Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Housing is the thing everybody in Colorado is stressed about right now. Not gas, not groceries. Rent. The number on the lease.
So this one matters.
On Tuesday, July 21, 2026, Gov. Jared Polis, OEDIT, and the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA) announced 11 new housing developments getting funded through voter-approved Proposition 123 Concessionary Debt dollars. Those 11 projects are projected to create 728 multi-family rental units, apartments and townhomes, for low- and moderate-income households.
Buckle up, because five of those projects are landing right here in Denver.
The five Denver projects hit the Golden Triangle, Montbello, Sun Valley, and Sloan Lake, plus the old Johnson & Wales University campus. If you have driven past that shuttered J&W campus and wondered what happens to it, this is your answer.
Let me walk you through the ones with real numbers attached.
Montbello Townhomes Phase I.
The Commons at Mosaic. This is the Johnson & Wales campus, now renamed the Mosaic Community. $6 million for a 58-unit permanent supportive housing community, serving households at 30 to 60 percent AMI who are at risk of or transitioning out of homelessness. So an old college campus becomes stable housing for people trying to get their footing back. That is a good use of the bones.
Townview Apartments in the Sloan's Lake and West Colfax neighborhoods. $3.5 million for 160 units, a mix of apartments and townhomes, serving residents at 40 to 80 percent AMI. And here is the part I want you to sit with. Sloan's Lake. If you have watched that neighborhood the last decade, you know what happened. The teardowns, the pop-tops, the new builds pushing north of a million. Median prices around the lake climbed hard and fast. Getting 160 below-market units into that exact zip code is not nothing. That is the whole point of a program like this, honestly. Put the affordable stuff where the market already priced people out.
With this round of awards, roughly $409.7 million has now gone out through the Prop 123 Affordable Housing Financing Fund. That is real money, not a press-release rounding error.
And the funding is not just Denver. The 11 projects are spread across Clifton, Colorado Springs, Idaho Springs, Leadville, Sterling, and Wheat Ridge too. So the Front Range gets a chunk, but the mountain towns and the Eastern Plains are in the mix, which they need to be. Leadville and Sterling do not usually make the headlines when we talk housing dollars.
CHFA Executive Director and CEO Thomas Bryan put it plainly. The developments range from supportive housing for people exiting homelessness, to housing for older adults, to larger units for families. That range is the story. It is not one type of tenant getting served. It is the whole spread.
Quick backstory, because context matters here.
Proposition 123 passed back in 2022. Colorado voters approved it, and it carves out state income tax dollars specifically for housing. Current Denver Mayor Mike Johnston was a key proponent of the measure before he was mayor. So the guy running the city now helped build the funding pipe that is currently pointing money at his own city. Draw your own conclusions on the politics, but the mechanism is doing what it was sold to do.
OEDIT and CHFA administer 60 percent of Prop 123 funding through land banking, equity, and concessionary debt programs. And most of what gets funded qualifies for federal Housing Tax Credits, which is the real engine underneath a lot of affordable development in this state. The state debt makes the deal pencil out, the tax credits do the heavy lifting. That is the machine.
One thing to keep in mind. Final award details still get worked out during the underwriting process. So the numbers you just read are the awards, not the finished ledger. Unit counts and dollar figures can shift a little as these deals close.
Here is the thing. If you own a home in Denver and you are thinking this does not touch you, it does.
When there is nowhere for teachers, nurses, restaurant workers, and young families to live, the whole market gets brittle. Neighborhoods lose the people who actually run them. And projects like Townview in Sloan's Lake are a bet that you can keep a neighborhood mixed instead of letting it price all the way out.
Whether 728 units moves the needle on a metro this size is a fair question. It is a down payment, not a fix. But it is a specific, funded, named-neighborhood down payment, and that beats another study.
I will be watching these as they break ground. The Montbello townhomes and that Mosaic campus in particular. Those are the ones worth your attention.
