Where Colorado's 2026 land-use agenda actually died

One Senate committee did nearly all of it, in nine days.

HB26-1300, letting health service districts provide affordable housing services without a service-plan modification, was postponed indefinitely 6–1 on April 22 after passing the House 43–20.
HB26-1114, barring a subject jurisdiction from requiring more than 2,000 square feet of lot for a single-family home from October 1, 2031, was postponed indefinitely 7–0 on April 23 after passing the House.
HB26-1308 was postponed indefinitely 6–0 on April 30.

Any 2027 refile of a Colorado land-use preemption has to solve for the Senate Committee on Local Government & Housing, not for the House.

What the two bills together tell a board about preemption

The pair is instructive because they were drafted differently on purpose.

HB26-1308 carried an express CIC carve-out because a by-right lot split changes the boundaries and the unit count of a lot that a declaration and a plat describe. Forcing that inside an existing common interest community would have collided with recorded covenants, allocated interests and assessment formulas, and the drafters avoided the collision entirely.

HB26-1114 carried no carve-out — and did not need one. It regulated only what a local government may require. A private covenant setting a larger minimum lot size would have been untouched either way. Its bill summary and text do not mention common interest communities, homeowners associations or covenants at all.

That distinction is the whole architecture of Colorado land-use preemption, and it is where most confusion about these bills comes from. A statute that tells a city what it may not require does nothing to a declaration. Only a statute that speaks to declarations reaches them — and Colorado has done that exactly once in this area, in HB24-1152 (2024), which added subsection (4) to C.R.S. 38-33.3-106.5 and voided association provisions restricting accessory dwelling units in designated jurisdictions, subject to a “reasonable restriction” exception, and only for accessory use to a single-unit detached dwelling.

What this leaves in place

No statewide by-right lot splitting in Colorado. Minimum lot sizes remain entirely with local jurisdictions. And for owners inside existing HOA and condominium communities, the practical point is that covenants were never in play in 2026 — not in the lot-splitting bill, which excluded them, and not in the minimum-lot-size bill, which never reached them.

Boards fielding owner questions about whether “the state is going to let people subdivide their lots” can answer plainly: the bill that would have required it died in April, and it would not have applied inside the community anyway.

What to watch next

The live preemption fight is not about lot splitting. It is about density and parking, and it is in court. Six home-rule cities — Arvada, Aurora, Glendale, Greenwood Village, Lafayette and Westminster — sued the State of Colorado and Governor Polis in Denver District Court on May 19, 2025, challenging HB24-1313 on transit-oriented communities and HB24-1304 on local minimum parking requirements, pleading that land use and zoning are matters of exclusive local concern under Article XX, section 6 of the Colorado Constitution.

Note what that complaint does not challenge: HB24-1152, the ADU bill — which is the one that reaches into declarations. The lawsuit is about mandates on cities, not about association governing documents, and the two should not be blurred. Separately, transit-oriented communities face a December 31, 2026 deadline to submit Housing Opportunity Goal reports to the Department of Local Affairs.