HUGE THANK YOU to all the volunteers who advocated for the passage of HB24-1007 to repeal our infamous discriminatory occupancy laws. On to the next!
Multifamily housing construction should be under the same approval standards as a single-family home. Permits for new homes should go through staff administrative review instead of lengthy, costly, and unpredictable planning and zoning reviews and city council appeals. Privileged neighbors shouldn’t be able to block new homes from being built near them just because "they like things the way they are."
Allowing more granny flats, basement apartments, cottage court houses, and other missing housing types will help address the crisis. YIMBY Fort Collins supports legalizing duplexes, triplexes, and small apartment buildings in more zones of Fort Collins. Allowing mixed-use homes in commercial areas near the MAX bus routes would also make a huge difference in providing missing middle housing.
We have a whole page on this one. Fort Collins is filled with mostly empty parking spaces. They are currently required by the code for every bedroom built, regardless of whether or not people that live there own a vehicle. These mandates eliminate the feasibility of building multifamily units on small lots. Commercial parking requirements also suck up a ton of valuable land that could be used for homes. Why does the city require so much parking to be built (instead of more housing) next to a MAX stop, in walkable Old Town, or along bike paths?
Eliminating parking mandates will also help Fort Collins reach our environmental and climate goals. Other cities have eliminated parking mandates, including Bend OR, Anchorage, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. Ending parking mandates does not mean the end of parking, but puts the decision of how much to build back in the hands of architects and homeowners.
The devil is always in the details when it comes to new housing. Codes, permits, and other technicalities should not used as tools to block housing: long setbacks on small lots, short height limits, impossible floor-to-area ratios, and historical preservation requirements should all be flexible enough to allow housing.
YIMBY Fort Collins supports using local, state, and federal taxes for housing for people with low incomes. Communities built, operated, and supported by local housing nonprofits using public funds are a crucial part of the solution. We enthusiastically endorse efforts to increase the supply of for-sale and rental mixed-income units, housing choice vouchers, supportive housing, and more. Opposition to housing for residents with low incomes is the worst kind of NIMBYism.