Proposal to keep evictions from being made public clears Colorado House

People who have been evicted can find it difficult to persuade a new landlord to rent to them.
2 min. read
District 42 Rep. Dominique Jackson, Colorado House of Representatives, April 19, 2019. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

A bill that passed the Colorado House on Wednesday would keep eviction proceedings from being made public unless an eviction is ordered -- and possibly even after that.

Representative Dominique Jackson's bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.

People who have been evicted can find it difficult to persuade a new landlord to rent to them.

"Today the House moved us one step closer to guaranteeing that people who have an eviction filed against them, but who haven't actually been evicted, can access the housing they need," Jackson, an Aurora Democrat, said in a statement.

The Colorado Apartment Association, a landlords' group, supports the proposal.

"This bill is a reasonable approach to prevent public records from being misinterpreted and to ensure that rental housing providers have an accurate picture of a potential renter's previous performance," Drew Hamrick, the apartment association's general counsel and senior vice president of government affairs, said in a statement.

The bill would ensure that once a landlord goes to court to force a tenant out of a home, the names of those involved and other details would not be publicly available unless the case ended with an eviction. The bill also proposes that a judge could continue to keep details of the case from the public even after ordering an eviction if the landlord and tenant involved both agreed to continued suppression.

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