More than 8,000 evictions have been filed in El Paso County this year, an increase of 1,000 filings from 2023 and nearly double the number of eviction filings from 2021. 

A solution-based court in El Paso County looks to combat the growing eviction rate through finding solutions for those facing a loss of housing. 

Division CARE — which stands for Court Assisted Recovery from Eviction — began under the leadership of Magistrate Andrea Paprzycki in November of last year with the goals of providing resources to people facing eviction and, ultimately, keeping them housed. 

When speaking with The Gazette, Paprzycki spoke about the importance of assisting people who face evictions. 

“Housing is such a fundamental human right, and we essentially unhouse people,” Paprzycki said. “There are a lot of legal reasons to do that, and I’m not saying it’s an unnecessary process. But people were starting here, left being unhoused, not knowing what to do and just feeling lost and alone.” 

Paprzycki said that Division CARE intends to help people facing eviction using three different avenues: Mediation between the landlord and the evictee to come to solutions prior to eviction, technological tools to assist people representing themselves through an eviction and eviction recovery resources. 

The first avenue may prevent an eviction: Division CARE mediates between the landlord and the potentially evicted client. In Colorado not every evictee is entitled to a mediation process with their landlord; Paprzycki said Division CARE extends an offer of mediation to everyone. 

Paprzycki said the mediation process allows for “a beneficial outcome for everyone, versus (Paprzycki) sitting there deciding what happens to people.” 

Those facing eviction are not entitled to an attorney like they would be in criminal court. Paprzycki said that one of the biggest challenges for individuals facing eviction is the lack of resources to help them fight the eviction in court. Those difficulties are only exacerbated by the speed at which eviction filings go through court, often moving from the eviction being filed to the evictee being removed from the house in less than a month. 

In an effort to assist these people, Paprzycki and the problem-solving court coordinator for Division CARE, Cameron McDonald, have partnered with the University of Colorado to build an online tool for eviction defendants to create legal defenses to use in court. 

“I can’t feed a tenant defenses,” Paprzycki said of why she views this online tool as important. “I’m not an advocate. I’m a judicial officer. I’m a neutral observer.”

Paprzycki said that the current resources available for individuals facing eviction are not enough to help defendants represent themselves in court. There is no timeline for when the online tool will be ready, but Paprzycki said that it is being developed by volunteers at the University of Colorado at Boulder School of Law. 

The last and biggest avenue of Division CARE’s work is the recovery resources provided to those facing eviction. 

McDonald said the most common resource needed by those going through an eviction is rental assistance, but that the program aims to find the reason an individual is about to be evicted, and help where needed. 

Paprzycki said that while being unable to pay rent is the primary cause of most evictions, there are often lots of other, often easily solved, reasons people are facing evictions.  

“You’ll have an elderly person who can’t clean up their lawn and their weeds are overgrown, and there’s trash out there, and they just don’t physically have the ability to do it,” Paprzycki said. “We can get some volunteers to clean their lawn and save them from being evicted.”

For those who are unable to avoid their eviction, Division CARE has partnered with numerous local organizations including churches, school districts, nonprofits and more to have a wide network of options to help avoid leaving people without any help following an eviction. 

“One quote we got from a tenant said, ‘for the very first time in my life, I don’t feel like I have to carry the weight of the world all by myself. I am incredibly grateful to you and to the judge who introduced me to the program,’” McDonald said. 

The Gazette sat in on the CARE intake process for a Colorado Springs woman unable to afford her rent, despite working two jobs. The woman, now facing eviction, spent around 20 minutes talking through her situation with intake director Charlene Best. When the woman mentioned she was a veteran Best was able to provide resources to a rehousing program for veterans for which the woman was not aware. 

Paprzycki spoke about one experience that she remembers in which a disabled student using a wheelchair was unable to return to school in their district due to their family being evicted. Paprzycki said that Division CARE was able to partner with D-38 to provide transportation for the impacted student to continue going to their school despite having to move outside of their former district boundaries. 

“It still brings tears to my eyes when I think about that,” Paprzycki said. “I put in so many extra hours to get this grant, and that was worth it, if that’s all we did, that was worth it, that kid in a wheelchair got to stay in school.”

According to data provided by McDonald, Division CARE worked with 419 people as of Nov. 1, less than one year after the program started.  

When taking into account that most households facing eviction include more than one resident, often children, McDonald estimates that the program has impacted more than 1,000 people since its creation last year. 

The number of people getting assistance from Division CARE continues to rise, with data provided by McDonald showing that the number of intakes completed by the program continues to rise each month. 

Since its 2023 launch, CARE has led to a 15% reduction in trials in eviction court despite an increase of more than 1,000 in total eviction cases in El Paso County from last year, according to Paprzycki.

Dating back to 2021 eviction filings have nearly doubled, with the total currently sitting at just over 8,100 for 2024 according to data from the Colorado Judicial Department. The numbers in El Paso County mirror the trend across the state, eviction filings are increasing in nearly every county and there have been nearly 6,000 more evictions filed statewide this year than there were in 2023,  according to data from the Colorado Judicial Department. 

The rising eviction numbers, according to Paprzycki, make Division CARE more necessary and beneficial to the community than ever. 

“I think the court is an essential and integral part of the community, and we shouldn’t just solve individual problems. We should be a problem-solving entity,” Paprzycki said. “We shouldn’t be seen as the entity in this building that everyone’s afraid of. … We should be seen as a place that can be regarded as holding the community together and part of the fabric of our larger society, and a place that people can feel helped and supported.”

Despite the success, Paprzycki and McDonald have concerns about the future of Division CARE due to a lack of long-term funding, estimated at about $200,000 a year. The program is funded through 2026 by a combination of grants and part-time funding from the judicial department.