American Planning Association now believes they do more harm than good. Studies show that developers spend anywhere from $9,000 to $50,000 per spot in surface lots and garages — many of which go unused when cities require more than residents and visitors actually need.
Sprawl has a cost of its own. As lots get larger, commutes get longer, car pollution increases and infrastructure needs balloon.
The state’s lot size and parking requirements, Bronin said, are “really at odds with this notion of Colorado being an environmentally friendly state, a state where people care about the land, where a lot of attention is paid to land management.”
Why the “missing middle” is so hard to find
Realtors say there’s fierce competition for smaller, multifamily units at a lower price point, as older adults look to downsize and younger families try to become homeowners themselves.
In April, the median condominium or townhome sold for around $400,000, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors. That’s $200,000 less expensive than the median single-family home sold that month.
Developers build so few duplexes, townhouses and condos that housing advocates refer to them as the “missing middle” — a somewhat mysterious-sounding key to alleviating Colorado’s housing crunch.
The Zoning Atlas report suggests there’s no mystery to it; often, local governments simply don’t allow missing middle housing to be built. And even when they do, developers have to overcome legal hurdles to get a project approved.
While property owners have the right to build a detached single-family home almost anywhere, duplexes are only allowed by right on 33% of residential land.
Multifamily housing is even harder to build. In the vast majority of Colorado — 68% of all residentially zoned land — multifamily projects are completely prohibited.
Just 3% of residential land allows housing with four or more units by right.
More often, multifamily housing projects are subject to a public hearing, giving local elected officials — and their most vocal constituents — a veto over proposed development.
“Research shows that the people who attend (zoning) meetings tend to be existing property owners, tend to be older and wealthier and whiter than is representative of their communities,” Bronin said. “That dynamic is problematic, not just in Colorado, but around the country. Research has shown that subjecting individual housing projects to public hearings is a major roadblock to those projects being approved.”
Big cities, small towns have the fewest restrictions
Urban areas in Colorado allow the most types of housing, the study found, while rural areas impose the most restrictions on apartments and lot size.
But — in a surprise to researchers — small towns have fewer zoning restrictions than the Denver suburbs.
Small towns allow multifamily housing by right on 23% of residential land. Denver’s inner suburbs allow it on 16% of residential land, while its newer, outer suburbs only allow it by right in 6% of residentially zoned areas.
Even among so-called “principal” cities — defined as the urban center of a U.S. Census statistical area — zoning policies vary greatly from one place to the next. And most of them can’t be easily categorized into “pro-housing” or not.
Fort Collins, for instance, has the smallest minimum lot size requirements of any central city except Denver — providing opportunity for more density and affordability. But it also subjects virtually all housing to public hearings, even single-family construction.
Shaping the future of zoning
In other states, studies by the Zoning Atlas have spurred land use reform.
In Colorado, the state legislature has already passed laws attempting to address many of the report’s findings. Legislation passed in 2024 requires many local governments to zone for denser housing types near transit and outlaws prohibitions on accessory dwelling units. The legislature also outlawed parking minimums at multifamily developments near transit in some cities.
“You know, I think we’re doing it in the reverse,” said Brian Rossbert, executive director of Housing Colorado, the statewide coalition of housing advocates that helped fund the study. But, he said, he hopes it can be a tool going forward as the political push for zoning reform shifts to the local level.
Some cities have gone beyond the state’s density requirements already. The city of Longmont, for instance, banned parking mandates entirely in 2024, and Denver is considering doing the same. Other cities are fighting the state’s foray into local housing codes, arguing that it violates home rule under the state constitution.
“The rubber meets the road in local government on some of the ways that our land use bills went through,” Rossbert said.
Those interested in learning more about the Zoning Atlas can register here for a webinar July 9.
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