Good housing that people can afford should be available for all Coloradans. Owning a home is more than just having a place of your own; affordable first-time homeownership opportunities serve as a critical foundation for long-term financial stability. And for those not ready to own, affordable, safe, quality rentals should be available across the state. Yet Colorado ranks 43rd in overall affordability and 48th in the nation in homeownership affordability. And our state is short of roughly 80,000 owner-occupied homes priced between $150,000 and $500,000. That is unacceptable.
No Coloradan should be forced to choose between paying for their home, groceries, or essentials like childcare, healthcare, or medications. And Coloradans should not have to commute hours to live in a community with homes in their price range. While the state has increased its efforts on housing affordability in recent years, there is much more to be done.
As governor, I will work to make housing in Colorado more affordable, safer, and better for all—for home buyers and for renters—in every part of the state. To achieve this, my goal is to increase the attainable owner-occupied housing supply by 40,000 units, closing the current gap by 50%, and materially decrease costs for 100,000 renters, currently spending half their income on housing, by 2035. To do this, my plan prioritizes new construction, preservation, enhanced trade education, lower building fees, renter protections, and downpayment support pathways to first time homeownership. To get there, here’s what I will do:
- Speed Up Permitting Times and Cutting Costs
Permitting delays and red-tape can delay homes from being delivered and drive up costs passed on to home buyers. As of February 2025, only five local jurisdictions had adopted, or were in the process of adopting, fast track approval processes necessary to opt into Proposition 123 funding (an affordable housing initiative approved by the voters). Through shared resources and coordination, we can do better. I will partner with local governments to accelerate the approval time for housing development and permit approvals to best-in-country levels to speed more housing units to completion and make them available immediately. And, importantly, I will work collaboratively with local governments, and push for legislation to offer incentives and partnerships to towns, cities, and counties to modernize land use, zoning, building requirements, and processes to support affordable housing development efforts.
In what is a perverse incentive, permit fees and approval times for multi-million dollar homes are often the same as for homes we need most (such as workforce housing for law enforcement, teachers, and nurses). We must prioritize the type of housing stock we need now. I will work with the legislature and sign into law new policies to incentivize local governments to lower building costs, lower fees, and guarantee quicker turnarounds for the housing we need most—especially affordable rental housing units and reasonably-priced starter homes. Specifically, I will work with local governments to lower permitting fees for rent restricted affordable rentals (including Low Income Housing Tax Credit (“LIHTC”) projects and other state subsidized projects), and homes available for sale at more affordable prices below $600,000, providing incentives for towns and cities that take this critical step.
- Replace State-Level Red Tape and Redundancies with a Focused and Innovative Approach
Too many uncoordinated state agencies, programs, rules, and regulations exist in the housing space. Overlapping and duplicative government efforts create redundancies and do not help tackle this problem. Rather, they cause confusion and unnecessary red tape that can slow delivery of new housing units. This is confusing and challenging to navigate for home buyers and home builders. As governor, I will sign executive orders and push legislation to reform all state housing affordability efforts into a single, streamlined structure that is understandable and navigable by home buyers and home builders so they can take advantage of the state’s housing incentives and so government processes on housing are streamlined and sped up.
An important part of this work will be to drive thoughtful planning into where and how we create new development—the more transit connected our homes are, the more effective public transit is for the people of Colorado. As governor, I will push for simpler and swifter planning, zoning, and design decisions that prioritize housing connected to public transit to support our multimodal transit system and plans. To ensure these efforts succeed, I will stand up the role of Colorado’s first Chief Housing Officer, a cabinet-level official charged with simplifying and speeding all state processes, funding, and steps involved in the housing space.
- Improve and Enhance the State’s Approach to Housing Funding
To improve the state’s overall efforts in supporting more housing now, I will establish a new Colorado Housing Innovation and Coordination Team, led by a Chief Housing Officer and charged with coordinating a single access point for federal and state funding programs tied to housing. The Team will undertake a data-driven assessment of statewide needs and program efficacy and establish statewide goals with transparent quarterly reporting. This work will be coupled with my statewide initiative to review all regulations to assess efficiency and performance.
- Support First-time Home Buyers with Down Payment Assistance
Construction alone isn’t enough to tackle this challenge. While we need far more housing units built—that does little if lower and middle income Coloradans cannot afford a down payment to buy their first home. As governor, I will expand existing down payment assistance and other innovative financing and push legislation to create new tools for first time home buyers—especially those in essential professions like teaching, nursing, and law enforcement. This will include expansion of existing programs, including those offered by the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority as well as exploring private sector and nonprofit avenues for new down payment assistance and financing programs. In addition, using the tools from S.B. 25-167 for downpayment support for K-12 public school employees, I will partner with legislative leaders to pass similar legislation to develop a down payment assistance pool for other critical groups across the state—including those who provide essential community services such as first responders, nurses, and childcare workers. My goal is to ensure that a down payment is no longer an impediment to any low- to middle-income family who wants to buy a home and can otherwise afford the monthly mortgage payment.
- Protect Affordable Rental Option and Renters
Renters must be able to access good, safe, and affordable rental units. For many, rental housing can be an accessible pathway to economic mobility, offering both flexibility and stability to pursue job opportunities or education without the burden of unsustainable housing costs. And more affordable rental units in communities and neighborhoods enhance inclusivity and ensure that residents at varying income levels can access education, transportation, and employment opportunities. This leads to stronger, more integrated communities for everyone. Fortunately, efforts in recent years are beginning to show progress in achieving more affordable rents in metro Denver. More still must be done.
As governor, I will ensure the rental market is fair and accessible—and that renters aren’t taken advantage of. That is why, as attorney general, I went after corporate landlords that illegally colluded to stop them from using unfair and illegal algorithms that harm renters and ones that used false advertising and lack of appropriate disclosures to lock tenants into mandatory junk fees. As governor, I will continue to fight to make sure that renters across Colorado are treated fairly and afforded equal opportunity to rent across the state. And, I will push for legislation and funding to provide greater resources, support, and legal tools for people at risk of losing their homes due to eviction—including access to attorneys so they know their rights, and support for alternative housing options to ensure they do not go unhoused.
One concerning trend is out-of-state investors buying up Colorado single-family homes and operating as irresponsible landlords. Responding to this concern, other states have begun to evaluate reasonable oversight of such actors, ensuring that they are not treating tenants unfairly. As governor, I’ll work to ensure that out-of-state corporate landlords that acquire Colorado properties do not mistreat consumers.
- Lower Housing Costs Through Innovation
As governor, I will push the state government to accelerate housing innovation across the state. This will include new accountability metrics for all state housing initiatives, and data to share transparent, objective feedback on what works and what doesn’t. We will employ this analysis on government initiatives as well as public-private partnerships across the state. With this data, coupled with visibility into best practices and creative ideas from other states, the state will roll out pilot programs to test innovations that promise to make home construction cheaper.
This will take many forms—as we will continue to test and learn. This could include giving local governments the support they need to deploy innovative technologies to speed plan review and permitting processes. We will look to create and offer model pre-approval options for affordable housing designs or approaches, including more affordable modular and prefab construction that local governments can leverage. We will support innovative new housing construction technology efforts, including modular/prefab construction with state funding. As governor, I will push for and sign new laws to provide economic incentives to spur more affordable ways to build, plan, and permit homes through innovation. Through this work, I will make it a goal for Colorado to be first in the nation for innovation in new housing development.
- Encouraging More Skilled Labor in the Building Trades
To lower costs and speed construction, we need more skilled workers able, trained, and willing to enter the building trades. I will direct my Cabinet to ensure the state’s workforce development training programs and initiatives include incentives to train, attract, and retain skilled trade workers for home construction and the building trades. I will promote apprenticeship and “pre-apprenticeship” programs like those run by Buildstrong Academy and Colorado Mountain College, including ones that focus on innovative skills training beneficial for modular and off-site construction. Developing more modular home construction in Colorado by both private developers and non-profits like Habitat for Humanity remains in progress, but Colorado is not where we need to be.
Encouraging more people to enter the trades will help address the housing affordability crisis, and enable good paying and stable jobs. As governor, I will push for greater financial assistance and incentive programs for building trades facing critical shortages across the state.
- Support for Rural Housing
What works along the Front Range and in rural Colorado are often different. The building trades gap is particularly wide in rural Colorado even when land on which to build is abundant.
From listening to rural leaders, I learned that one of rural Colorado’s challenges in addition to a shortage of housing is too few skilled building contractors in their regions—meaning that qualified builders must travel long distances which in turn drives up costs. To make a dent in this problem, as attorney general, I launched the Colorado Partnership for Education and Rural Revitalization (“COPERR”), a partnership with Colorado community colleges in Lamar, Otero, Trinidad, and Pueblo. COPERR builds skills and housing simultaneously, creating opportunities for students to gain an education in the building trades while also providing new housing units for residents. As governor, I will expand this successful effort to all rural areas of the state—so we have better housing, lower costs and more affordability, and more skilled building trade professionals in rural communities.
As governor, I will also work with rural communities to develop solutions tailored to their needs. This means developing ways for the state to support smaller affordable housing projects in smaller communities—whether through tailored funding pools, specified funding mechanisms or other approaches. By listening and collaborating with rural leaders, we will partner to innovate on solutions to address unique needs in rural Colorado, including addressing “inverted housing markets” where it is cheaper to rehabilitate existing housing rather than build new homes. And I will ensure that state programs, like Proposition 123, work for all Colorado communities.
- Safeguarding Affordable Housing Units We Already Have
We cannot lose the affordable housing we already have. As governor, I will defend and safeguard the affordable housing options already in place. To do this, we will work with CHFA to significantly enhance the state’s records of affordable housing throughout the state, including those eligible for rolling off deed restrictions or other time-based affordable housing programs, and naturally occurring affordable rental housing that comes to market. Improving the quality, transparency, and accessibility of this information will enable state and local leaders to proactively protect these homes.
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Solving the housing affordability crisis in Colorado will not be simple, and it will not be done overnight. Addressing this core challenge for our state will require a creative effort by leaders who collaborate and think broadly. As governor, I will be laser-focused on developing collaborative housing solutions so people have a safe place to live that they can afford.