Boulder won’t pursue occupancy violations against illegal co-ops while the city tries to work out ordinances that would provide legal ways for cooperatives to operate here.

Just a week ago, the Boulder City Council gave final approval to an ordinance that makes it easier to enforce occupancy complaints by adding new requirements for landlords and increasing fines in three student-heavy neighborhoods: University Hill, Martin Acres and Goss-Grove.

Many advocates for cooperative housing, as well as those who live with more roommates than the legal limit to save money, had asked the City Council not to pass the ordinance because sharing housing is the only way they can afford to live in Boulder. But homeowners in student-heavy neighborhoods said increased enforcement is necessary to prevent the loss of remaining single-family homes to investors who can make more money by renting to students.

Boulder’s occupancy limit prohibits more than three unrelated people from living together in low-density residential areas and more than four unrelated people in medium-density residential areas, regardless of the size of the house or the number of bedrooms.

In the midst of this debate, city inspectors received an anonymous complaint against one of the city’s better-known illegal cooperatives. On Tuesday, City Manager Jane Brautigam and City Attorney Tom Carr sought approval from the City Council for not enforcing the ordinance against households that have the characteristics of cooperatives, including a governance structure and sharing of resources.

“We have gotten mixed signals from council,” Carr said. “We have been told to enforce occupancy, and we also have been told that co-ops should be off-limits.”

Carr said his office always has prosecutorial discretion, and he won’t enforce the occupancy limit against “legitimate co-ops that are not legal.”

“There are some well-known co-ops in Boulder that are not legal,” he said. “We will take a hands-off approach on those.”

The council gave approval for that approach, but not without concerns about how the city defines a co-op versus a standard over-occupied roommate situation.

“We had more than 100 people speak to us, and some were in co-ops but many were not,” Councilwoman Lisa Morzel said of the night a public hearing was held on occupancy enforcement. “Maybe we need to bring back the whole occupancy ordinance.”

Councilman Sam Weaver also questioned whether enforcement should be suspended until the city could work out its policy on cooperatives.

Councilman Andrew Shoemaker, who had pushed for increased occupancy enforcement to protect the remaining single-family housing on University Hill, said he was frustrated by the complaint and the suggestion that the entire enforcement ordinance was flawed.

“Someone is stirring the pot,” he said. “Someone called in a complaint against a co-op that we have discussed as a model of what we’d like to see more of. The complaint was anonymous. We don’t know which side of the debate they’re on.”

Shoemaker said he disagrees that it will be difficult to tell the difference between co-ops and party houses. The “Animal House Co-op” will be obvious, he said.

Members of the community who asked the council not to adopt the ordinance had said enforcement should be focused on parking, noise and trash issues that affect neighbors’ quality of life.

Stephen Haydel of the Goss-Grove neighborhood, which has many student rentals, said he hopes the city enforces the portions of the ordinance aimed at landlords.

“What we want is the occupancy listed in the advertisement and the lease being such that the tenants and the landlords know what the occupancy really is,” he said.

As for exempting co-ops, he wonders how the city will define that. More broadly, the city needs to have rules it will enforce, he said.

“I think if there are rules on the books, they need to enforce them, and if the rules need to be changed, then that is what they need to do,” he said.

Brautigam told the City Council the city’s inspectors are in an awkward position in that when a complaint comes in against a certain address, it’s not immediately apparent whether a house is a cooperative until they investigate. However, the city stopped enforcement action against the cooperative in question and doesn’t plan to pursue occupancy enforcement against households that have the qualities of cooperatives.

Shoemaker identified the cooperative cited in the complaint as the Radish Collective, which hosted Shoemaker and several other council members at a campaign event in 2013 and which is the home of recent City Council candidate Lauren “Cha Cha” Spinrad.

Saying that residents were not in agreement about how to deal with the media, two members of the cooperative approached outside the house Wednesday declined an interview request.

Lincoln Miller, executive director of the Boulder Housing Coalition, a nonprofit organization that operates several legal cooperatives, said advocates are working with city planners to come up with definitions and legal pathways for rental and equity co-ops that could be presented to the City Council next year. The creation of a legal option for co-ops, rather than selective enforcement, is the better long-term solution, he said.

The city’s current rules make it nearly impossible to operate a legal co-op, and the coalition’s cooperatives are boarding houses for zoning purposes.

And in fact, Mayor Suzanne Jones, who has pushed for the city to change its co-op ordinance, said the selective moratorium on enforcement would be a temporary situation until the status of cooperatives can be resolved.

At the same time, the focus on co-ops ignores the impact of occupancy enforcement on thousands of other people, Miller said.

“I am happy that council wants to support co-ops, but I think it’s also important to understand that there are literally thousands of people who are low-income who need to share to have affordable housing,” Miller said. “Their crackdown hurts those people and criminalizes those people. That’s not fair. That’s not just. Those people will be hurt, and that’s what they voted for.”

Erica Meltzer: 303-473-1355, meltzere@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/meltzere