DENVER, Colo. — At the end of the month, new rules for factory-built homes will go into effect in Colorado.
The rules are part of SB25-002, a bill Governor Jared Polis signed into law last year, along with several other bills that address affordable housing in Colorado.
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SB25-002 creates a uniform set of rules for regions across the state when it comes to modular housing.
Nate Peterson, the CEO of Vederra Modular — a modular housing factory in Aurora — serves on the committee that was put together to create the rules that will be implemented June 30.
He explained just how beneficial this streamlined process will be by cutting a lot of the "red tape" manufacturers face when building modular homes for the same area.
“We had to build everything for one singular address, and so you had to submit plans for that singular address, build for that singular address, and if you wanted to build one for the address next door, you had to do the whole process again,” Peterson explained.
“When we have plans approved for that project in that zone already. We were able to now freely use them again, whereas in the past we had to start the whole process over again," he explained.
He also outlined what this could mean for the future of factories like his.
"Now we actually have the option to build ADUs [Accessory dwelling units] and things like that, and so I think it's going to take a little bit of time to figure out how to support those programs, but you know, realistically, I think that they would start to see some more kind of like off the shelf housing options, probably in the next 12, 18 months.”
State Senator Jeff Bridges, D-District 26, echoed the benefits and importance of the changes this law will bring, saying it is game-changing for housing in the state.
“That [new rules] actually allows them to build up inventory to say we're going to build like 50 homes that could be put in anywhere in sort of the rural resort parts of Colorado, we know what those standards are, and then as we have customers come in, we have units that we can just sell them and install right away,” Bridges explained. “By having this uniform set of policies that folks will be working off of, you are preserving safety across the state for the people living in these homes, but you're reducing the burden on the developers for building them, lowering costs, making housing more affordable."
Bridges emphasized that these new changes are part of the solution to addressing housing affordability in the state.
“We know we're in an affordability crisis here in Colorado. We know that housing is a big piece of that, and this helps to address housing affordability for new builds that are using modular homes,” Bridges said.
"Part of why housing is so expensive is that we just don't have enough homes in the state. We're about 100,000 homes short here in Colorado, and so if we can dramatically increase the number of new homes that get built and put into housing people, every year will be able to bring down the cost of housing here in the state," he added.
