Colorado legislators, homebuilders look to new bill to standardize building codes
Despite historic investments in affordable housing in Colorado, home ownership remains out of reach for many people.
While the state has increased manufactured home production by 687% over the last three years, Colorado's building codes, which vary from one city to the next, remain a barrier. Now some state lawmakers want to remove that barrier.
There are more than 300 different sets of regulations across the state. One city may want all outlets to the left of the studs, while another may want them on the right.
One builder told CBS Colorado it would be like asking automakers to use a certain type of paint in one city, or a certain type of exhaust system in another. The more changes they need to make along the assembly line, the greater the cost.
"We need to look at every possible measure we can to reduce the cost of housing," said Colorado state Sen. Jeff Bridges.
Bridges and Colorado state Sen. Tony Exum said if Colorado wants more affordable housing it needs fewer building codes.
Nathan Peterson, owner of Vederra Modular Homes in Aurora, agreed.
"When you're talking about having a housing crisis, this is a conversation need to have," said Peterson.
He said factory-built homes, like factory-built cars, are all about efficiency achieved through standardization. But in Colorado, manufactured home builders have to change their designs based on 340 different jurisdictions all with their own building codes.
Peterson explained, "Some counties say, 'Well, we want you to have metal soffits on your houses.' And that's ok. Then another county says 'We don't want that, we want non-vented metal soffits there.' And then, yet another county will say 'We'd like it to have hardy cement board.'
A bill by Bridges and Exum would create regional codes instead.
"The way I look at is there's 336 dots out there, jurisdictions. And we're like, 'You know what? You 80 are kind of the same, can we put a circle around you?' And can we say, 'This is what you're going to be,'" said Peterson.
He said going from 300 codes to maybe 10 would mean more production and less cost.
Nationwide, manufactured homes run about 20% less than those built on-site. In Colorado, the savings is about half that.
"A lot of factories from out of state, they don't like to send stuff here because it's a pain," explained Peterson. "So, one of the things that this bill does, it gets us a lot closer to how other states structure it."
The Colorado Municipal League, which represents most of those 300 plus cities, opposes the bill. They want more local representation, and fewer manufactured homebuilders, on the advisory committee that would help develop the new regional codes. They also want the codes limited to residential and not commercial structures.
But Bridges told CBS Colorado for regulatory purposes commercial projects include apartments and condos, which represent half the manufactured home builders' business.
The bill passed its first committee in the Senate 5-2 and has the backing of Gov. Jared Polis.
