On April 8, HD3 State Rep. Meg Froelich, who represents Cherry Hills Village, Englewood, Sheridan, and a small part of Denver, held a virtual town hall about housing. Although the event had been planned before the introduction of the SB23-213, Governor Polis’ statewide housing plan currently being considered in the State Senate, that bill was top of mind for many listeners.
Froelich explained her position, “We need to build more housing. We are at a deficit. In conjunction with environmental groups, we would like to have new housing built around transit centers. We want to reduce vehicle miles traveled. We want to make walkable, livable communities.” She also related workforce challenges to the lack of middle housing available for employees, including health care workers, teachers, and construction workers.
Addressing SB23-213 directly, Froelich shared that the proposal came from the governor and that she, like others, has concerns with parts of it, but, she pointed out, it is presently “an introduced bill–not the final product,” continuing, “If it makes it to me in the House, it will have made it through the Senate, which means it will have been amended to get enough people on board who are currently opposed,” adding that, if the bill does not pass the Senate, it will likely be because enough Senators agree that land use is not a matter of statewide concern, a contention of many local elected officials across Colorado.
Conversely, she predicted that if a majority of Senators conclude that climate and housing “are in a crisis state,” and those are matters of statewide concern, the bill will be amended as necessary and pass the Senate, then the House.
In her view, “I believe we are in a climate crisis and we are not meeting our greenhouse gas roadmap goals. Housing is a place where both of those things must interact to meet those goals…There is a challenge with municipalities whose zoning and decision-making have been absolutely in obstruction to both transit-oriented development, affordable housing development (and) middle housing development.”
She went on, “We have lots of areas around transit, around light rail that are not developed. In the case of the Orchard Light Rail Station in Greenwood Village, that was Greenwood Village acting proactively to make sure that that land was not developed…What can we do to nudge our cities to…address these twin challenges of housing and climate?”
Froelich also pointed to the Englewood Civic Center as a location where transit-oriented development could “benefit our whole community,” adding, “We don’t need to do that by razing a mid-century modern home to put in a four-plex, and that isn’t in the plan.”
For now, Froelich assured constituents that she is “conducting lots of rounds of listening sessions with local folks” on the matter and that she agrees that local elected officials should have been consulted more when this plan was devised. She also assured concerned residents of Cherry Hills Village that, “You are not going to have a triplex on your cul-de-sac in CHV.”
fmiklin.villager@gmail.com