Regulating Landlords Out of the Market: The Laws Fueling Colorado’s Rental Crisis

Colorado landlords who are not adequately informed about the state’s complex regulatory landscape face significant challenges and potential liability. Tenant Advocacy Groups (TAGs) began imposing new regulations on landlords when they gained control of the Colorado General Assembly. Since then, landlord regulations have continued to be enacted with little to no landlord input—because, as the TAGs say, “we have the votes.”

In 2023, Governor Polis stated he had “serious concerns about the piecemeal approach to landlord-tenant law” and promised to veto further overreaching efforts. Unfortunately, because that promise went unfulfilled, the 2024 session brought even more laws—drafted almost entirely by TAGs—that are poorly written and difficult to interpret, even for informed landlords.

Two major developments in 2024 exemplify this trend: the rewrite of the Colorado Warranty of Habitability Act and the passage of the Just Cause eviction law. The revised habitability law spans 40 pages and is so complex that only attorneys specializing in landlord-tenant law can reliably interpret it. The Just Cause law, more than 20 pages long, was promoted as requiring legitimate reasons for non-renewals but ended up rewriting the entire eviction statute, significantly reducing landlords’ rights.

Together with the 2023 amendments to the Rental Application Fairness Act (RAFA), these laws now cover the full spectrum of landlord-tenant relations. RAFA turned a straightforward tenant application process into a legally risky procedure. Across the board, new regulations have created a slew of tenant rights while significantly restricting landlords’ ability to contract and operate freely. What was once a stable and navigable legal landscape is now a liability minefield, where even small missteps can lead to significant exposure.

This increasingly hostile legal environment has driven many small “mom-and-pop” landlords out of the rental market. Contrary to the common misconception that most rentals are owned by large corporations, a large portion of Colorado’s housing stock has historically been provided by small, independent landlords. As they leave the market, competition declines, and rent prices rise—an economic consequence TAGs and lawmakers appear unwilling to acknowledge.

The revised Warranty of Habitability law illustrates the core issue. These laws were originally designed to address truly dangerous or life-threatening conditions. But now, even when a unit is deemed “uninhabitable,” the landlord may not have the right to enter and fix the problem immediately. Tenants can delay repairs at their convenience, even when landlords face strict legal deadlines. This creates a scenario in which landlords are legally obligated to act but may be prevented from doing so, with no clear guidance for emergency situations.

One especially problematic provision concerns air conditioning (AC). Landlords are not required to provide AC in rental units, and its absence does not make a unit uninhabitable. However, if AC is present and stops working, it must be repaired within 14 days or the unit is legally deemed uninhabitable. This inconsistency imposes liability on landlords for a feature they were never required to offer in the first place.

The Just Cause law further tilts the balance of power. It significantly restricts lease non-renewals, effectively granting tenants quasi-ownership rights. Landlords may no longer end a lease simply because it has expired—only for lease violations or set number of defined causes. Advocates claim this law prevents discriminatory terminations, but multiple protections already existed: federal and state fair housing laws, Colorado Supreme Court precedent, and eviction statutes that explicitly allow discrimination defenses. Ironically, the sponsor of the Just Cause bill had co-sponsored the legislation making housing discrimination an affirmative defense to an eviction case.

Because sufficient safeguards already existed, the Just Cause law didn’t fill a gap or meet any need. All it did was create new burdens for landlords and significantly erode their property rights. These changes were made not out of necessity but because tenant advocates had the political power to push them through.

Since 2022, Colorado has seen a surge in class action lawsuits targeting landlords—a dramatic shift from prior years when such suits were virtually nonexistent. Driving this wave is a single legislator who, as both an attorney and elected official, has filed dozens of class actions against housing providers. What’s especially concerning is that this same legislator has either sponsored, co-sponsored, or played a key role in every recent legal change that has made it easier to sue landlords—including legislation that voided class action waivers in leases.

Many of his lawsuits revisit eviction cases that were already resolved in court, often portraying landlords and their attorneys as having violated tenants’ rights despite the existence of judicial oversight. These lawsuits ignore a key fact: every eviction in Colorado requires a court order. Implicit in many of the cases is the suggestion that judges failed to protect tenants or that landlords acted unchecked. This ignores the reality of modern eviction courtrooms, where many tenants are now represented by attorneys trained in tenant advocacy, and legal challenges can and do occur within those proceedings.

Evictions for nonpayment of rent have also been fundamentally weakened. These actions were designed to give landlords a lawful, efficient, and peaceful method to recover possession when tenants failed to pay rent. They protected both sides—tenants from self-help and retaliation, and landlords from financial harm. Now, the process is longer, more complicated, and more expensive. Each day that rent goes unpaid is more costly, and each procedural delay eats into the landlord’s ability to enforce the lease.

The balance of rights has tipped sharply. Tenants are still free to end a lease at its natural conclusion without providing a reason. Landlords, in contrast, face a strict set of limitations. They must justify lease non-renewals even when the lease term has ended, essentially stripping away what was once a basic contractual right.

These recent laws do not merely adjust policy—they reflect a larger philosophical shift. Colorado’s rental law has moved away from balanced regulation toward a system where tenant rights are continuously expanded and landlord rights are systematically curtailed. Fueling this shift is a state representative who not only sponsors and promotes these laws but also directly profits from them by filing class action lawsuits against landlords under the very statutes he helped create. In doing so, the laws introduce ambiguity, erode basic property rights, and actively discourage continued investment in rental housing—while enabling one of their chief architects to enrich himself through litigation.

What’s happening in Colorado isn’t just regulatory evolution—it’s a systemic redefinition of the landlord-tenant relationship. Policies once rooted in balance and fairness have become tools for political leverage, often ignoring the practical realities of housing operations. The more Colorado lawmakers legislate without landlord input, the more fragile the rental housing system becomes.

If Colorado is to preserve affordability, fairness, and housing stability, the pendulum must begin to swing back toward balance. The General Assembly needs to stop passing laws that do nothing but create a lawsuit pipeline and start acknowledging that stable housing markets depend on stable legal frameworks—and on the participation, not the vilification, of those who provide housing. Colorado lawmakers must decide: Do they want rental housing providers—or only plaintiffs?