There is a glaring lack of long-term thinking when it comes to neighborhood continuity and planning in Lakewood.
City council’s radical rezoning is a blueprint for rushed, cheap, builder-grade development over thoughtful planning. Mature trees? Bulldozed for convenience. Infrastructure for fire, water, traffic, parks? Afterthoughts, already failing to keep up with current demands. Adding correlating parks and open spaces for the huge increase in population over the last decade? None. Tens of thousands of new residents have already been crammed in, and they hope to cram in tens of thousands more. All this while homes and apartments sit vacant and residents flee Colorado like something contagious is in the air. And honestly? They’re not wrong. The corruption is so obvious, it’s like watching a rigged game where the house already knows it wins.
Meanwhile, our government keeps repeating the same lie: “We need more housing.” No. We don’t. Hundreds of homes currently sit empty, and buyers aren’t magically appearing. Supply isn’t the problem. Adding more “units” won’t make housing affordable. It will make it worse. Developers won’t build homes anyone can actually afford. They build what makes them profit. Period! And we’ve all seen them: million-dollar, three-story skinny homes crammed lot line to lot line. Not everybody wants that. People with mobility issues or older folks who can’t use stairs? Totally impractical…