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Colorado is often a lightning rod for debates around housing policy, access, and affordability; these debates ultimately point to the fundamental question housing policies ask of us as communities: who has the right to belong here?   This question is at the center of a fierce debate currently happening in Aurora which concerns the city’s recently enacted camping ban. The current law permits city workers and law enforcement to remove encampments for the unhoused from public spaces without any notice. A proposed change to this law would mandate…

Conventional thought says that the best way to achieve progress is to install a figurehead in a position of authority to dispense justice: i.e. President, Prime Minister, Senator, Judge, CEO, etc. This top-down approach to dispensing justice makes sense to a lot of people who have accepted that not only is this hierarchical approach the best system, but it is the way the system must function. In reality, the opposite is true: true justice does not come from…

In September 2025, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston reduced the city’s 2025 Temporary Rental & Utility Assistance (TRUA) budget by about $9 million, down from an original allocation of roughly $23 million. City leaders described the move as part of broader budget tightening and said the money would be “rolled forward” into the 2026 budget instead of being spent in 2025. The timing mattered. The cut came as eviction filings in Denver and across Colorado were hovering near record…

Greystar, the nation’s largest apartment owner, Denver-based Simpson Property Group, and more than twenty other major property management companies have agreed to pay $141 million to settle a nationwide class-action lawsuit brought by renters. The lawsuit claims these landlords used rent-setting software created by RealPage, Inc. to push rents higher in cities across the country. The settlement, reached in October 2025, is currently before a federal judge in Nashville and is awaiting final approval. According to the renters…

Colorado’s Warranty of Habitability reflects that principle by tying a landlord’s legal obligations directly to health and safety. Not aesthetics, not luxury, and not tenant preference. State law requires rental housing to be fit for human habitation, including structural integrity, functional utilities, weather protection, and compliance with fire and building codes designed to prevent injury, illness, and death.  Those requirements exist because unsafe housing does not end at one front door. History has shown that when buildings are unsafe, entire…