In Colorado, a full-time worker must earn US$36.44 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment without spending more than 30% of their income on rent, according to from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The state鈥檚 minimum wage is $15.16. Someone earning that would have to work 96 hours a week, more than two full-time jobs, to cover rent.
The report ranks Colorado as in the country for renters.
In July 2026, Congress offered state and local leaders a new set of tools to expand housing supply when it passed , the most significant federal housing legislation . It authorizes relatively little new spending. Instead it offers competitive grants and technical assistance to that ease the local rules that slow housing construction and raise its cost, and it on how existing housing dollars can be spent.
The ROAD to Housing Act will also prohibit large investors from buying more than 350 homes, as reported by CBS News.
I direct the at the 吃瓜大本营, where we study how Colorado and states across the Mountain West can expand housing supply and lower housing costs. Before that, I led the at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which evaluates proposed housing legislation, during the years when many of the ideas behind this new law were being developed and debated.
Housing costs are now central to Colorado politics. In , voters were more likely to call the cost of housing 鈥渁 very big problem鈥 than any other cost they were asked about. Whoever wins the governor鈥檚 race in November will inherit that problem along with a new federal law that could help address it. They will also take office just as federal agencies begin writing the rules that determine how much the law actually delivers and what states get out of it.
What the new law offers Colorado
Much of the federal act rewards changes that Colorado has already spent several years making. One provision authorizes competitive grants for local governments that or streamline permitting and environmental review for new construction. A 2024 Colorado state law , and Denver has since .
A policy change could help make urban housing more affordable. It鈥檚 about parking, says Stefan Chavez-Norgaard, who teaches urban planning at the 吃瓜大本营.
Colorado also in 2024, letting homeowners build small backyard or garage apartments without needing a special hearing or approval. What that law could not supply was money. The federal act now lets these units, pairing permission the state already granted with financing that has been .
The same pattern appears in construction rules. Colorado is one of four states that have , a design that allows small apartment buildings to be served by one stairwell rather than the two that American building codes have long required, freeing up floor space and making it possible to build apartments on narrow lots. The new law directs federal officials to issue guidance for these buildings and authorizes grants to test their safety and cost.
Financing rules are shifting too. Banks are the main investors in the federal , the largest subsidy for building affordable apartments. Developers sell those tax credits to banks in exchange for cash to build with. But federal regulators cap how much of a bank鈥檚 capital can go into such investments. The act raises that ceiling . Banks can now buy more credits, putting more equity into each deal, just as . The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, a statewide housing finance authority that awards those credits to developers, .
What Colorado learned that other states can use
Colorado鈥檚 most useful contribution to other states may not be any single law but rather the machinery the state built to make those laws function.
Housing subsidy in the United States is fragmented, and assembling it consumes time and . The ROAD Act does not eliminate that fragmentation, but it trims some federal requirements that make stacking subsidies expensive, and it gives states a reason to make their own programs easier for developers to combine.
Colorado has been chipping away at this problem. In 2025 the state, its housing finance authority and the city of Denver launched , a single portal that . A shared application accepted by all three is .
The portal came out of the , a coalition launched in 2025 that brings together more than 120 people from state and local government, developers, lenders, philanthropies and nonprofits. Its members surveyed the field, ranked the barriers driving up construction costs, and picked three to work on first: a shared funding application, a revolving loan fund, and pooling demand for modular construction.
The lesson for other states is practical. A project stalls if any one of these fails: land it can be built on, permits that arrive on time, financing that closes, and a builder who can deliver at a price that works. Fixing one at a time leaves the others to block the project, which is why states that coordinate across agencies can act quickly when federal money and guidance arrive.
Colorado鈥檚 experience is also a caution. Passing a reform and implementing it are different things. In 2025, six of Colorado鈥檚 105 home-rule cities, which under the state constitution control their own zoning, over the 2024 laws and over Gov. Jared Polis鈥 move to withhold state grant money from cities that don鈥檛 comply. Bills to limit how large a lot cities can require for a single home, and to allow lot splitting, after local governments objected to the state overriding their zoning decisions.
This is where research and measurement matter. Colorado has been at this since 2022, when voters passed , dedicating a share of state income tax revenue to affordable housing. Its reforms are now far enough along to evaluate, and knowing which produced housing and which produced only paperwork can inform other states considering similar measures. This knowledge will also help federal officials assemble the the law directs them to publish for states and cities to adopt voluntarily. The HUD research office I used to lead is responsible for developing these guidelines.
What the law will not do
The new federal law is designed to make new housing cheaper and faster to build, not to help people pay for homes that already exist. Focusing on new production . It does little for households whose incomes are too low to pay for housing at any price. Three in four eligible low-income renter households nationally because the programs are underfunded.
Colorado is testing that limit. To close a $1.5 billion budget shortfall this year, lawmakers , with most of the cut falling on programs that build rental housing for low-income families. Regulatory reform costs little and can do a great deal, but it does not replace subsidies. The likely result is less subsidized housing built in Colorado over the next few years, at the same time the new federal law is making it easier to build housing generally.
Some of the state鈥檚 own barriers also remain. Colorado law gives condominium owners up to eight years after a building is finished to sue over construction defects, and the insurance costs that follow have long pushed developers toward building apartments instead. Condominiums are one of the few paths to entry-level homeownership. State lawmakers did act: A 2025 law offers if they agree to third-party inspections and warranties. But homebuilders expect it to take to affect premiums. The federal law does .
Why the next year matters
Federal agencies must still write regulations, conduct studies and launch programs as part of the new federal law, work that at HUD, whose staff has been . Despite that, analysts at the Pew Charitable Trusts argue that jurisdictions that update their zoning, building codes and permitting policies now will be .
Colorado already knows how to do this work. What it has not yet demonstrated 鈥 and what the next governor and the state鈥檚 mayors now have a chance to show 鈥 is whether reform on paper becomes homes people can afford.
This story has been updated to clarify that the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority is not a state agency.
, Executive Director and Research Professor,
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