The Durango City Council will weigh housing policy changes next year to encourage more residential construction.
Developers need to build between 560 to 790 new housing units each year until 2035 to meet demand, according to projections by the Regional Housing Alliance of La Plata County.
To help encourage more housing, the council plans to look at introducing protections for condominium developers, expanding neighborhoods where accessory dwelling units are allowed and adjusting home-building regulations, such as the number of parking spaces required for some projects.
The housing shortage has become an emergency, and some steps need to be taken in early 2016, Councilor Sweetie Marbury said during a meeting on Tuesday.
“I don’t want to push things down the road,” she said.
Making it tougher to sue condominium developers in Durango could be one option. The Colorado General Assembly passed a law making it easier to sue the developers of condos, and that slowed condo construction statewide. But several municipalities on the Front Range have passed local ordinances to help protect condo developers.
In 2014, the Lakewood City Council granted condo developers the right to repair their construction before facing a lawsuit, The Denver Post reported.
The local law also requires homeowner association boards to get consent from a majority of homeowners to file suit. State law requires consent only from a majority of the homeowner association board members to file.
If Durango passed a similar law, it could be the first municipality on the Western Slope to take action. If the council does not pursue a law like this early in 2016, it could prevent condominium projects from getting started.
“The concern is that we will lose another building season,” Councilor Christina Rinderle said.
But the council hopes to encourage more than just condos. An ordinance also will be targeted at needed housing projects.
The home-building regulation changes that will be presented in the new year could apply specifically to needed housing projects as opposed to high-end housing, said city planner Phillip Supino.
For example, the city could adjust how much land must be designated to build a development, according to a city presentation.
The city staff is also exploring funding options such as property-tax measures or impact fees that could help fund subsidized housing projects, Supino said.
Expanding the areas where accessory dwelling units, such as mother-in-law apartments, can be added to houses is also a goal.
As part of the this goal, Marbury said she would like to revisit the lot sizes required to build a unit to give more people the opportunity to build a secondary unit.
The city also will not be shutting down ADUs when the city closes its voluntary registration period for formerly illegal units on Dec. 31.
However, those owners who do not voluntarily register a unit could face significantly higher fees, in some cases 20 percent more than they would have paid, the council decided. But owners will still have five years to pay back the fees at 2 percent interest.
Currently, owners who can prove their unit was built before 1989 pay only an application fee and are required to sign an affidavit that the unit is safe.
Those with a unit built after 1989 need to pay the fees that were in place the year the unit was built, which can total up to about $7,000.
Most of the more than 220 units that have been registered were built before 1989, and few people have asked to be put on a payment plan, said planning manager Nicol Killian.
In the new year, the city will start registering small multifamily structures, such as houses with four units, and the owners of those buildings will have eight months to come forward.
Visit http://durangogov.org/ADUs online for more information about registering an ADU.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
This story has been updated to correctly describe one of the changes the city may make to accessory dwelling unit policies.
