The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law July 11, but its potential impact in Southwest Colorado is not yet known.
Colorado is facing a housing shortage, similar to much of the country. In Durango alone, the shortfall is an estimated 2,500 housing units. The need for housing in Southwest Colorado is evident with both housing affordability and availability at the forefront of many residents’ minds.
“When we travel around the state, including to Southwestern Colorado, we hear about how the housing crisis is affecting working families,” Sen. John Hickenlooper said in a statement to the Herald. “We need to build more housing and make it more affordable – and that’s exactly what our ROAD to Housing Act does.”
The act provides exemptions in housing-related activities to expedite affordable housing construction. Legislation prevents institutional investors from buying more than 350 single-family homes, incentivizes housing construction near public transit and includes exemptions from environmental review processes.
The bill, however, focuses on authorizations within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and directions for the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Those authorizations, rather than appropriations, could mean Colorado won’t see the bill’s effects for some time, said Pam Moore, executive director of HomesFund.
“Nothing quick is going to happen from that act,” Moore said. “There’s a whole lot of stuff that has to happen before it actually has any local impact.”
Authorizations are described as statutory provisions that define the authority of the government. In the case of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, the bill’s language provides authorization to HUD and other agencies but not funding. Funding comes from appropriations, which the act lacks. While the language gives HUD the power to institute the housing provisions, it does not allocate money specifically for affordable housing. It implements grant programs but not direct funding to housing projects; HUD decides on that.
“The big issue is that many provisions under the act are authorizations rather than immediate appropriations,” Moore said. “This means that HUD has to issue guidance, establish grant criteria and implement rule changes before it’s ever going to filter down to the HomesFund.”
Greg Lopez, former CD4 Rep. and a 2026 unaffiliated gubernatorial candidate, also believes the bureaucracy of the bill will slow down its impact because “the most powerful people in government are not the elected officials; it’s the bureaucrats, it’s the ones that are writing all the rules.”
“It’s not going to happen anytime soon,” he said. “What they pass in Congress takes at least three to five years to actually be implemented.”
While a housing affordability crisis is ever-present in Durango, Moore thinks the high cost of living might deter the Housing Act from effectively impacting the area.
The act includes provisions to bolster homeownership by lowering the cost of home buying. It also increases the eligible income for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which provides grants to states and localities to support housing for low-income households. Moore said these programs are for low-income homebuyers and the programs “might not work in our area because we’re such a high-cost area.”
In September, Gov. Jared Polis and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs released a report on Colorado’s housing shortage. The report said to prevent the shortage from growing, Colorado must build 34,100 new homes each year throughout the next decade. From 2020 through 2022, the state built an average of 43,000 units per year, but production has since decreased.
The housing shortage, according to the report, peaked in 2019 with Colorado short 140,000 units. The shortfall has decreased, but construction has also slowed while interest rates rise, contributing to a widening affordability gap, DOLA said. The report released in 2025 gathered data from 2020 to 2022. The department noted no new data is available at this time.
According to Hickenlooper’s office, the senator has secured more than $62 million for 37 specific Colorado projects that help address the housing crisis through the Congressionally Directed Spending process. Roughly $16 million of that has been directed toward affordable housing projects in Cortez, Durango, Ignacio and throughout Southwest Colorado.
Lopez said the bill is a step forward, but the focus must remain local going forward.
“While it’s a good conversation to have, it needs to stay at the local level, right?” he said. “City managers, mayors, county commissioners – they need to understand that they have a responsibility to create their own community.”
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