From The Denver Business Journal (Ed Sealover):
Dismayed by highway congestion and hamstrung government budgets, the author of Golden’s 21-year-old housing-growth limitations has submitted an initiative for the 2018 ballot that would cap the number of new homes and apartments going up along most of the Front Range.
Daniel Hayes’ effort must be categorized, at least for now, as a long shot.
Not only has he not solicited funders or backers for the campaign, but he said in an interview Thursday that he plans to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the recently passed Amendment 71, arguing that it would be nearly impossible to meet the new threshold of 55 percent approval to pass a constitutional amendment like his.
But local economic-development leaders are already concerned about the implications of any such proposal on being able to attract more jobs and workers if the supply of housing dries up.
And Hayes said he believes he can tap into a growing sentiment among Colorado residents that people should be able to control the amount of new housing before its effects and the effects of a booming population weigh even further on the crowding of highways, schools and other infrastructure.
“The growth is completely out of control. And it’s costly,” Hayes told the Denver Business Journal. “Excessive growth will bankrupt the state. There’s already no money for highways.”
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that Colorado’s population grew 8.5 percent between 2010 and 2015, reaching a level of nearly 5.5 million people. The growth rate is one of the fastest in the country during that time period, and roughly two-thirds of the growth comes from in-migration rather than the natural cycles of state residents’ birth over death, studies have shown.
Hayes’ proposed constitutional amendment would, beginning in 2019, limit the number of new residences in the seven-county Denver metro area and in El Paso, Larimer and Weld counties to no more than 1 percent growth per year. Homes would be counted as one structure in that calculation and each apartment in a new apartment building would also be counted as one structure.
In addition, the proposal would allow residents of any other city or county government to petition to put a similar growth limitation on their local ballot. And it would allow growth limitations to be amended or repealed by initiative or referendum beginning in 2021.