As Colorado Democrats advance eviction protections, landlords and tenants describe impacts

At the intersection of Colorado lawmakers’ debate over renters’ rights are landlords like Page Pulver and tenants like Trudy Carra-deSalero.

Pulver owns the Coffman House in downtown Longmont, a 46-unit rooming house she purchased in 2017. She’s poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the property, which was built in 1902 by Charles Dickens’ grandson and served as a hospital in the ’30s.

Its inhabitants are now college students and nurses and retired professors, ranging in age from 18 to 70. Pulver hasn’t raised the rent in four years, she said, and prices for a studio apartment top out at $975 a month — below the median rate in metro Denver.

“We take risks on people who may not be able to find housing elsewhere,” she said.

Carra-deSalero told lawmakers Wednesday that she’s twice been displaced from units she was renting because the property owner declined to renew her lease. Between movers, application fees and deposits, her relocation costs totaled more $6,000, she said.

A previous landlord ignored conditions in her apartment, waiting until the clock ran out on her lease. That same landlord then refused to confirm her tenancy, making it harder for Carra-deSalero to find a new home.

“Growing up in Colorado, I don’t remember being worried about being forced to move,” she said. “We decided ourselves to relocate for personal reasons. We knew our landlords and owners. They were mom-and-pop people. It was mutually beneficial to both of us. That’s no longer the case.”

Pulver’s and Carra-deSalero’s attention were trained on a pro-tenant bill that passed an initial House committee vote Thursday. The measure — HB23-1171 — would generally give tenants a right-of-first refusal on whether to re-sign their leases, and block evictions, unless the landlord had legitimate reasons.

It’s part of a broader package of pro-tenant legislation that’s been advanced by lawmakers in recent weeks as Gov. Jared Polis and the Democratic majorities in the Capitol work to address housing access and affordability.

Supporters of “just-cause evictions,” like Democratic sponsor Rep. Javier Mabrey, say the bill is an essential tool needed to avoid gentrification and displacement. As Polis and top legislators consider sweeping changes to the state’s land-use policy, Mabrey said, tenants need protections to ensure they won’t get priced out of their homes or have their maintenance requests ignored until their leases end.

“Colorado renters should be able to expect if they pay their rent each month and do not violate the terms of their lease agreement that they cannot be evicted,” said Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, who like Mabrey is a Denver Democrat and a co-sponsor of the bill.

Opponents of the bill, Drew Hamrick of the Colorado Apartment Association, argue that it goes too far and infringes on the basic principles of a lease: Either party — tenant or landlord — can agree to continue on or not. Hamrick told lawmakers Wednesday that the bill would allow for “endless leases,” restricting the availability of housing and, in turn, cause prices to go up.

Republican Rep. Rick Taggart, of Grand Junction, said he was concerned the bill had gone too far in addressing the balance between landlords and tenants. That echoes criticism raised by other House Republicans of the broader Democratic push to reshape the landlord-tenant relationship.

But supporters of the just-cause eviction bill argue that tenants are often fearful of raising concerns about the condition of their units because the property owner can choose to not renew their lease, prompting renters to embark on a sudden, uncertain search for housing. If land-use reform opens up more property for multi-unit development, then those areas will become more valuable and, Mabrey and other housing advocates argue, make displacement of lower-income renters via non-renewals more likely.

“It just seems like the deck is stacked against us,” said Cleveland Smith, a Westminster resident. His wife, Monique Gant, testified that she was attacked and racially abused by her landlord after she asked for a copy of her lease and address other concerns she had.

But property owners argue that stories about slumlords paint all property owners with a broad, negative brush. Nora Baldwin, who described herself as a “small-time landlord in Denver,” told lawmakers that the experiences that tenants had described were “tragic and traumatic” and that the landlords in those cases were “terrible human beings.”

“But I am not one of them,” she said. “I care about my tenants, I run a business. I’m fair, I’m kind, I help innumerable tenants make it through hard times.”

Pulver told The Denver Post that the bill would be so burdensome that running the rooming house would no longer be feasible. Not everything goes smoothly at Coffman House all the time, she said. That’s not fair to tenants who try to follow the rules, which she said boils down to “be considerate — live and let live.”

Not renewing a tenant’s lease is a way to address those problems, she said.

Pulver took particular issue with a provision in the bill that requires landlords who evict without cause to provide relocation costs to the tenant. Mabrey told the Post that negotiations around that part of the bill are ongoing and that changes are likely.

After more than four hours of testimony Wednesday, the House’s Transportation, Housing and Local Government committee voted — on a 9-4 party-line vote — to advance the bill to the full House.

The green light comes days after the House advanced bills that would allow local governments to enact rent control, limit what can be included in lease agreements and strengthen eviction protections for certain tenants.

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