Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to reflect the accurate investment needed in housing, according to a recent report.
The NoCo Foundation, a regional nonprofit, debuted its “Housing at a Crossroads” report at a breakfast Tuesday morning, a document that presented what experts called a daunting shortage in the area’s housing stock that would need to be addressed if the northeastern part of the state could remain affordable.
In many ways, the report found the region is already notably unaffordable.
Larimer County had the greatest affordability mismatch in Colorado, the report (nococoundation.org/noco-housing-initiative) found. Nearly 80% of Larimer County households were spending more than a third of their income on housing, a typical metric for affordability. That figure had doubled from around 40% in 2015. Weld County fares slightly better, with 65.5% of households unable to afford the housing options on offer, still in the top ten most mismatched counties in the state, according to the report.
It found that approximately $18 billion annually will need to be invested in order to provide enough affordable housing to accommodate growth in the region over the next decade.
“I’m thinking about it as a generational issue,” said UCHealth President and CEO Kevin Unger during a panel discussion about the contents of the report. “It feels like we’re taking the wind out of the next generation’s sails. They absolutely don’t see a future where they own a house, unless they move back in with their parents and spend some time there.”
There are multiple causes of the problem, the report found, ranging from community pushback to development in the name of preserving local neighborhood character to policies regarding fees for building permits, which drive up construction costs and make developers less interested in building new housing.
A building permit in the Denver metro area, said panelist Jamie Thorpe, vice president of entitlements for Hartford Homes, typically costs around $68,000, but the figure can be roughly twice that in the Loveland and Fort Collins area.
“I’ve been in hearings where staff says ‘Well we’re not as expensive as our neighbors, so we have room to grow here,’” Thorpe said. “Northern Colorado is kind of an echo chamber with itself. We’re spiraling up faster than everybody else. $135,000 in fees for a building permit gets out of sync really quick.”
Changing demographics also play a role, changing the housing needs for the community.
Household size is decreasing across the region, and the population is expected to grow while simultaneously aging. Approximately 100,000 new Larimer County residents in need of housing are projected over the next decade, requiring roughly 43,000 new homes.
The existing housing stock isn’t well suited to the projected demographic changes, with larger single-family homes occupying an outsized portion of the existing housing in Northern Colorado. Of the home builds over the last 5 years, 90% have been three bedroom houses or more, and 0-2 bedroom homes, better suited for downsizing seniors or smaller households, have slid from 38% of the housing stock in 2000 to 30% in 2023.
Condo construction has also declined in Colorado, with a 95% decrease in active condo developers since 2007. Only 16,000 condos were built between 2005 and 2025 statewide, half the number that were constructed in the three year period between 2002 and 2005 alone, the report found.
To reach the $18 billion investment needed over 10 years ($1.8 billion annually), the report recommended a coordinated effort by local governments, developers and nonprofit funders.
NoCo Foundation announced a new contribution to the problem, a $7 million fund to support low interest affordable housing loans and to help with what President and CEO Kristin Todd said was often the most challenging step in first-time homeownership: a down payment.
But she said that contribution is a drop in the bucket of what is needed.
“As you’ve heard throughout this morning, it will take all of us,” she said. “Whether that’s on the investment side, or on the process and systems side, nothing should be off the table. We need to come together as we have this morning. Whether you’re serving in elected office or you’re representing the business community, community members, philanthropists, municipal staff, you name it, we have got to come together.”
