Heads up on a pending amendment to the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, or IHO. Passed by Council in 2002, the year before Judy took office, the IHO requires large-scale residential developments (30 units or more) to include a certain amount of affordable housing — 10 percent of the overall units. The ordinance is credited with having created more than 1,000 units of affordable housing since its enactment.
The IHO includes four bonus incentives for developers, including one related to parking and another related to density. Under current law, developers who invoke the parking and density incentives must set aside 10 percent of their bonus units as affordable housing. The pending amendment would eliminate the 10 percent affordable requirement for the bonus units.
Let’s take an example. As the ordinance is currently written, if a developer builds 100 units (including 10 affordable) and wants to take advantage of the density bonus incentive, the developer would get to build 10 bonus units — but 1 of them (10 percent) would have to be an affordable unit. That undermines the value of the density bonus and deters builders from pursuing density — the exact opposite of what the IHO intends.
Judy supports the amendments in part because they will bring the IHO into agreement with the way other cities apply these incentives. The amendments are supported by local and national affordable housing developers, as well as at least one of the former Denver City Council Members who authored the original IHO.
At the moment these amendments are still in Council committees, but they’ll be before the full Council at some point this fall. If you feel strongly about this proposal, yea or nay, weigh in here or contact Judy’s office.
