My Former Roommates and I Had No Idea Our Living Situation Was Technically Illegal
Until last month, it was unlawful for more than two unrelated people to reside in a single-family home in Denver even if the rule wasn t widely known. Will adjusting the ordinance change the character of the Mile High City?Shane Monaghan •
March 1, 2021
In September 2017, I moved into a small house in Denver’s Sloan’s Lake neighborhood with two of my friends. All three of us had recently either moved back to the city or were new to it, and none of us were making very much money. That meant the only way we could afford to live anywhere near downtown where all of us worked was to shack up together.
After nearly three years of work, a proposal to overhaul the group-living aspects of Denver s zoning code most notably the number of unrelated adults who can live together in one household is in the final stretch. Our zoning code’s rules on residential uses, from household sizes to care facilities, are outdated and are preventing the city from meeting our residents’ urgent needs for shelter, supportive services and shared housing arrangements, says Laura Swartz, a spokesperson for the Denver Department of Community Planning and Development (CDP), which has pushed the project. These changes would replace many outdated regulations, which have roots in classism and racism, with a more equitable approach for how and where residential-care facilities are located.
DU sues city over $232K affordable housing fee it paid to build dorm
Courtesy of University of Denver)
The University of Denver has sued the city over a fee it paid in connection with the construction of a new residence hall.
The nonprofit private school argues in a lawsuit filed last week in Denver County District Court that it should be exempt from paying the city’s Affordable Housing Linkage Fee, which in its case ran $232,000.
That fee is assessed by the city on projects that are deemed to cause a need for new affordable housing. The university is arguing that its residence hall did not prompt any additional need, and in fact added more housing to the broader market by lessening the amount of DU students living off campus.