Michael B. Hancock,
Denver
Denver is one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, with a population growth of 100,000 in the past decade and another 100,000 expected over the next 10 years. Along with this growth comes the need for additional affordable housing units, and Mayor Michael B. Hancock is making that a priority.
“While the city’s population growth has spiked, the housing stock is simply not keeping pace with the community’s needs,” says Hancock. “I have the audacity to believe that anyone who wants to live in the city should not be forced out because of costs.”
In October, Hancock introduced Housing Denver, a collaborative plan that will serve as a guide for informing the city’s housing policies and resource allocations over the next five years.
In February, the mayor announced the new $10 million Denver Affordable Housing Revolving Loan Fund to boost affordable housing development for households earning up to 60% of area median income (AMI).
And going forward, the city is planning to create a permanent funding source for affordable housing.
“The No. 1 affordable housing priority for Denver is to increase our housing resources,” Hancock says. “This ambitious effort is in the very early stages—we’re undertaking a needs analysis of rental and for-sale affordable housing, we’re developing a modeling tool to help assign costs to address affordable gaps, and we’re carefully exploring various permanent funding source alternatives.”
The mayor also tells AHF he would like to see the city’s
development partners produce more workforce units targeted to households
earning between 60% and 80% of AMI.
Helping that effort, the city updated its inclusionary housing ordinance
last year to make it more effective to produce affordable for-sale units for
households earning 80% to 100% of AMI.
