Lakewood voters’ approval of a 1 percent annual cap on new homes and apartments may have opened the door to housing growth limits across the region. “Eleven Front Range counties are looking at growth limits” via one initiative, said Teo Nicolais, who addressed the Apartment Association of Metro Denver at its Summer Econ conference Thursday. Even as the overall pace of apartment rent increases in the second quarter dropped below the rate of inflation, Nicolais said the few remaining reservoirs of apartment affordability in metro Denver — places like Wheat Ridge — continue to see big rent increases. “It’s incompatible for us to limit growth and make rents more affordable,” Nicolais told the crowd. The U.S.