Three Council members propose rent escrow and required landlord meetings for Denver's worst buildings
Sawyer, Gonzales-Gutierrez and Romero Campbell brought a tenant proposal to committee Monday. No bill yet; a Health and Safety hearing is penciled in for March.
Three Denver Council members want new tools to push the city's most-cited landlords to make repairs without shutting buildings down, according to a presentation to the Budget and Policy Committee on Monday, Nov. 9. The item is 26-1720.
The slides name Amanda Sawyer, Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Council President Diana Romero Campbell as the members proposing it.
Why it matters: today, when a landlord won't fix problems like no heat or rodents, the city's options are mainly fines and, at the extreme, license revocation or closing the building, which "displaces the tenants," the slides say.
The two ideas
Meet and confer. Tenants would have the right to organize, and landlords would have to meet with tenant organizations on a regular basis to remain in good standing for their rental license. The organization would have to be democratic and independent of management. Landlords would have to provide common space for free, and retaliation would be banned.
Rent escrow (REAP). A hearing officer, or licensing staff as a license condition, could order a property into a rent escrow program. Rent would go into an account that has to be used to bring the building into compliance before money is released to the owner. Tenants would be notified, and owners could appeal.
Many details are still open. The slides list questions such as how many tenants it takes to form an organization, whether meetings should be quarterly, what triggers escrow and who manages the accounts.
The models
The slides cite San Francisco, where buildings of five or more units can form a tenant association with half the occupied units and landlords must attend a meeting a quarter on request; New Haven's Fair Rent Commission; Los Angeles County's administrative escrow program; and Baltimore's court-run rent escrow.
The numbers behind it
City health department figures in the slides, through Oct. 23:
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- Complaints: 1,549 residential health complaints in 2023, 1,678 in 2024, 1,794 in 2025 and 1,560 so far in 2026.
- Fines: $422,536 in citations issued in 2025, with $313,963 collected. In 2026 so far, $142,817 issued and $50,772 collected.
- Most-fined buildings: The Raven, formerly The Felix, with 418 units, tops the list with 36 citations since mid-2022, followed by William Penn Apartments (31) and Meridian, formerly Cedar Run (27).
What our records add
It grew out of stakeholder meetings. The slides say the health, housing and licensing departments, the mayor's office, tenant unions and tenant rights groups met from December 2024 to February 2026, and some recommendations within the health department's reach were already put in place, including a public complaint dashboard. Meet and confer and rent escrow went beyond that department's scope.
There's no video yet. Monday's committee recording hadn't been transcribed on our site as of Tuesday morning. We'll add what members said.
A related proposal. At the same meeting, the committee heard a plan to license "We Buy Houses" wholesalers (our story).
What's next
According to the slides:
November to February: More drafting and stakeholder meetings.
March 3, 2027: Health and Safety Committee.
April 2027: Full Council and public hearing.