Fear Sells, Complexity Doesn’t: Lakewood’s wealthy minority overrides the democratic process to kill housing reforms

Lakewood, Colorado was doing everything right, but it still wasn’t enough for local NIMBYs. The town residents overwhelmingly supported pro-housing candidates for the council, councilmembers who drafted zoning ordinances to bring the town into compliance with Colorado law. Their modest reforms would have helped boost local housing production and kept them eligible for state infrastructure grants. But despite dedicated work from local organizers, voters in April repealed the reforms in a remarkably low-turnout election. Through four separate initiatives, they unwound a series of crucial zoning laws. It’s another example of how the complexity of zoning laws can allow misinformation from those opposed to affordability to win at the ballot box.

The first and most critical lesson from Lakewood is that an election can be a death knell for a pro-housing policy. After dozens of public meetings to lay out the new zoning code and its benefits, less than a third of the town voted in a special election. 

During the election, the pro-housing Livable Lakewood campaign leaned heavily on data proving the connections between housing, affordability, and sustainability. However, the data couldn’t beat fear of change, even if that fear was unjustified.

The people most affected by the new codes often did not understand what they were voting for, because despite months of public outreach, the waters became muddied by misrepresentations about how Lakewood stood to benefit. To even understand what the election was about, a voter would need some knowledge of form-based zoning, density bonuses, and long-term supply elasticity. By contrast, many voters had their minds made up when they heard that the new zoning ordinances would destroy their neighborhoods.

This election is in no way reflective of the local residents, or of partisan politics. Lakewood is a Democratic-leaning city, but the voters who show up to stop zoning changes are often older, whiter, and more likely to be homeowners. In fact, the median age of a voter in the election was 61 years old. Those obstructionists were joined by liberal environmentalists who’ve internalized the myth that single-family zoning is the only legitimate form of neighborhood preservation. 

There is good news however: YIMBY Law is already hard at work challenging similar ballot initiatives across the country. The point is not to overturn the will of the voters. Rather it is that the evidence shows that nominally pro-democratic measures  really function as tools to let a minority of fear-addled elites override the will of the rest of the community. If pro-housing reforms are forced into off-cycle, low-turnout contests, the hurdles can be nearly insurmountable. The best strategy is to prevent them from happening at all. This requires a robust defense of the legislative process and serious support for existing campaign laws.