Affordable housing and fully funding K-12 education on the top of the docket for 2024 legislative session

DENVER, Colo. (KRDO) - Today, the 2024 legislative session began. Legislators plan to address affordable housing supply and fully fund the Colorado K-12 education system for the first time since the Great Recession.

While Lawmakers from both sides said they're planning on addressing these issues first and foremost, the question is how they will address them.

"The reality is we're 200,000 dwellings short of what we need in the affordable housing market," said House Minority leader Paul Lundeen.

Lundeen is talking about the construction of Condos in his district. He says that the best way to address the issues is to reduce the amount of legislation that allows condo owners to be sued for small construction error claims.

"We need to rewrite the laws so that lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits aren't preventing the development and building of condominium homes," Lundeen said.

Democratic Representative Marc Snyder is on the same track when it comes to the amount of affordable housing needed to solve what they're calling a housing crisis.

"I think we're all committed to finding the same result, which is providing more attainable or lower cost housing so that we can, you know, take care of the needs of Coloradans who are in a housing crisis," Snyder said.

Snyder says the way to get this accomplished is to create tax incentives for developers who want to build affordable housing.

A bill proposed and struck down last year, Senate Bill 213, was supposed to help solve this problem, among many others surrounding land use and housing. Snyder says that the bill wasn't passed because it was too broad.

Now, lawmakers are trying to get the same meat of that bill passed -- but in smaller chunks.

Another major issue both lawmakers agreed on was fully funding the K-12 education system to the Constitutional requirement. For a long time, the Colorado State Legislature has essentially "owed" the education system money.

"I'm proud to say that this year we will get that down to zero,  which will be fully financing and funding our schools for the first time since the Great Recession," Snyder said.

But Lundeen took it one step further, saying that the funding of the education system could mean that teen mental health has better support.

"I think having a really robust, effective public education system is helpful for the mental health of our children and students," Lundeen said.