Proposed House Bill Would Enable Local Governments to Consider Rent Control

This story was updated to reflect that the bill passed, with amendments, in the House on February 27.

Leonard Moralez has lived in his Westminster apartment for seven years, but in the spring of 2022, his landlord announced that his rent would go up from $850 to $1,350 per month.

Moralez is a 65-year-old Army veteran and lives off disability income. He says that kind of rent increase makes his home unaffordable for him — and for many of his neighbors in the complex.

“He didn't give an explanation whatsoever,” Moralez says of his landlord. “All he's saying is that they have to raise the rent, and now we're living in a competitive area. We've got nice apartments to live in, and the bottom dollar is you've got to stay competitive with the other apartments.”

However, Moralez says he hasn’t seen improvement in the complex over the last seven years that would warrant such a steep and sudden increase. There are cockroaches in many units, he says, and the heat and electricity are spotty. Moralez has talked to his neighbors, and he says many of them have the same problems he does. His neighbor on the second floor has plumbing problems and worries about the safety of her children in the apartment, Moralez says.

To raise the rent in a situation that is already subpar isn’t fair, and Moralez says it puts him and several of his neighbors at risk of homelessness. That’s why he plans to testify in support of a House bill: Repeal Prohibition Local Residential Rent Control, which would repeal a provision in state law that prohibits rent control policies in the state of Colorado. The bill will be heard in the House Transportation, Housing & Local Government committee on February 15.

“Before I moved in here, I was homeless for three years,” Moralez shares. “I lived outside first, and then I got a vehicle, and I had to live in my vehicle. We're talking about the dead of winter, sleeping in my car. …By them raising the rent, it takes away more of my little bit of money I get. I can't afford to pay for food, telephone, utilities, laundry. I'm in fear of losing my place to live and ending up on the street again. That's why I'm so passionate. I don't want to be homeless.”

Representatives Javier Mabrey and Elizabeth Velasco, along with Senator Robert Rodriguez, are sponsoring the legislation. Mabrey says he wanted to put the bill forward because the state is in a housing crisis, with housing costs increasing statewide by approximately 92 percent since 2011.

The bill, he says, “opens the door for new and transformative solutions regarding such a crisis.”

It wouldn’t implement rent control, but would repeal a ban on such policies enacted by the legislature in 1981. If the bill passes, local governments would be able to make their own choices regarding rent control.

Meanwhile, the bill is making progress, passing the House on February 27 with amendments exempting new development and limiting how stringent rent control policies can be at the local level.

“I brought forth this policy because teachers, nurses and other working-class folks are getting priced out of their communities,” Mabrey continues. “There is no silver bullet when it comes to the housing crisis, but rent stabilization helps stabilize our communities, helps keep communities together, and helps prevent unnecessary displacement.”

Cesiah Guadarrama Trejo, co-chair of Colorado Homes for All and state director for 9to5 Colorado, which works toward economic justice for working-class people, says that in a 2016 report, the organization found that the number-one issue preventing people from staying in their homes is rent increases.

“We know that the problem has only been exacerbated,” Guadarrama Trejo says. “For folks who are renting, either from small or big landlords, those rent increases have only continued to get higher and higher, while wages have been maintaining or have been stagnant.”

Because of COVID, she adds, the problems have gotten worse. Colorado Homes for All and 9to5 Colorado support the bill, finding that people across the state are having to choose between food, medicine and a roof over their heads.

But not everyone agrees that rent control would help. Andrew Hamrick, general counsel and senior vice president of government affairs for the Colorado Apartment Association, says the association opposes the bill because rent control has the unintended consequence of removing the financial incentive to create new housing units or improve existing units.

“Colorado’s prohibition against local governments enacting rent control ordinances for more than fifty years is both a recognition of the damage rent control can do to available housing and an understanding that one local government’s housing policy negatively impacts neighboring communities,” Hamrick says.

He argues that should one city enact rent control and cause builders to decrease new housing units in that city, people in surrounding areas pay more, too, because there is less supply overall.

Guadarrama Trejo says it’s important to recognize that localities know best what their constituents need when it comes to such policies, and they should have the freedom to address those needs.

“Something that Denver implements is not going to be the same thing — and it's not going to be the same needs — as the community in Fort Collins, or the community in Durango,” she says. “We would like for local municipalities to have all the tools to make sure that they're implementing something that makes sense for them and their communities.”

Hamrick, on behalf of the CAA, argues that a better tool would be encouraging the creation of more housing units, particularly multi-family units.

“The reality is that some greedy corporate landlords are charging Colorado families outrageous rents and rent increases,” Guadarrama Trejo says. “If we are saying that we want a Colorado where all families can thrive and where we can all have a place to call home, we need to address this issue. We continue to see that folks unfortunately have to continue to live in uninhabitable conditions, and those rising rent increases have never stopped.”

In Moralez’s case, a rent increase wasn’t tied to improvements in his unit, and he could lose the community of neighbors he’s gotten to know as they’ve tried to work together to convince their landlord to change his mind about raising the rent.

“When people have problems like we are having now, people come together,” Moralez says. “It's just gotten virtually impossible to live here anymore. If things don't get better, I'm trying to get ahold of a cousin up in Oregon to try to find a place there. I don't know what else to do.”

He’s lived in Denver his entire life, though, and says it saddens him that the place where he grew up might not be a place where he can stay.

“No matter where we come from or what we look like or how much we earn, we all need a warm and safe place to call home, where we can raise our families, where we can put our roots down and get involved in our communities,” Guadarrama Trejo states. “This is a tool that is needed, because people are rent-burdened.”

Removing a provision that prevents local governments from even examining whether rent control is a tool they want to use could help people stay in their homes, she emphasizes. Moralez looks forward to seeing the bill through, because although his situation is difficult, he believes change is possible.

“I'm trying to remain optimistic that things are going to get better,” he says. “We just want peace and a stable place to live.”