Colorado Democrats have advanced a slew of pro-tenant bills amid a legislative session that one lawmaker called “the year of housing.” Despite concerns from some that two of the most high-profile bills may die, lawmakers and lobbyists say enough measures will advance this year to help achieve Democrats’ goal of rebalancing the relationship between landlords and tenants.
“There’s too many of them,” said Drew Hamrick, a senior vice president with the Colorado Apartment Association who’s criticized many of those bills as being counterproductive. “And you can’t go to the same (Democratic) legislators over and over again and ask them to kill numerous of their party’s bills.”
The focus on housing is in part driven by what Democratic candidates heard while campaigning last year, legislators said, and in part by the number of renters now serving in the General Assembly. The “year of housing” also extends beyond lawmakers. Gov. Jared Polis has unveiled his own housing plan: a first-in-decades zoning reform that, he and other supporters say, will jumpstart Colorado’s lagging housing development in the years to come.
Democratic legislators, meanwhile, say they’re pushing bills to deliver help to renters in the more immediate term. To do that, they’ve proposed more than a half dozen that directly relate to evictions, the cost of rent or the rental process. Others — one to boost local governments’ ability to buy apartment complexes, another that requires radon disclosure — cover availability and habitability of housing.
Supporters of those bills cast them as essential addendums to the land-use reform effort. The need for tenant relief is immediate, said Zach Neumann of the Community Economic Defense Project. According to data from Denver County Court, nearly 1,200 residents here faced eviction filings in March, a five-year high. In a state where more than a third of residents are renters, evictions have climbed across the board as COVID-era assistance and protections expire.
“We’re trying to make sure the market works,” said Sen. Faith Winter, a Westminster Democrat who’s sponsoring a bill that would give renters more flexibility in security deposits, limit how much income landlords can require and give tenants an additional eviction defense. “The market’s not working right now. There are a lot of folks seeking housing that can’t get housing, whether it’s not affordable or there’s barriers — for example how much income you have to make to rent.”
Hamrick and Republicans, meanwhile, argue that the Democrats’ bills will have the opposite effect: More regulations on housing and landlords, they say, may further restrict supply, increase prices and make the state less attractive for development.
Despite his belief that several of the bills would pass, Hamrick said he was optimistic that the more moderate state Senate would defeat two high-profile tenant bills that soared through the House: One would allow local governments to enact certain rent control policies if they so chose, and the other would require landlords to have “just cause” to evict a tenant, cutting the use of expired leases as a de facto displacement strategy.
The two bills — which are distinct but ideologically aligned policies — both passed the House comfortably, albeit with only Democratic support. Their path into the Senate begins with the Senate’s Local Government and Housing Committee this month, a journey that will test the outside perception that Democratic lawmakers vote as a monolith.
Though Democrats have a near-supermajority in the Senate, the chamber’s housing committee — the makeup of which is determined by Senate leadership — has a slim 4-3 Democratic majority. One of those four members, Avon Democratic Sen. Dylan Roberts, told The Denver Post on Wednesday that he was “skeptical” of both rent control and just-cause, and supporters of the measures have said Roberts is the particular sticking point on the committee.
“I would just say that the voters that elected the House majority are the same voters that elected the Senate majority,” said Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat and the co-sponsor of both bills, when asked about the policies’ prospects. He defended both bills as vital to the success of land-use reforms and necessary interventions to protect tenants from displacement and rent increases, which have spiked in recent years.
He added, pointedly: “The voters expect Democrats to deliver for renters. Especially our primary voters.”
Rep. Steven Woodrow, another Denver Democrat who’s sponsoring other housing bills, said sometimes legislation takes multiple sessions to pass and that Democratic lawmakers “aren’t a monolith.”
“It forces an even tighter deliberative process,” he said of the Senate committee’s narrow Democratic majority. “You gotta pare down even more because that committee is going to be even more discerning.”
But other lawmakers and advocates said just-cause legislation and giving local controls authority over rent control weren’t new policies. Other states have enacted just-cause provisions, for instance, and a bill to allow local governments to enact rent control was introduced here in 2019. Sen. Julie Gonzales, who’s co-sponsoring the just-cause eviction bill, noted that the rent control bill was four pages in length, compared to the 105-page land-use bill (which Woodrow is co-sponsoring).
“We’re trying to legislate to the experiences that most tenants are living through right now,” she said. Gonzales has expressed concern about the land-use bill and its potential to displace current residents: If the zoning reform bill passes and land in key areas becomes more valuable to development, housing advocates have said that could lead to those developers pushing out existing community in favor of higher-paying tenants. The just-cause bill, Gonzales and Mabrey have said, would help alleviate that concern.
For his part, Roberts said he didn’t “relish” his position as the potentially decisive vote on two policies that progressive advocates are pressing. But he said he was concerned about both bills’ potential to hurt housing availability and affordability. He didn’t select the committee’s members or its composition, Roberts said, and he’s committed to giving the bills the same fair hearing as any other.
He was the key vote last week when the same committee voted to advance a House bill that gives local governments the ability to swoop in and purchase an apartment complex before it’s sold to a private buyer. But that bill required moderating amendments, including an exemption for developments built in the past 30 years and a five-year sunset on the entire program. Supporters said the concessions were made to get Roberts on board.
Advocates have dispatched constituents who’ve been affected by rent increases to call Roberts. Gonzales, who also sits on the housing committee, said she was working “incredibly hard” to get her bill passed and to ensure legislators live up to “campaign promises of ensuring we keep Coloradans housed.”
Still, Gonzales and others said, Democrats’ pro-tenant push was broader than just two bills. Winter noted that she’d passed three housing bills through the Senate housing committee Tuesday. A bill to make it easier and cheaper for renters to apply for housing has passed both the House and Senate. Others — regulating the content of lease agreements and making it easier for pet-owners to rent — have either made it through the Senate committee or are expected to. House Democrats are seeking to set aside millions for rental assistance when they pass the budget in the coming days.
“Those bills have gotten more room because (rent control and just cause) are taking up all the oxygen,” Winter said. “We’re going to pass really good things that are going to help tenants, and it’s going to be really exciting. And we’re going to do long-term strategy on land use, and that’s also really exciting.”
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