UPDATE – Upzoning was repealed by Lakewood voters by an almost 2-1 margin on April 7, 2026.

‘Upzoning’ usually refers to zoning changes that allow more ways to use land in an effort to increase the density and supply of housing.

Professor Kim, shown above, co-authored research at UCLA addressing the impacts of upzoning in New York City.  Read on to view their findings.

The City of Lakewood, Colorado has approved a city-wide upzoning scheme largely in response to the influence of private equity developers and the ‘redress’ movement as described at their website redressmovement.org.

Redress posted an article titled: ‘A Step Closer to Ending Segregation Zoning in Lakewood, CO’

The article claims that after the US Supreme Court banned housing discrimination based on race including in housing documents and plat maps in 1948, ‘segregationists’ then fell back on ‘technically’ race neutral policies like large lot, single-family zoning and HOAs.

That argument falls flat since they cite a court case that preceded the 1948 SCOTUS decision.  Obviously, what was at issue in the 1924 case they cited could not have been a reaction to a SCOTUS decision 20 years in the future!  It gets worse.

Keep in mind their entire argument against large lot, single family zoning is that such zoning is discriminatory even though they admit such zoning is actually ‘race neutral’ but to redressmovement.org that fact is simply a technicality!  And that is good enough for Lakewood City Council to upzone the entire city – based on a technicality!

Looking further at dubious claims by redressmovement.org, they directly quote a key phrase they say was used by the judge in that 1924 court decision.  Yet that quotation does not occur anywhere in the text of the court decision they reference.

They specifically state the judge mentioned ‘the single-family zone’ in order to help establish context for their interpretation of that court decision.

However, since the phrase they directly quote does not appear anywhere in the court decision, it appears redressmovement.org may have fabricated it to support their apparently unfounded interpretation.

That same court case also makes no mention of HOAs even though redressmovement.org says:

“The architects of zoning law spoke this intention out loud”

including with regard to HOAs when they cited that court case.

Their claim that HOAs are used in Lakewood to impose racial discrimination is also puzzling because they even admit HOAs are ‘technically’ race neutral.  It is unclear how HOAs discriminate against minorities or what possible connection upzoning the entire city has to reducing alleged racial discrimination by HOAs.

Between 1910 and 1948, 17% of plat maps in Lakewood contained racist language prohibiting black residents.  Fortunately, the vast majority of plat maps did not contain such language.

The redress folks claim that large lot, single family zoning and HOAs ‘create the same effect’ today as those blatantly discriminatory provisions that were banned by the US Supreme Court in 1948.  Yet, they admit single family zoning and HOAs are ‘technically’ race neutral.

So they want to have it both ways.  They are claiming racial discrimination while agreeing the source of the discrimination is also race neutral, but a technicality.  Obviously, that is not an argument they can put over at the US Supreme Court level.  But to the  folks on Lakewood City Council, that argument must be an easy sale.

We could be on a slippery slope because if such extreme claims of discrimination succeed without proof because the contradicting reality is simply ignored as a technicality, where is the limit to future extreme claims Lakewood City Council will accept as valid issues also deserving of another extreme policy response?

After all, the mayor has stated upzoning is simply the ‘first step’!  What is the next step?  Nobody knows what the actual agenda of this council is because they have concealed it from the voters.  Nobody ran for council on upzoning the city.  So are we going to see additional ill-conceived policy initiatives that city councilors also concealed from voters?

If the redress folks truly believe HOAs are discriminating against minorities, then let’s just get rid of HOAs!  Talking about that would at least have some connection to their complaint.  And there might even be a groundswell of support in Lakewood and maybe Colorado for eliminating HOAs.  Doing so would be a heavy lift, but it could be worth considering since their might be a co-coalition of support from the redress folks and others that could make it happen.

The people who want HOAs are municipalities because HOAs do their work for them.  Cities used to maintain all the parks and open spaces.  Now HOAs do a lot of that.  I once lived in an HOA that had 50 acres of open space to maintain.  Mowing 50 acres for fire prevention.  Controlling invasive plants.  It wasn’t cheap.  It saved the city a lot of time and effort.  That is mentioned as an example.

Yes, Lakewood maintains a lot of park property.  But HOAs also do.  If anyone wants to eliminate HOAs and transfer their grounds maintenance to the city, we would probably find strong resistance from city hall.

Cities have transferred a lot of their workload to HOAs.  That is the key reason we have so many HOAs.  They are not there as a way to discriminate in housing.  If they violate any Fair Housing laws, they can be sued and they are sued at times.

Of course, proponents of upzoning also claim it will be the solution to the shortage of affordable housing.  However, research from UCLA contradicts that expectation because in their study of New York City, upzoning caused rents and housing prices to increase.

The Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA has studied the impacts of upzoning in New York City and published their findings in 2024.  Please access the study for a more complete view of their findings.

They found:

We find that upzoning is positively associated with signs of gentrification – upzoned neighborhoods became whiter, more educated and more affluent in the long run. Upzoning is also associated with increases in housing production, but housing prices also increased…

Black-majority and low-income neighborhoods experienced gentrification to the greatest extent”

The research clearly supports the prediction that upzoning Lakewood will increase the cost of housing – both rental and owner-occupied units.

If upzoning is not repealed on April 7, 2026, the affordability problem will get worse in Lakewood and the public may become weary and less sympathetic to addressing the issue down the road as more voters come to recognize City Council ignores them.

UPDATE – Upzoning was repealed by Lakewood voters by an almost 2-1 margin on April 7, 2026.

If this type of free-for-all land development is the solution to affordable housing, why does Lakewood’s new 400-page zoning code not require any affordable housing?

Why do developers oppose any requirements for affordable housing?

If affordable housing is the key reason for Lakewood’s new haphazard rezoning law, wouldn’t it make sense to at least include some minimal affordable housing requirements?

Why is the city council totally opposed to affordable housing in their own rezoning of Lakewood?

Why are developer’s opposed to affordable housing as part of the extreme new 400-page rezoning of Lakewood?

Why do they unethically keep preaching about affordable housing when their own extreme rezoning law totally ignores doing anything reasonable about affordability? Get the picture?

YES, YES, YES, YES on April 7.

They didn’t tell you the truth about what they would do with the money when you let them keep the Tabor refunds? Instead, they used that money when they got caught in their scheme to illegally extract money from telecom providers. The Colorado Supreme Court decided UNANIMOUSLY that the scheme was against the law. SInce the supreme court was 100% unanimous that Lakewood broke the law, don’t you think the city attorney might have seen it coming? Why would you believe them now when they want to rezone the entire city in the name of affordable housing but with ZERO requirements for anything affordable?

YES, YES, YES, YES on April 7.

Many of you are aware of the ongoing attack on Front Range habitats including Belmar Park, Chatfield State Park and Bear Creek Lake Park.  Unfortunately, habitats are under pressure globally which threatens the web of life for everyone on the planet.

This trend is often justified locally by proclaiming the need to ignore the value of habitats because there is a ‘housing shortage’ and building more housing is necessary above all else.

While statistics are not supportive of that argument for the Lakewood area, proponents continue to repeat it for lack of anything better to spout.

Some even claim that regardless of whether there is an actual shortage of housing, it is necessary to build more housing in order to reduce the cost of rent.  In other words, if there are enough vacant, unused rental units, THAT will cause rent to come down significantly.

Yet that 20,000 units was actually a much larger than average inventory increase.

“This growth far exceeds Denver’s average annual construction of 11,400 units over the past five years” according to JP Morgan.

Because adding 20,000 units was such an outsized increase, it should have reduced rents significantly but for many local residents the $56 was not enough relief.

Yes, rents declined but according to the FOX31 report, developers also reduced apartments under construction by over 36% which will exert upward pressure on rents.

Proponents of continuously building more and more rental units might say the minimal rent reduction was due to the upward pressure on rents caused by the population increase!

They claim we need to keep building rental units to accommodate the population increase in Lakewood which is causing the so-called ‘housing shortage’.

What population increase are they talking about?

Developers don’t seem to agree with the growth argument since they reduced the amount of units under construction by 36%.

The US Census Bureau shows Lakewood has experienced a population increase of less than 1,000 people from April 1, 2020 through July 1, 2024.  That is almost zero growth over 4 years!

Even Denver has increased only 13,500 which is less than 2% total growth in that extended 4-year time period.  Compare that to the 20,000 units added plus the 11,000 units per year average for earlier years.  It would seem a lot more units are getting built than are needed.

Jefferson County has actually lost 4,000 population in that same time period.

Neither Lakewood nor Jeffco are in a population growth mode.

As you probably know, because the secret is finally out – Jefferson County is closing schools!  Even selling off school buildings. That is not exactly an indication of population growth.  Just the opposite.

So let me ask, if I can find this data and you can click and easily verify it, why can’t the Planning Commission or the City Council find these relevant facts to inform their planning horizon and policies?  What is that different drum they are dancing to?

Why do we have to sacrifice the habitat quality of Belmar Park to accommodate population growth that does not exist?

And as far as the use-by-right argument for private property?  We have previously exposed the fact use-by-right is irrelevant since the developer has to do earth moving in Belmar Park itself and they needed Lakewood to surrender valuable easements to enable their project.

Instead of use-by-right, we should call it use-by-deception.

So the question still stands.  What is that different drum?

While many today complain that US housing costs are much higher than earlier decades, data compiled from the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells a different story.  The BLS has collected data for decades on how much US households spend on food, clothing and housing as a percent of total income.  In 1901, 82% of household income was expended on those basic necessities.  By 2023, only 37% was spent on food, clothing and housing.

In particular, housing cost has stayed roughly in the mid-20s since 1901 except for 1935 when it reached 31.8% of household income.

Housing cost in 2023 was actually slightly less than in the 80s and 90s consuming 25.4% of household income.

Unfortunately, many younger adults today struggle financially including paying for housing and saving to purchase a residence.  Some of them even blame seniors for their financial woes because some seniors have owned their home for many years, even decades, during which time the value of their homes has increased significantly.

The reality is that the cost of housing in the US as a percent of household income has remained fairly steady over time and the combined cost of food, clothing and housing has declined significantly over time.

Unfortunately, some younger adults are easily influenced by secretive lobbyists (possibly paid or volunteer) who decline to identify who they are affiliated with.  These individuals frequent social media sites and propound a variety of misleading statements to gin up resentment towards seniors claiming they are obstructing upzoning Lakewood.  A central theme of their malicious campaign against seniors is that seniors are responsible for the high cost of housing simply because they often prefer living in their detached homes rather than selling their homes to developers.

Here are some of the misleading claims made by these advocates of upzoning the City of Lakewood:

CLAIM: Increasing housing density increases the number of homes in the city which will reduce the cost of housing.

FACT: Upzoners admit upzoning will not help home shoppers today because it will not significantly increase housing density for at least 10 to 20 YEARS!

CLAIM: Upzoning allows building smaller homes which will cost less because they are smaller.

FACT: These so-called smaller homes are expensive new construction, market rate homes.  They typically cost much more than older homes of the same size already for sale today.  New homes with 1,250 square feet or less compared to older homes of the same size on Zillow can cost hundreds of thousands more.

CLAIM: Seniors who are unwilling to sell their single family homes to developers are the reason younger home shoppers are not able to afford housing.

FACT: Housing costs less today as a percent of household income than in decades past.  And combined costs of food, clothing and housing costs much less than in decades past.

 

The fact that Lakewood city hall including some members of the city council have no apologies for this campaign of negativity towards senior citizens in Lakewood casts a shadow on their character.  Their presumed minions on social media have even made biased and cynical allegations that some seniors are guilty of fear mongering for presenting facts that do not fit Lakewood’s upzoning narrative.  Or that simply living in their own residence constitutes seeking to be ‘subsidized by taxpayers for a low-density lifestyle’.

The message here certainly seems to be that seniors are not welcome in Lakewood.  At least not until they sell their residence to a developer.

Sadly, those who fall prey to accepting the false narrative of the upzoning scam may get side tracked from the discipline needed to save, budget, plan and sacrifice to purchase a residence.  Nobody is saying it is easy to purchase a residence today.  But the fact remains that the most basic necessities of food, clothing and housing formerly consumed over 80% of household income and now only require 37% according to BLS data.  That historic decline in the cost of these important necessities has been totally absent from the conversation.

Now you know.

Homelessness, and especially people who are unhoused, is a growing concern in the US.  Upzoning advocates have pointed to the high cost of housing as a key driver of homelssness and that upzoning would make housing more affordable and therefore would reduce the number of unhoused persons in a city.

‘Upzoning’ is a city planning strategy to increase housing density and therefore housing supply via related zoning changes to support the strategy.

Profile: Lakewood, Colorado

Lakewood, Colorado is a city of 156,000 with 329 unhoused residents as of the 2024 point-in-time count.  Lakewood also recently upzoned the city adopted in late 2025 but at this early stage, it is not possible to see any affordability improvement.

Based on US Census Data 2019-2023, housing in Lakewood is affordable.  The median housing cost is $1,729/month and median household income is $85,789.  That means housing only costs 24% of median income which is well below the HUD 30% affordability threshold.

Median gross rent was $1,746/month and median income of renter households was $60,018 in 2022 which indicates renters in Lakewood are cost burdened since housing consumes 35% of income which exceeds the 30% HUD affordability threshold.

60% of renters were cost burdened in 2022.  42% of housing units in Lakewood are renter occupied.

If we look at what a a buyer can purchase in Lakewood in December 2025, the Rocket Mortgage calculator estimates a buyer with the median household income of $85K and 5% down with 720+ credit rating could purchase a home up to $284,000.  There were 51 properties for sale on Zillow for that amount or less in December 2025.

Renters with the median income of $60,018 per year can afford $1,400 rent per month plus $100 for utilities based on the 30% HUD limit.  There were 402 Lakewood rentals advertised on Zillow in Dec 2025 for $1,400/month or less.

Therefore, before upzoning, Lakewood aggregate housing was already quite affordable according to US Census statistics although rental housing was not typically as affordable.  Other proprietary and often subscription-based statistics from the for-profit housing industry may have various different views and may exaggerate the need for housing such as Zillow’s extremely inflated model which is based on every unrelated or unmarried person having their own individual housing unit with no roommates.   

Profile: Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon is a city of 635,749 with nearly 7,500 unsheltered residents according to county data. (Another agency claims the number is over 15,000 in Portland!)

Portland has four times the population of Lakewood but 22 times the number of unhoused residents despite a long history of state and local upzoning measures implemented starting back in 1978 with Senate Bill 100.

It would appear that Portland’s efforts to reduce the number of unhoused residents are failing.

Yet, Portland has implemented upzoning in multiple phases over several decades. A significant wave of upzoning occurred between 2001 and 2002, primarily in southwestern Portland, as part of the adoption of the Southwest Community Plan by the Portland City Council. This period saw the upzoning of nearly 679 acres of residential land, which accounted for almost half of the total upzoned land in the city between 2000 and 2017.

Earlier, from 1978 to 1982, Oregon’s state-level anti-sprawl law, Senate Bill 100, triggered a major upzoning that doubled the maximum housing capacity of the Portland metro area and tripled the share of buildable land zoned for multifamily housing. This reform was a sweeping change to low-density, exclusionary zoning practices.

Despite upzoning to address housing affordability, Portland now has hundreds of homeless encampments.  Here is a map.

Portland ‘cleans up’ between 500 and 800 homeless camps EVERY MONTH according to the map linked above.

If upzoning were going to make a difference in the homeless problem or the housing affordability problem in Portland, it should have kicked in by now.

After over 40 years of upzoning, only 2% of homes for sale in Portand in 2023 were affordable to a household earning the median income.

Comparison – In 2022, 80% of Lakewood homeowners could afford their housing without exceeding 30% of their income which is the HUD definition of affordability.

The Zillow comparison shows a different perspective:

Portland median renter income 2023: $58, 946.  Affordable rent: $1,373 + 100.

Zillow listed 1,587 rental units available in Dec 2025 for 1,373/mo or less in Portland.

Zillow listed 258 homes for sale at $247,580 or less based on median income of 75,149.

Using the Zillow comparisons, it appears Portland offers buyers 20% more homes to select from than Lakewood given that Portland is 4 times the size.  However, renters with median income have somewhat more options to rent in Lakewood than are available in Portland considering Portland is 4 times larger.

Profile: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis, MN is a city of 429,954 with 429 unsheltered residents in all of Hennepin County as of the point-in-time count in 2025.

Minneapolis has 2.8 times the population of Lakewood and only 1.3 times the number of unhoused residents which is better than Lakewood is doing.

Portland is 1.5 times larger than Minneapolis yet has over 17 times as many unhoused residents which is far worse than either Lakewood or Minneapolis.

Based on these comparisons, Minneapolis is doing better than Lakewood in reducing the number of unhoused residents and doing much better than Portland.

Why is Minneapolis getting a handle on reducing the unhoused count?

Minneapolis attributes their low and declining rate of unhoused citizens to their multiple programs including combating drug abuse and fentanyl addiction, providing mental health services, response team outreach, behavioral crisis units, youth education of brain health, free 24-hour NARCAN vending machines, mobile healthcare to low-income neighborhoods, rental assistance, free addiction medication, affordable housing investments, upzoning and more.

Proponents of upzoning in Lakewood not only ignore key factors that Minneapolis is facing head on, but in Lakewood, proponents actively spread misinformation including this video they posted on Next door.  The video even uses fancy charts to make various misleading claims that contradict established research.

Misleading Claim – They claim there is no correlation with homelessness and mental health.

Research published in JAMA Psychiatry included over 50,000 participants and found “the current prevalence of mental health disorders among people experiencing homelessness was 67% and the lifetime prevalence was 77%”.  Yet, the overall prevalence of any mental illness (AMI) among US adults is only 23%.  The research disproves the misleading claim that there is no correlation between homeless persons and mental health disorders.

The misinformation video also claims no correlation between homelessness and alcohol or substance abuse.  Again, this claim is misleading.  Based on data from the US Centers for Disease Control as shown in the chart, alcohol and substance abuse is 6-7 times more prevalent among the homeless population.

I shared some of this information with local city hall advocates of upzoning.  I was accused of ‘fear mongering’ and told ‘you want the taxpayers to subsidize your low-density lifestyle’.  (Even though I’ve lived in attached housing recommended by upzoners most of my life and still do!)

If their belligerent, head-in-the-sand attitude represents the approach of city hall to upzoning and homelessness, then we could see the numbers of unhoused persons keep increasing in Lakewood.  Because upzoning is not the panacea local upzoners seem to think it is.

Lakewood’s upzoning proponents are saying neither mental health disorders nor alcohol or substance abuse have anything to do with homelessness.  Their misleading video makes those claims crystal clear.  Supposedly, the only possible explanation for all homelessness must be the high cost of housing.  Their willingness to use misinformation to suggest that extreme argument should give anyone pause.

Lakewood’s upzoning law also has no requirement for any affordable housing.  Therefore, market rate housing is primarily what will get built.

So far, it does not appear Lakewood plans to follow the Minneapolis example.  Ignoring the facts and ignoring the Minneapolis example increases the risk that unhoused folks in Lakewood will continue to construct disheveled homeless encampments around the city and engage in behaviors associated with their various untreated afflictions going forward.  Simply forcing unhoused homeless persons to relocate their camps every few months does not address any drug, alcohol, mental health or financial problems but it does create recurring expenses for taxpayers.  It also obviously disrupts the lives of unhoused persons and complicates any efforts on their part to remediate their issues.

If Lakewood intends to ignore the association of alcohol, drugs and mental health disorders among the homeless population, that could delay or prevent some from receiving needed treatment.  That would be unfortunate and possibly inhumane.

Mental health disorders can be helped.  Example – After intensive in-patient treatment, a paranoid schizophrenic I knew who thought all cars on the road were foreign agents spying on him, later went on to complete a 4-year UC-Berkeley degree and 3 years in the Peace Corp.  But the current philosophy towards mental health disorders locally seems to be that giving free meals and clothes will allow persons with serious mental health disorders to ‘work through’ their ‘issues’.

Although, given how much better Lakewood was already doing without upzoning compared to Portland, it could be Lakewood already has an effective approach which would be very good news.

However, if city hall actually believes the upzoners’ misinformation, let’s hope for a change in direction at city hall that reflects a more constructive and informed course of action regarding homelessness and affordable housing.

Higher urban housing density is being promoted by the City of Lakewood, Colorado as a strategy to improve affordability by increasing the supply of housing units in a given area, which can help meet high demand and reduce competition for housing. 

But density advocates often neglect to explain why simply increasing supply via ‘densification’ doesn’t work.  The problem is that land values increase and developers pass that increase on to buyers.  A key problem is that ‘densification’ uses limited infill locations to build housing.  As those locations are used up, infill sites become more and more expensive which makes the new housing more and more expensive.

Evidence demonstrates that higher urban densities are associated with worse housing affordability.

A study of the 53 major U.S. metropolitan areas found a strong positive correlation (+0.858) between urban density and housing unaffordability, with areas exceeding 3,500 people per square mile showing significantly higher median housing multiples (indicating unaffordability). 

In Vancouver, despite a doubling of housing units due to pro-density zoning, housing prices remain among the highest in North America, with the average house costing 13 times the median household income in 2020. 

 Patrick Condon, a Vancouver-based city planner and professor predicted these upzoning laws would lead to more expensive housing.

Condon has lived in Vancouver long enough to see high rise condo and apartment buildings rise on a peninsula–which includes its central business district–like the redwood trees that covered it a century ago. Vancouver also encourages duplexes, fourplexes, “lane houses” and other forms of suburban upzoning.

Since 1970, Vancouver’s population has increased by more than 50%, from around 420,000 to nearly 665,000; thanks in part to pro-density zoning, its number of housing units has doubled, according to Condon’s numbers.

Its density is over 14,000 persons per square mile–fourth highest in North America.

If density were the solution, Vancouver should have some of the lowest home prices in North America!

Instead, the lowest price townhome on offer in Vancouver, BC on Zillow.com in November 2025 is $589,900 for a 490 square foot unit.  That is $1,204 Canadian dollars per square foot.

Compare that to Lakewood, Colorado.  The lowest price townhome in November 2025 is on offer for $235,000 for 1,000 square feet or only $235 per square foot.  Vancouver is over 5 times as expensive as Lakewood! 

THAT is the price of housing density.

“Land prices absorbed all the benefit of that new supply,” said Condon. “Because the capacity of those parcels was increased in terms of the financial return on it, it’s reflected in this tremendous rise in land value.”

To explain: If upzoning, say, doubles the number of units allowed on a given piece of land, the seller will calculate the upzoned value and raise the asking price accordingly, thus sticking it to the buyer, who must, as a matter of necessity, pass on the added cost to residents. In Vancouver, Condon says 40% of the rent or price — at whatever density — goes right into the land.

And that same escalation of land value is also going to happen in Lakewood if upzoning survives citizen challenges.  Some vacant lots in Lakewood have already increased their asking prices in expectation of the increase in land value Lakewood will create with upzoning.  That increase in land value is the proof that upzoning will NOT result in affordable housing although it may result in more housing being built in Lakewood. And since Lakewood does not mandate any requirements for new housing to be affordable, that further guarantees affordability won’t happen.

Most people are aware that housing cost is typically very high in the center of large cities where density is typically also very high.  Does anyone looking for affordable housing expect to find it in downtown New York, Vancouver, Los Angeles or Denver?  If we are looking for less expensive housing, where do we look?  We look in the outskirts of the city or beyond the city.  So why would anyone believe claims that by increasing housing density, housing cost will be reduced?  

The fact is that claims made by city hall that upzoning to ‘densify’ the city will make housing more affordable in Lakewood are misguided and will lead to disappointment by anyone who trades their future by relying on such claims.  Density will not bring housing affordability as shown by the evidence and examples cited here.

If you are planning to sit around and wait for housing density to make housing affordable in Lakewood, you may as well buy a tent.

So why would the city council adopt such a professionally debunked housing strategy?  Well, consider the impact on property taxes.  Typically, in order to increase revenue coming in to city coffers, city council would need to increase the mill levy which is a highly visible and unpopular political move.  By adopting ‘densification’, under the guise of promoting housing affordability, city council can increase city tax revenue over time without the visible act of officially raising the mill levy.  It is clear that increasing housing density will make housing more expensive.  That increase in property value will also raise property taxes under the automatic taxation formula used in Colorado.

Tax payers will also have to deal with the likelihood of higher homeowners insurance premiums because, as density increases, so does fire risk.  Just look at the Pacific Palisades or Marshall fires where entire neighborhoods of densely packed homes were destroyed by wind-driven flames.

It is established that buildings are more likely to catch fire the closer they are to another burning building.  ‘Densification’ will result in more housing units being placed closer together.  Fire risk then goes up.  Insurance rates then go up. 

Now you know.  Let your city council reps know you know.  Because if city council is not hearing from you, who are they hearing from?  Please let them know you are paying attention.

Has the US drowned itself in luxury housing? This video explains the problems with building ‘luxury’ apartment housing in the US. Take this challenge to find housing for a family. Try to find a new four bedroom apartment in Lakewood on Zillow that is cheaper to rent (or buy) than an existing four bedroom home in Lakewood.

Forget about the new Lakewood zoning code bringing down housing costs!
This tiny 6,150 square foot vacant lot in Lakewood now asking over $1,000,000!

City council has legalized building out of scale projects in many neighborhoods where such projects used to be illegal. Many view this as uncontrolled development.

Notice what the neighborhood looks like. Single family homes. Now the neighborhood will have these enormous, out-of-scale multifamily structures to live with.

This could be your neighborhood under the new zoning law Lakewood just passed which allows buildings up to 35 feet tall in many residential areas (including RLA, RLB, and RLC).

And do you mind vehicles parking on the sidewalk and in No Parking zones? The same developer (Highland Development) was a major developer in the West Line Village project where Lakewood has reported major parking issues. Now that there are no parking minimums, the Lakewood parking problems will likely get even worse.

Here is how Lakewood described parking at West Line Village:

“Many cars were observed parked illegally on sidewalks and in no parking zones in West Line Village area.” p9 of Lakewood’s 2023 Parking Study

Under the new zoning code, large, out-of-scale projects can now happen almost anywhere in Lakewood. Even next to parks. And next to open space. Because Lakewood also totally ignored the petition with over 7,000 signatures asking to protect those areas with a law modeled after Fort Collins. A PhD biologist attended a city council meeting and told them it was the right thing to do. That fell on the deaf ears of city council.

Yes, the seller has pre-paid tap fees and permits and will give you plans to build 9 more attached units like the multifamily building shown next door. But isn’t $1,170,000 still a bit much for just 1/7 of an acre? They could at least mow the weeds.

Do you want this all over Lakewood at $$ ONE MILLION PER HOME? (Click the image for a better view.)That is the offer price! Welcome to the new zoning law.

City council must think the answer to the housing crisis is building this style of million dollar homes all over Lakewood! Because city council has just legalized this type of construction all over Lakewood in many locations and neighborhoods where it used to be illegal.

These four expensive homes crammed together in a row are an example of more to come! And not even a garage. Just small one-car carports that may become open-air junk storage areas. The home is only 5 feet wider than a single parking space! How is this helping Lakewood’s housing affordability crisis?

Zoning reform is another Lakewood handout to developers. Somebody is not telling the full truth about the benefits of zoning reform. Are there ANY benefits? Name one, Lakewood. Just one. Even supporters of zoning reform have left comments that the featured home is so atrocious, it looks fake. Sadly, it is not fake.

Your mortgage payment would be **only** $5,394 per month assuming you make a down payment of $200,000!

THAT is how Lakewood is dealing with the housing crisis – by passing city-wide zoning reform that enables building many more out-of-scale homes in Lakewood locations that would be illegal under the old zoning law and that only the rich can afford.

(1753 Harlan)

Lakewood refused to adopt the science-based wildlife buffer ordinance modeled after Fort Collins to protect areas like Belmar Park.

And these examples of escalating housing costs in Lakewood will only get worse if the tentacles of zoning reform are allowed to continue.

Skinny home only 5 feet wider than a parking space costs $1,000,000!

1/7 acre vacant lot costs over $1,000,000

No, you can’t build a home for $75,000 in Lakewood!

Why do they give a month of free rent?  Why not just lower the rent?

What the city claims?

Has the US drowned itself in luxury apartments?

Lakewood’s secretive housing plans!