With the cost of living rising rapidly across Colorado, some organizations see local control of “rent stabilization” policies as a way to help make communities more affordable for those struggling to pay for housing.

A rally on Sunday at the Capitol sought locally elected officials’ support for reversing Colorado’s rent stabilization ban ahead of the 2023 legislative session.

A law passed by state lawmakers in 1981 prevents local governments from imposing rent control policies on private property. Should state legislators decide to overturn the ban next year, local governments would be free to “pass policies that support renters’ health based on what makes sense in their localities,” a report from Human Impact Partners said. That could include “limiting how much private landlords can raise rent each year in order to protect tenants from huge and sudden rent increases.”

Critics of rent control, on the other hand, argue that while renters accrue short-term benefits, the policy doesn’t address the underlying reasons for soaring rental rates and, in the long term, it diminishes the incentive for homebuilders to supply rental housing.     

Writing for the Brookings Institution, Rebecca Diamond, an economics professor at Stanford University who studied San Francisco’s rent control program in 1994, said while it “appears to help current tenants in the short run, in the long run it decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative spillovers on the surrounding neighborhood.”

Housing is a human right, said Yocelyn Iboa, coalition manager with Colorado Homes for All, which organized the rally. And with home prices and rent skyrocketing, housing is simply not reachable for many Coloradans.

“We’re mainly trying to push our local elected officials to push their state legislators to tell them what housing policies they need within their communities,” said Iboa, who added that her organization wants local governments to decide what rent control policies, if any, would be best suited for their communities.

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Moriah Rodriguez, a Denver native and single mother of four teenagers, has struggled to afford rent since she suffered a brain injury four years ago when she was hit by a drunken driver. Her family moved into public housing after she couldn’t get rent relief.

“My kids ask me why don’t we just move and get a house. I try to explain to them that with my fixed income, there’s no way we can afford rent,” Rodriguez said. “Right now in Colorado … so many families have to struggle, even ones with good jobs.”

Denver City Council President Pro Tem Jamie Torres voiced her support for the reversal of the ban at the rally and said conversations around rent policies will be difficult, but they need to happen now. Her council district in west Denver has felt the impacts of gentrification and rent inequality.

“What we’re experiencing in west Denver is an infusion of investment purchases of homes,” Torres said. “From 2015 to 2018, we lost 3,000 residents in west Denver — 70% of their housing turnover went to investment purchases. Those homes will never come back to the market. They will never come back to individual purchasers, so they will always be rented.”

Diamond, the Stanford professor who looked into San Francisco’s rent control program, said the city’s policy helped to reduce rental housing supply, as existing structures were converted to owner-occupied condominium housing and existing structures were replaced with new construction.

“Taking all of these points together, it appears rent control has actually contributed to the gentrification of San Francisco, the exact opposite of the policy’s intended goal,” she concluded. “Indeed, by simultaneously bringing in higher income residents and preventing displacement of minorities, rent control has contributed to widening income inequality of the city.”

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