Up to 20,000 new affordable housing residential units may see construction in Denver depending upon the fate of a sales tax proposal being touted by Mayor Mike Johnston.
If approved, the 0.5% sales tax is expected to generate as much as $100 million annually that would target both new construction, while also maintaining existing affordable units.
Johnston has said that the need to build new affordable housing is something of a time bomb: “Every year you wait, makes this problem far worse,” the Mayor remarked in an interview with Denver television station KUSA.
“If you wait two years or four years to run this measure, that’s another 10,000 to 20,000 units that you’re behind and units that now coast a lot more to build than they do today,” he continued.
According to a study released by the Denver Regional Council of Governments, the city is in immediate need of around 44,000 new residential units just to keep pace with expected demand.
The impetus for new affordable housing in the city is driven by numbers: the average apartment rent in Denver is now just below $2,000, while the average price of a home is just over $571,000.
At the same time, city documents have indicated that as many as 9,000 people have been classified as homeless.
Although members of the Denver City Council, on an 8 to 5 vote, earlier gave an initial approval to putting the sales tax question on this November’s ballot, the idea has not been universally popular.
Former Mayor Wellington Webb has said that while he supports the idea of building new affordable housing in general, he thinks Johnston should concentrate more on a separate revenue-generating measure to assist the financially challenged public Denver Health Hospitals and Clinics.
The Denver Gazette, meanwhile, has characterized the Mayor’s housing sales tax proposal as “poorly thought through and ill-timed.”
On Monday evening, the Denver City Council in a final vote of 9 to 4 agreed to put Johnston’s proposal on the November ballot.
By Garry Boulard
Image Credit: Courtesy of Unsplash