We did it!!! HUGE THANK YOU to all the volunteers who advocated for the passage of HB24-1007 which repealed our discriminatory occupancy laws after years of advocacy.
Multifamily housing should fall under the same approvals as single-family homes. In Fort Collins this means sending more proposals through "Basic Development Review" and "Type 1" administrative review instead of lengthy, costly, arbitrary, and unpredictable hearings and city council appeals. Our process shouldn't allow privileged neighbors to block new affordable housing for reasons like "neighborhood character."
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 along the MAX bus routes would also make a huge difference in providing missing middle housing. Fort Collins needs to implement new state housing laws by allowing more housing in these corridors.
Fort Collins is filled with seas of mostly empty parking spaces. Parking lots are currently required by our building code for every bedroom built and every SF of retail space, regardless of whether or not people that live or work there own a car. Parking 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 our neighbor Longmont. 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, excessive impact fees and other technicalities should not used as tools to block housing: long setbacks on small lots, impossibly short height limits, impractical floor-to-area ratios, and historical preservation requirements should all be flexible enough to allow housing.
We support the use of local, state, and federal taxes to help house people of all 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. Fort Collins should prioritize affordable housing in the annual budgeting process. Opposition to housing for residents with low incomes is the worst kind of NIMBYism.
