EDITORIAL: Rising evictions? Blame Colorado’s lawmakers

By The Gazette editorial board September 7, 2025 | updated 2 months ago

Our legislature continues to set Colorado’s renters up for a fall.
The Gazette

Perennial attempts by ruling Democrats at the legislature to impose rent control on Colorado’s landlords have been unsuccessful, and that’s a good thing. Any policy capping rent by law would be an epic failure.

The consensus on rent control — within our state’s business community and among economists of every political stripe — is it backfires in a big way. In cities that have tried it elsewhere in the U.S., investment in upkeep and upgrades to apartments plummets, and construction of apartments grinds to a halt. The market deteriorates. Rent control deprives property owners and developers of the incentive, or even financial ability, to do otherwise.

Lawmakers haven’t limited their meddling in the rental market to their quest for rent-control, however. They have proposed and in some cases enacted related policies that have flown largely under the radar — and that similarly undermine rental housing and its tenants.

In 2024, the legislature passed, and Gov. Jared Polis signed, a mandate on landlords requiring them to ease their standards for income-screening of prospective tenants. The new law scrapped the industry’s standard for minimum qualifying income — three times a month’s rent before a tenant could sign a lease — and imposed a new one of only twice the monthly rent.

The expressed intent, of course, was to give tenants of more modest means — especially lower-income tenants as well as younger workers establishing themselves, among others — a foot in the door. The net effect of the new law, however, has been the opposite.

In a commentary published last week in Colorado Politics, Denver-area landlord Erica Sanchez points out compellingly that evictions have soared in the wake of the law’s implementation. The tenants the law’s authors claimed they were helping were hurt the most.

“In 2023 — the year the bill went into effect — we had a 15-year record high in eviction filings in Denver,” wrote Sanchez on behalf of the Colorado Apartment Association. “In 2024, an all-time record 15,960 renters in Denver faced an eviction filing, and in 2025 we’ve already seen more than 9,000 filings.”

Go figure.

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Sanchez notes, “This harsh reality is the unintended consequences of well-intentioned legislation based on assumptions.”

She’s far too kind. The outcome was in fact foreordained by the legislative majority’s evident ignorance of basic economics as well as its seemingly unquenchable thirst for grandstanding.

Indeed, lawmakers who for years have advocated one policy after another to “help” renters — only to kick them in the shins, instead — appear to lack the common sense of 8-year-olds running a lemonade stand. Even kids know you can’t sell lemonade to customers who can’t pay for it.

Housing experts typically recommend no more than 30% of a household’s income be spent on rent. That’s all the more advisable in costly Colorado, where a fast-food meal for a single worker on a lunch break can top $20.

Sanchez did the math for readers — something lawmakers forgot to do: “For an apartment with a rent of $1,800 per month, a renter would have needed an annual household income of $64,800 before (the 2023 legislation) to qualify and would have around $3,600 left each month for other expenses. Today, a renter only needs a household income of $43,200 to qualify for a unit that would leave them with just $1,800 each month for other expenses.”

Bottom line: The law makes eviction inevitable for more tenants.

Sanchez holds out hope that lawmakers will revisit the issue and realign the law with the industry’s more responsible standards. We won’t hold our breath. Colorado’s legislature seems bent on helping our state’s renters — no matter how much it has to hurt them.

the gazette editorial board