LEGISLATION
DIRTY DOZEN
12 Passed Laws that have increased the cost of housing in the last 3 Years
The cost of housing has increased dramatically in Colorado . The average cost of buying a house has gone up 49 % in the last 5 years ( 10 % per year ). The average rent rate has increased 18 % over that same period of time ( 3.6 % per year ). Perhaps because many people own houses , the increased cost of purchased housing is often celebrated . However , the less volatile and slower rising cost of renting one of those purchased housing units is uniformly viewed as a problem that needs to be corrected and is the central theme and talking point for every type of law change that ’ s harmful to rental housing providers .
Housing costs are a function of supply and demand . When there ’ s more people demanding housing and housing units cannot be built to meet that demand , the price of housing gets bid up . Housing is a game of musical chairs , and Colorado is not building enough chairs for all those playing . Driving it all is a Colorado population growth of nearly 800,000 people between the last 2 censuses , almost exactly double the population growth rate of the nation as a whole .
The only source of revenue for a person selling or renting a housing unit is the customer paying the purchase price or rent . Consequently , any law that makes it more difficult or expensive to build a housing unit or to loan that housing unit to somebody else raises the cost of housing . Unfortunately , when elected officials consider and promote ideas with a goal of decreasing the cost of housing , they often end up passing laws with the unintended consequence of increasing the cost of housing and making the problem worse .
Our core message is that affordable housing results from policies making it less expensive to build housing units and rent them to customers . When engaged having conversations with policymakers and the public on this issue , it ’ s helpful to have examples of the many and growing number of policies that do the exact opposite .
Here are a dozen examples of laws passed in the last several years that have or will have the effect of increasing the cost of housing for Coloradoans .
26 | TRENDS SEPTEMBER 2021 www . aamdhq . org