Upzoning and Homelessness

From savebelmarpark.com

Homelessness, and especially people who are unhoused, is a growing concern in the US.  Upzoning advocates have pointed to the high cost of housing as a key driver of homelessness and that upzoning would make housing more affordable and therefore would reduce the number of unhoused persons in a city.

‘Upzoning’ is a city planning strategy to increase housing density and therefore housing supply via related zoning changes to support the strategy.

Profile: Lakewood, Colorado

 Lakewood, CO Median Housing Cost – US Census Data 2019-2023

Lakewood, Colorado is a city of 156,000 with 329 unhoused residents as of the 2024 point-in-time count.  Lakewood also recently upzoned the city adopted in late 2025 but at this early stage, it is not possible to see any affordability improvement.

Based on US Census Data 2019-2023, housing in Lakewood is affordable.  The median housing cost is $1,729/month and median household income is $85,789.  That means housing only costs 24% of median income which is well below the HUD 30% affordability threshold.  Median gross rent is $1,746/month which also indicates rental housing is affordable in Lakewood.

Therefore, before upzoning, Lakewood housing was already quite affordable according to US Census statistics.  Other proprietary and often subscription-based statistics from the for-profit housing industry may have various different views and may exaggerate the need for housing such as Zillow’s extremely inflated model which is based on every unrelated or unmarried person having their own individual housing unit with no roommates allowed.  

Profile: Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon is a city of 635,749 with nearly 7,500 unsheltered residents according to county data. (Another agency claims the number is over 15,000 in Portland!)

Portland has four times the population of Lakewood but 22 times the number of unhoused residents despite a long history of state and local upzoning measures implemented starting back in 1978 with Senate Bill 100.

It would appear that Portland’s efforts to reduce the number of unhoused residents is failing.

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