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By Lucy Carlson-Krakoff. Also published as a "Letter to the Editor" in the Daily Camera on August 10, 2020.
"I never thought I would be tackling issues so close to home, but The Bedrooms Are For People initiative, which seeks to reform Boulder’s discriminatory occupancy limits, was so compelling that I am now spending the majority of my free time campaigning for housing justice.
I am 20 years old and I was born and raised in Boulder. I left for my freshman year of college. I took my sophomore year off to be a field organizer for Elizabeth Warren right here in Boulder. And in the process, I realized that there was important work to do for furthering progressivism at the local scale.
While in the field, I talked to thousands of Boulder County voters and heard many of the same concerns. In my experience, the issues that matter most to Boulder voters are the environment, structural inequality, and cost-of-living expenses.
Bedrooms Are For People supports these values by making more efficient use of our existing housing stock, recognizing the diversity of peoples’ living situations, and providing more affordable living options in the city, which can increase socioeconomic and racial diversity.
Problems such as climate change, structural inequality, and cost of living are often discussed at the national level, but big structural change must start at a local level. The ordinance permitting only three unrelated people to live together is antiquated. Removing it is the exact type of economic and policy reform that Boulderites want leaders to fight for.
We don’t have to wait for the national government or high-profile progressive leaders to take action before we do. Instead, we should start reforming locally by eliminating this antiquated and discriminatory ordinance and protecting the human rights to housing and companionship in our charter this Election Day."
— Lucy Carlson-Krakoff
Boulder
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