Not Even in Someone Else’s Backyard
Two anti-housing measures on Denver’s November ballot.
By Benedict Wright
Although it’s an electoral off year, there’s still plenty to vote on this November 2021 in Denver, Colorado, where I now live. From new marijuana taxes for pandemic research to bond approvals for infrastructure, the subjects of the ballot measures vary greatly. However, the issues of housing and land use loom especially large. This should come as no surprise considering 35% of Denver households spend over a third of their income on housing, and Denver is nearly 42,000 rental units shy of adequately housing its lower income residents according to the Colorado Department of Local Affairs.
What does come as a surprise—an infuriating one at that—is the fact that several of the ballot measures concerning housing plainly serve to constrict rather than promote the creation of affordable housing and an easing of what many consider to be a housing crisis. The two measures I find especially irksome, both on the Denver ballot, go by the identifiers 301 and 2F. I’d encourage anyone living in Denver to consult their city-issued voter guide (or this very good one provided by Denverite) for more complete details of these measures, but I’ll give a brief description of my understanding.
The Measures in Question
The first measure, 301, claims to save open space from the ravages of reckless development by barring the city from lifting any conservation easements without a vote of the people. At first glance perhaps, the environmentally conscious voter would be drawn to the “green vs. concrete” tagline and be tempted to vote yes thinking themself a loyal steward of the planet.
However, the story behind this measure is more complicated—and in my view more insidious. It turns out that measure 301 sprang out of a fight over a single property. Back in 2018, a 155 acre public golf course in northeast Park Hill shut down. The land, though inundated for years with fertilizer, water, and pesticides, is technically on a conservation easement—the result of a slick and somewhat complicated deal that interested readers can learn more about here.
In the years since its closing, the golf course was bought by a developer who, with community input, has proposed to build a mix of housing, retail space, and open space on the property.
Some residents say that the neighborhood, which is predominantly low-income and has a large Black population, lacks easy access to fresh groceries and has an acute need for affordable housing. Providing any of these things on the former golf course would require the Denver City Council to lift the conservation easement.
In reaction, an anti-development group by the name Save Our Open Space Denver (SOS Denver for short) has protested for months the developer’s plans, ultimately filing measure 301 in the hopes of convincing the voters of Denver to curb the city council’s power to make decisions like the one they may consider in the case of the Park Hill golf course.
The developer, in response, has filed a measure of its own, measure 302, which would change the definition of a conservation easement in order to exempt the Park Hill golf course thus circumventing 301 should both measures pass.
Signs from SOS Denver have sprouted in lawns across Denver decrying the “concrete” of 302 and praising the “green” of 301. Imploring us to save Denver’s open space, SOS Denver’s website cites the benefits of green space and demands the golf course lie fallow in the name of environmentalism and equity—not to mention the chance to stick it to that greedy developer. In response to all this, a local campaign Empower Northeast Denver has distributed signs of its own urging voters to vote yes on 302 to protect the voice of the local community in determining the future of the Park Hill golf course.
Before I say my piece on measures 301, I want to briefly introduce the second measure, 2F, which is also an attempt to circumvent the city council in order to stifle housing.
In short, measure 2F would reverse the city council’s 11-2 vote in early 2021 to update zoning code to allow up to five unrelated adults to live in a single home up from just two. That update also made it easier to establish certain residential care facilities like halfway houses and assisted living homes by allowing them in mixed-use and commercial areas rather than relegating them to industrial areas. It also removed the buffer between such facilities and residential areas or schools. Notably the update passed would not permit such care facilities within residentially zoned areas.
Safe and Sound Denver, the group responsible for putting 2F on the ballot, cites issues like parking, neighborhood character, and safety as reasons why the will of city council must be undone.
In opposition, Keep Denver Housed, a coalition of advocate organizations and elected officials, opposes 2F, arguing for the urgent need for affordable housing options and social rehabilitation for those who have fallen on hard times.
A Response
As I said at the top of this essay, I believe measures 301 and 2F are bad and their proponents misguided citizens at best and reprehensible bad faith actors at worst.
Let’s start with 301, the golf course one.
Imagine for a second that there is not a housing crisis in Denver. Can you picture it? Even in this imaginary world. The arguments for 301 don’t hold up.
For one, a former golf course laden with non-native grass and sprinkled with non-native deciduous trees is not open space in need of saving. The original easement was more of a technicality used to make a deal between the city and a private trust rather than to preserve ecologically significant land. Any ecological value that place had was snuffed out by an herbicide or pesticide long ago. And keep in mind that the new developer wants to build a public park with athletic fields on a sizable chunk of the land—it’s not like the Kentucky blue grass is going anywhere.
For another, the idea that the discretion of city council and the expressed will of local residents should be thrown out in favor of a city-wide vote, strikes me as bad policy and simply unfair. Interested readers can consult the city-funded survey of local residents’ desires for the future of the property. One notable finding is that “70% of mailed survey respondents also favored some development. 22% favored only green space and 8% favored only development-oriented uses.” To reiterate 70% of people surveyed wanted a mix of open space and development.
It would be absurd to contest this survey saying that the residents of Cherry Creek or Montbello or Sunnyside or Cherry Hills Village were not consulted. Of course it would be: they don’t live there.
It's often a tactic of NIMBY (Not in my backyard) activists to rally around slogans of “local control” and “local voices” to keep “outside” interests from corrupting the character of an area. But interestingly, in this case, it is the advocates of 302 that have “protect local choices and local voices” on their yard signs. That’s because in this instance the anti-development activists are going so far as to say ‘it’s not enough to keep development out of my backyard, it shouldn’t even happen in their backyard.’
Now, flash back into the real world where there is in fact a housing shortage in Denver and as a result, a growing affordability crisis. Why are housing prices rising? The same reason prices on anything rise: supply can’t keep up with demand. Denver, like other high-productivity metro areas, has been a magnet for economic activity in recent years, and the existing housing stock cannot adequately support all the people who want to live here. (I was largely convinced of this dynamic by Connor Dougherty’s 2020 book Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America which introduced me to the work of economist Edward Glaeser and his seminal 2005 paper “Why Have Housing Prices Gone Up?” which convincingly demonstrates the links among zoning, housing supply, the interests of property owners, and housing prices).
In this context, as the Denver City Council well knows, the only long-term solution to housing scarcity is to allow the construction of new housing. And density and infill are the most cost-effective and environmental ways to do it.
That’s what really gets to me about SOS Denver spewing facts about climate change and open space. They are of course right to care about those things, but their emotional attachment to this golf course is demonstrably counter productive to the goals of lowering emissions and protecting open space. Here’s why: 1) low-density, car-centric development is a major reason (if not the reason) why transportation accounts for 30% of carbon emissions in Denver. Preventing density and transit-oriented living is not helpful in lowering emissions—it makes it worse. 2) By making it harder to strategically increase density within Denver’s core, we direct all of the market pressure to build housing onto the outskirts of town, into the plains and mountains—in short, to where there is actual open space!
If 301 advocates really care about open space, they shouldn’t be advocating for 301.
Let’s move on to measure 2F, the one about roommates and halfway houses.
My take is this: in a time when affordable housing is unattainable for many in this city, we should be making it easier, not harder, for people to live with roommates and distribute the cost of housing.
And we shouldn’t be making it harder for the unhoused to get housed by rolling back the expansion of residential care facilities.
I’m sure the city council was thinking something similar when they voted 11-2 to pass the ordinance that 2F now hopes to reverse.
Given the massive hardships brought on the already excluded and vulnerable during the pandemic, it is in my view unconscionable to set back the expansion of these services. If the city really cares about reintegrating people into society after they have slipped through the cracks (whether the result of historic oppression, a cutthroat economy, bad luck, or bad choices) it shouldn’t be relegating these facilities to industrial areas. And to those who don’t care to recognize the humanity of those who live in precarity or destitution, as some advocates for 2F seem not to, there is really nothing to discuss—you are wrong.
The materials I’ve been getting in the mail from Defend Colorado, another 2F advocate, contain little more than bad faith, fearmongering about halfway houses next to schools, children kidnapped, and neighborhoods destroyed. I’d like to reiterate again that, as I understand it, under the ordinance passed by the city council, it’s still illegal to put halfway houses in residential areas. Even the most generous reader of the concerns raised against 2F can see they are overblown.
Speculative Conclusion
As I hope I’ve made clear, I do not support measures 301 or 2F, and I do not think much of their proponents’ arguments. However, I do think it’s important to consider why so many people actively oppose housing to the detriment of the climate, open space, and other people.
In my reading of the situation, most of the arguments about safety, neighborhood character, “concrete,” preservation, parking, and the rest, spring from a concealed (and understandable) anxiety shared by many if not most homeowners about property values. This anxiety, it seems, can be exacerbated when imposed overtop even more concealed anxieties about race and class.
It's hard to know what to do about these anxieties since they are often unconscious. However, it seems to me that much of the anxiety about property values is the result of an antagonism between homeowners and nonowners—an antagonism largely of our own choosing. For one hundred years, homeownership has been held out (both by public policy and popular culture) as a critical investment, a wealth-builder, a social capstone, a reason to labor and toil, and indeed a synonym for the good life itself. Pitched in such a way, it should be no surprise that homeowners have a vested interest in preserving and growing the value of their property and thus the legalized scarcity of their most prized commodity: housing.
What’s more, since land use decisions are often controlled by people who currently live in a particular place, current residents have an outsized influence in preventing new housing. And the people who would benefit most from that new housing do not yet live there and thus cannot advocate for their interests.
This unfortunate, yet improvable, situation has precipitated the likes of the YIMBY (Yes in my backyard) movement in cities across the country, bringing people (often renters) together in solidarity to advocate for their shared interest in the creation of new housing. YIMBYs are often met with fierce resistance from homeowners (and market-skeptical leftists, but that’s another blog post).
301 is an interesting case, since many of the truly local residents in this instance are advocating for new development. And lest I be accused of only supporting “local control” when it produces more housing, let me be clear that I think local input in land use decisions is always important. Current residents of course have an interest in what their neighborhood is like and should have some say in its development. However, that voice needs to be balanced against what’s good for a city or town at large which is why bodies like city councils often have the final say in approving zoning variances and new developments. Sometimes it’s necessary for the state to ensure a baseline level of density when the need for housing becomes especially acute. California’s recently passed law making it legal to build 2 units on virtually any residential lot is a good example of such action.
I find measure 301 particularly vexing because it throws out the traditional mechanism for balancing land use interests in favor of a fickle city-wide election. The measure undermines a core tenant of representative democracy: we elect people whose job it is to represent our interests and consider the good of the community as a whole when making decisions. It would make for very bad governance if every land use decision was in the hands of voters, and the case of the Park Hill golf course is no exception.
In any case, I still view the move by concerned advocates to prevent development on the Park Hill golf course as coming largely from a place of anxiety over property values in Denver—an unfortunate antagonism between haves and have nots.
But again, this antagonism does not necessarily need to be so pronounced. Years of public policy gave homeowners a vested interest in the scarcity of housing, and public policy can be tweaked to lessen and disempower that interest. Media and culture, I think, also have roles to play in getting us to rethink the social value of property ownership.
I also hold on to a hope (perhaps naively) for the possibility of more solidarity among people who live in a city like Denver—renters and homeowners alike. I’ve heard it said that contradictions are organizing opportunities. In other words, a tension within someone’s values and beliefs can be an opening for new ideas, an opportunity to change their mind.
Biking around Denver this past month and seeing so many signs in favor of 301 and 2F, I couldn’t help but cringe with a special frustration at seeing them sometimes adjacent to wearisome signs about hate having no home in the occupant’s house or that the occupant was of the mind that no human is illegal. As frustrating and hypocritical as I find this, I also remind myself that if a person really believes that a human is not illegal even if they cross a border a thousand miles away, they may someday be convinced that that a newcomer’s home shouldn’t be illegal either—even if it happens to be in their own backyard.
Someday. But today they must be beaten at the ballot box. Vote no on 301 and 2F.
Further Reading:
“Renting is Terrible. Owning is Worse. A third option is necessary: a way to rent without making someone else rich.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/why-its-better-to-rent-than-to-own/618254/
“Is Open-Space Preservation a Form of Exclusionary Zoning? The Evolution of Municipal Open-Space Policies in New Jersey”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1078087408331122
“A Sunflower Farm And Thoughts On ‘Open Space.’ Low-density sprawl is the enemy of a functioning, preserved countryside.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/a-sunflower-farm-and-thoughts-on-open-space/