Senate clears bills to address homelessness, affordable housing, and poverty
By Robert Davis
Bills to address homelessness, give municipalities more authority to create affordable housing, and curtail over-policing in impoverished communities cleared the Colorado State Senate last week.
The bills still have to make their appearances in the House of Representatives before becoming law. But, Democrats say they are emblematic of the party’s agenda to address perpetual cycles of abuse and mistreatment of vulnerable populations.
“It’s heartbreaking to see so many people on our streets without safe shelter,” Sen, Brittany Pettersen, D-Lakewood, said. “We have a moral obligation to lift up those in our community who are struggling and need our support.”
Pettersen is sponsoring Senate Bill, 21-242, which would create a $15 million grant program for municipalities to rent, acquire, or renovate unused hotel rooms to provide non-congregate shelter or affordable housing to people experiencing homelessness.
According to the latest Point in Time count data, Denver has nearly 1,000 people sleeping on the streets each night. During the pandemic, Denver lost more than 56% of its shelter capacity to implement social distancing guidelines, according to data from the Department of Housing Stability (HOST).
As a result, HOST rented hotel rooms to house people experiencing homelessness, as well as protective action rooms and activated respite rooms. Protective action rooms are for people who are 65-years-old and up, who have underlying health conditions; whereas respite rooms are for people experiencing homelessness who are exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms.
Altogether the city has more than 1,500 hotel rooms available for people experiencing homelessness, according to HOST data.
“By fully utilizing hotels, motels, and other establishments to house the most vulnerable among us, we can put Colorado on a successful pathway towards ending the homelessness crisis once and for all,” Pettersen said.
To prevent a tidal wave of homelessness in Denver following the eventual lifting of the eviction moratorium, Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, is spearheading an effort to increase the rights of rental tenants.
Gonzales is sponsoring House Bill 21-1121 alongside Reps. Dominique Jackson, D-Aurora, and Iman Jodeh, D-Aurora. The bill would prohibit landlords from raising rents more than once within 12 months. It would also extend the notice period for eviction proceedings from 21 days up to 60.
The Majority Caucus Chair is also co-sponsoring a bill that would give rental tenants legal recourse against landlords for wrongful evictions. If found guilty by a court, Senate Bill 21-173 would allow tenants to recoup as much as $1,000 per violation.
“It’s time we protect tenants from predatory behavior and ensure Coloradans can remain in their homes,” Gonzales said. “This bill will make our state more tenant-friendly by limiting the power landlords have to drive up rent and push residents – particularly low-income folks – out of their communities.”
Impoverished and indigent individuals who find themselves in the criminal justice system got a helping hand from Sens. Pete Lee, D-Colorado Springs, and Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City when the duo introduced legislation to curb the detainment of low-level offenders.
Senate Bill 21-273 prohibits the court system from issuing monetary bonds for municipal offenses, misdemeanors, and felonies ranked class 4 or lower. It also establishes the Community Response Working Group, which is tasked with engaging low-income communities to find alternative policing solutions, according to the bill’s text.
“Ability to pay should never determine a person’s freedom; however, we continually criminalize poverty when it comes to our justice system,” Moreno said in a statement. “The majority of people in our pre-trial detention system have not even been convicted of a crime, yet they sit in our jail cells simply because they cannot afford bail.”
According to statewide jail population forecasts by the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice, the prison population is expected to increase by seven percent this year followed by another 5.7% gain in 2022. That is despite the jail population seeing a greater than 12% reduction in 2020 as many municipalities opted to release low-level offenders to home detention to maintain social distancing in prisons.
Overall, Colorado’s jail population has grown by more than 800% over the last 50 years, according to CDCJ data. Black people are eight times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses in Colorado than their White counterparts as well.
“Justice and freedom are the cornerstones of American values,” Lee. “But since our founding, these values have been applied inequitably. For people of color, the poor, and socially marginalized justice is a rarity rather than a right.”
“One of the biggest culprits of this toxicity is reflected in jailing and arrest practices, where people’s freedom and even lives are taken away with a devastating level of frequency. It’s time to completely rethink how police interact with our communities and recalibrate the role money has in our justice system,” he added.