When talking with your representatives, city council, neighbors, and media, remember to be courteous, listen to their point of view, and calm in your response. This is an emotionally charged issue that may cause tempers to rise. A message can be lost in the noise when we let our tempers get the best of us. Remember that while we may have differing opinions, these are still our neighbors.
Print these and bring them to meetings, put them in your car window, house window, or distribute to neighbors.
Contact your representative by email by clicking on their name. Visit the City of Englewood City Council website for more details on your representative, including phone numbers.
Steven Ward, Mayor Pro Tem, District 4
Term Expires: November 2025
Chelsea Nunnenkamp, District 2
Term Expires: November 2025
Joe Anderson, District 3
Term Expires: November 2023
Rita Russell, At-Large
Term Expires: November 2023
Jim Woodward, At-Large
Term Expires: November 2023
Cheryl Wink, At-Large
Term Expires: November 2025
Your voice matters! Even if you don’t want to speak at meetings, having you attend to show your support for your neighbors is vital.
When posting on social media, please tag the following accounts:
City of Englewood
Your Representative
Media Outlets
Feel free to download these and share on social media, in emails to council, or anywhere else you see fit.
Two Years of Public Input Made It Clear That Residents Are Opposed to Changing R-1 Zoning.
- Please Note: CodeNext is a comprehensive update to all of Englewood’s zoning codes. The R-1 zoning is just one part of it.
- As early as 2020, residents stated their concerns about building height and size (bulk plane), alleys, solar, greenspaces, safety, parking, traffic, and sanitation.
- The 2020 UDC Code Assessment Report issued in March 2021 notes all of the concerns citizens have raised over the past two years.
This is not a solution for affordable housing, but a gift to developers and real estate investors.
- Minneapolis eliminated single-unit zoning in 2019, and now housing prices are up, property taxes have increased 70%, rent is higher, foreclosures are on the rise thanks to the expired moratorium, and the city is still grappling with affordable housing for low-income residents.
- The foreclosure moratorium expired in June 2022, which means that more people will be out of their homes, giving investors prime real estate to take over. Denver foreclosures are on the rise.
- Multiunit REITs are making a play for rental properties. “There are sectors that stand to gain should the housing market continue its contraction. Wall Street’s analysts have been tapping multifamily residential REITs (real estate investment trusts) as potential winners. These companies function as large-scale property owners, owning, managing, and leasing out real properties of all sorts. In a slowdown of the single-family housing market, people will naturally move toward rental apartments – and for investors, that will open up new opportunities in the multifamily residential REITs.” Tipranks.com
Corporations are squeezing out home buyers and causing the housing crisis.
- Corporate investors have bought up millions of residential real estate since 2009, helping to create the housing crisis.
- Investors purchase a record share of the homes sold in metro Denver in third quarter, Denver Post.
- “According to data reported by the PEW Trust and originally gathered by CoreLogic, as of 2022, investment companies take up about a quarter of the single-family home market. Specifically, investor purchases accounted for 22% of all American homes in 2022. This number slightly decreased from last year (2021), which sat at 24%, with 90,215 homes in the third quarter alone. Over the last decade, the number of investors purchasing homes has increased from 10% to 15% each year, except for 2020 to 2021, which, according to a study by Redfin, saw an increase of over 80%. So, yes, investment and residential real estate companies are purchasing more and more American homes each year.” Source.
Don’t Put The Fox in Charge of the Henhouse!
- Putting the responsibility for affordable housing in the hands of an industry that created the housing crisis will not solve the crisis! “This crisis will not be solved by a for-profit industry with a relative intolerance for profit-losing requirements.” Tom Coale, an affordable housing attorney.
- This proposal eliminates neighbor, and city zoning oversight and there is no going back once the older homes, trees, and environment are scraped for redevelopment.
Realtors Speak
- The homes in a specific neighborhood on a busy street normally sell for less per square foot than other homes in the same neighborhood.
- People have an instinctive need for privacy. So all other things being equal, the home with a private backyard (or side yard, wherever your outdoor recreation areas are) will always sell for more than one with other homes looking into it. I have seen buyers pass up “the perfect” home because one or more residence windows are perceived as “too close.
There are several other groups working on issues in Englewood. We share these so that citizens can make their own decisions on which issues to support. We are not affiliated with any of these websites.
- englewoodrecall.org
- yimbyenglewood.org
- attainableenglewood.org