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Despite Colorado's 2026 budgetary woes, affordability advocates still found room to advance housing stability measures.

Budget pressures may have set the tone for Colorado's 2026 session, but advocates still found room to advance protections particularly for mobile homeowners and people experiencing homelessness, with limited advances for renters and affordable housing providers.

Rare Wins Across the Board

Mobile home park residents

Both of this year’s efforts to stabilize and shore up the rights of mobile homeowners fared favorably.

The first (HB 1120) responds to recommendations from Colorado’s 2024 Mobile Home Taxation Tax Force, requiring notices of delinquent property tax be in English and Spanish, modifying how a tax lien can be placed on a mobile home for delinquent taxes, and extending the amount of time a homeowner has to settle their debts and reclaim their home before public auction to three years (nine years for people living with disabilities).

The second (HB 1224) strengthens mobile homeowners’ ability to exercise their legal rights to try to purchase their park when an owner decides to sell. DOH, which administers Colorado’s Mobile Home Oversight Program, helped shape and backed this bill after growing concerns that park owners and potential buyers have effectively been working against residents.

  • Among other protections, this new law guarantees residents a 90-day due diligence period, provides greater information to residents when their park is part of a “portfolio” sale of several properties, and requires disclosure of major property details to residents upon request such as basis for a purchase price, information on park infrastructure, rent rolls, operating expenses.
  • Also caps certain fees passed to residents, requires evictions be based on a formal finding the resident violated state or local law, and requires landlords to notify their residents when the their ability to increase lot rents have been suspended, which indicates the landlord is in violation of various state or local requirements, including water standards and state-defined responsibilities of park owners.
Homelessness response

Three proposals to facilitate and support homelessness response across the state are now law.

One transfers decision-making authority from an advisory committee to DOH to enable more efficient administration of the Homelessness Prevention Activities Program (HB 1192).

Another extends the existing Homelessness Contribution Tax Credit through 2030, enabling taxpayers to claim a credit of 25% of their donations to approved nonprofit service providers, and 30% in rural counties (HB 1015). This program has proven notably successful, with thousands of donors contributing a total of $75.6 million since its inception in 2023.

The third (HB 1202) advances state and local homelessness interventions in three different ways:      

  • Allowing interested local governments to create multijurisdictional homelessness response authorities and pursue ballot initiatives in impacted localities to raise tax revenue they would need to sustain operations and homelessness intervention efforts.
  • Directing DOH to create a proposal for a statewide strategy on homelessness prevention and resolution including timelines, gaps and barriers, coordination with Colorado’s four continuums of care, and policy and funding recommendations, which must be presented to the legislature in January 2027.
  • Enabling counties that choose to do so to direct a portion of their documentary filing fees, fees associated with transferring or selling real estate within the county, to develop, preserve, or acquire affordable housing, including for people exiting homelessness.

Modest Gains in Housing Stability

Renters

Following several years of successful laws expanding renters’ rights, which brought Colorado out of the ranks of states with harmfully few renters’ protections, advocates sought relatively few changes to tenant-landlord law in 2026, and bills that passed will likely have little impact. Successful policies include:

  • Updating building code definitions, approvals, and enforcement to more clearly define and ensure accessibility for people living with disabilities (SB 109)
  • Codifying now-rescinded federal guidance on service animals in rental properties into state law (HB 1045)
  • Adjusting disclosures affecting renters, specifically redacting personal identifying information from certain documents in an eviction court filing, and notifying prospective tenants what information will be assessed in tenant screenings and broad factors considered in evaluating rental applications (HB 1196)

Proposals that failed to cross the finish line sought automatic, blanket suppression of residential eviction court records (HB 1047); significant reforms to residential eviction court processes and timelines (HB 1106); and adjustments to utility billing practices for buildings without individually metered units (HB 1284).  

Affordable housing providers

A handful of successful bills may help stabilize providers of affordable multifamily housing:

  • Addressing uncertainty raised by 2025 changes to fees housing providers may charge renters, HB 1013 clarifies that landlords are still able to utilize “ratio utility billing,” or dividing a building’s utility costs among tenants in unmetered buildings, so long as they disclose the formula used to calculate utility costs assessed to each unit. 
  • SB 009 protects against federal attempts to deny organizations’ tax-exempt status over ideological or political differences by requiring the state to continue recognizing any entity with a 501(c)3 determination letter as a charitable, tax-exempt entity.
  • SB 155 is designed to help stabilize the state’s property insurance market in part by establishing the “Strengthen Colorado Homes” enterprise in the state Division of Insurance. The program can grant up to $10,000 per home to support homeowners’ installation of resilient roof systems, especially to stave off hail damage, related insurance claims, and costs. While only applicable to single-family homes, there is an opportunity to extend the program to multifamily affordable rental properties in the future.

Looking ahead

As of this month, next year finally promises some budget relief, as well as expanded opportunities for affordable housing and housing stability under revamped state leadership. New legislators and leadership will take their seats alongside a freshly elected governor, newly appointed agency heads, and other statewide elected leaders, including attorney general and treasurer, all of whom will surely shape the future of housing in Colorado.

Enterprise looks forward to working with all these policymakers to prioritize meaningful investments in preserving existing affordable housing and in housing Colorado’s most vulnerable residents and identifying sustainable new resources for affordable housing—among so much other work to be done, together.

In our companion piece, we cover the session's difficult budget environment and its sweeping cuts to affordable housing funding, and the few bright spots that emerged.