The parking change, and why it reaches boards

The second half of the ordinance implements HB24-1304. Recital F records the mandate: the bill “prohibit[s] the City from imposing minimum parking requirements on land use approvals for new multi-unit and residential mixed-use development after June 30, 2025.”

Retained residential minimums include: detached house — one space on lots with more than forty feet of street frontage, two spaces on lots with forty feet or less; duplex or rowhouse — one space per unit with two or fewer bedrooms, two spaces per unit with three or more; manufactured homes — one space per unit; fraternity or sorority — two spaces per three beds.

Short-term rental parking survives, on a scale: one to two bedrooms rented requires one off-street space; three to four require two; five to six require three; seven to eight require four. With one grandfather: STRs licensed under City Code § 15-646 “for which the license application was submitted prior to October 31, 2017, are exempt from compliance with these parking requirements so long as such license remains continuously valid.”

Why this matters to an association: Fort Collins has removed its own minimums for new multi-unit development. That does nothing to what a declaration may require on private drives and lots — but it does mean the city is no longer generating the off-street supply that some association parking and exterior rules historically assumed would exist.

There is also a Colorado statute that does reach parking directly and is older than any of this: HB22-1139 added C.R.S. 38-33.3-106.5(1)(d.5), which bars associations from regulating use of public rights-of-way running through their communities — parking, vehicle storage or other activities — regardless of what the governing documents say. An association enforcing a street-parking rule on a public street inside its boundaries is already outside its authority.

The definitions, and the occupancy footnote

The ordinance adds a definition of “Occupant” and revises the definitions of “Dwelling, single-unit,” “Dwelling, single-unit detached” and “Dwelling, two-unit” so that an attached ADU does not change the unit count.

It does not deal with occupancy limits, because Fort Collins had already handled those: a recital notes that Ordinance No. 081, 2024, effective July 12, 2024, removed familial-relationship occupancy limits from the Land Use Code, implementing HB24-1007.

And here is the point that gets missed statewide. HB24-1007 binds local governments. A common interest community is not a local government. Occupancy restrictions in a declaration are not touched by it. A Fort Collins board that quietly stopped enforcing an occupancy provision because “the state changed the law” changed its practice for the wrong reason.

What the silence means for a Fort Collins owner

An owner in a covenanted Fort Collins subdivision now has a city code that plainly permits an ADU and says nothing whatever about the declaration. The document that reaches the declaration is the state statute, not this ordinance: C.R.S. 38-33.3-106.5(4), added by HB24-1152, voids association provisions restricting an ADU as an accessory use to a single-unit detached dwelling in a designated jurisdiction, subject to a “reasonable restriction” exception.

So the sequence of questions is: is this a subject jurisdiction; is the home a single-unit detached dwelling; and is our restriction a reasonable one rather than a prohibition. None of those questions is answered by Ordinance No. 009, 2025.

What to do before the next application

Write the ADU rule in the reasonable-restriction lane. Placement, materials, height within the city's limits, prior notice. Not a ban.

Check the association's parking provisions against the public-right-of-way bar in C.R.S. 38-33.3-106.5(1)(d.5), and against the practical reality that new multi-unit development nearby may bring less off-street parking than the rules were drafted to assume.

Do not read the city's occupancy change as reaching the declaration. It does not.

And keep the two documents distinct when you answer owners. The city code says what Fort Collins will permit. The declaration says what the community permits. Fort Collins has been silent on the second, and that silence is not permission.