Denver is on track to break its annual record for eviction cases — more than 16,000, if nothing changes, even as rent levels are falling.
The city is bucking national trends. Most other U.S. cities are seeing a drop in the number of eviction cases going to court, according to Juan Pablo Garnham with the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.
But Denver, like Austin, Las Vegas and Phoenix, is trending in the opposite direction. These Western cities tend to have policies that are friendlier to landlords, he said.
Multiple studies show the devastating impact of evictions on childhood mental and physical health and brain development. Students’ school attendance rate plummets. And mothers face higher rates of depression, stress and poor health.
While the Eviction Lab has not studied Denver, cities with higher eviction rates share a few things in common, Garnham said: Their populations are growing and they tend to have laws that favor landlords, with faster eviction processes and low-cost court filing fees. Denver’s population growth essentially stopped during the pandemic, but the city is now adding several thousand people per year.
“Denver got so hot and the market increased so much that even if it corrects a little bit, it outgrew the capacity for someone making $40,000 or $50,000 to raise a family,” Johnston said. “And so that is why we're most committed to adding more and more housing stock to try to solve that problem.”
In most cases, evictions are filed over a failure to pay rent, said Zach Neumann, head of the Community Economic Defense Project, a nonprofit offering legal aid to tenants facing evictions.
“The city, the state, the nonprofits, the housing providers, we have not gotten our arms around this problem,” Neumann said.
What is Denver trying, and what’s working?
Denver offers legal aid for some tenants facing eviction, emergency rental assistance funds and homeless shelters for people who lose their homes. In 2024, the city spent $31.3 million on rental assistance and eviction legal services. This year, the budget dropped to $25.5 million because of reductions in federal funding.
“In 2024, eviction legal assistance was provided to 3,331 households,” said Julia Marvin, a spokesperson for Denver’s Department of Housing Stability, with the city’s housing department. “The level of support varied depending on each household’s needs. Some received brief legal advice, while others were offered more in-depth assistance.
More than half of the households with eviction cases and help from city-funded lawyers either avoided eviction judgments or had their cases dismissed.
But many people fall through the safety net. This week, Denverite profiled Tiara Coleman, a mother of three, who went through a divorce, lost her job and faced eviction. She tried to secure eviction assistance through city and state channels, but she and her three daughters were left homeless.
Meanwhile, eviction courts are packed, and eviction defense attorneys are scrambling to keep up with demand. Policymakers are weighing whether to increase the amount of emergency rental assistance funding after pandemic-era federal emergency rental support dried up.
What else can be done?
Marvin says there are not enough funds to offer emergency rental assistance to every household that needs help.
Mayor Mike Johnston has not said whether he plans to increase funding for emergency rental assistance in the 2026 budget, but he does say the city is prioritizing help for people most likely to experience homelessness over those who might have somewhere else to stay. The city declined to specify the criteria it is using to make that call.
“We have to be really thoughtful about how to use resources,” Johnston said. “We want to make sure we're prioritizing those that really are at risk of homelessness, and we will keep doing that.”
Some researchers, including Garnham, suggest that cities could discourage evictions by making it more expensive for landlords to file eviction cases in court.
“We have good research that shows that eviction filing fees, when you increase them, they actually decrease eviction rates,” Garnham said.
In Denver, landlords pay between $95 and $145 to file an eviction case, depending on the amount they are trying to recover, according to Carolyn Tyler, a spokesperson for Denver County Court.
But filing fees may not be the issue in Denver. They are comparable to Philadelphia, a city often cited as a model when it comes to preventing eviction.
With lawyer fees added, an eviction case costs far more for a landlord, roughly $550 per case, not including the costs of the sheriff and moving expenses, said Drew Hamrick, with the Colorado Apartment Association.
Hamrick argues changes in the eviction process have unintentionally encouraged landlords to file eviction cases sooner than they used to. Recent laws gave tenants more time to pay back rent and avoid an eviction, required landlords to offer mediation with some tenants, among other changes. Denver passed a law in 2021 guaranteeing defendants an attorney in eviction court.
Evictions have “gotten slower and slower and more expensive and more expensive,” Hamrick said. “And I think the unintended consequence that comes from that is that a housing provider has to pull the trigger. They can't have the luxury of saying, well, they're only a month behind. Let's wait a little bit before we file a case, because if it's going to take you four months [to evict someone], you've got to get started sooner rather than later.”
Hamrick is especially critical of a law that requires landlords to accept tenants paying as much as half of their income toward rent, saying it sets people up for eviction.
Robin Kniech, who directs the New Directions in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Colorado Denver, says Denver would do well to look at Philadelphia’s “gold standard” eviction diversion program, which provides mandatory mediation between landlords and tenants before a no-payment case goes to court. The program, when successful, allows helpers to intervene before a person gets an eviction case on their record or loses their home, and allows landlords to avoid the legal expenses of eviction.
While Denver offers free landlord-tenant counseling services, the process is not mandatory.
New York City, Garnham said, is one of the most unaffordable cities in the world, and it has historically had some of the highest eviction rates in the country. But in recent years, the city passed laws that make what he calls “nefarious evictions” more difficult and has increased resources for renters, dropping the eviction rate.
Mayor Johnston has pledged action on housing.
Johnston has made housing and homelessness a focus for two years. But in his recent State of the City speech, he focused on the city’s approach to managing homelessness and building housing, not the eviction process.
“In today’s world, housing is the safety net that every family needs to know they have financial protection against whatever storm is coming,” Johnston said at State of the City. “It is the most important way people build and pass on wealth. As a city, we cannot lose sight of this challenge, and together, we must find a path to create the housing supply we need.”
The mayor tried to pass a new sales tax to build affordable housing last November, but voters shot it down. He has since looked for other ways to fund housing — especially “middle income” housing —as part of the Vibrant Denver bond package and the Downtown Development Authority’s new spending package.
“We know that lack of housing that is affordable to Denverites is an urgent crisis in this city,” Fuja said. “Too many families are just one missed paycheck away from losing their homes.”
Despite the focus on building housing, Johnston agreed in a recent interview that eviction is a public health issue. His focus, he said, is deciding how to prioritize eviction assistance as the city faces a loss of federal funding for housing services and other help.
“We are still very focused on preventing eviction. I think what we want to be better at is making sure that we are focused on eviction prevention that prevents homelessness,” he said.
