Nathan Adams founded redT Homes with a commitment to developing sustainable, attainable housing. He and his award-winning team are exactly the kind of builders...

A fundamental law of economics is that an increase in supply tends to lower prices.

But in communities across the country—including Denver, Colorado—local officials have adopted counterproductive and unconstitutional “inclusionary zoning” fees designed to mitigate their lack of affordable housing by extorting homebuilders for new developments.

My colleagues and I have now filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of PLF client redT Homes—led by its founder and CEO Nathan Adams—challenging Denver’s permitting scheme, which forces builders to either set aside units to sell at below-market prices or pay huge fees to help create affordable housing.



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Nathan founded redT Homes with a commitment to developing sustainable, attainable housing. He and his award-winning team are exactly the kind of builders that you’d expect Denver to welcome with open arms—considering that the City faces a critical housing shortage.

Instead, he is being hit with $70,000 in permitting fees for two small-scale development projects—one that includes four single-family homes and another that consists of two duplexes.

Denver claims these fees are justified because new residences generate more housing demand, but that rationale is completely illogical.

By charging builders like Nathan exorbitant permitting fees that are unrelated to their actual developments, Denver is punishing the very builders who are working to solve the housing crisis.

This isn’t some wild, new frontier in local land use regulations either—the Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that governments cannot burden homebuilders with costs for problems they do not create.

Permit conditions for new construction must be proportional and directly related to the impact of that construction. But building new homes doesn’t make housing less affordable; it makes it more affordable.

This case is just the latest in our efforts to protect Americans’ right to build

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—and we’re incredibly grateful to Nathan and his team for taking up this fight.

Thank you for standing with us.

David J. Deerson

Attorney



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