Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Community Planning and Housing Committee with Denver City Council. Your Community Planning and Housing Committee starts now.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the community planning housing meeting on July 28th. I'm Amanda Sandoval. I represent Northwest Denver. We have a presentation in front of us. Do we have any council members online, producer? No council members online. All right, I'll start to my left.

Good afternoon. Flor Alvidrez, Lucky District 7.

Good afternoon. Diana Romero-Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

And good afternoon. Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Chantel Lewis, District 8.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

Awesome. We have two briefings. I think it's a combined briefing, right? So they're all combined into one slide deck and I'll pass it over to the Office of Housing and Disability. The floor is yours.

We'll start by introducing ourselves. My name's Melissa Toddy. I am the Director of Stability and Prevention with HOST. Can you repeat?

I'm Ian Cohen, Program Officer with HOST.

I'm Carissa Johnson, Housing Policy Officer at HOST. So we have two briefings for you today, one on the property tax relief program, just to provide you all an update, and then also an update on the tenant legal services 2025 report that we sent out, I think, around March of this year. And we'll pause in between the two briefings so we can open it up for questions on the first topic. And with that, I will kick it over to Ian.

Great, thanks. So this slide is just a reminder of sort of where in our spectrum of work our property tax relief program falls with our stability and prevention team. It's just a little reminder there. In a quick program background, HOST absorbed this program from Denver Human Services last spring of 2025 and we launched The program for 2024 rebates on May 1st with a new online application. That program still provides a partial refund on property taxes paid or to renters the equivalent of rent. Our minimum rebate is $372. That has stayed the same since DHS was running the program. Renters can still receive a maximum of $1,000 and $1,800 maximum rebates for homeowners. Our average refund did increase slightly from the 2023 rebates to the 2024 rebates from $1,148 to $1,180, which I believe to be a factor of more approved rebates to households at zero income or unfixed incomes receiving like Social Security benefits, which we don't consider to be a source of income, which will result in higher rebates for renters and for homeowners. And this is just a bit of a breakdown of our application volume received since taking it over from DHS. So you can see for the 2025 to 2026 program year, which is rebates issued for the 2024 calendar year, we received almost 3,900 applications and at least through July 14th had paid about 2,600 applications. At that time, we had about 475 applications pending, I believe, As of today, it's about 375, the majority of which were from homeowners. And our breakdown remains pretty similar to what DHS was seeing previously, where about 46% of applications received were from homeowners, about 54% from renters. And year-to-date payments issued for 2024 calendar year, the breakdown is pretty similar of 46% to homeowners and 54% to renters.

Next slide.

Just a quick snapshot of demographic data. And this is of households served, again, of all 2024 payments issued through about mid-July. So this maybe has changed a little bit through the end of July. But we are seeing, as you can see, the majority of households served have area median income of 0% to 10% AMI. So many of the households we serve do have income, but on fixed income benefits such as Social Security, we do consider that to be zero dollar income, which I think speaks to probably the huge volume of households at zero income. And with applicant and race too, we are seeing that the majority of households served are white and the majority are not Hispanic or Latino. We've done some comparisons recently of how that stacks up against payments actually issued. And we see that to be pretty comparable that, excuse me, households served or payments issued, we compare that to applications received. And we found that The majority of applications received were also from non-Hispanic or Latino households and the majority of payments issued are also going to white households at this time. So I think that there is some work for HOST to do in terms of outreach to BIPOC homeowners. We also are going to try and pull some data to see if more BIPOC households are applying later and therefore make up the majority of applications that remain pending. Or there could be that more BIPOC households are being found ineligible or withdrawing their applications as their duplicates. So I just want to let you all know we are doing some more work in that area as well.

And I'll just, while we're on this slide, note, and you'll see it in the eviction legal presentation as well, that we do across our stability and prevention programs do tend to see more households being served from BIPOC communities compared to Denver's population overall.

sorry okay there we go um and you know just some additional demographic data we're finding that um most most households served are meeting the age requirement which for 2024 rebates was that you had to be 65 or older for the entire 2024 calendar year um And then about 29% of all households served are meeting the program's definition of having a disability. And then for children present, this data point is a little skewed. That was something we were only collecting for homeowners because you could only qualify as a homeowner if you had a dependent child. So previously, we were only asking that question of homeowners. Starting with the 2025 rebate that launched on May 1st, we've corrected that to get that data from all households applying and all households being served. But at least for 2024, among homeowners, about 12% had a dependent child living in the house. So we'll probably have more data for all households in the next year. This is just a quick reminder of some of the eligibility changes we made starting with the 2025 rebate that we just launched. I'll just refer to the text in bold. So for all households, whether you're a renter or a homeowner, we decrease the age requirement from 65 to 62. So now you would have had to have been 62 or older for the entire 2025 calendar year. From homeowners, we increased the AMI level from 60% to 80%, both to capture more homeowner households that needed the rebate, but it's also more consistent with our other direct financial assistance programs, which all have an 80% AMI threshold. And then we added for homeowners a criteria for a surviving spouse. So starting with the 2025 rebate that we just launched on May 1st. If you lost your spouse at any time and have not remarried, you may also qualify now for a rebate as a homeowner. For renters, we just made the AMI level consistent for all renter households to 30% AMI, whereas previously it was 25% for one-person households and 30% for two-plus-person households. So just for implementation purposes, we made that more consistent. And this is just a map to kind of speak to some of the work that hosts did this spring and will continue to do kind of all the time as we have better data of who's applying and who's being served, particularly among homeowners. As you may remember, there's new ordinance language to sort of phase out renters from this program by 2030. And so Host is trying to do a lot more work to find homeowners who would be eligible for this program who are maybe not aware or not applying. And so what this map demonstrates is the volume of homeowner applicants as a share of cost burden homeowners in that area. And so we're really trying to target and that's kind of what we did this past spring at various rec centers throughout the city is targeting neighborhoods and zip codes with a lower volume of applications, but areas we know there are a high number of cost burdened homeowners. So we have much more better data and our excellent data team at HOST is helping us to sort of map those households and see year over year where we need to be doing more outreach and we're just seeing a huge need for people to be, since this application is online, accessing it with in-person supports. And we also help people over the phone as well. That's it for me. You can take any questions.

Thank you so much. First in the queue is Councilman Torres.

Thank you. Thanks, folks. I guess, so I have been interested in how the changes, if they're making any difference on kind of who's applying. Based on like your demographic data, slide six, You're not really receiving a lot of applications at that 80% yet. I'm really interested in this 0 to 10%. Obviously, that's homeowners, right? Because your eligibility criteria says renters have to have equal to 25, 30% AMI. Up to 30%.

Up to, okay. So that could be renters. Yes. All this demographic data is all households.

Very good. Okay. That's, I think, what was, like, what's happening within that population, who they are and where they are, especially with, like, the evolution of this program to be mostly focused on homeowners. What do we know about the renter population of that in that 2,200-applicant pool?

Do you mean, like, what do we know about their demographics or household composition?

Yeah, maybe also about their vulnerability. If we get to a point where we're starting to reject renter applications in favor of homeowner applications, what do we know about their stability? It's one thing, I think, if they're in subsidized housing. It's another thing if they're not. So what do we know about those applicants?

Yeah, I would say the majority are... Actually, I think I'd have to probably pull some more data to be confident about whether they're coming from like DHA properties, subsidized properties or market rate. I want to be right if I'm speaking to that. I do wonder if TRUA has maybe more with the work being done there of like the vulnerabilities of renters in that AMI bracket. Because that's not currently data we collect for this program, but I think more work that TRUA is doing with some of our research studies.

Yeah, and I think like, anecdotally, we do see a lot of the renters coming from subsidized properties. Historically, when DHS would run events and stuff, they would be at DHS or sorry, DHA properties. And so maybe we can dig into that a little bit more, but certainly. I think anyone on a zero to 10 fixed income as a renter is going to be vulnerable. And so I do think we're trying to be really mindful of the impacts, but we can certainly dig into that data a little bit more. Yeah.

At least they're in housing though, that will only take 30% of whatever their income is. As opposed to it being kind of a market situation or something like that. So I'm more and more like, it's, they're like, I'm seeing them in different levels of vulnerability as well. But I appreciate that. Thank you for this info.

Thank you. Next up we have Council Member Alfidrez followed by Council Member Cashman.

Thank you. Sorry, I lost my notes for a second. I was curious about the pending applications from 2024. Can you talk to me about why those are still pending?

Yeah, this program operates on a sort of May 1st to April 30th. program here. When we launched this program host for the first time on last May, we had about a 60-day gap in which no one was being served while our providers were hiring staff, training staff, setting up new systems. So we had a bit of a late start and we're working with providers to just increase capacity throughout the year. And so when we launched 2025 applications on May 1 of 2026, we still had hundreds of pending 2024 applications. And so in an effort to not put ourselves in the same situation we found ourselves this year, we dedicated half We have two providers for this program, Brothers Redevelopment and Community Economic Defense Project. Our Brothers Redevelopment team, we assigned them to finish the 2024 applications so that our team could still start the 2025 applications so that by next spring of 2027, we didn't find ourselves with a huge number of pending applications still. At this time, we have maybe four to six weeks of the 2024 applications remaining, at which time all teams will be reviewing 2025. So I think because this program was new to host and it was new to our providers, there was a gap in time in which we were establishing policies, writing guidelines, just working through some of the case processing issues because it was brand new to us as a department.

Have you talked to your providers about the lack of Latino representation in those?

We usually address some equity concerns in site visits with them. We've already conducted site visits for this program, but we'll certainly be going back to those providers with this data. This is probably the first time we've had almost a full year of data to really see where some of the gaps in service provision are. But that's as program officers are integrated into our site visits with all providers to discuss any equity concerns and come up with strategies to solve for them.

So how are you looking at strategies to be different to make sure that this is a more equitable number in the future?

In terms of, like, with, you know, households applying and being served? Well, I think it comes to outreach, which we, I think for this program, will need to dedicate more funding to. I think we have opportunities to do, this program used to do a lot of direct mailing. And since then, we just haven't had budget for that. So I think it's a matter of, like, Being out in the community, we find that there's a much better response to being out in rec centers to even visiting DHA properties. We get lots of requests to be hosting application workshops, but I think host needs to have some more intentional strategies of connecting with community groups that can connect us to those populations. And I think every spring we've been able to identify more and more staff resources to actually be doing that on the ground outreach, because we just don't have the resources at host, so we really have to rely on our program partners

What does the language access look like? Is it all translated into multiple languages? And are there bilingual people at these events, outreach events?

Yes, all of our providers are at minimum bilingual in Spanish, but there are additional languages that they speak. They also have contracts with third parties to do language interpretation and translation services. The application itself is available in Spanish. But if there are other languages needed, other language supports, there are, again, both those providers have contracts and relationships with translation services. They also have 24-7 hotlines that residents can call to get assistance in any language, completing the application over the phone or requesting an appointment to do so in person.

Okay, and then I guess I'm concerned that you're not looking at other providers that are more connected to the Latino community. What will that process look like? Will there be opportunity for other providers to apply to service that maybe aren't the ones that we have right now?

Yeah, I will mention too, we do have providers housing navigation contracts with grassroots organizations like East Colfax Community Collective and Buku West that are serving more specific populations. As far as this program, I think the next time we procure for it would be 27 or 28.

The program year is good to me. I'll follow up with you.

I would take that very seriously, especially if they fail to continue to meet the equity goals of this. I think we're seeing a high amount of displacement in the city and it's very concerning to see those numbers. Thank you. Thank you, Council President. Thank you.

Next up we have Council Member Cashman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for the presentation. Does this conflict in any way with the state senior tax exemption, or if you qualify for both, you get both?

You can receive both simultaneously.

Thank you very much. That's all, Madam Chair.

Thank you. And then President Romero-Campbell. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I know this isn't part—I didn't see it on there, but I'm just wondering, like, do you have younger homeowners that are also applying but don't qualify because of age for the program? I just—just an interesting data point of, like, do we have— younger homeowners who are also having trouble staying in their homes. And I know that we have limited funds, et cetera, but I just would be interested to see if that's

Yeah, we could definitely pull more data on that. I think apart from this program, our foreclosure financial assistance program, I also learned some interesting insights into like age of homeowners struggling to afford the home they're in. For this program as a, excuse me, as a homeowner, yeah, you can without age also qualify as when meeting disability status or having a dependent child in the household. So we could probably pull all those households who meet those criteria but may not meet the age criteria and get back to you. I don't necessarily know off the top of my head. I would say, however, the majority of households are meeting the age requirement. It's far less who are only disabled or only have a dependent child, at least for the 2024 rebate.

But younger homeowners, to be clear, younger homeowners with children are eligible for this program. So they could be served. We just don't know what that looks like. But we can dig into that data a little more.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Some thoughts I have are for outreach. I don't know if you're connected to the Denver Preschool Program. They're a great resource. They serve a lot of families in Denver who have younger children and might need this. Another one is Servicios de la Raza. I don't know if you're connected with them. And then the last one that I was going to mention is all of us have different events. So for example, I have an event in Chaffee Park, a movie in the park coming up at the end of August. And that's where I see one of my more stable neighborhoods where I have home ownership. it doesn't have an active registered neighborhood organization. So if you sent me things, I don't have anywhere to send it up to. Um, so if you partner with all of our council offices, I bet you would be able to get the word out more because what it is, is it's, if you are able to help one person, then that person's going to tell their friend about, right? I mean, that's the biggest type of campaign that you can do. Advertising is really word of mouth. So making sure that we just get into those places and I know it's hard when you don't have a budget. But sharing that information with all the council offices is we have movies in the park and we are out in our communities. Also the far northwest neighborhood plan is starting in my community and so I know community planning and development are all over the place right now in northwest Denver. I don't think my council district, a lot of people could qualify, but there are some that might be able to. But Chaffee Park in my area is predominantly a huge area where I think that this could work. And just, if you haven't met with any of my colleagues, they know their community really well. We have to... represent our communities we usually go shopping in our communities we usually go hang out with friends who live in our communities and that's how I get word of mouth out is by hanging out with my friends and talking to them and asking them what their needs are but really leveraging that subject matter expertise that you have And I don't have any other more questions. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Just appreciate all the work that you all have done on this program and how I know you have fierce advocates in city council to get this out and get help because home ownership and being gentrified out of our communities I think is something that all of us have experienced. Thank you for coming today and thank you for sharing the presentation. Colleagues, we have no more, that was our only.

One more thing to present.

Oh, we do have one more. Okay, sorry, go ahead.

I'm accessing the agenda by the start. Click it, it says the page.

Sorry, one second. Okay, our eviction legal defense contracts live in our stability and prevention pillar as seen here and And our eligibility criteria for this program have to be at or below 80% of the area median income and you have to be a Denver County resident. The services provided through these contracts include limited legal representation and full legal representation. The main difference there is that full representation likely means the attorney is going to trial and defending someone in court in a formal court proceeding. Limited representation may look like assistance with a stipulation agreement or filing an answer, that sort of limited service. The eviction legal defense contracts, we have four partners there, Colorado Poverty Law Project, Colorado Economic Defense Project, the Colorado Affordable Legal Services, and Colorado Legal Services. In 2025, we served 3,584 households with an average cost per case of $681.87. The racial demographics have been fairly consistent over the last few years. We have seen a slight increase in multiracial and other households served and a slight decline in white households. Also worth noting that annually we serve more households, so makes sense that some of the percentages would decrease slightly. For the ethnicity, historically, the Hispanic and Latino households were closer to 75-25 split over the years. We have seen increases in that population. In 2025, it was 36.6% Hispanic and Latino and 56.2% non-Hispanic and Latino. The additional demographics, 50% female-headed household. That number is fairly consistent over the last three or four years. It was 65% last year. Households with a person with a disability at 35% in 2025. And that number has been fairly consistent as well. It's also 35%, I'm sorry, 27% last year. Households coming from subsidized housing, it looks like that number has gone down year over year. I can't read my writing, sorry. But it has gone down. And households with a person over the age of 62 at 11%. We'll go to the next one. The outcomes, I'm going to start on the left here with the income levels. Overwhelmingly, people who face eviction in Denver and statewide are usually at or below 30% of the area median income. In 2025, they made up 78% of our households served. We did have 29 households that were income ineligible, meaning they made over 80% of the area median income. I'm moving down now. The full representation, we saw 17% of households getting full representation and 83% at limited legal representation. Those numbers have skewed slightly over the years. It used to be closer to a 25%, 75% split. It has shifted slightly. That might have something to do with the fee-for-service adjustment that we've made to ensure our contractors consistently spend down. I'm moving over to the right now at the case disposition and outcome. For case dismissed, we're at 33%. That means the person likely paid the rent in full before it could go to trial or the landlord made an error when filing and the case was dismissed. So 33% have that outcome. We're at 2% of people moving with or without time to move, 35% at filing an answer or another brief legal service. The stipulation agreement was 13% of outcomes and a judgment vacated is 10%. Judgment vacated means they went to trial or signed a stipulation and a judgment for possession was offered, but the tenant held up their end of a stipulation and then the judgment was removed and the case was sealed. And the last one is judgment for possession, which is the least desirable outcome in an eviction filing. It means judgment was made in favor of the landlord, and we're at 7% for those. And... This one, I just wanted to highlight the difference in eviction filings versus writs issued for eviction legal. Since 2022, eviction filings are up about 80%. That's that yellow line there. going up and the purple line at the very bottom has stayed sort of flat and those are writs executed that is when a sheriff's department comes and packs things up and physically removes someone from their home in 2025 we saw 15 953 eviction filings but only 2 333 writs restored and you can see that that purple line at the bottom has stayed relatively flat. So it's historically has not been high. It's rare for a sheriff to come and physically remove someone from their home. And the last thing I want to point out is that the 15,953 eviction filings are not unique households. So just wanted to point that out and I'm done.

Questions just to help me understand the language. I think it's really important that outcome slide that you showed because I think we have a perception of eviction filings. Tell me a little bit more about what issued and received mean in the process as well.

Yeah, writ issued is what happens when a person goes to trial or doesn't go to trial and the writ is offered from the judge. Yeah, writ issued. And then on the landlord side, they have to take a step to have the next part of the writ received. It comes from the landlord. to the sheriff's department. Yeah. So that's the other step.

So it's still a pretty high number writs received versus restored. Now, is that a capacity piece? Like the sheriff's department can only do so many evictions in a given year? Are there folks like in queue?

I would have to circle back with the Sheriff's Department and get some more information about that.

Because their number seems super flat in terms of how many evictions they're actually processing. I'd be interested if that's just as many as actually make it to that step or if they're waiting in a queue. Okay. Thank you for this. I think... Just in general, I feel like this has grown so much in how important the work has become. Like I remember, I think this started as basically a crowdfunding effort from Robin Kniech, right?

Yeah.

And then trying to make sure that it became more of a permanent offering from the city took place over time. But when you, you mentioned not unique households, so you might have multiple evictions in place for any given household. Are they different addresses or are they multiple evictions on the same household?

For 2026, I have looked at eviction filings from January through May, and it appears to be the same address, multiple eviction filings for the same address. Sometimes that means someone just cured before it could go to the next steps of the filing, but they were late enough that the landlord was like, filing. Jeez. So, yeah.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Next up we have Councilmember Alvarez followed by Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you. I echo that's great to see the actual evictions are relatively flat. It looks like they're not actually flat so it's kind of hard to see. Some numbers might be helpful there just to get some perspective. But I'm curious, have we been doing any kind of surveying of why? Or do we have any data of what the difference between filings and those that actually get evicted are?

We're working on some surveying this year through the contractors with the Pulse for Good surveys. We're also doing some follow-up surveys through our Truer program to learn more about that.

So more to come. I mean, I think that would be great to see so we can think about, is it this program that is helping that number? Is it another factor? I'm also curious of, of course, I assume affordability is one of the reasons why eviction filings are going up. And so curious around any research around that. I've also heard from landlords directly that there was a change in law that is pressuring them to file that eviction sooner than they might have otherwise. And I don't know if you all have heard that as well or aware of anything like that.

No, I'm not familiar with any law that changed that would perpetuate filing an eviction sooner than otherwise. That's news to me. So thank you for that.

Yeah, definitely try to find out more and maybe send you what exact law they're talking about that is propelling them to file for eviction maybe sooner than they would normally. Thank you. That's all.

Thank you. Next up we have Council Member Lewis followed by Council President Diana Romero.

Thanks. I just have one question. Thank you all for the presentation. You mentioned that for 2025 the households and subsidized housing has gone down. I'm just curious as what the story is there.

Maybe there's no story. There is no story. This is 2025 data, right? It is 2025 data. I think I'd like to circle back and look at my other data and give you an answer in writing. We'll take that. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I keep on thinking, like, is this, is it throughout the entire city? Is it concentrated in certain neighborhoods? And you had mentioned, I'm holding, actually, let me ask that and then I'll ask my other question from a statement that was made earlier.

No, I think evictions, we do have a... map somewhere that we'll follow up with but it doesn't look that any it doesn't appear that any neighborhood in Denver County is immune from eviction filings there there are pockets of concentrations throughout the city which is my next question you had mentioned that there were repeat evictions at a location so are we seeing

property owners or that are just filing? I mean, like, are there just bad actors in here that are just really aggressively going after incidents?

Yes.

Okay. Sorry, Andrea. No, no. Period. Yeah, yeah. But I'm just wondering what's the next, like, are there... I'm just wondering, like, do you see, what do you see as possible ways to address that then from where you're sitting?

Yeah, I need to... I'll run your ear later on. I'll jump in while she's speaking. So the eviction process is governed at the state level. So it's really hard for us to implement things at the local level that will have that sort of impact. Because if there's a need to regulate the way landlords are doing something, that has to come from state legislation. And I think that we've seen over time, obviously, that when folks are behind on rent, and there are likely more people behind on rent after COVID, that landlords will immediately file that eviction. If a tenant cures, but they fall behind again, they're going to file that eviction. So they are going to go through the court process. Another note I'll make is that One thing we did change this year is with true that applicants can have a rent demand, meaning that they don't have to wait to be in the court eviction process to try to get folks to have get assistance sooner when possible. So that landlords don't feel that they have to go through the court process, because I think what had. may be been a shift is that when rental assistance programs require a tenant to provide documentation that they're in the eviction process via court, that landlords understood that to mean, OK, then I'm going to file in court so that you go get assistance to make me whole. So all of these things are kind of interconnected in ways. So we do what we can locally, but would need changes for state legislation for policy shifts.

Because it's just still sitting with me like over 50% are female-headed households.

That's a national trend also. We see that in Trua too. Yeah, households served. Yeah, lots of female-headed households with children. Single-headed household, yeah. Okay. I'm going to sit on that one too.

I look forward to the response or just kind of knowing a little bit more about what other strategies or what other things you could see that might also address that. I just think that's a lot of moms with kids.

Thank you. This information is fascinating. I think especially since after being a council person who's been here after COVID, seeing how what it looks like now and I was hoping that we could get it a little bit better, but I do see that I know that it's hard when we have our hands held at the municipal level and what we're doing at the state level. If there's any partnerships that you need, when Councilman Gonzales Gutierrez was at the state, they ran a bill that opened up expanding housing affordability, and we were one of the first people municipalities in to be able to take part in that legislation. So those partnerships are so important between our state and our city. I don't have any questions at that time. Colleagues, any other questions, any more comments? Thank you so much for the presentation. We really appreciate you coming in and sharing this really important information for our city. We have one item on consent and seeing no other further business before this body, we stand adjourned.