Land Use and Housing Legislation Implementation

DOLA released Sections 1 and 2 of the TOC Guidance in October 2024, which provide an overview of the TOC law that is intended for a general audience. A new draft of Section 3 of the TOC Guidance published today supplements this by providing more detailed interpretive guidance intended to assist practitioners with implementation of the law. This interpretive guidance includes the factors with which DOLA will determine compliance with the law.

DOLA will publish a complete version of the TOC law guidance by February 28, 2025, which will compile the sections published to date, along with the user guides for technical tools, “form and manner” templates, and other appendices.

Please submit comments on this Section 3 draft by February 14, 2025. DOLA will strive to incorporate comments submitted by then, and may continue to update the TOC guidance over time as needed.

The Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA), with funding from SB24-174, offers state assistance to local governments and regional entities to promote the development of housing need assessments, housing action plans, and comprehensive plans compliant with state law.

DOLA invites you to review the draft program guidelines for the Sustainable Affordable Housing Assistance Grant Program and to comment using the Sustainable Affordable Housing Assistance Grant Program Guidelines form by February 16, 2025. While we welcome your input on the draft guidelines in full, we would greatly appreciate your feedback on critical components of the guidelines such as match requirements, scoring criteria, and eligibility. Please consider unintended consequences associated with the proposed requirements and criteria.

Please note that the application deadline has yet to be determined. There are also references to some DOLA guidance documents that are not yet available. Once the referenced guidance documents become available, they will be hyperlinked within the program guideline document.

Thank you in advance for your insightful feedback. We look forward to reviewing your comments!

On December 30, 2024, the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA), through the Division of Local Government (DLG), published a suite of important tools as part of the 2024 land use and housing legislation implementation. Among these resources are the Housing Needs Assessment Methodology and Displacement Risk Assessment Guidance.

A Housing Needs Assessment (HNA) identifies the type and amount of housing needed in a community or region to ensure current and future resident and employee households at all income levels have access to quality housing that they can afford.

The primary goal of a displacement risk assessment is to help local governments understand how to better identify who is at risk of displacement before it happens so they can incorporate strategies to prevent and mitigate displacement in the process of planning for community growth and change. The displacement risk assessment is one of the six required outputs of regional and local Housing Needs Assessments described in SB24-174. The published guidance is base guidance, meaning it is intended to work for a majority of communities, however, DOLA intends to develop further guidance in 2025 for additional, more complex community contexts.

Senate Bill 24-174 requires each local government, with some exceptions, to conduct and publish a HNA no later than December 31, 2026, and to update the HNA at least every six years thereafter. A regional entity may conduct a housing needs assessment on behalf of, and with the participation of local jurisdictions. The HNA must include an assessment of displacement risk. This new law directed the state to develop, by December 31, 2024, a methodology to conduct local and regional housing needs assessments and guidance to conduct a displacement risk assessment. The linked guidance documents are to be used by local governments when conducting these assessments.

Additional tools can be found under SB24-174 Sustainable Affordable Housing (Housing Planning) in the Tools and Documents sidebar and include:

• Preexisting HNA Self-Assessment Tool
• Preliminary Affordability Strategy Compliance Guidance
• Displacement Risk Assessment Guidance Word Document
• DOLA Displacement Risk Assessment Public Participation Report PDF
• Displacement Risk Indicators_Data Access Tool (Excel File)

HB24-1304 directs DOLA to create best practices and technical assistance materials related to optimizing parking supply and managing it in a way that increases the production of market-rate and affordable housing by December 31, 2024. On December 30th, DOLA in partnership with CEO and CDOT published the final version of the “Best Practices in Parking Management Strategies for Colorado Communities” report, informed by a literature review, survey, focus groups, and round of public comments on the draft report. The state agencies want to thank everyone who contributed to the report, particularly the Colorado communities highlighted who were willing to share their stories about parking policies and programs, and are looking forward to sharing the findings of the report via a webinar or other events in the new year.

Senate Bill 24-174 requires each local government, with some exceptions, to conduct and publish an HNA no later than December 31, 2026, and to update the HNA at least every six years thereafter. This new law also directs the state to develop, by December 31, 2024, a methodology to conduct local and regional housing needs assessments.

DOLA invites you to review the Final Draft Housing Needs Assessment Guide for Colorado Communities and to comment using the Final Draft Housing Needs Assessment Methodology form by December 16, 2024. In your comment, please note the section and page number (e.g., "C. Housing Inventory, pgs. 30-31”), and please also provide links to any additional resources that may be helpful to reference in the report.

Does your jurisdiction have an existing local and regional housing needs assessment? If you would like to have this reviewed and have not yet done so, please email preexisting HNAs to kc.mcferson@state.co.us by December 31, 2024. In the subject line, include: “SB174 Preexisting HNA for Review.”

Thank you for your interest and support! And thank you to those jurisdictions and organizations that participated in our focus groups that shaped this methodology!

DOLA has published new draft tools to support jurisdictions subject to HB24-1313 with calculating the Net Housing Density and Zoning Capacity of their Transit Centers, and is inviting public comment by December 16, 2024:

• A draft Transit Center calculation model in a spreadsheet format
• A draft user guide for the Transit Center calculation model (see Section 2 in the Table of Contents)
• A webinar recording of an introduction and walk through of the tool
• A draft parcel shapefile provided by DOLA based on the Office of Information Technology’s statewide parcel dataset, which includes parcels within Transit Areas and the additional quarter mile buffer with certain fields needed for the Transit Center calculation model already added. This is meant to help save Transit Oriented Communities time and GIS staff capacity if helpful, and is not required to be used. DOLA welcomes feedback on how to improve it if it is helpful.

DOLA welcomes comments, questions, and feedback on these draft tools by December 16, and encourages jurisdictions to download the tool and test using it. Please provide your input using the Draft Transit Center Calculation Model and Guide form, or reach out to our team if you would like to meet to discuss further.

DOLA has published new draft tools to support jurisdictions subject to HB24-1313 with calculating their Housing Opportunity Goal (HOG), and is inviting public comment by December 16, 2024:

• A draft Housing Opportunity Goal calculation tool in a spreadsheet format.
• Draft guidance and step-by-step user guide for calculating the Housing Opportunity Goal using the draft spreadsheet (see Section 1 in the Table of Contents).
• A draft parcel shapefile provided by DOLA based on the Office of Information Technology’s statewide parcel dataset, with some Exempt Parcels already included. This is meant to help save Transit Oriented Communities time and GIS staff capacity if helpful, and is not required to be used. DOLA welcomes feedback on the draft dataset, and whether it would be helpful if DOLA added additional exempt parcel types to it. More information about the available fields and data sources used to create the dataset are included in Worksheet 6 of the HOG calculation tool, and the parcel layer and relevant exemption data can also be viewed on the Transit Oriented Communities online map.
• A recorded introduction and walk through of the tool

DOLA welcomes comments, questions, and feedback on these draft tools by December 16, 2024, and encourages jurisdictions to download and try out using these tools. Please provide your input using the Draft Housing Opportunity Goal Calculation Tool and Guide form, or reach out to our team if you would like to meet to discuss further.

HB24-1304 directs the state to create best practices and technical assistance materials related to optimizing parking supply and managing it in a way that increases the production of market-rate and affordable housing by December 31, 2024.

DOLA invites you to review the Best Practices in Parking Management Strategies for Colorado Communities draft report and to comment using the Best Practices in Parking Management Strategies for Colorado Communities form by December 2, 2024. In your comment, please note the section (e.g., "Sharing Parking, Implementation") and page number, and please also provide links to any additional resources that may be helpful to reference in the report.

Thank you for your interest and support!

DOLA is publishing a first version of guidance for HB24-1304, the minimum parking requirements law, to help explain how the law works and support compliance. The guidance contains a summary of the law, guidance for ways that local governments can implement the law, and examples of how local governments can change their land use codes to comply. Please review the guidance and submit any questions or comments on the “Ask a question” tab, sign up for office hours or email the interagency land use team to discuss further.

HB24-1304 Minimum Parking Requirements - Guidance to Support Compliance

DOLA is publishing a first version of guidance for HB24-1152, the accessory dwelling units law, to help explain how the law works and support compliance for local governments subject to this law, as well as those interested in opting in. The guidance contains a summary of the law, guidance for how local governments can implement the law, and examples of how local governments can change their land use codes to comply. Please review the guidance and submit any questions or comments on the “Ask a question” tab, sign up for office hours, or email the interagency land use team to discuss further.

HB24-1152 Accessory Dwelling Units - Guidance to Support Compliance