White Paper

Who Built the Crisis?

Boulder Development GroupAugust 15, 202635 min read

Local Government Regulation and the Middle-Income Housing Shortage. A white paper for policymakers and the development community testing one hypothesis: that regulation — not market forces — caused the middle-income housing crisis in Colorado’s north Denver suburbs.

Central thesis

The middle-income housing shortage in Colorado’s north Denver suburbs is not primarily a product of construction cost increases, high land costs, developer inaction, or demographic accident. It is a predictable, documented outcome of cumulative local government regulatory intervention — in zoning, fees, climate activism, review processes, and inclusionary mandates — that has made workforce housing economically impossible to produce at scale without subsidy.