HB24-1007 Sardine Housing Bill Set for a 2nd Reading on Senate Floor and vote. 3/17/2024. Send in that email. Be heard.
- Colorado Community Coalition
- Mar 17, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 17, 2024
Colorado State Senate and urge them to vote no on HB24-1007. We’ve included all their emails at the bottom of this blog, so you can easily copy and paste them all into the “To” field of your email. It matters. Emails are like votes to politicans. They need to hear from us. We recommend copying your local media as well so they will inform the public about these concerns.
1. HB-1007 will badly hurt families. Families who rent have, at most, two wage earners.
They cannot compete with the combined incomes of 5, 7, or 10 unrelated wage-earning
adults. So households of unrelated people will always beat out families, in Colorado’s
highly competitive rental market that favors those with the most money for rent. Thus,
far fewer families will rent in neighborhoods, which will feed declining K-12 school
enrollment, and other problems. And for-sale home prices will also skyrocket, given the
much higher rental profit potential, post HB-1007. Rental investment firms and
speculators will buy increasing percentages of homes, and use them for rentals, post
HB-1007.
2. HB-1007 endangers existing laws concerning occupant and general public safety.
The sudden and dramatic increases in population density following HB-1007 will
overwhelm the already-strained emergency response routes in many cities near the
wildland urban interface, and those in flood-prone areas. In addition, HB-1007 will
overwhelm the infrastructure of many single-family neighborhood homes which were
designed for far fewer people. Note: larger multi-family, multi-unit dwelling situations
typically have 4” sewer lines exiting in the property. Single family neighborhood
residences typically have 3” sewer lines. Many such houses would be unable to support
the 10, 12 or more residents allowed under HB-1107. We will also likely see many hasty
“unfinished basement conversions into multiple bedrooms,” under HB-1007. Some may
be inspected by local building departments; others will not be. The likelihood of unsafe
situations developing (for the occupants) is high.
3. There is little proof that HB-1007 will lower per-person rents. Landlords and
property management companies run businesses. They will be the main beneficiaries of
HB-1007. It’s highly unlikely that they’ll benevolently offer quantity discounts, when
renting to more people. If current monthly rent is $1500 for each of 3 people, or $4500,
they’ll simply charge the same $1500 per person rate for 10 people, i.e., $15,000. They
may actually charge more per person, post HB-1007, with the realization that the
house’s infrastructure is more likely to be strained and require more upkeep,
maintenance, replacements, and repairs. A study of Austin, TX’s brief experiment with a
High Occupancy Unit (HOU) ordinance allowing 6 unrelated people per dwelling found
that per-person rents actually went up in the areas with the highest deployment of
HOUs.
4. Occupancy limits for unrelated individuals were created to “ensure the domestic
tranquility” in neighborhoods, and prevent out of control “Animal House” party
homes. We’ve all lived next to out of control rentals, and it wasn’t pleasant. Such
impacts will increase many-fold, once HB24-1007 prohibits any and all reasonable
occupancy limits. Occupancy limits serve as guardrails on out of control situations.
If the goal is increasing housing affordability in Colorado’s housing market, legislation
must include affordability requirements. Examples are requiring meaningful
percentages of affordable housing in new developments. There are ways of requiring
new commercial development to help fund affordable housing, too. The difference is
that these tools by definition create affordable housing. HB-1007 will not.
HB-1007’s sponsors erroneously place huge faith on back-end “noise and code
enforcement,” after problems develop. But enforcement response in most CO cities
is incredibly under-staffed and under-resourced. They can’t keep up with current noise,
parking, etc. complaints…let alone the exponentially greater incidents, post-HB1007.
And it’s frustrating, ineffective, and even dangerous to call authorities, given the
potential for retaliation and retribution.
Email addresses for Colorado state senators:
Please copy us, local and state media for transparency. Our email is: ColoaradoCommunityCoalition@gmail.com
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