Colorado Landlords Dodge Major Eviction Law — For Now

Colorado investment property owners and real estate professionals dodged a bullet last month. The House Judiciary Committee voted not to move HB 1047 out of committee. HB 26-1047 is titled “Protections for Residential Tenant.” A more truthful title would be “Suppressing Evictions and Attorney Employment Act.” The bill’s goal is to reduce evictions and require that full leases, ledgers, and supporting documentation be included in eviction notifications. If passed, Colorado would have become an unfriendly state for landlords, drastically increasing the paperwork requirements for evictions and reducing landlords’ ability to properly vet new tenant applications. According to the Denver Gazette on February 25, HB26-1047 failed by a 6-5 vote in the House Judiciary Committee, with all Republicans and two Democrats voting against it. It is not the time to sit idle. These bills can be sent to the General Assembly for a vote by parliamentary maneuvering. Maybe Governor Polis will veto it, maybe not if it passes. It is time to call your congressperson.

How Excessive Regulations Affect Housing Costs in Colorado

At its core, housing affordability is a supply-and-demand issue. Denver’s population grew by roughly 20% between 2010 and 2020, but housing production did not keep pace. While rising costs are often blamed on greedy landlords or corporate investors, the deeper structural causes trace directly to government policy — permitting bottlenecks, building codes layered over decades, lack of condo construction, and the increased cost of doing business managing rental properties. In other words, much of Colorado’s housing affordability crisis is self-inflicted. Understanding how regulation inflates housing costs is key to identifying the root causes of the state’s affordable housing shortage.

How We Got Here – Our Legislators Just Cannot Help Themselves

Many legislators are activists who believe housing is a right. When housing is treated as a right belonging to occupants, the property owner’s rights become subordinate to that claim. Many Coloradans do not know this, but about a quarter of our legislators are appointed rather than elected. One congressman, Javier Mabrey, has a full-time tenant eviction defense law practice and is Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Every bill that makes evictions slower, more expensive, or more procedurally burdensome for landlords creates more opportunity for him professionally.

Colorado’s vacancy appointment system has become the primary vehicle through which radical progressives gain seats in the General Assembly. These legislators tend to be aggressive non-compromisers, since they do not have constituents at home to worry about. Rep. Bob Marshall, a Democrat himself, stated plainly: “There’s a problem. There’s an antidemocratic element going through our state legislature where, last year, 29 out of 100 legislators got their seats originally by a vacancy committee appointment.” Vacancy committees are a thing of political parties, not the people, serving party goals rather than their constituents’ interests.

The Democratic Socialists of America work hard to win elections at the state and local levels. What better way to achieve their goal of placing progressives in power than by avoiding pesky and costly elections? Many of the selected members probably could not win in open, competitive elections. Not sure what they are afraid of, given that Colorado is a solid blue state. But who does not like a sure thing, even if it is undemocratic? The following members have been selected as state representatives:

Rep. Lorena Garcia — House District 35 (Adams County)
Garcia is directly connected to the Democratic Socialists of America. She was appointed to the House by a vacancy committee after Rep. Adrienne Benavidez resigned before the 2023 session, never having won a competitive general election before holding office.

Rep. Junie Joseph — House District 10 (Boulder)
Joseph holds a master’s degree in applied human rights, supports repealing Colorado’s ban on rent control, frames housing as a fundamental human right, and has built her entire legislative career on subordinating landlords’ property rights to tenants’ welfare. She was vacancy-appointed in 2022. Representative Joseph is the primary sponsor of HB26-1047.

Rep. Manny Rutinel — House District 32 (Commerce City)
Rutinel has been a consistent progressive voice on worker and tenant rights. He is now retiring from the House to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in Colorado’s 8th congressional district this year. Rutinel entered the House through the vacancy committee process.

Sen. Iman Jodeh — Senate District 29 (Aurora)
Jodeh has been vacancy-appointed twice in rapid succession. Why bother with elections when a politician can be selected instead? Jodeh is a progressive Democrat focused on immigrant rights, tenant protections, and social justice issues.

Rep. Steven Woodrow — House District 2 (Denver)
Woodrow has been among the leaders of the House Democrats’ progressive wing, working on policies addressing affordable and rental housing, including rent algorithms. He was appointed by a vacancy committee in January 2020 after Rep. Chris Hansen moved to the Senate. He has announced he will not seek reelection in 2026.

Rep. Jamie Jackson — House District 41 (Aurora)
Jackson was selected by just 19 members of the Arapahoe County Democratic vacancy committee.  She aligns with the progressive wing of the House Democratic caucus.

Sen. Matt Ball — Senate District 31 (Denver)
Ball was selected by a Democratic vacancy committee of approximately 100 party insiders — representing just 0.09% of the 119,000 registered voters in Senate District 31 — to replace Sen. Chris Hansen. Ball advocates for a “progressive income tax” and describes him as a “practical progressive” focused on housing affordability and climate policy. He is more moderate than some of the others on this list, but was elevated through the same insider process.

HB 26-1047: Protections for Residential Tenants

Colorado’s 2026 legislative session continues the pattern established over the last two years — expanding tenant protections in ways that, while individually defensible, collectively increase the cost and legal complexity of operating a rental housing business. The bill has four primary initiatives.

Permanent Record Suppression: Under the current law, eviction records are suppressed until the landlord wins, after which they become public. HB 26-1047 mandates that records remain permanently closed to the public, even after a tenant is evicted, except when the eviction involved a substantial lease violation. The law is vague about what constitutes a substantial lease violation, which means more litigation. If passed, property management companies have no way to discover past evictions in the tenant screening process. Let’s be perfectly clear here: nonpayment of rent is not considered a lease violation in the eyes of Rep. Junie Joseph and other lefties at the Capitol. Remember, in their eyes, housing is a right.

Eviction Documentation Requirements: Before filing any eviction action, landlords must now attach a copy of the lease and a current rent ledger to the written eviction notice. Failure to do so creates an affirmative defense for the tenant — meaning the eviction can be defeated procedurally, regardless of whether the tenant actually owes rent. The tenant stays and cannot be evicted.

Expanded Complaint Documentation: The legislation requires landlords to present a significant portion of their case evidence at the time of filing, before any hearing takes place. Again, this requirement makes it far easier for attorneys representing tenants in eviction cases. Why should eviction attorneys do any discovery since landowners must hand it to them on a silver platter?

Non-Electronic, Fee-Free Rent Payment Option: The ability to pay by check or cash has been included in past bills signed into law, so this initiative is redundant.

Impact on Property Management Operations and Cost of Business

Eviction record suppression represents a significant structural change to the rental market’s economy. Property managers lose a critical data point in risk assessment, so tenant screening will become more intensive to compensate for the loss of eviction history. They could require higher income thresholds, larger security deposits (within legal limits), or set qualification standards that effectively exclude more applicants to lower financial risk. Smaller operators who do not have the asset base to cover any eviction losses may choose to stop renting their properties. Requiring landlords to compile and attach the lease and a current rent ledger to every demand notice sounds straightforward, but it creates a real operational burden. These documents must be copied from files or exported from property management software. There will be extensive preparation to ensure the eviction documentation is legally compliant. Staffing time to prepare compliant notices will increase, and there is no margin for error. All these compliance costs will be eventually result in higher rents.

HB26-1106

The legislature must be getting to the bottom of the tenant rights barrel. We can only hope. House Bill 26-1106 has a catch-all title, “Eviction Protections for Tenants.” A better title would be “Evictions Only On A Nice Day and When Tenants Do Not Have a Fever.” The bill is under review by the House Judiciary Committee this month. The goal of the bill is to delay and slow the eviction process. It first starts in the courts. In Denver, courts would be limited to scheduling no more than 65 eviction cases per day. It now handles over 100 per day. The bill’s intent is to create backlogs and delay hearings. The bill would also require courts to hold a hearing if a tenant states an intent to cure unpaid rent, reducing the number of quick default judgments. Attorneys get to bill for their court time, and the tenant remains in place until their case is completed. Tenants who miss filing deadlines could ask courts to reopen cases for reasons such as illness, hospitalization, transportation issues, or electronic filing problems. Again, extending and slowing timelines. Here is the kicker: HB26-1106 would also prohibit evictions during extreme weather. Property managers and owners can be thankful that Colorado has over 300 days of sunshine. However, a process that currently takes roughly three to five weeks from filing to enforcement could extend to six to ten weeks or more, depending on court schedules, hearings, weather delays, and potential appeals.

Ironically, HB26-1047 and HB26-1106 both tighten the standards for everyone by degrading the screening information available to landlords. The problem is not that any individual unreasonable provision—it is that the aggregate regulatory environment operating rental housing in Colorado has substantially risen, without corresponding action on the supply side to keep pace. So, the housing shortage continues, and rents go up. The current legislative balance is all stick, no carrot, and close to making Colorado an anti-landlord state.

These socialists and radicals do not care that these delays cost property owners and managers money. Their ultimate goal is rental control, which is prohibited by our state’s Constitution. It is just a matter of time before they try to pass rent control legislation again. The state demographer’s office confirmed that last year was the first time in memory when more people moved out of the state than in. Palantir Technologies, an extremely successful company with thousands of employees, last month moved its headquarters to Florida without notice from Cherry Creek North, citing a difficult, onerous, and costly regulatory environment in Colorado. Let’s hope the smart money is not starting to leave the state.

Real estate professionals and investors who want a fairer, more balanced approach to rental regulations, please call your congressional representative.