The dimensional standards, and the design rule that will look familiar

Internal ADUs: maximum 750 square feet or 50% of the existing primary dwelling, whichever is greater; extensions beyond 100 square feet of added gross floor area reclassify it as attached. Basement and upper-storey conversions were exempt from the floor-area maximum.

Attached ADUs: minimum 250 square feet, maximum 750 square feet or 50% of the primary dwelling, whichever is greater; same side setback as the primary dwelling; five-foot minimum rear setback; three feet from an abutting rear alley; entrances on the side or rear.

Detached ADUs: minimum 250 square feet, maximum 750; maximum height twenty-four feet; side or rear yard only; five-foot rear setback, three feet from an abutting alley; a thirty-six-inch clear access path from the front property line where possible. Mobile homes and vehicles prohibited; prefabricated, manufactured and tiny homes allowed in permitted durable materials.

Design standards — and this is the provision an architectural committee will recognise. ADUs must use materials permitted for single-family detached dwellings and be “objectively consistent with the primary dwelling by incorporating at least four of the following elements”: roof pitch and form; soffit and fascia style; exterior wall cladding style or material; window style, trim and orientation; exterior door style; architectural features such as recessions, projections, dormers, balconies, porches, columns or prominent entry features; and colour palette.

Parking: no new off-street parking required with an ADU unless all three of the following applied — the zone district required off-street parking for a single-family detached dwelling as of January 1, 2024; there is no existing space on the lot that could be designated for the ADU; and the ADU is on a street where on-street parking is prohibited. Then one space.

No subdivision: a lot with both a primary dwelling and an ADU could not be subdivided so the ADU sat on a separate platted lot. The draft also removed the Planning and Zoning Commission hearing from the ADU approval path in favour of a building-permit route.

Covenants: absent from the ordinance, addressed in the city's Q&A

Searched in full, the draft ordinance contains zero occurrences of “association,” “covenant,” “HOA,” “deed restriction” or “homeowner.” It does address Planned Developments expressly, but that is the public PUD instrument, not a recorded declaration.

The city's public question-and-answer material does address it, and closely tracks Denver's position: the city “does not enforce deed restrictions or covenants,” associations may impose “reasonable restrictions” under state law — requirements that do not “unreasonably increase the cost … or effectively prohibit the construction of” an ADU — and state law “overrules” local restrictions inconsistent with HB24-1152.

Where that leaves an Aurora board

This is the most confusing jurisdiction in Colorado for an association right now, and the honest description is that Aurora sits in a gap.

The city's zoning text is not aligned. The city says it will not enforce covenants either way. And the statutory preemption of declaration-based ADU bans is a matter of state law whose application in Aurora is contested in pending litigation — Aurora being a plaintiff in the six-city suit filed in Denver District Court on May 19, 2025, which challenges HB24-1313 and HB24-1304, though notably not HB24-1152.

Boards in Aurora should be taking their own advice on whether their ADU provision is enforceable, and we are not resolving it here. What can be said without resolving anything: the association's exposure does not depend on Aurora's council. It depends on whether Aurora is a subject jurisdiction under C.R.S. 29-35-102, whether the home is a single-unit detached dwelling, and whether the association's restriction is a “reasonable” one.

What has happened since

Aurora returned to the subject a year later. At a study session on July 13, 2026, council directed staff to draft a formal ADU expansion ordinance. As of today no ordinance has been adopted, so that effort is a proposal rather than law.

The scale figures reported alongside that session are worth noting, because they show what the city's 2018 rules produced: 262 ADU requests received between 2023 and June 2026 from owners in non-approved zones, against only nine ADUs permitted and five built under those rules. Demand exists; the code did not accommodate it.

For a board, the practical read is that Aurora's code is likely to change, on the city's timetable rather than the state's, and that the association's own design standards are the part it controls either way.