Lakewood’s February 2024 Strategic Housing Plan p.93 reports Lakewood has ‘a large surplus’ of over 9,000 rental units priced from $1,250 to $2,500 per month!
We are not interpreting this to be a large surplus. That description is a direct quote from Lakewood’s own professional housing study. The analyst(s) even included a 20% rent adjustment to allow for rent increases from the time of their research up to publication of the study.
The range of rents in this surplus rental inventory is affordable at income levels from 60% of Area Median Income through 120% of AMI! Most of these surplus units are affordable below 100% of AMI!
The fact that Lakewood has thousands of ‘surplus’ rental units affordable below 100% of Area Median Income is not currently being reported in the mainstream media or by elected representatives or staff at city council meetings.
Unfortunately, this media blind spot feeds the oft touted narrative that we need to build, build, build more market-priced housing. And market-priced housing is typically only affordable above 100% of AMI.
The Lakewood Housing Plan even describes these luxury market-priced units as: “amenity-laden properties and a standard of quality that differs from the older apartment supply in Lakewood.”
However – 5,119 of these surplus units are affordable below 100% of AMI and have a vacancy rate of 52%!
You may wonder how this huge surplus is possible and whether these numbers are incorrect outliers that should simply be ignored.
In fact, for the affordable price range we are talking about ($1,250-1,874/mo), the vacancy rate calculated from the Gruen and Gruen data comes out to a whopping 52%! So do we conclude this data is simply unreliable and abandon the discussion?
Don’t be too fast. When we look at total rental units across all price ranges, Lakewood’s vacancy rate from the G&G data is almost zero. The reality the data is showing is that Lakewood has a very uneven distribution of rental housing across price ranges.
The fact that Lakewood has such ‘a large surplus’ (quoting their consulting firm) of rental housing in this ‘middle’ price range is solid evidence that continuing to build more and more luxury rental housing, such as the proposed Belmar Park West project, has absolutely no useful impact on the supply of affordable housing at incomes below 100% of AMI since Lakewood is already in a large surplus situation.
However, the study also revealed Lakewood has a deficit of low-income housing below $1250/month and especially below $875/month or affordable below 40% of AMI. Community members including city councilors who are concerned about affordable housing in Lakewood, Colorado should focus their attention on this shortage of low-income housing affordable below 40% of AMI.
Policymakers everywhere should also take responsibility for their role in allowing land developments, and especially unnecessary ones such as BPW, in locations that degrade valuable habitats, reduce biodiversity and encourage invasive species. Such destructive decisions and policies regarding land development are stealing the future from everyone including your children. If appropriate, please reconsider and take a different road.
Lakewood Area Median Household Income 2022: $85,988/annum
Income Levels
120% of AMI: $103,186/yr
100% of AMI: $85,988/yr
80% of AMI: $68,790/yr
60% of AM!: $51,593/yr
Affordable Rent Levels (AMI Income Level x .3 /12 -100)
(30% of annual income divided by 12 less $100 allowance/mo for utilities)
120% AMI: $2,480/month
100% AMI: $2,050/month
80% AMI (68790/12*0.30): $1,619.75/month
65% AMI: $1,297/month
Housing is ‘affordable’ if rent plus utilities does not exceed 30% of gross household income. If it does exceed 30%, that household is ‘cost burdened’. If greater than 50% of gross household income, that household is ‘severely cost burdened’.
About Housing Data: Much housing data is sequestered by commercial entities who charge subscription fees plus additional reporting fees for access. SaveBelmarPark.com does not have access to this privatized data other than what may be curated by the MSM. Data for this article is sourced from Lakewood’s 2024 Strategic Housing Plan, from US Census statistics for Lakewood, CO and from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition as cited above.
