Session Recap
CSG West Housing Committee
79th CSG West Annual Meeting
Salt Lake City, Utah
Introduction
Despite signs that home prices are moderating in parts of the West, the region’s housing shortage remains severe. Half of all renters nationwide are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on rent, while one-quarter spend more than half. With the national housing shortage estimated at 4 to 7 million homes, state legislators are looking beyond land-use reforms highlighted in the previous day’s session toward the tools that turn zoning changes into built housing: faster permitting, better financing, and smarter use of public assets.
This second CSG West Housing Committee session brought together three practitioners working on different pieces of that puzzle. Travis Plunkett of The Pew Charitable Trusts presented research on pre-approved building plans to reduce permitting delays and cost. Liz Sidor of the Center for Public Enterprise discussed how state-level revolving loan funds are financing “missing middle” mixed-income housing that falls outside traditional affordable housing programs. Thomas Kurek of the Colorado Department of Personnel & Administration’s Public-Private Partnership (P3) Unit described how Colorado is converting underutilized state-owned land into a housing development pipeline.
Together, the speakers aimed to answer a practical question for legislators: once a state or city decides it wants more housing, what specific administrative and financial tools get it built faster and at lower cost?
Key Takeaways
1. Pre-Approved Building Plans Cut Permitting Time and Cost With Little Public Pushback
Plunkett compared pre-approved plans to “TSA PreCheck” for permitting. By front-loading design review and receiving discretionary approval, localities can move individual projects that use pre-approved plans through the permitting process roughly twice as fast. Pew identified 44 programs currently in use across the nation, most of which have launched in the past few years. Reported time savings ranged from one week to nine months, depending on the locality. Pew’s research, which was built on data from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, found that the gap between lightly and highly regulated cities is about five months of approval time—equivalent to roughly $22,000 per unit. Architect cost savings alone run 1.5% to 3% of a project’s total value.
Two dominant models have emerged, along with one variation.
- Pattern books: Catalogs of pre-approved designs available to any builder that are being used in places like Kalamazoo, South Bend, and Claremore.
- Self-submitted plan reuse: A builder’s previously approved plans are pre-cleared for reuse elsewhere, as has been implemented in Fairfax County and Memphis.
- Pattern zones: A variation that allows an entire neighborhood to pre-approve designs that match local character.
Plunkett noted that pre-approved plans are among the least politically contentious housing tools available, since public input happens once—at the design stage—rather than on a project-by-project basis. Even so, only a handful of jurisdictions have scaled meaningfully. Hawaii County (225 units), South Bend (223 homes), and Seattle (190 accessory dwelling units – ADU) are the largest examples, but interest is growing. A federal pilot program to fund pre-approved plan approaches is currently pending before the President of the United States. Meanwhile, Arizona and California now mandate pre-approved ADU plans, while Oregon, Maine, and Colorado provide resources or grants to help localities develop their own.
2. State Revolving Loan Funds Are Emerging to Finance the “Missing Middle”
Sidor’s presentation focused on the financing gap for mixed-income housing. These developments blend market-rate rents with a share of subsidized units, typically serving households earning between 80% and 120% of area median income (AMI). Nationally, this population represents nearly 50% of all renter households (22.7 million). Many earn too much to qualify for traditional Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) programs but struggle to afford market rents. Because LIHTC and tax-exempt bond volume are both oversubscribed, states are increasingly creating their own publicly-capitalized revolving loan funds (RLFs) that offer below-market debt—or, in some cases direct equity—to help these projects pencil out.
This model traces back to Montgomery County, Maryland, whose Housing Opportunities Commission created a $100 million self-capitalized revolving fund. Since then, several states have launched their own versions:
- Massachusetts’ BILD program: A $50M housing bond that takes a direct ownership stake in projects (“Momentum Equity”) paired with Freddie Mac-backed debt. Its first project, the 92-unit Residences at East Milton, began construction after financing closed in 2025.
- New York’s Housing Central New York Fund: Pairs $150 million in public and private capital, including $120 million from Micron and regional banks, to build 2,500 homes over seven years near Micron’s $100 billion semiconductor plant, a workforce housing response to the regional impact of a single large employer.
- Utah: The state reallocated $30 million from transportation funds to support homes for sale and priced under $450,000.
Sidor also noted a wave of newer state programs launched between 2024 and 2026, including initiatives in Arizona, Michigan, Oregon, Virginia, and Wyoming. She encouraged legislators to ask three practical questions before creating a revolving loan fund:
- What is primarily blocking housing projects from moving forward in their state? Is it zoning, permitting, financing, or another factor?
- Does the state’s housing finance agency have the staff capacity and flexibility to operate a revolving loan fund?
- How will compliance and income verification will be handled, recognizing that these requirements can be lighter than those associated with traditional LIHTC programs?
3. Underused Public Land Can Become a Repeatable Housing Development Pipeline
Kurek described how Colorado created a dedicated Public-Private Partnership (P3) Unit after the Colorado legislature passed SB22-130 to unlock housing, childcare, and behavioral health development on underutilized state-owned land. As he explained, public agencies collectively own large amounts of property but rarely redevelop it because of fragmented ownership, limited staff capacity, and unpredictable approval processes.
The unit’s core shift involved mindset. Rather than asking “How do we develop this site?” on a project-by-project, Colorado built a standardized, repeatable process consisting of asset identification, due diligence, market testing, procurement, governance, and stewardship —designed to work across many sites at once.
Current projects illustrate how this model is being applied:
- Lakewood Complex Redevelopment: 22.5 acres with more than 200 mixed-income units, along with childcare and artist studios.
- Golden Range Redevelopment: 41 acres with 378 housing units across four phases.
- Auraria Higher Education Center Ballfield project: More than 168 housing units and an early childhood education center, supported by a $5 million P3 investment expected to return $3.75 million over 10 years.
Revenue generated from ground leases and market-value land sales is reinvested to fund the next round of projects. Kurek explicitly framed the goal as making Colorado “a credible development counterparty”—not a one-off deal partner, but a predictable partner that developers want to work with repeatedly.
4. Land Use and Permitting Structures—Not Interest Rates Alone—Explain How Much Housing Gets Built
A common theme emerged across both the Pew Charitable Trusts and Center for Public Enterprise presentations: financing conditions matter, but they are not the whole story. Plunkett pointed to permit data comparing Austin and San Francisco when interest rates spiked in 2022 and 2023. While San Francisco’s permitting activity—already low—fell further, Austin’s remained comparatively high despite facing the same national interest-rate environment. His conclusion: underlying land use and permitting structures establish the ceiling on how much housing a city can build, while interest rates modulate housing production within that ceiling rather than determining it outright.
Drawing on national data from stalled multifamily projects, Sidor reinforced a complementary point: financing gaps, not zoning alone, are becoming an increasingly binding constraint. Together, the presentations suggested states are likely to see the most benefit from pursuing land-use reform, permitting reform, and financing tools in tandem rather than relying on any one single strategy.
Looking Ahead
Expect the number of state-level revolving loan funds to continue growing through 2026 as more legislatures recognize the mixed-income financing gap left unaddressed by LIHTC and bond-cap constraints. Arizona, Oregon, Virginia, and Wyoming have all introduced or launched programs recently, joining Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Utah. At the federal level, a pilot program to fund pre-approved plans for middle housing was pending before the President at the time of this session. Its outcome could shape the level of federal support available to localities moving forward.
Colorado’s P3 Unit pipeline continues to expand. The Golden Range project’s request for qualifications (RFQ) closed in December 2025 and is now in pre-development negotiations, while the Auraria project is expected to close financing in the coming months. Other states may look to Colorado’s standardized, portfolio-based governance model as a template for underused public land.
Several open questions also surfaced during the discussion, which legislators and staff will likely be tracking. Those include:
- Additional policy questions: How should voucher holders, including veterans, be integrated with mixed-income developments? And what does independent, nonpartisan research show about rent control’s effect on housing supply?
- Administrative capacity: How can state housing finance agencies build the staff capacity and flexibility needed to administer new mixed-income tools?
- Maintaining long-term affordability: How should compliance and affordability requirements be enforced over time for housing units financed outside LIHTC? Presenters highlighted approaches ranging from Massachusetts’ land-use restrictive covenants to Hawaii’s proposed shared-appreciation model for for-sale units.
The committee co-chairs encouraged attendees to continue to engage in these conversations during the following day’s Housing Committee policy tour.
Final Reflection
This session highlighted that housing supply bottlenecks are often more administrative than economic. Permitting delays, financing gaps, and idle public land are all, in their own way, process problems. Each speaker demonstrated how a state or locality redesigned the process itself rather than waiting for land-use overhaul or more favorable interest rates. For Western states weighing where to invest limited legislative time and staff capacity, these tools stand out because they are comparatively low-cost, largely bipartisan, and, as Plunkett noted of pre-approved plans, some of the least politically contentious options currently available for increasing housing supply.
