Ro Troia

House Size Control or Socialism in Boulder CO?

A friend of mine is so proud of the fact that his “town” of Boulder Colorado only has approximately 100,000 people in it and that he also supports the new Boulder County regulations, passed June 12, 2008, to limit house sizes in unincorporated Boulder County which will “preserve the rural character”. The new rules which will go into effect August 8, 2008 states that if you want to build a home larger than 6000 sq. ft (that includes basements, garages and storage areas) than you will have to purchase “development credits” from smaller houses or vacant lots to do so – something that might cost homeowners thousands of dollars. This has been brewing in Boulder for years now and the BoulderCounty commissioners unanimously passed this new regulation claiming that it also includes changes to the county’s site plan review process, which is the framework used by the land-use staff to ensure that new development is “compatible” with the existing neighborhood. Boulder is one of a select numbers of counties around the country to impose restrictions on the size of a new home. Boulder doesn’t think it’s unreasonable to put checks and balances in place to limit house sizes – basically adding 10-12 percent of additional space as a buffer against the upward trend in consumption they feel is not sustainable.

Not everyone in Boulder feels this way. Some call it “Socialism at its best” – squelching the American dream to ensure a more equal socialistic society so that lower income workers who probably can’t afford a big house won’t feel bad and calling the effort to be more “green” a smokescreen, an attack on success and wealth in this country and an attempt to curb class envy!

Some say there are already plenty of houses under 2600 sq. feet that waste more energy than some over 2600 sq.feet.

Others say that it’ all about population control – home size, immigrations, jobs environment, all of it.

And many say that we need to be more concerned about energy efficiency of new homes than restricting home sizes, to encourage creativity and technological innovations by people who can afford it.

Austin Texas instituted a policy similar to this in 2006 and Boulder has taken it’s cues from watching it unfold. A Boulder Daily Camera article written April 6, 2008 states “The Austin ordinance limits “floor-area ratios” of new homes — that is, the percentage of the lot that’s covered by square footage — to 0.4, but it gives the owners of small lots a minimum of 2,300 square feet to work with. The measure also requires new building to fit within an “envelope” meant to keep new construction from crowding its neighbors.”

You can’t believe everything you read right? Texans are also trying to restrict the size of the beer containers!

If you’re still interested in this subject I found an interesting article put out by the Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York which talks more in detail about the the impact of building restrictions on housing affordability – Focusing on an alternative view that because of government regulation zoning and other restrictions on building an artificial limit is created forcing higher prices. They present several radically different hypotheses about the relationship of regulation and high prices, reiterating that almost all of the very high cost areas around the country are extremely regulated-even though they have fairly reasonable density levels. In summary this article concludes that America does not uniformly face a housing affordablity crisis but states that in places where housing is quite expensive, building restrictions appear to have created these high prices.

The City of Boulder has chosen to focus on the “community character” component of regulating house sizes. Although they want the community to have the flexibility to alter their homes as needed to fit their lifestyles, they would like to see some sort of threshold of “pops” (example = building up on a one level ranch) because they feel some of the additions are just “too much”. Another concern is “scrapes” where the builder tears down the house and builds a mega spec house that is out of scale with the neighborhood with the potential of maximizing his profits. Boulder has a strong Affordable Housing Program as well as a City Green Building Program which will the city says will work hand in hand with reduced house sizes.

Meanwhile the discussions go on about what exactly “in harmony with existing homes” means here in Boulder. This has caused a lot of frustration and the Commisioners hope the new rules (at least in the county) will clarify both neighborhood boundaries and how large a house can be and still fit in. Guidelines have also been set up to allow developers to get a better handle on what harmony and compatibility looks like when it comes to house sizes. They also believe that when the dust settles a lot of people will be happy to sell off their development credits, allowing them to choose to keep small houses for the benefit of themselves and the rest of their community.

Let us know what’s going on in your community and if you don’t know go find out so you can share it with us.

While the chatter continues about house sizes around Boulder, another group is moving where no man has gone before (OK, so maybe it’s happened in Boulder before…..) Riding your bikes naked with “Less gas, more ass,” painted on their bodies delivering the message that the United States and the world should reduce its dependency on oil. It’s Boulder!

Tags: Tags: boulder colorado real estate, boulder homes, boulder housing, boulder properties, Boulder real estate

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Boulder Subdivisions and Neighborhoods, Focus on Boulder. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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