Legislative Priorities
2023 Priority Bills
HB23-1002: Epinephrine Auto-injectors
The EpiPen has been around for decades and costs $8 to make. The active ingredient has been around even longer, costing just pennies to make. In 2007, Mylan acquired EpiPen and used a simple but abusive business model that other drug companies have repeatedly used – find a drug that has existed for decades, is cheap to make, has virtually no competition, and raise the price over and over and over again.
Today, an EpiPen two-pack costs $690 dollars, a 664% increase from $90.28 in 2006. This predatory pricing harms families and perpetuates a system that extracts wealth from working families and the communities they live in. And we know that the high cost of EpiPens can lead to economic instability and displacement of Colorado’s families. We shouldn’t force parents to choose between life-saving medication for their children and paying the rent.
We support this legislation because we believe thousands of Colorado’s children who may experience an allergic reaction deserve access to an EpiPen so they can breathe.
HB23-1171: Just Cause Requirement Eviction of Residential Tenant
A stable, safe, affordable home is a foundational for health, financial security, and well-being. An eviction can affect a tenant’s ability to get or keep their job, care for their family, stay in good health, and secure future housing—perpetuating financial instability. Unfortunately, this
is something we see every day as we work to keep our clients housed.
A landlord in Colorado shouldn’t have the power to evict a tenant just because they want to. And they shouldn’t be able to use eviction to raise the rent or transfer or flip the property. That’s why CEDP supports HB 23-1171 to provide Just Cause eviction protections for tenants that say a landlord may only evict a tenant for “cause,” such as not paying rent or breach of the lease agreement.
We know that Just Cause protections work and keep families in their homes. Five states have implemented Just Cause legislation: New Jersey, California, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Washington. As Colorado runs out of emergency rental assistance, rent remains high, and eviction numbers surpass pre-pandemic levels, Just Cause legislation will provide stability and security to Colorado’s tenants vulnerable to predatory practices from corporate and out-of-state landlords.
2023 Legislative Endorsements
SB23-184: Protections For Residential Tenants
Concerning protections for residential tenants, and, in connection therewith, prohibiting a landlord from considering certain information relating to a prospective tenant’s income or rental history, establishing a maximum amount that a landlord can require as a security deposit, allowing tenants to pay security deposits in installments, and allowing a tenant to assert as an affirmative defense in an eviction proceeding that a landlord violated anti-discriminatory housing laws.
HB23-1099: Portable Screening Report for Residential Leases
Allowing a rental applicant to use the same screening report for multiple applications and prohibiting a landlord from charging an additional fee if the applicant provides this report, to protect tenants from the unnecessarily high cost of looking for housing.
HB23-1126: Consumer Reports Not Include Medical Debt Information
Limiting the medical debt than can be reported to an individual’s consumer report so that Coloradan’s don’t have a harder time securing things like housing because of health-related debt.
HB23-1186: Remote Participation in Residential Evictions
Allowing tenants who must appear at an eviction hearing the option to participate virtually, reducing the barriers for renters to fully participate in the judicial process and not lose their housing just because they can’t get to the courthouse.
HB23-1095: Prohibited Provisions in Rental Agreements
Preventing landlords from requiring tenants to sign away rights to things like class action lawsuits in their leases, protecting renters from compromising their access to justice in exchange for housing.
HB23-1190: Affordable Housing Right of First Refusal
Giving local governments the option to match an offer when a multifamily building goes up for sale to help increase affordable housing statewide in a competitive real estate market.
HB23-1192: Additional Protections in Consumer Code
Concerning the creation of additional protections in the consumer code.
HB23-1115: Repeal Prohibition Local Residential Rent Control
Removing the statewide ban to allow local governments to determine their own need for rent stabilization.
Past Legislative Accomplishments
CEDP was founded as a direct response to the economic instability and housing insecurity brought on by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. In those early days, we were primarily a community organizing effort, and we rallied around advocating for an eviction moratorium to keep Coloradans housed amidst the public health emergency. This organizing work afforded us the opportunity to hear directly from clients about the systemic challenges they faced.
During the 2021 Colorado state legislative session, we drafted and led the campaign to pass SB21-173 drawing directly from what we’d learned from our clients, many of whom faced an uphill battle to remain in their homes. Dubbed the Tenants’ Bill of Rights, the bill codified some important renter’s protections into Colorado state law, which has historically been heavily weighted in favor of landlords, especially when it came to going to court for an eviction.
We worked in close partnership with community organizations and nonprofits, ultimately earning more than 50 endorsements. Dozens of our clients showed up to testify in support of the bill’s passage as it worked its way through the legislature, in some cases staying late into the night to ensure their stories were heard by lawmakers.
During the 2022 legislative session, we once again focused on client priorities, this time working to root out predatory residential towing and address abuse in Colorado’s mobile home parks. We helped lead the charge on HB22-1287, which strengthened Colorado’s Mobile Home Park Act and provided new protections to prevent displacement and predatory practices committed by mobile home park owners.
The 2022 session also saw CEDP leading the effort to pass the Towing Bill of Rights, HB22-1314. This legislation came on the heels of our clients’ stories of being unjustly towed from their apartment complex for dubious reasons, as well as our own research into the non-consensual towing industry. We had too many clients facing eviction because they had to spend their rent money to get their car back. HB22-1314 limits the circumstances in which a towing company can remove a vehicle from a residential property in Colorado, caps how much someone must pay to retrieve their vehicle from a tow lot, and provides a number of other consumer protections to safeguard against a historically predatory industry.