denver city council committee looks to ease affordable housing metrics
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By Deborah Grigsby | Published on August 11, 2026
Denver’s Department of Housing Stability is asking the city to rewrite some of the key performance metrics in the city’s agreement with the Denver Housing Authority to deliver affordable housing.
HOST is asking the city to amend parts of a 2018 intergovernmental agreement with DHA to lower its promised housing totals for the DHA Delivers for Denver program, drop the Westridge development from the program and extend some deadlines by almost a decade.
The proposed legislation was presented Tuesday to the Community Housing and Planning Committee.
Since its initiation, the program, which aims to expedite an affordable housing pipeline, has faced challenges due to rising costs and market conditions.
Erin Clark, chief real estate officer for DHA, said that market conditions changed dramatically after the IGA was signed, with many assumptions set before the COVID pandemic.
Along with increases in hard construction costs, supply chain limitations and tightening borrowing capacity, the program has struggled to recover.
“We were in a really volatile interest rate environment. A lot of the capital markets were constricting,” Clark said. “It was very hard to deliver some of these, and we had to make some other negotiations.”
The availability of federal and state housing vouchers has also played a role in the program’s delivery pace.
Clark points to the Sun Valley Housing redevelopment, completed in September 2025.
At the project’s onset, the cost assumption was $332 million. By the time it was finished, Clark said actual costs for the project were closer to $480 million, more than $148 million above planned.
Denver’s Department of Housing Stability is asking the city to rewrite some of the key performance metrics in the city’s agreement with the Denver Housing Authority to deliver affordable housing.
HOST is asking the city to amend parts of a 2018 intergovernmental agreement with DHA to lower its promised housing totals for the DHA Delivers for Denver program, drop the Westridge development from the program and extend some deadlines by almost a decade.
The proposed legislation was presented Tuesday to the Community Housing and Planning Committee.
Since its initiation, the program, which aims to expedite an affordable housing pipeline, has faced challenges due to rising costs and market conditions.
Erin Clark, chief real estate officer for DHA, said that market conditions changed dramatically after the IGA was signed, with many assumptions set before the COVID pandemic.
Along with increases in hard construction costs, supply chain limitations and tightening borrowing capacity, the program has struggled to recover.
“We were in a really volatile interest rate environment. A lot of the capital markets were constricting,” Clark said. “It was very hard to deliver some of these, and we had to make some other negotiations.”
The availability of federal and state housing vouchers has also played a role in the program’s delivery pace.
Clark points to the Sun Valley Housing redevelopment, completed in September 2025.
At the project’s onset, the cost assumption was $332 million. By the time it was finished, Clark said actual costs for the project were closer to $480 million, more than $148 million above planned.
view out of an apartment building shows a sports stadium
Empower Field is visible from a window at the end of a hall in the Joli apartment building, the first building to open in the final phase of the Sun Valley redevelopment in Denver, on Oct. 24, 2025. (Stephen Swofford, Denver Gazette)
The bottom line, according to Clark, is that the DHA’s D3 Direct program absorbed a market shock in order to complete the Sun Valley pipeline, leaving funding gaps for other projects such as Westbridge.
Because of the increase in total development costs for the seven Sun Valley buildings, along with depleted private activity bond capacity by the city, more resources were needed to complete the project.
With all D3 Direct funds exhausted, Westridge cannot be completed as part of the D3 program without additional funding.
Specifically, HOST and DHA are asking for the following concessions from the city:
DHA’s affordable housing production commitment to be lowered from 1,300 units to the 959 income-restricted units already complete
Remove the Westridge projects from the D3 program
Reduce the permanent supportive housing unit goal from 1,200 to 1,100
Extend the deadline for DHA to complete its two remaining supportive housing sites at 3965 Fox St. and 4595 Quebec St. to Dec. 31, 2038. The current overall deadline for delivery is 2029.
Loosen other agreement restrictions surrounding deed-restriction language and how much D3 money could be spent in each council district.
A 2023 report from Denver City Auditor Timothy O’Brien found that, in general, the department’s policies “align with leading practices.” However, the document says that taxpayer-funded projects aren’t developing the required number of affordable housing units and the city isn’t doing enough to ensure that existing units are safe and habitable due to a lack of oversight from the department.
A follow-up audit in January of this year showed that the Department of Housing Stability was still not providing sufficient oversight over Denver Housing Authority and its intergovernmental agreement known as “DHA Delivers for Denver Program” — or D3. As a result, the report said, the housing authority is not building the required number of units for people earning less than 80% of the area median income and is not held accountable for providing required information to the department.
Committee members voted unanimously to advance the bill to the full Denver City Council for consideration.