Despite its avowed goal of making Colorado’s housing more affordable, the General Assembly continued right up to the 2023 session’s closing gavel to pass legislation that is likely to raise the rent instead. Those measures are now on the desk of Gov. Jared Polis awaiting his action.

We’ve urged vetoes on three pending bills that stand to make housing less affordable across the state by shifting costs, one way or another, to other renters:

• HB 23-1120’s mandate for mediation prior to evictions would slow the turnover of rental units from current tenants who aren’t paying rent to new ones who are able to. The extended period of lost income to landlords would be passed on in rent increases for all units.
• Senate Bill 23-184’s cap on minimum income requirements that landlords use to ensure a tenant can afford the rent will end up causing more evictions; a lower income requirement up front will mean more tenants won’t earn enough to cover rent as time goes by.
• Warm and fuzzy HB 23-1068’s limit on deposits and fees for pets on a lease would shortchange landlords for the costs they must recover to clean up messes and repair damage left by pets. The difference will get passed on to other tenants.

We must add another bill to the must-veto list for the governor: HB 23-1190.

Incredibly, it gives any Colorado municipality the right of first refusal in purchasing any apartment complex or other multifamily residential property. That’s right; an apartment building owner who puts the property up for sale can be required to sell to city hall regardless of other offers. And, if sued by an advocacy group under one of the complicated bill’s provisions, a landlord could be forced to sell to the city even if the property isn’t for sale.

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The cities would take title to those properties with the help of anointed nonprofits that would run them – into the ground. Picture dilapidated rentals where no one can be evicted – kind of like inner-city housing projects in places like New York or Chicago.

It’s hard to look past the measure’s up-front spookiness – shredding private property rights with a policy you’d expect of socialist Cuba or Venezuela – to see its underlying, disastrous economic implications. Fundamentally, the bill would undermine Colorado’s entire rental market. It would set off an alarm for investors nationwide – the very investors who helped create so much of the state’s rental housing in the first place – to avoid Colorado’s housing market at all costs.

Ask any builder, economist or affordable-housing advocate in Colorado what’s the No. 1 factor driving rent so high in our state, and the answer will be a lack of housing stock. Demand exceeds supply.

HB 23-1190 will make matters even worse. It’s a sure way to shut off the flow of investment to create more housing. Meaning, the bill is yet another legislative attempt at “affordable housing” that will translate to even higher rent.

Prominent business-advocacy group Colorado Concern called on the governor last week to veto the bill. The group’s president, former state Sen. Mike Kopp, predicted the bill would “dramatically hurt investment” in the state’s multi-family housing market. “This bill,” Kopp said, “would effectively weaken the private housing marketplace by returning to the failed policy of public housing. That is just the wrong direction for Colorado.”

Let’s hope Gov. Polis draws upon his own considerable business savvy and keen understanding of the marketplace – and vetoes HB 23-1190.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board