Steve Pomerance

When the council decided to try to get the Sundance Film Festival to move to Boulder, there were obvious issues. One big one was that Boulder does not have the hotel and other lodging space of a resort community like Park City, Utah, where Sundance was located and grew for almost 50 years. But now we are faced with an ordinance that would allow a potentially massive increase in short-term rentals (STRs) to attempt to accommodate this influx. Here are the numbers: Per the Web, around 24,000 people attend the Sundance Film Festival from out of state. The staff memo says there are 2,900 hotel rooms in Boulder, with an additional 74,000 rooms within 40 miles. So, for additional STRs to make a difference in the number of people in-commuting to Sundance, we will need thousands more. Is that what you want for Boulder? The ordinance the council is considering allows many properties to become STRs for “festivals” by being issued special “festival lodging rental licenses.” This ordinance states ...

Each of the first four acronyms in the headline above identifies some housing “solutions” that have become issues for the lower-density neighborhoods. STRs are “short-term rentals,” where a homeowner rents out part or all of his or her home on a short-term basis. ADUs are “accessory dwelling units,” where a homeowner has built a separate apartment as part of a single-family house, sometimes called a granny flat. OAUs are “owner accessory units,” a completely detached second residential unit, like a garage apartment, on a single-family lot. CHUs are “cooperative housing units,” commonly called co-ops, which may have 12 or more residents in a single-family house. The HAB is the Housing Advisory Board that the City Council is forming, presumably to provide some citizen oversight to all of the city’s housing efforts. So it’s clear, there are already a number of technical advisory groups working on housing. But what doesn’t exist right now is a board that represents the general citizenr...