U+2 is ending in Fort Collins. Here's what might or might not happen after that

With a new state law going into effect this summer, Fort Collins city government is starting to make plans for the repeal of the U+2 roommate rule, six decades after it was first adopted.

In addition, City Council will have to decide whether it even wants to redefine occupancy limits without considering family relationships, and if so, how.

Fort Collins’ current law, referred to informally as U+2, or the three unrelated rule, says only three people who are not related to each other can live together in a residence. It gets even more complicated when couples, siblings or children are in the mix.

But a new state law passed by the Colorado General Assembly this session says cities can no longer use family relationships to determine how many people can live in a residence. Instead, they can use only health and safety standards or affordable housing program guidelines.

Advocates of the bill say laws like U+2 are arbitrary and discriminatory because they disproportionately affect minority communities.

The House sponsors of the state bill, Reps. Manny Rutinel and Javier Mabrey, said getting rid of these laws will encourage more dense living arrangements and will lead to more affordable options, reduce the environmental footprint by allowing more people to live closer to their daily activities, and increase social connection.

In Fort Collins, U+2 has been prominently debated in Fort Collins for more than 20 years and has been around since the 1960s. It wasn’t widely enforced until 2007, when it became a civil infraction instead of a criminal offense.

Since then, though, there have been many council conversations about changing it in the face of pressure and increasing housing costs. Proposals have included allowing one more unrelated person per residence, dubbed “Me+3,” and removing the family relationships definition.

Before the state bill was introduced, council had already been planning to consider changes to U+2 this spring. Now, the state law puts specific parameters on what the city can consider, leaving out the possibility of Me+3.

What happens now? When does U+2 get repealed?

The only thing that is certain at the moment is that Fort Collins will have to repeal its residential occupancy ordinance. What happens beyond that is unclear.

To explore the possibilities, the Coloradoan interviewed city staff and council members to learn what actions they might consider. There's a work session on the topic Tuesday, May 14, and council is currently set to repeal relevant provisions of city and land use code in June. The state law goes into effect July 1.

Beyond repealing U+2, city staff will ask council members whether they want to consider setting occupancy limits based on what the bill allows, said Ginny Sawyer, lead project manager in the City Manager’s Office.

Most council members interviewed for this story said they were waiting to see what city staff presented as options and either didn’t have specific ideas or wanted to remain open to all scenarios.

The Coloradoan also interviewed representatives of Fort Collins housing and community activist groups, CSU student government leaders and property managers to explore those groups’ hopes, concerns and ideas for how the city should move forward.

It’s been almost 20 years since Fort Collins’ rules were changed. Here's what's happened.

Council member Kelly Ohlson said he has lived through what he described as a decline and rebirth of neighborhoods after the city began enforcing U+2 in 2007.

Living in his home near Rolland Moore Park for 43 years, he said, "I've seen it when things were OK, and then I saw the decline of the neighborhood when things were over-occupied and nothing was done, and then I saw the dramatic changes when we ... started to somewhat enforce the occupancy ordinance."

Ohlson noticed improved home exteriors, fences, lawns and yards as well as improvements with parking, traffic and noise.

The changes brought families back to live in neighborhoods they left due to those issues, Ohlson said. And while driving recently, he noticed many families of all kinds out working on their lawns and yards.

Next door to his own home, a property that had been a "problem house" for the better part of 30 years has since become a home for a young family and a day care.

Since 2007, there have also been changes to the city's housing market.

After reaching a peak of 86% of homes in Fort Collins being considered affordable to those making the area median income in 2012, that number plummeted to 20% last year, according to city data.

And while much of the consternation over occupancy rules in the early 2000s focused on college students, data from a rental market study presented to City Council in 2019 showed that more than half of the people estimated to be living in violation of U+2 were not students.

That data showed that after enforcement was increased starting in 2007, the number of estimated violators dropped by half. But by 2018, they had jumped back up to pre-enforcement levels, coinciding with the decrease in housing affordability.

In recent years, there has also been a wave of student-oriented housing built in Fort Collins. Student-oriented housing projects added at least 5,000 off-campus bedrooms geared to students since 2014, the Coloradoan has reported.

On campus, CSU's housing capacity in the past decade outpaced its enrollment growth.

Will the reversal lead to a backslide in neighborhoods?

Mayor pro-tem Emily Francis said the city improved its codes in recent years, including revamping the public nuisance ordinance to help with enforcement.

She pushed back on the idea that U+2 was solely responsible for improving neighborhoods.

For example, she said CSU and the city have built up their off-campus education programs to emphasize being a respectful neighbor.

"To say that a policy single-handedly reversed neighborhoods — it just seems unlikely to me. So, to say that undoing one policy is going to revert back to the way it was 2005 seems unlikely to me," Francis said.

"The world's different. That was 20 years ago."

So, what are Fort Collins' options?

Most council members explicitly said they were waiting to see what information staff might present at their work session.

"I don't really know what that law passed at the state would really allow us to craft locally," Mayor Jeni Arndt said.

Council members Julie Pignataro, Tricia Canonico, Melanie Potyondy made similar statements.

Canonico said she hasn't heard much from the community on this topic, perhaps because her southeast Fort Collins district might not see as many impacts as those closer to the CSU campus.

Some ideas that Pignataro said had been promising may no longer be an option, she said, like waiving occupancy rules if a home is owner occupied and making it easier to obtain waivers.

Fort Collins could repeal U+2 without enacting a new occupancy ordinance

Francis said Fort Collins might want to take a wait-and-see approach.

"We don't know if removing (U+2) will create a problem, and I think it would be irresponsible to preemptively make policy on one, whether or not there is a problem, and two, what is that problem that we're addressing," she said.

Both Francis and Pignataro said reports of U+2 violations often don't have anything to do with the number of people living in the residence but rather the behavior of the occupants in a home or upkeep of the residence.

Fort Collins could rely on the International Property Maintenance Code definitions

There are building codes that Fort Collins has already adopted, like the International Building Code and the International Property Maintenance Code, which permits one person per bedroom if it's at least 70 square feet and two people per bedroom if it's 100 square feet. It also requires living and dining rooms to have a minimum size to accommodate more than three people.

The International Property Maintenance Code includes provisions for fire safety, property maintenance and equipment maintenance.

But enforcement of occupancy could be challenging because inspectors would need to get inside the home to take measurements and would need property owner access to due so.

"We would need significant staffing to be able to stand up a program like that," and any request for staffing would likely come with a funding ask, Marcus Coldiron, the city's head of Building Services, told council at a March work session.

"It would be fairly intrusive and onerous," Sawyer said in an interview with the Coloradoan, though it doesn't mean it can't be done. "Are we going to really ask where everyone's sleeping? That seems awkward, as well."

Arndt has frequently shared a concern about how limits based on square footage could affect properties on the extremes, whether very small or very large.

While she said it's right to not define based on family relationship, there could be problems if limits make it impossible for a family with children, for example, to occupy a very small home. On the other end of the spectrum, there's a question of whether it really is appropriate for 16 people to live in a home, even if it's very large.

Fort Collins could rely on its current codes and programs to deal with any complaints

The city's public nuisance ordinance was updated in 2022 to define two kinds of nuisance: public nuisance and chronic nuisance. There are now 66 criminal and civil violations that qualify as a nuisance and can trigger enforcement.

This ordinance covers violations around weeds or tall grass, snow removal, trash, building code and property maintenance violations, animal issues, noise and disruptions. It also includes things like public urination or sex, shooting a firearm and drug use.

The code was updated to allow the city to hold property owners more accountable for things happening on their properties, and a citation is no longer required to begin the enforcement process.

Arndt, Canonico, Pignataro, Potyondy and Francis all cited the public nuisance code as an important tool that could be used to help with complaints.

But Ohlson doesn’t think the improved nuisance ordinance will be effective on its own, citing concerns like traffic, increased speeds, parking problems and big investors “cramming as many people as they can into a building, strip-mining the neighborhoods. A public nuisance ordinance isn’t going to help that.”

For council member Susan Gutowsky, the state bill amounts to an unfunded mandate because she said cities will have to put out money for enforcement. In addition, she envisions parking issues will become a problem and additional people living in one home could stress infrastructure like water and sewer.

Sawyer said the city probably will see an uptick in complaints if there's a shift to enforcing only nuisance and property maintenance standards.

"If council would want us to look for additional means of enforcement, or if we do get a really strong uptick in (complaints), we may need more staff or we may not be as responsive as people would like in the time frame we would like," Sawyer said.

The problem with relying on public nuisance tools is that they require the neighbors to be the police, said Ross Cunniff, chairman of community activist group Preserve Fort Collins, which has opposed increases to housing density.

"They’re better than nothing," he said. "Necessary but not sufficient."

Who is Preserve Fort Collins? Born out of land use code fight, group cites broader mission

YIMBY Fort Collins co-lead Peter Erickson said while YIMBY isn't going to take a position on what the city should do now and says city staff can figure it out, he thinks it's time for the city to get away from nonsafety-related occupancy standards.

One big issue is that the international codes don't distinguish between adults and minors, while U+2 did, he said, citing advantages but also potential issues.

"We don’t want to find there are families not in compliance," he said.

More: What is YIMBY Fort Collins and what does it stand for? Here's how it came to be.

Money the city has been using to enforce occupancy can now be used to enforce nuisance laws and address parking problems, he said.

He believes parking is one of the most solvable issues because a neighborhood experiencing issues can apply to be part of the city's residential parking permit program.

Is rental inspection the answer or a hindrance?

Don Dunn is owner of Dunn Real Estate and Management, which manages single-family and small multifamily home rentals. Half of them are occupied by students and half are occupied by families.

He is skeptical the change will be permanent, saying City Council might “try to find a way around it.”

For example, he said the city's new rental registration program could later be expanded into requiring rental inspections.

“They’re not just going to roll over and accept it, I believe.”

But Sawyer said after the contentious discussion in 2023, when the rental registration program was adopted and a rental licensing program was rejected, the city doesn't currently have plans to create a more "onerous" and "regulatory" program to help when it comes to the occupancy discussion.

Arndt said she felt strongly against rental inspections and doesn't envision it coming back for a council vote anytime soon.

"I’m convinced that that would have been a huge cost, one, to the landlord, passed on to the renter," she said. "We always have to be worried about how much our policies drive up costs."

But Cunniff said even though he knows it might be unpopular, the city does need a rental inspection program that would require standard fire code compliance before rental can occur. This would include egress windows to provide safe emergency exits, smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, and requiring furnace maintenance before being allowed to rent them out.

"It shouldn't just be a good idea. It should be the law," he said.

Ohlson is pessimistic about what will happen.

“Actually, don’t think there’s very much we can do, nor do I have any confidence in this City Council that they would do anything of significance to minimize the damage from the state legislation,” he said.

Without a rental licensing program and access to check homes, the city’s hands will be “pretty tied,” he said.

“I hope there are some things we can do, I just don’t know what they are at this time," Ohlson said. "And perhaps staff will be bringing them to us at the next work session.”

While he believes there were real issues around late-night noise or the occasional party before the ordinance was revamped, the real problem was the physical deterioration of homes due to a lack of investment in the properties by big investors, he said.

Whatever ideas come forward, they must be actionable and meaningful and not just empty rhetoric, he said.

Was a blanket, statewide bill appropriate?

Michael Stella, director of governmental affairs of ASCSU, the student government at CSU, said his organization changed its strategy after previous attempts to repeal U+2 went nowhere.

Stella believed it was time for a new approach, and ASCSU hired a lobbying firm to represent them on the issue at the state legislature once they heard the bill was in the works.

ASCSU worked to get the bill amended to kill square footage requirements in favor of health and safety requirements, citing the same concerns about the extremes that Arndt mentioned.

ASCSU hasn't taken a stance on what City Council should do now, but Stella said just because students advocated for change doesn't mean they want to live in packed houses.

"As students, we don’t want to live with 10 roommates, and we don’t want to negatively impact our community," he said.

He said students might be breaking U+2 but not in an extreme way: They might be living four people to a four-bedroom house.

But some believe the statewide bill is an overreach of government.

"It’s a bad law based on bad premise and will not lead to any of the good outcomes they claim for it," Cunniff said. "Making this kind of a decision at the state level leads to a lack of accountability and diminishes the influence of the people living in these communities."

It eliminates any reasonable occupancy limits in neighborhoods, Ohlson said. “It’s very poorly done and very disappointing.”

It also eliminates local control, he said.

Gutowsky and Cunniff pointed out that council had already planned to revisit U+2, and without the state bill, Gutowsky said council could have done so while considering the values of the community.

"It took away that opportunity that we had planned for," she said.

Ohlson, who has been wary of any changes to U+2, said he would have been willing to support “Me+3” if it included a plan for compliance and rules on maintenance.

But others on council said the widespread nature of housing affordability issues require broader action.

Potyondy said the housing crisis is no longer a local issue.

Canonico said home rule applies to elements of local interest and not state interest, and "with how critical the housing crisis has become" across the state and nation, "this is something that has moved to the state level."

"It would have been nice to see the governor and members of the House and Senate do a bit more stakeholdering on this one, but I think this is where we had to get to," she said, because it didn't seem like it was going to happen at the local level.

Arndt said: "It's not our favorite thing to have state preemption, that's for sure," Arndt said.

Was U+2 discriminatory?

Ohlson said he knows of no specific allegations that U+2 was discriminatory.

“It was never never ever ever about married white people, married straight white people,” he said. “It honored just about every type of family one could envision.”

“It was about the number of people,” he said. Ohlson contends that council would have quickly updated the ordinance if any situations of discrimination had been brought forward.

Sawyer told the Coloradoan she doesn't know of any formal complaints.

Cunniff said the ordinance did not limit its definition of family.

"If you represented that you were a family, you were considered a family," he said. "It was a false premise of the state that somehow this was an equity or equality issue."

Advocates for the state bill argued it disproportionately affects marginalized communities.

For example, Denver census data shows that Black and Hispanic households comprised 30% of all Denver households but 72% of those with five or more adults, according to testimony given in a House committee by Kinsie Hasstedt with Enterprise Community Partners, which aims to increase the supply of affordable homes and improve housing stability.

Kate Conley, a co-lead of housing advocacy group YIMBY Fort Collins, said the city's law disproportionately affects members of the LGBTQIA+ community — "historically marginalized and oppressed people often share homes with chosen family" — along with students.

The ordinance has, ironically, been a barrier for single parents living with their children in a home where they live with other roommates whom they aren't related to, Conley said.

U+2 by the numbers

A rental market report in 2019 by Corona Insights estimated how many residents were living in violation of the occupancy ordinance.

• In 2005 (prior to ordinance change): 1,238

• In 2009: 650

• In 2018: 1,234

• 45% were undergraduate students, while 42% were not students.

Source: Corona Insights Rental Market Report (2019)

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins roommate rules will be repealed. Here's what's next