Greeley City Council votes to quash changes to city’s occupancy limits, definition of family

By Kelly Ragan

Greeley City Council voted Tuesday to quash changes to the city’s occupancy limits Tuesday in a 5-1 vote. 

Councilmember Tommy Butler was the lone no-vote, while councilmember Dale Hall was not present at the meeting. 

The move comes after significant back-and-forth among the Greeley Planning Commission, which had voted to recommend a scaled-back version of changes proposed by city staff. 

City staff proposed changing the occupancy limits to allow more unrelated folks to live together. In residential estate, low-density and mobile home communities, the city proposed allowing one more unrelated adult, essentially bumping the U+1 limit to U+2 for homes with three or more bedrooms. 

That recommendation lost in a 4-3 vote, though the commission voted unanimously to approve more limited changes. 

The alternative plan left low-density neighborhood residencies unchanged, meaning a family can still have one, but only one, unrelated person living with them. The alternative plan suggested allowing medium-density residential zones to tie the number of unrelated people living together to the number of bedrooms in the home. 

The Greeley Planning Commission had also agreed it would be worth redefining “family” in the city code. 

As it stands, a married couple is not considered a family unit – therefore, in areas zoned low-density, a married couple is not allowed to rent out a room to someone unrelated to them. 

“The confusion around married couple plus one is decades old,” said Greeley Community Development Director Brad Mueller. “I will be the first to acknowledge this is not intuitive and has often been misunderstood by the public over the years.” 

Zasada said she’s wrestled with this concept for months, including the family definition. 

Zasada said that by changing the definition of family, which would increase the occupancy limits, she’s concerned the city would see more rentals, which stress neighborhoods. 

“I’m going to propose that we pull this initiative, that we kill it to protect the integrity of our neighborhoods,” Zasada said. 

Councilmember Brett Payton said he sees a problem with how family is being interpreted but that he wasn’t sure council was ready to move forward with it. 

This was an example, Payton said, of how Zoom meetings making it harder to have discussions and ask good questions before items come up for a vote.  

“At the very least I think we should revisit the family question,” Butler said. “Maybe we can bring that back to a work session to have a more robust discussion around that.” 

Mayor John Gates said he would support revisiting the discussion another time in another form. 

Why was Greeley considering change? 

In 2018, the city put together a housing task force to draft a strategic plan to address Greeley’s affordable housing shortage. That plan was adopted in 2019 and outlined several strategies. Changing occupancy limits is one part of that equation. 

The U+1 standard dates back to 1980, said City Planner Caleb Jackson at a city council meeting in February. 

In 1962, Greeley was a U+Unlimited city. In 1966, it changed to U+2. In 1976, it changed to U+0. In 1980, it changed again to U+1. 

Mueller said the conversation around change has a lot to do with the fact that demographics have changed. 

“A generation ago, over 50% of households were households with children,” Mueller said. “That’s now down to 25%. We know people are waiting longer to have children, expressing a preference for alternative housing situations – having four roommates for example – even as unrelated professionals living together.” 

Cost of housing is also outpacing wage growth, said Jackson.

Greeley has long been seen as an affordable place to live in northern Colorado, Jackson said, but that’s changing. 

In 2010, the median sale price of a house in Greeley was $140,000, Jackson said. By 2019, that increased to $320,000, according to city documents. 

People can argue that Greeley’s and Evans’ housing prices are lower than other northern Colorado communities, Jackson said, but the rate of housing prices is increasing faster than in surrounding communities such as Fort Collins, Johnstown, Loveland, Severance, Timnath, Windsor and Berthoud.

“Our advantage in the affordability aspect is declining faster than other communities in northern Colorado,” Jackson said.

Beyond increasing median sale prices in Greeley, rent is also rising. 

“In 1983, you could get a three-bedroom apartment in Greeley for $404 per month,” Jackson said. “In 2020, that’s $1,509 per month. A one-bedroom apartment in the 80s went for $281 per month. In 2020, a one-bedroom apartment went for $845 per month.” 

While rents have tripled or quadrupled, Jackson said, incomes have doubled in that same time.