Longmont City Council to vote on renter safeties
Longmont, in what is expected to be a joint communication from several of Boulder County’s cities and towns, may ask Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to consider extending and expanding on COVID-19 emergency declarations intended to provide financial protections for residential tenants having hard times paying their rents because of the pandemic.
A draft letter up for Longmont City Council consideration Tuesday night would ask Polis to:
•Extend or make permanent a governor’s already-issued executive order requiring landlords to give tenants a 30-day “Demand for Compliance” notice, rather than the current statutory 10-day Demand for Compliance, when the compliance breach is nonpayment of rent, before the landlord can file an eviction case in court.
•Extend a current state moratorium on fees or penalties for late rent payments for COVID- 19 impacted tenants or cap late fees to a reasonable percentage, such as 2%-5%, of monthly rents.
•Reinstate an eviction moratorium in Colorado, to complement and suppor t the national moratorium imposed by the federal the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The draft letter up for the Longmont City Council vote during its 7 p.m. Tuesday meeting stems from a communication suggested during a Feb. 3 meeting of the Boulder County Consortium of Cities, a county-sponsored organization of Boulder County’s cities and towns. Councilwoman Polly Christensen, Longmont’s Consortium representative, asked on Feb. 9 that Longmont schedule its council vote on the communication for this week’s meeting.
Leslie Irwin, a senior Boulder County policy analyst, said in a Monday email that Boulder, Boulder County, and Lyons already have agreed to sign the letter to Polis and that Nederland plans to.
“I’ve not yet followed up with other jurisdictions and am doing so this week,” Ir win said.
“A very important issue in this request is extending from 10 to 30 days the time period of the Demand Notice,” she said. “A prior executive order making this extension expired at the end of December 2020. Practically speaking, what that extension means is that tenants have 30 rather than 10 days to resolve unpaid rent amounts. The 30-day time frame such as under the expired executive order provided a much more workable time frame for tenants to come up with a plan and access resources such as mediation or rental assistance.
“The extended time frame moves both landlords and tenants toward mediation, negotiation, and more willingness to develop creative solutions to help renters retain housing. With a 10-day Demand, many tenants simply do not have time to come up with a workable solution with their landlord nor to find the assistance they need. Tenantlandlord mediation and rental assistance take time to organize and accomplish in typical circumstances. Due to the incredible need in the community because of the pandemic, there are waiting periods to get appointments with or secure assistance from the agencies that can help,” Irwin said.
As for the moratorium on late fees, Irwin said Polis’ current order expires later this month. “The governor typically extends orders before they expire, and our letter to him reiterates the need for this protection,” she said.
Ir win said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control extended an order temporarily halting residential evictions until March 31 but that the federal moratorium applies only to some tenants at risk of losing their housing through eviction and doesn’t effectively protect all tenants needing eviction protection.
“As a result, we are seeing the numbers of cases on the dockets in Boulder County have been steadily increasing. A state executive order could clarify and strengthen this protection,” Ir win said.
The local Boulder County governments’ letter would add that the protective actions in a previous Polis executive order “proved to be a lifeline to community members at risk of losing their housing due to the economic impacts of COVID-19. These protections allowed many residents to successfully maintain their housing in the face of the economic impacts of the pandemic, especially by pairing the moratoriums with rental assistance, community mediation and legal ser vices, thus giving the support necessary to both allow residents to remain housed and to allow landlords to stay financially afloat.”
The Consortium also suggested that the state require that any information about late payments and evictions be provided in English and Spanish — or the first language of the renter, as reasonably feasible — and include information regarding financial assistance, community mediation, legal representation or other resources supporting housing stability that may be available.
The proposed letter can be viewed as an attachment to the item about it on Tuesday night’s Longmont Council agenda, tinyurl.com/hkr3b9p2. A video of the Feb. 3 Boulder County Consortium of Cities meeting, including the discussion of the letter, can be viewed at boco.org/2021-02-03-con sortium-of-cities-meet ing.