Brighton City Councilors said they have no problems enlisting in a state effort to boost the state's affordable housing inventory, although they had suggestions about the peculiarities of Brighton's market.

City Councilors told staff they did not object to opting into Proposition 123, the ballot measure voters approved last year that created the State Affordable Housing Fund, a roughly $300 million pot of state income tax revenue designated to address housing issues. Councilors will vote on the matter at a future City Council meeting.

The city needs to agree to the state's terms and opt in to the program by Nov. 1. To opt in, the city must commit to increasing its supply of affordable housing by 9% through 2026.

Brighton does that not now, City Manager Michael Martinez said.

"It's my opinion that Prop 123 would be beneficial to us," Martinez said. "It gives us some additional money to affect affordable housing and at this point there really is nothing of consequence if we don't fulfill our obligation to the state."

According to Andrew Ratchford, a consultant with Gruen Gruen and Associates, land use consultants the city hired to review affordable housing plans, Brighton has 1,492 affordable housing units — 1,357 units of rental housing and 135 for sale. To qualify as affordable, rental units must cost less than 30% of the median income for the area. For Adams County, that's about $1,200 in rent per month.

To meet the state's guidelines for Proposition 123, Brighton would need to add 135 units of affordable housing through 2026, about 45 units per year in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Ratchford said.

"I would not that these units do not need to be built in order to comply with the program," Ratchford said. "They need to have building permits issued and it's my understanding that you have a couple of ongoing projects and others in pre-development that well exceed this number while complying with the income limits of Prop 123."

Ratchford said that money from the state's Affordable Housing Fund could be used to purchase land set aside for development later on, create homeless programs, make rents more equitable, promote home ownership, pay debts and build new units.

Brighton's housing currently is comparatively new, with 60% of all bedrooms in the city and 67% of all buildings constructed since 2000.

"One advantage the community has is that its housing stock is relatively young in comparison to the rest of the state and other communities," Ratchford said. "Since 2010, the city's building permit data indicates you have issued permits roughly 340 units a year. About two-thirds of this was for single-family housing,  and the remainder has been multi-family apartments and a small number of Accessory Dwelling units."

Building permits for new homes have also decreased recently, however, and the inventory of for-sale units is low, pushing the price up.

"In the Brighton area, you've had single-family home prices increase by some 80% since 2015," he said, "In the last six months or so, most homes will sell for between $250 and $200 per square foot, which is a lot higher than it was five years ago."

Rents, too, have been increasing to about $2,100 per month in July 2023. Rents were about $2,000 per month in July 2022 and about $1,900 per month in July 2021, he said.

He also noted that Brighton has added more jobs than housing units every year since 2011.

"More than 80% if the households in Brighton today are what I would call workforce households, with at least one person in the household active in the labor market," he said. "So while the current ratio between jobs and housing isn't unusually high or unbalanced, over the past 12 years or so the community has added more jobs than housing," Ratchford said. "If that trend continues, you would expect housing to become more competitive, more scarce and you'd see that upward pressure on housing prices over time."

Councilor Peter Padilla said Brighton should opt into the program.

"It look like all upside and no downside at this point because we do have things in the works to accomplish getting this credit, we may as well get the money that goes along with it," he said.

But he wondered if Brighton could use state money to help alleviate other problems with housing, namely parking and water.

"The parking challenge here is that we have multi-generational occupants in a lot of our apartments and fitting those into standard parking spaces is a problem," Councilor Peter Padilla said. "For a lot of our developments, there is no on-street parking anywhere close to them. So creating solutions to that won't work well."

Padilla said new developments are required to help increase the city's water supply, so a method to set aside water rights they could purchase would also help.

Councilor Matt Johnston said he is in favor of accessory dwelling units, or ADUs. Those are small housing units attached to an existing house used for family members or to generate rental income for the homeowner.

"I"d like concentrate on having ADUs which is a major factor in multi-generational housing," Johnston said. "Having ADUS in Brighton and having the ability to easily get those done and taking away some of that red tape, that is my thought."