Rental housing is front and center during this legislative session where Colorado lawmakers are considering more than 30 housing-related bills, most of which specifically target rental housing. Over-zealous regulation has become increasingly common in our state in recent years, but none have gone as far as Senate Bill 25-020, which would grant the government unprecedented authority to seize private rental property and the investments backing them.
Though SB25-020 does include some solid measures aimed at protecting tenants from a small number of negligent landlords in our state, buried within its language is a sweeping provision allowing our government to take over private rental properties — an extreme step that could place an immediate chill on the industry. This overreach would unfairly penalize responsible and reasonable rental housing property owners and ultimately drive up costs in the housing community.
In addition, the bill’s “receivership” provision allows the state, municipality or county to petition district courts to take over multifamily, rental properties for any violation of either municipal ordinances or state habitability standards. Though that might sound reasonable in theory, in practice this could result in property owners losing control of their multi-million-dollar assets for relatively minor or even ambiguous infractions…