Denver rent assistance program gears up for big year as evictions surge

On a December morning, dozens of people cycled through the benches outside Room 163 of the Denver City and County Building. A few cradled children, and some looked at the floor. Deja Balles held a document from her landlord.

It demanded just shy of $2,700 in back rent for October, November and December. Like the others, Balles waited her turn to meet with a tenant advocate or attorney as part of a free eviction defense legal clinic. She hoped she would qualify for rental assistance that might keep her from being kicked out of her apartment during the holiday season.

“I’m just stressed,” the 21-year-old said, voicing concern for her three cats. “I have pets, so I’m more scared about where they are going to go if they don’t give me more time or rent assistance.”

The scene that played out on the ground floor of city hall that morning, just steps from eviction court, has become a regular occurrence in a city where rising rents have left household incomes in the dust and COVID-19-era tenant protections have ended. Denver landlords filed 12,910 evictions last year, according to Denver County Court records — by far the most in any year going back to at least 2008.

As the new year begins, Denver city officials and partner organizations that support renters are touting a deeper well of city-funded financial support to bail out vulnerable low- and middle-income tenants like Balles: $29.1 million, up from $22 million in 2023, for the Temporary Rental and Utility Assistance, or TRUA, program. And state lawmakers recently increased funding for a statewide rental assistance program by 85%, recognizing the surging need for help.

In 2023, demand outstripped the city’s ability to provide rent assistance. The day Balles was summoned to court, roughly 120 eviction cases were on Denver County Court’s dockets, by Anna Fullerton’s count.

Fullerton is a senior housing attorney with the Community Economic Defense Project, overseeing lawyers who provide free legal advice to renters, working in tandem with the organization’s rental assistance teams. Not every eviction case stems from unpaid rent — but in her experience, those cases make up 75% or more of filings.

“It’s not people who don’t want to work, and (who) want to take advantage of the system,” she said. “It’s people whose cars break down, and they have to decide if they pay for repairs to get to work or pay their rent.”

To qualify for TRUA, renters must make no more than 80% of the area median income — including $66,300 for a single person or $94,650 for a family of four, per the city’s latest guidelines — and experience an unexpected financial or housing crisis. The program can also be used to pay power, water and other utility bills.

A new online application portal is making it easier for qualified renters to tap into the funding and remain in their homes.

Denver City Council members came together in the fall as a veto-proof supermajority that pressured new Mayor Mike Johnston to greatly increase the city’s annual contribution to the TRUA program in this year’s budget. His initial proposal had set aside just $12.6 million, a total that advocates predicted would be insufficient to stem the wave of evictions facing Denver. In part, the lower amount reflected a drop in pandemic aid.

“When we talk about addressing homelessness, we also need to talk about how to prevent it,” Councilwoman at-large Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez said in a statement celebrating the November budget deal in which Johnston agreed to $29 million.

Facing difficult decisions

The circumstances that led Balles to fall behind are familiar to people who work with renters facing eviction: Her hours were cut at her job at Denver International Airport. Then a roommate who wasn’t on her apartment lease moved out unexpectedly, leaving her on the hook to pay more. She tried to work out a payment plan directly with her building’s leasing office, she said, but was denied.

But by December, Balles was too late to tap into the city assistance program, which had run dry. She did qualify for support through the state’s rental assistance program but ultimately chose to forgo that help in favor of striking a deal with her landlord.

Her landlord dropped the eviction case against her in exchange for her agreeing to pay all back rent, late fees and other associated charges after moving out. She found a new place and moved Dec. 29, just after Christmas.

She estimates the total she owes will be in the ballpark of $18,000, far more than just the rent she couldn’t pay on time.

“They gave me a date to be out and I was able to be out by then — and now there is no eviction on my record,” Balles said last week while on a break from her job at the airport. “I will have to set up a payment plan. But I’m not stressed anymore. I am able to get my rent paid without having to stress now.”

Balles’ decision to simply move out is something tenant advocates call “self-evicting,” and it can have negative effects on a renter’s credit history, said Briana Johnson, who manages one of two rental assistance teams for the Community Economic Defense Project.

It’s one of the organizations that has partnered with the city to distribute rent help and legal advice around evictions. She was in Room 163 the day Balles lined up to seek help.

She said all of the legalese involved in an eviction often makes the process even more opaque and terrifying for renters who have no experience with the legal system.

Even after the city increased its rental assistance spending by 32% in 2024, Johnson is apprehensive.

“Definitely not enough,” Johnson said. “While we’re excited (and) grateful for that, we are going to run out. Hopefully, it takes us further into the year than how we ran out in October” for the 2023 funding.

Emotionally taxing for renters and advocates

Tenant support is emotionally taxing work. It weighed especially heavily on Fullerton and her colleagues late last year after the city’s funding ran dry. By December, even people who were already in the application pipeline could no longer receive support.

Eviction courts churn through many cases, often resulting in default judgments against tenants who don’t show up to court hearings. Landlords contend evictions enable them to deal with problem renters and can resolve disputes in which tenants have failed to uphold their financial obligations.

But Fullerton said the organization’s attorneys have multiple defenses they can help renters mount to stay housed — including a failure by a landlord to provide proper notice or a lack of jurisdiction.

In cases where landlords follow all legal rules and the issue is exclusively unpaid rent, she said, the first question she often asks clients is: Do you have friends and family you can stay with after you lose your place?

Research suggests the ordeal can have serious health ramifications.

The Eviction Lab at Princeton University released a study last month that linked significant rent burdens — when people are paying 50% or more of their income toward housing costs — to higher mortality rates. The risk of premature death increased even more for renters who faced the loss of housing through an eviction.

Even the threat of eviction was associated with a 19% rise in mortality rates in the researchers’ model. Sitting on the receiving end of an eviction judgment — with a judge ruling in the landlord’s favor — was associated with a 40% increase in the risk of premature death.

Aside from city-funded programs, the Denver County Court offers a civil self-help clinic and a website dedicated to people representing themselves in cases, including evictions.

Despite the surge in eviction filings in 2023, county court officials say they found the share of cases in which a writ was issued — allowing landlords to request a sheriff’s deputy to oversee an eviction — was lower than in any of the prior four years. Officials view that as an indication that early intervention and new resources were helping keep people in their homes.

Melissa Thate, the city’s housing stability director, said the recently launched online application portal for the TRUA program fulfilled a longtime goal of making it easier for people to apply for help when they’re in a pinch. The system also has streamlined reviews by providing quick access to the city’s three TRUA contractors this year — Brothers Redevelopment, Jewish Family Services and the Community Economic Defense Project.

The city is working with some smaller organizations to assist people who face technology or language barriers and want to apply for help.

In a nod to the critical role the legal defense clinics have played in county court, Thate said those service providers are slated to be moved to dedicated space on the Denver City and County Building’s fifth floor. That will mean no more lines outside Room 163, a cramped office space that previously housed court marshals.

The Community Economic Defense Project prides itself on moving quickly inside that small room. If a tenant qualifies for rental assistance — and there is money to go around — the organization can get a check printed and delivered within 24 hours, in many cases.

After the city’s well ran dry late last year, the organization was able to help some renters qualify to receive money from the state’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Gov. Jared Polis in late November signed a bill that added another $30 million to the state’s rental assistance pot for the state’s current fiscal year, which ends June 30. That almost doubled the $35 million already earmarked for the program.