COLORADO — Affordable housing is emerging as a major issue in Colorado's race for governor, with both candidates offering competing visions for how to bring down costs for residents.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Weiser used a Sunday campaign stop at a modular housing development in Aurora to highlight his goal of building 40,000 starter homes across Colorado.
"Just like these homes right here that a teacher could afford to be able to buy, that a law enforcement officer could afford to buy in their community," Weiser said.
Watch Maggie Bryan's video report below:
Modular homes are prefabricated houses built in sections at a factory then transported to a building site and assembled with a crane. The construction method is meant to maximize work done at the factory and minimize what is left to finish in the field, making the process faster and more cost effective than traditional home building.
Adam Berger, the developer behind the duplexes on Emporia Street, joined Weiser to highlight modular construction as a practical solution to Colorado's housing costs.
"We're convinced that modular has a significant role to play in delivering both affordable for sale and affordable rental housing in Colorado," Berger said.
The Aurora development features three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, two-story homes with 1,800 square feet of living space priced at $350,000. Berger said each home is made up of two factory built sections: one for the ground floor and one for the top, with a Nebraska factory used for this project producing roughly one section per day.
After the sections are assembled on site, Berger said the rest of the work is usually straightforward: a plumber handles the final connections and a drywaller wraps up the walls.
"I think we're at an inflection point here, where we're walking and we're ready to start running and really expand on supporting modular development and be a true leader nationally," Berger said.
During Sunday's event, Weiser said he also wants to speed up and reduce the cost of permitting, while expanding down payment assistance programs.
"Let's cut permitting costs so that when we're building these type of starter homes, it's not going to cost the same to get a permit if you're building a mega mansion," Weiser said. "These permits can take too long, but when you have modular homes, in particular, you know what you're getting. We can make it literally within a week."
Republican gubernatorial nominee Victor Marx told Denver7 he believes Weiser's approach misses the mark and said modular construction can be "one good tool, but it isn't a housing plan."
Marx said the real problem is not a lack of building programs, but instead the government processes that can make homes more expensive to build.
"I'm going to lower the price by cutting what government adds to it. That means firm deadlines for permit approvals, repealing building and energy mandates that drive up costs without improving safety, stopping backdoor fees that should go to a vote of the people under TABOR, capping property taxes for homeowners, freezing them for seniors on fixed incomes and bringing down insurance premiums," Marx said in a statement to Denver7.
Marx said if Colorado taxpayers back modular housing, those homes should be built in Colorado by Colorado workers. He also pushed back on Weiser's proposal to expand down payment assistance programs, arguing that government handouts are not the solution.
"The best down payment assistance is a lower price. When government hands out more money to chase the same limited number of homes, prices go up and families end up with bigger mortgages. Colorado already has first time buyer help through CHFA and federal dollars, and I'll audit those programs, keep what works and fix what doesn't," Marx said.
According to data from Zillow and Redfin, the median sale price of a home in Colorado is between $552,599 and $557,500. The national median home sale price is $398,596, according to August data from Redfin.
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