June 23, 2025 | Max Nardo, Housing & Smart Growth Senior Associate
This report was originally published at Housing Forward Colorado (a SWEEP project).

———————————————————-

Across Colorado, cities and towns are rethinking how neighborhoods are built. Communities like Lakewood and Denver are exploring changes to zoning rules to allow more diverse housing types like duplexes and cottage clusters in areas historically reserved for one single detached home per lot. These reforms are gaining traction as local leaders seek solutions to a growing and urgent challenge: Colorado’s persistent housing shortage and lack of housing choice.

Colorado communities can learn from places that have taken the leap. Portland, Oregon, offers one of the most comprehensive and well-documented examples of middle housing reform to date. “Middle housing” refers to small-scale, multi-unit homes that occupy the gap between single detached houses and apartment buildings. Portland enacted sweeping middle housing reforms in 2021 and 2022, opening up neighborhoods previously reserved for single detached houses to a broader range of these housing types. This post summarizes the early outcomes of Portland’s reforms and the lessons they offer for Colorado communities.