Lauren Folkerts
Lauren Folkerts, an architect and member of the City of Boulder’s Design Advisory Board, is making her first run for public elected office in the 2021 race for Boulder City Council.
“The two issues that have really inspired me to run are our affordable housing crisis and our climate crisis. I think the last year has made the overlap between those issues really clear, and as an architect I feel like I understand the forces that shape those issues with more detail and complexity than a lot of the other candidates. And I think that I can bring my creative design thinking to bear on new types of solutions for us to try as a community,” said Folkerts on her reasons for throwing her hat in the Council ring.
SHORT LIFE STORY
Folkerts was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, and grew up just outside of Seattle. She went to high school at the Overlake School in Redmond, Washington. She stayed in the Northwest for her higher education, attending the University of Oregon to get an accredited five-year degree in architecture, and said she chose this path partially because Oregon boasts one of the top schools for sustainable design in the country. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Architecture.
But she graduated during what was once known as “The Great Recession,” and said she lived out of her car for a period of time. She eventually got a job at Arapahoe Basin Ski Area in Colorado, and met her partner while living in the mountains, who convinced her to move to Boulder in 2011.
Folkerts has worked for several architectural firms during the 10 years she’s lived in Boulder, including the Boulder-based firm Caddis. She said one of the projects she is proudest of from her Caddis years was working on the Community Center at Diagonal Plaza with Boulder Housing Partners (BHP), a Net Zero Energy project. This was part of BHP’s Bringing School Home program, an affordable housing program for families that would also “commit to participating in specific supportive services focused on helping children achieve success in education.” She currently works with HMH Architecture and Interiors as an architect and project manager, and has been with HMH for five years.
She was appointed to the City’s Design Advisory Board (DAB) in 2017, and has been Chair of DAB for the past three years. In short, the board reviews and provides design guidance for projects located in the Downtown area involving the construction of a new building or exterior work on an existing building. Folkerts said the top roles of DAB include “protecting the city from the worst” in design, but also protecting the best, and believes she’s helped change the review process so DAB begins by discussing the best aspects of a given project. She is also currently president-elect of the Colorado Green Building Guild.
ON THE ISSUES
Housing: According to Folkerts, there are two types of housing projects commonly found in Boulder at this time – high-density larger-scale projects, and projects where people have a single-family home torn down to replace it with a new single-family home. She said this means people in town tend to see either large blocks of attached units or high-end single-family homes, but not a lot of “missing-middle” housing. She considers the newer development in north Boulder, such as the Holiday Neighborhood, to be a good example of the types of development that could help bring about more middle-income housing. However, north Boulder was to a certain extent developed on a large portion of land in a relatively compact time frame, along the lines of what might happen with large-scale apartment complex development, and Folkerts said she would like to see development like what happened at Holiday on a smaller scale, as opposed to building an entire new neighborhood.
When it comes to increasing housing affordability, she supports considering adjustments to the city’s regulatory process as part of the solution. She said she would support “reducing discretionary review” for projects that could bring high levels of affordability, in part to meet timelines that would allow projects to qualify for federal funding. She would also support relaxing restrictions around creating Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU), increasing the use of land trusts to create opportunities for housing and ownership models, and incentivizing projects that offer affordability through means such as increasing the number of allowable housing units, accelerating the review processes, or lowering city fees.
She would not support completely eliminating single-family zoning across Boulder, but believes some of the solutions to Boulder’s housing challenges will have to happen in areas currently zoned single-family, partially because these zones take up roughly 80 percent of Boulder’s land that’s zoned residential. She favors considering strategies within current single-family zones including affordability incentives, deed restrictions, and the “land trust” land ownership model. She said ideally new density in areas once zoned single-family should be located near transit corridors or favorable for alternative modes of transportation, and believes density could make amenities like neighborhood grocery stores or retail more feasible.
CU-South: During a late August interview, Folkerts said she supported the CU-South annexation agreement as it stood at the time. She said the time and expertise that has went into the project yielded positive plans that improved over time and in her opinion will be in the best interest of the community, with benefits including flood mitigation, student and affordable housing, concessions to nearby neighborhoods including traffic mitigation plans, and Open Space on site.
She acknowledged that climate change and the likelihood of more serious weather events made the discussion around whether to do 100-year flood mitigation or something more substantial a “salient issue,” but did not support changing the 100-year plan. She said a 100-year plan would be “in line with national practices,” and does not believe the city should regulate this project to stronger standards than regulations in other parts of the city.
Folkerts does not support the “Let the Voters Decide on Annexation of CU South” ballot measure, partially because of complications that could arise, including some possibility of the issue going to court, if City Council approves an annexation agreement and the initiative passes. She noted the other possibility of a citizen-initiated referendum being launched against the annexation agreement if an agreement is reached, and said she believes a referendum would provide a clearer process than the current initiative.
Governance: Folkerts said she believes Boulder is “incredibly politically polarized,” even though residents largely share many of the same general goals and values. This means members of the next Council will certainly face opposition from groups or individuals, and Folkerts said she intends to listen with the intent to understand why people may have passionate opinions. She also said she does not intend to govern based on the raw numbers of comments she receives, but instead hopes to listen to the concerns of everyone in the city in order to hopefully “do what’s right for the city as a whole.”
She believes there is room to improve the city’s public engagement process, which in turn could help public process be more productive. Certain housing projects in Boulder have certainly been contentious, and Folkerts said it’s important to make sure moving forward that community engagement starts early in the process, along with strong outreach and high-quality framing of the issues, so citizens are well-informed and feel heard when they express opinions.
She mentioned the city’s Be Heard Boulder platform as one service that is working well in terms of gathering input from residents, and added that the city could improve its outreach process in order to “meet people where they’re at” and get input from a wider range of the populace.
Homelessness: Folkerts said she did not agree with the Council’s decision to approve a $2.7 million package to address issues with homelessness in the city, and would have preferred a heavier focus on addressing what she called the “gaps in our social services.” She believes actions like encampment cleanups are only temporary, since people who are moved out of one area might eventually come back elsewhere, and said in her opinion the city’s current course of action won’t make its parks and open spaces safer in the long run.
But rather than immediately spending more money on services for people experiencing homelessness, she said she’d like to first look at reallocating funds. She said that according to Boulder’s Police Chief Maris Herold, the two issues currently taking up the most time for the Boulder Police Department are noise complaints on the Hill and calls around homelessness, and Folkerts also doesn’t believe spending money on policing is the best way to address either problem. She would like to see a stronger focus on issues including mental health and substance abuse, and believes it could be more cost-effective than a more policing-heavy approach.
Public Safety: According to Folkerts, the city has had ebbs and flows in crime rates since the pandemic hit, which could have a correlation to economic conditions, but said “any time people in our community feel unsafe, we have a problem.” Again, she turned to addressing underlying issues that might be driving some of the crime, including substance abuse or mental health challenges. She suggested the city could more closely examine other alternative approaches such as the Support Team Assisted Respone (STAR) program in Denver, which employs Emergency Medical Technicians and Behavioral Health Clinicians on certain calls, or the CAHOOTS program in Oregon, to seek better and more long-lasting solutions.
Transportation: Folkerts noted that the lack of affordable housing in Boulder has a strong connection to auto traffic volume and congestion, and said increasing access to affordable or attainable housing will be among her top objectives to address the city’s traffic problems. She favors investigating a citywide EcoPass program, or a program to make RTD passes more affordable, to boost transit ridership. Like most candidates, she said Boulder needs improved north-south bike lanes to make the city’s bike network more complete, and to create more connections that feel safe and comfortable. She would consider incentivizing electric bike adoption, and believes more people would be able to access the city’s bike infrastructure with e-bikes.
Bedrooms Are For People: Folkerts supports the Bedrooms Are For People ballot measure, and mentioned she has lived in West Coast-area towns that have no occupancy limits at all. She said she doesn’t think the initiative will “answer” the city’s affordable housing problems, but will make a difference by increasing legal occupancy limits. She said some homes, particularly those located near CU, are currently overoccupied in the eyes of the law. This puts renters who aren’t actually listed on the lease at certain risks, and she said passing Bedrooms would provide legal safety for more renters. She has heard criticisms and concerns around the Bedrooms ballot measure, but said there were also concerns around the city’s ADU and co-op housing ordinances that didn’t come to pass, and she believes the same will generally hold true with Bedrooms. She does not believe that “allowing an additional renter or a couple additional renters in a house is going to dramatically drive up rental prices,” or that the rental cost for an entire house will necessarily increase at a rate proportional to the increase in renters.
CONNECTIONS
Endorsements: Folkerts has been endorsed by has been endorsed by the following Unofficial Candidate Committees (UCC): Better Boulder, Boulder Is For People, Boulder Progressives, Sierra Club Indian Peaks Group, South Boulder Creek Action Group, United Campus Workers Colorado, and The Coalition. She has also received endorsements from the Boulder Weekly and Open Boulder.
Contributions: Folkerts has received maximum $100 individual contributions from former Council member Jan Burton, current Council members Aaron Brockett and Rachel Friend, and current Council candidates Nicole Speer, Dan Williams, and Matt Benjamin.
Digital Presence:
Website: https://www.lauren4boulder.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Lauren4Boulder
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BoulderLauren4
