Pictured: Future home of Mosaic Community Campus on the Johnson & Wales Campus. Mosaic is a historic renovation of former dormitories into 154 new, affordable apartments funded in part with $3.85 million in gap financing from the city's Affordable Housing Fund.

Special Issue:

DENVER -- Last night, on Monday, May 22, Denver City Council voted in favor of extending the deadlines of the city's Expanding Housing Affordability ("EHA") ordinances. The extensions maintain the intent of the ordinance as originally adopted by allowing adequate time for existing projects to move through development permitting. The extensions do not apply to any projects that were submitted on or after July 1, 2022.

• For projects subject to a Site Development Plan (SDP), the deadline for SDP approval is now May 17, 2024.

• For projects subject to an SDP and large development review (LDR) or subdivision, the deadline for approval is now September 13, 2024.

The city will allow additional time if, by the dates stated above, a project has received consolidated review comments from their project coordinator that will require a 4th round or more of formal SDP review. This would extend the above deadlines to August 31, 2024, for SDP projects and December 31, 2024, for LDR projects and subdivisions. This is only for projects that are at the fourth round of review or later, indicating they are close to completion and a redesign at that stage would require considerable investment and re-work. Projects in earlier review cycles (3rd round or fewer) that are not approved by the dates above would become subject to the EHA requirements.

Why were the deadlines extended?

Community Planning and Development believes extending this approval timeline is the fair response to a difficult situation that has impacted customers through no fault of their own. Like many municipalities recovering from the impacts of the pandemic, Denver was challenged by high application volumes and high staff vacancy rates in 2022. While review times are starting to decrease as a result of our strategic efforts over the past year, we expect it will continue to take time to return to target timeframes. We believe the extension times provided are fair and accurate, and keep with the spirit and intent of the deadlines initially set in the EHA ordinance.

Learn more about these changes

View current review times

Projects moving forward under the older rules do still pay the affordable housing linkage fee, which is adjusted annually for inflation. These funds go into the city's Affordable Housing Fund, which is used to build new affordable housing like Mosaic Community Campus (May 18, 2023, groundbreaking celebration pictured here).

While the Mosaic Community Campus is the latest city-supported affordable housing development to begin construction in Denver, a total of 1,870 affordable units that have received city financing are currently under construction at 31 sites throughout Denver. An additional 599 income-restricted units are in the planning stage.

Learn more about this inventory at the Denver Affordable Housing Dashboard. 

The Expanding Housing Affordability policy was a joint effort of Mayor Michael B. Hancock’s Department of Community Planning and Development and Department of Housing Stability in collaboration with City Council, residents, businesses, housing developers and others, to increase access to affordable housing across Denver. The policy, which took effect in Denver starting July 1, 2022, requires new residential development of 10 units or more to include affordable housing.

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