Fees increase for many reasons, but according to recent reporting by The Denver Post’s Aldo Svaldi, some of the biggest increases are a result spikes in property insurance premiums.

So profound is the problem in Colorado that in 2024, lawmakers gave the Colorado insurance commissioner two years and $329,863 to study the issue and report on their findings this January.

Now is the time for Colorado lawmakers to step up and help keep existing multi-unit housing affordable. Insurance releif will also assist single-family homes in subdivisions where HOAs have a hard time insuring community buildings and recreation centers.

We fear that since 2024, matters have only gotten worse for Coloradans living in multi-family units that share insurance coverage using an HOA. The extreme example is Broomfield, where condominium owners are now paying a premium for their property insurance because of the threat of wildfire — made apparent by the 2021 Marshall Fire fire that tore through Boulder County. The Denver Post’s Aldo Svaldi found some communities where HOA fees have doubled — or more — in response. And condominium housing values have plummetted 12% in a single year.

When the report is released this month, Colorado’s leaders need to take a long, hard look at how we can protect people from skyrocketing insurance costs and the subsequent increase in HOA fees. In theory, living in a condominium should protect people from skyrocketing insurance costs. If 50 people live under the same roof, sharing that cost burden of insuring that roof should be a fraction of the impact to individual homeowners. But because of complexities in the market, that is not the case.

“What we are seeing in the market over the past 12 months is that the premium increases seem to be stabilizing, but they are stabilizing at a place that’s really high,” said Michael Conway, Colorado’s insurance commissioner. “It is imperative to try to find ways to bring more affordability into the market. There isn’t an easy button. It’s going to take a lot of work.”

Conway said that the single biggest driver of homeowner’s insurance premium increases is hail damage claims. If you have ever seen roofers going door to door after a minor hail storm in Colorado, you might have an idea what is driving the claims and the costs.

In addition to the excess and sometimes dubious roof claims in Colorado, the condominiums are uniquely burdened by a shortage of companies offering insurance policies to multi-unit dwellings, especially in large complexes that require multi-million dollar policies with complex terms.

These units are insured through the surplus lines market — an insurance marketplace that exists largely unregulated for unique or high-risk properties. The nature of the market means that policies are not reviewed or approved by the Department of Insurance. The lack of standard language and other regulation also makes it more likely that HOAs will suffer surprises about what is and is not covered by these complex agreements. Instead the system relies on licensed agents to broker the deals and take a commission.

Colorado lawmakers need to take a long, hard look at the market for insurance for complex and hard-to-insure units. We are not suggesting that Colorado establish a state-owned insurance company for such units or even that it step up regulation. That ship has sailed.

But Colorado could play the role of a broker, providing free services to residents who live in HOA communities to help them navigate these systems, shop for options and perhaps qualify for Colorado’s new insurance of last resort.

That is just one of many ideas that lawmakers should investigate after the report is released this month.

Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie, who was an author on the legislation requiring the study, said she is open to any and all suggestions.

“I’m eager to get my hands on the report in the next week or two and see what direction it might take us,” McCluskie told The Denver Post. “We should open every door and explore every option.”

McCluskie said residents in her mountain town communities are suffering from the insurance prices and are struggling to keep units insured and affordable.

Colorado lawmakers have a responsibility in 2026 to make this a top priority. The report will guide the way, but not if it sits on a shelf after it is released. There are ways to help HOAs navigate these systems and to create a fair field of competition for insurers, if only we can find the political will to make it happen.

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The HOA at Todd Creek Farms, an up-scale subdivision west of Brighton in Adams County, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy July 15. The reason, said board president Jason Pardikes, is to “stop the bleeding.”

The bankruptcy filing, first , follows years of turmoil that include anger over changes to the HOA’s covenants, a disputed swap of board members’ terms and allegations that Pardikes has financial ties to a landscaping company hired by the association.

The bleeding that Pardikes referred to is the money paid by the HOA to fight a lawsuit by the owners of 21 homes, roughly 5% of the 370 homes at Todd Creek Farms. The lawsuit filed in 2023 claims the swap of two board members’ terms violated the HOA bylaws and code of conduct.

The board also failed to disclose HOA records as required and documents in the court case and failed to carry out its fiduciary duties in its handling of the contract with Method Landscaping Services, the lawsuit said. For now, though, the lawsuit is on hold while the bankruptcy court decides the way forward.

“There’s not going to be movement on the state court case until or unless the bankruptcy court gives the blessing for such,” said Peter Towsky, the attorney representing the homeowners who sued. “I know the HOA filed for bankruptcy to stop the prosecution of the state court case. The question is whether or not there are actual solvency issues that justify the bankruptcy filing.”

A July 19 message from the HOA board to homeowners disputed a claim by plaintiffs in the lawsuit that filing for Chapter 11 reorganization was a delay tactic. The decision is “an end tactic, and it¶¶Òőap the only viable path to protect all homeowners from continued legal exposure,” the board said.

Pardikes told The Denver Post that with legal fees from the lawsuit averaging at least $40,000 a month, the HOA would have been unable to pay for services this month. “We are closing in on $900,000 in attorneys’ fees since this case started 27 months ago.”

If the court approves the reorganization, the HOA can resume payments to residents from the oil and gas drilling on the subdivision’s property, Pardikes said. The money is being used to pay legal expenses.

Asked if he knew how common HOA bankruptcies are, Towsky said, “At the very least, I would venture to say it¶¶Òőap exceedingly rare.”

A state agency that fields complaints and questions about HOAs and tracks trends for legislators hasn’t heard much about associations going bankrupt. The state doesn’t require HOAs to report bankruptcies and the issue doesn’t come up often with people contacting the , said David Donnelly, an education, communication and policy manager with the Department of Regulatory Agencies.

The state doesn’t regulate HOAs. Most of the associations are nonprofits governed by covenants and a board of homeowners elected by the other homeowners. The spells out basic standards and requirements.

At least 40% of Coloradans live in HOAs, which collect assessments for maintaining common areas and insurance and have the power to fine homeowners for violations of rules. Lawmakers have passed laws to protect homeowners when they think HOAs have gone too far. Legislators have moved to prevent the associations from foreclosing on homes because of late fees, fines or legal bills.

Pardikes said he has endorsed state laws to reform how HOAs are governed. In a 2024 interview, Pardikes, first elected to the board in 2019, said he and other members pushed for updating their bylaws. The changes included a ban on foreclosures for violating the rules and limiting the amount of interest on fines. He said there were 14 liens on people’s homes that should have been released.

After he joined the board, Pardikes settled a lawsuit with the HOA over deductions from his account that he said were never explained. He blames the current lawsuit against the HOA on personal grievances by former board members, some of whom are plaintiffs.

Trail of lawsuits

A previous lawsuit by one resident challenging the covenant changes was dismissed in 2022. A similar complaint was filed when the required 5% of the homeowners signed on. Pardikes shared emails showing efforts among residents to line up enough people to file the lawsuit in Adams County District Court.

In depositions by attorneys for the HOA, some plaintiffs said they didn’t have firsthand knowledge of various allegations in the lawsuit. Pardikes said previous board members, including plaintiffs in the lawsuit, participated in the kind of swap of board seats that critics said was a ploy for him to extend his time in office. He was re-elected to the board in February.

Independent audits from 2020 to 2024 found no financial irregularities under the current board, Pardikes said. Homeowners have re-elected current board members in three consecutive elections, with record-high participation this year, he added.

Pardikes also denied the lawsuit’s claim that he is connected to Method Landscaping Services, a company hired by the HOA.

But the lawsuit said based on bank records in an Adams County Sheriff’s investigative report, “numerous financial transactions flowed from the HOA to Method Landscape Services” and then to the accounts of Pardikes and his wife.

Towsky said his clients filed a motion to get a fully unredacted copy of the investigative report, but a judge sealed it. The lawsuit said HOA information listed ground maintenance payments for $224,529.35 in 2020 despite a contract calling for payment of only $26,677.05.

“We believe that Jason Paradikes, president of the HOA, benefitted to the tune of well over $100,000, it’s fair to say over $150,000, from the money that Method Landscaping Services was paid by Todd Creek Farms HOA,” Towsky said.

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs had access to contracts showing that the HOA paid the landscaping company $219,000 for work, including redoing a trails system, Pardikes said. In May, his attorney filed notice of intent to sue the Adams County Sheriff’s Office and the detective who investigated claims of theft from Todd Creek Farms by Pardikes.

The detective said criminal charges couldn’t be filed in the case “because the landscaper actually conducted some of the work according to many of the residents,” Adams County Sheriff’s Sgt. Adam Sherman said in an email. “So although the situation seems unethical, it¶¶Òőap not illegal.”

Towsky said his clients are frustrated by the delay in resolving their lawsuit.

“They believe this is just another act in a long pattern of behavior sought to avoid accountability,” Towsky said. “The plaintiffs believe there needs to be accountability.”

Pardikes said just “a small minority” of the community has pursued the lawsuit. He said 52% of the community has signed petitions saying the plaintiffs don’t represent them.

Christophe Attard scored a Denver home worth at least $300,000 in a 2021 foreclosure auction for a mere $23,524. To his credit, Attard has allowed the family he bought the home out from under to continue to live there as long as they made the payments to the mortgage that still used the house as collateral.

This was not actually a foreclosure. Monica Villela and her ex-husband Gilardo Gonzalez Jr. had made their mortgage payments and had even paid their homeowners association dues.

But the aggressive HOA in charge of their Green Valley Ranch neighborhood used fines, late penalties, interest and attorney’s fees to push the family out of the home that they had purchased in 2005 for $164,000.

Denver Post reporter Noelle Phillips has documented the abuse of the Green Valley Ranch HOA in northeast Denver, where people have lost homes over oil stains on driveways, broken blinds, and having a rug on a back patio.

The Master Homeowners Association filed 50 foreclosures in 2021 alone. And while they were among the worst offenders, across the state, HOAs take hundreds of houses every year, often over petty infractions and hefty late penalties and attorney fees.

The situation uncovered by The Post was so dire that state lawmakers responded with changes — limiting the amount of fines and attorney fees that can be collected. Most HOAs got the memo, and the number of foreclosures has decreased; Green Valley Ranch HOAs filed none in recent years. But other HOAs are still initiating foreclosures.

As we wrote in 2024, state law must change further so that HOA liens are secondary and cannot be used to initiate a foreclosure process. Leins should also not be used for fines, but only for unpaid HOA dues. Small claims court is the appropriate venue for an HOA to collect fines for overgrown weeds and broken windows.

For families like Villela’s, the damage had already been done.

Her situation, however, is unique because they purchased their home under an affordability easement owned by the City and County of Denver.

A judge ruled just last week that the house was illegally sold to Attard’s investment company — Welcome to Realty LLC 401K PSP — because the company exceeded income limits, and also the city’s housing ordinance prohibits homes from being owned by investors.

Given the situation, we advise Attard to sell the home back to Monica Villela and her ex-husband Gilardo Gonzalez Jr. for the offered price of $30,000, which was raised by a group of people who support Villela’s effort to keep her house. Attard should not be surprised. The deal was simply too good to be true.

And we’d also advise HOAs and investors to take note of this ruling.

While past foreclosure auction sales will likely stand judicial challenge unless there are affordability easements on the property, this case should give everyone involved in these deals pause. It’s unethical to foreclose a home over unsightly or inconvenient violations of covenants, and the ethics of snapping up these deals at auction are questionable as well.

No one has evidence that HOAs have been conspiring with investors, but now that residents know their rights and have learned to protest this abuse, investigations for collusion and equity theft are certain to follow.

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Updated 9:40 a.m. April 26, 2025: This story has been updated to correct the figure in the headline.

All that pressure caused tears to flow as she spoke last week about the looming May deadline that will determine whether she and an army of affordable housing advocates can save the house where she has raised four children.

“I’m so scared,” she said through those tears.

For three years, Villela and her four children have lived in a house in Green Valley Ranch, in far northeast Denver, that her family bought but no longer owns. The home is now owned by an investor who bought it at auction for $23,524 after the neighborhood homeowners association foreclosed over unpaid fines for overgrown weeds and other minor violations.

But a ruling earlier this month by a Denver District Court judge gives Villela a chance to buy the home back. Other qualified buyers could also make offers, depending on what kind of agreement is made between the city and the investor during ongoing court proceedings. Meanwhile, that investor is trying to evict the family.

It’s a tense situation in an ongoing fight in Colorado over the power that HOAs have to foreclose on homeowners over unpaid fines and fees.

Judge Mark T. Bailey ruled April 5 that Welcome to Realty LLC 401K PSP, an investment company owned by Christophe Attard, must sell the house it bought at the foreclosure auction in December 2021 because the company does not meet the conditions of , which sets affordability covenants on some homes. Those covenants prevent homes from being owned by investors.

Bailey’s order also placed an injunction prohibiting Attard from leasing the house and, because affordability covenants eventually expire, the judge demanded the clock reset to account for the three years Welcome to Realty has owned the house.

Housing advocates believe the ruling will set a new precedent in Denver and could force other investors to sell homes with affordable housing covenants that they bought at foreclosure auctions forced by HOAs.

The judge’s order “would also suggest that every sale at auction of every home in Green Valley Ranch was probably not legal because the auction house, or the county sheriff who’s running the auctions, were not qualifying buyers,” said Zach Neumann, co-founder of the , a housing equity nonprofit. “And as far as we can tell, most of the purchasers are real estate investors who, by definition, are not qualified buyers. And there’s a lot of potential that all of these sales have been invalid and are potentially reversible.”

Villela’s family bought their homeÌęon Netherland Place in 2005 and made regular mortgage payments and kept up with their HOA’s rules and fees. But the family began struggling when Villela and her husband, Gilardo Gonzalez Jr., separated.

Gonzalez continued to pay the mortgage, but Villela, who was living in their house with the couple’s four children, could not keep up with the maintenance required by the Town Center Homeowners Association.

Fines over weeds and leaving a garbage can on the curb multiplied as late fees stacked up. Villela said she knew the family was in arrears, but put those expenses on the back burner because of other struggles connected to her and her husband’s separation.

She said she wasn’t aware that the HOA had put a lien on her house and that a judge had ordered it to be sold at a foreclosure auction.

Then Attard showed up in her driveway in March 2022 with documents showing he had purchased the house.

“As soon as he left, I started crying,” Villela said. “I remember exactly that day started my nightmare.”

Since then, Villela has assembled a team of housing advocates, friends and neighbors to support her fight to get her home back.

Her ex-husband continues to pay the mortgage, taxes and homeowner insurance so his family has a place to live. Neumann said Villela reached an agreement with Attard that allowed her family to stay in the house without paying rent to Welcome to Realty, though Attard has now moved to evict the family.

The Denver Post contacted Attard to ask about how he plans to comply with the judge’s order to sell the property or whether he will appeal. He said, “It¶¶Òőap too early to tell. I appreciate your time. Thank you,” before ending the phone call.

Residents rise up

The ability of homeowners associations to place liens on houses for unpaid fines in Colorado has been an ongoing issue since 2022, when residents in Green Valley Ranch began speaking out against the high number of foreclosures instigated by their HOAs.

In 2021, the filed 50 foreclosures, accounting for nearly half of all HOA-initiated foreclosures in Denver that year. The Master HOA represents about 4,600 homes, all located south of 48th Avenue.

Between Jan. 1, 2022, and Dec. 31, 2024, HOAs in Denver foreclosed on 94 homes, according to data from Denver’s . Sixty of those cases were filed in 2022, with 28 of the properties located in Green Valley Ranch. There were zero HOA foreclosures in Green Valley Ranch in 2023 and 2024 after the public protests.

The Department of Housing Stability could not provide the number of houses with affordability covenants that had been sold at foreclosure sales.

Homeowners associations have so much power in Colorado that they can place liens on people’s homes that supersede even the banks that hold their mortgages. That means an HOA could sell a property to collect the money it¶¶Òőap owed and the owner still would be left with mortgage debt and none of the equity they had built.

The foreclosure auctions cause homeowners to lose thousands of dollars in equity. Villela’s family, for example, bought their house in 2005 for $164,200. It was valued at more than $300,000 when it was sold at the January 2022 auction.

In Colorado, homeowners associations operate with little oversight from any state regulatory agency, including the , whose real estate division oversees agents, brokers, developers, mortgage lenders and appraisers. More than 2.3 million Coloradans — about 40% of the population and about 61% of homeowners — live in communities with HOAs.

The Colorado legislature has tackled HOAs’ unbridled power by requiring written notices about violations in a homeowner’s preferred language, capping fees and limiting the amount an HOA can charge a resident for reimbursing attorneys’ fees.

This year, the legislature is considering two bills: one that intends to protect homeowner equity and avoid courthouse foreclosure auctions, and one that would create an alternative dispute resolution process. Time is running out in the legislative session and both bills appear to be stalled.

‘This is still happening’

Critics say there is more to do, though, to rein in the associations’ ability to foreclose on homes for unpaid fines and fees.

“We’ve found it is still happening even with the laws passing,” said Lydia Flynn, a Green Valley Ranch resident who has become an advocate for HOA reform and one of Villela’s allies. “The HOAs have found ways to skirt them.”

As of Monday, the listed seven houses on its . Five were initiated by homeowners associations.

That’s exactly what happened to Villela, whose Green Valley Ranch home is part of theÌęTown Center Metro District.

Since Welcome to Realty bought her house, Villela has become an outspoken critic of how HOAs operate. She has told her story to multiple news outlets and testified before the legislature. She has also surrounded herself with a support network that includes the Colorado Economic Defense Project and the , a racial justice organization that fights for fair housing policies across the United States.

The fight over the house has taken a toll on the Villela family, and it escalated in March when Attard left an eviction notice on the family’s front door. It was discovered by Villela’s 14-year-old daughter. They have until 10 a.m. May 31 to buy the house or move.

“The girl was devastated,” Villela said. “She couldn’t even talk because she was crying so hard.”

Neumann, the economic defense project’s founder, is helping Villela fill out applications so she can apply to buy the house back from Welcome to Realty. She most likely will meet the income restrictions that will make her an eligible buyer. But she hopes no one else competes for the house.

A group of supporters has come up with $30,000 to offer, Neumann said. That would give Attard a $7,000 profit.

“We want to get this house back,” he said.

About half of the state’s population lives under the thumb of an HOA. They might appreciate the communal gardens, community pool, and limits on the number of front yard lawn gnomes, but worry about the dark side of HOA governance – the proliferation of rules, busybody enforcement, escalating dues and fees, and the risk of HOA foreclosure for delinquent payments. They should worry about the latter. According to a 2023 investigation by the , HOAs filed around 3,000 foreclosure cases since 2018 and more than 250 homes were ultimately auctioned off, most for less than the home’s market value. A hundred of the properties sold for less than $60,000 and the owners lost most or all of their equity.

One such property the Sun found was auctioned off for $5,000, just $110.69 more than the homeowner owed the HOA. A half a year later, the condo sold for $420,000, that¶¶Òőap money the former owner never saw.

This session, the General Assembly is considering legislation to protect homeowners’ equity. by State Rep. Naquetta Ricks would give homeowners facing an HOA foreclosure a nine-month grace period to try and sell the house on the open market. Homeowners unable to get the market value could secure a lien on the home to retain some of the equity from the eventual sale. The bill just passed out of committee.

Ricks has sponsored a second bill, , which would mandate homeowners and HOAs in dispute work through an internal mediation process to resolve the conflict. Under current law, HOAs and homeowners in dispute must resolve their issues through civil lawsuits, which can be expensive and take a long time to resolve. Mediation can lessen the cost and time for resolution.

Both of these bills have merit.

Last year the legislature passed to reduce the number of HOA foreclosures. The law requires the HOA to take steps before initiating a foreclosure. It must first file a lawsuit to collect the debt owed or file an involuntary bankruptcy petition against the owner. The law caps attorneys’ fees at the lesser of $5,000 or 50% of their debt. The law increases the limit each year based on inflation. The law also creates a “first right of redemption” for HOA-foreclosed houses sold at auction. Homeowners, tenants, affordable housing nonprofits, community land trusts, cooperative housing corporations, and state and local government agencies have 30 days to state their intent to purchase the property in an affidavit. The law gives the purchaser 180 days to raise the money for purchase and complete the sale.

House Bills 1043 and 1123 would complement House Bill 1337’s protections for homeowners who live under HOAs. They wouldn’t go far enough to get me to consider purchasing in such a neighborhood. I still couldn’t live with the beige paint palette.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.

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Colorado Democrats, hoping to enshrine federal voter protections in state law, are pursuing a bill that would bar voter discrimination based on race, sexual orientation and gender identity in state law — just as President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at overhauling elections nationwide.

Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat and sponsor of the measure, described it as an attempt to bolster state election protections — and voters’ rights — amid an uncertain federal climate.

Senate Bill 1 passed its first full Senate vote on Friday afternoon. If it becomes law, it would prohibit local governments from holding elections in a way that would result in “material disparity” in voter participation based on certain demographics, whether it was intentional or not.

The measure still needs to pass a formal vote in the Senate and go through the House before it could land on Gov. Jared Polis’ desk.

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Colorado lawmakers pass 3 gun-control measures including bill limiting sale of semiautomatic weapons

Colorado lawmakers on Friday sent three gun-control measures regulating the sale of ammunition and firearms to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk for passage into law.

The bills now waiting to be signed include Senate Bill 3, which would limit the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms to only people who’ve passed a background check and training course; House Bill 1133, which requires retailers to keep ammunition locked; and House Bill 1238, which requires additional security at gun shows.

The three bills received final procedural votes in the House and Senate on Friday. Polis is expected to sign all three. He has 30 days to do so — or to veto them — before the bills pass automatically into law.

Gun-control advocates celebrated the bills’ passage — and what they described as Colorado’s role as a “national leader” on gun violence prevention — in a statement Friday afternoon.

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Colorado budget proposal averts severe Medicaid, education cuts; transportation among areas trimmed

Colorado budget writers have finalized the state government¶¶Òőap proposed spending plan — and they’ve done so without long-feared draconian cuts to Medicaid and education.

The powerful Joint Budget Committee, which wrapped its work Wednesday night, started the process last fall with a $1.2 billion spending hole it needed to fill. State spending, driven primarily by mandatory Medicaid costs for the lowest-income Coloradans, had been outpacing caps set by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR.

The size of the shortfall, out of a $16 billion-plus general fund budget, left the bipartisan membership of the committee and others worried they’d have to sever services for some of the most vulnerable Coloradans, or set back education goals. Instead, they preserved — or even gave small increases — to some of the services they consider most vital.

The JBC’s proposal — which now goes to the rest of the legislature — sets aside $150 million to boost education spending and gives Medicaid providers a small increase to their reimbursement rates.

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Colorado lawmakers kill bill aimed at banning lobbyists from donating to campaigns

Colorado lawmakers killed a proposal Thursday that would have prohibited lobbyists from donating to legislators, statewide elected officials or candidates for those offices.

Senate Bill 148 fell at the measure’s first hurdle on 2-3 bipartisan vote by a committee. The bill would’ve expanded a 31-year-old Colorado law that bars lobbyists from donating to campaigns during the legislature’s 120-day annual session.

Had the bill passed, the proposed year-round prohibition would have bumped Colorado into the ranks of a handful of states that more broadly limit lobbyist donations to the policymakers they’re trying to influence. But it failed to get out of the Senate’s State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee.

Sen. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat, sponsored the bill and is the committee’s chair. He said the bill was intended both to “catch up the law” to modern realities — lawmaking and meetings with lobbyists extend beyond the bounds of the legislative session — and to improve the public perception of government.

Weissman was the subject of a dark money-drenched primary challenge last summer, and a consumer-protection bill he sponsored was among the most-lobbied bills of last year’s session.

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Colorado House passes bill banning use of algorithms blamed for driving up apartment rents

For the second time in a year, the Colorado House passed a bill Wednesday that would prohibit the use of algorithms that, critics and investigators allege, have been used to hike up apartment rents in Denver and across the country.

House Bill 1004 would ban the use of algorithmic devices that are used to set or recommend rental prices or occupancy levels in rental housing. It effectively targets RealPage, a Richardson, Texas-based software company being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the state for allegedly facilitating price-fixing via its algorithm. The software takes rent and occupancy data from property owners and recommends prices and rental targets back.

The bill’s sponsors — Denver Democratic Reps. Steven Woodrow and Javier Mabrey — said the measure was intended to ensure housing providers compete with each other to lower prices, rather than collude to keep rents higher.

“We need competitors to compete, especially on critical terms like price,” Woodrow said during the bill’s initial floor debate Tuesday. “Unfortunately, with the advent of the internet and massive data collection and sharing, certain actors have developed sophisticated price-setting algorithms.”

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Should it be illegal to shoot wild bison that wander into Colorado? Lawmakers will decide.

Every so often, wild bison from one of Utah’s herds cross the invisible state border and wander into northwest Colorado — unknowingly putting their lives in danger.

When the bison cross over, they lose the protections Utah gives the species as a big-game animal. In Colorado, there are no repercussions for killing wild bison.

Such killings are rare in Colorado, but the state should protect the species because of its importance to Coloradans and Native American communities across the country, Sen. Jessie Danielson said. The Jefferson County Democrat is sponsoring a bill in the legislature that would make it illegal to kill bison here.

“This is a really important animal to the state of Colorado, our history, our cultural background,” Danielson said. “The Native community brought this forward because of the importance of the animal to their religion and culture.”

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Colorado legislature passes gun control bill requiring training before purchase for certain firearms

Two days after the fourth anniversary of the Boulder King Soopers mass shooting, the Colorado House passed legislation to limit the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms to Coloradans who have passed a background check and taken a training course.

Senate Bill 3 — which would apply the new restrictions to the gun used in the Boulder attack — passed the House 36-28 on Monday. The bill’s Senate sponsors next will move to accept changes made in the House and then send the bill to Gov. Jared Polis.

The governor is expected to sign the measure. At Polis’ behest, lawmakers agreed to weaken the bill’s initial intent of fully banning the sale or purchase of the targeted weapons, unless they were altered to have a fixed magazine — meaning that they could not be reloaded as rapidly.

Still, the measure represents the strongest gun-control legislation passed by Colorado lawmakers since they began undertaking firearm regulation in earnest more than a decade ago.

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Colorado legislators consider another round of HOA bills to protect homeowners from foreclosure

The Colorado General Assembly is poised to approve additional protections for homeowners who become indebted to their homeowners associations and risk losing their houses because of unpaid fines, late fees and legal bills.

Two bills are up for consideration this legislative session. One is intended to protect homeowner equity and avoid courthouse foreclosure auctions, and is one vote away from legislative approval. A second bill, which would create an alternative dispute resolution process, is in the early stages of legislative consideration.

The homeowner equity bill, HB25-1043, would give homeowners facing foreclosure a chance to sell their houses before judges order them sold at courthouse auctions by requesting a nine-month stay, giving the homeowners time to list the houses and find buyers. Homeowners could then use the sales proceeds to pay their HOA debt, pay off their mortgages and potentially keep the remaining equity.

Colorado HOAs have the authority to place “super liens” on houses that even trump bank mortgages. That often leads to people losing their homes as well as the equity they had built while still owing their bank for the loan.

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Major gun control vote, plus hearings for abortion bills this week in the Colorado legislature

The rhythm of the Colorado legislature’s 2025 session hit a snag Friday when members of the Joint Budget Committee delayed the budget¶¶Òőap introduction by a week, but several major bills are still set to work through the building in the coming days.

On Monday, House Republicans were fighting Senate Bill 3, the proposal to restrict access to certain firearms, during one of its last steps before it might end up at Gov. Jared Polis’ desk. The House was set to vote on the bill — which would require a background check and a training course to buy certain semiautomatic weapons — in the afternoon.

At the same time, the Senate also debated a pair of firearm bills: House Bills 1133 and 1238. Those proposals would restrict ammunition sales and increase the requirements to host gun shows, respectively.

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Two bills are up for consideration this legislative session. One is intended to protect homeowner equity and avoid courthouse foreclosure auctions, and is one vote away from legislative approval. A second bill, which would create an alternative dispute resolution process, is in the early stages of legislative consideration.

The homeowner equity bill,Ìę, would give homeowners facing foreclosure a chance to sell their houses before judges order them sold at courthouse auctions by requesting a nine-month stay, giving the homeowners time to list the houses and find buyers. Homeowners could then use the sales proceeds to pay their HOA debt, pay off their mortgages and potentially keep the remaining equity.

State Rep. Nequetta Ricks, D-Aurora, who is one of the bill’s sponsors, has been at the forefront of HOA reform in the Colorado legislature since 2022, when sustained media attention, including from The Denver Post, showed how Colorado’s HOAs operated with little oversight and possessed the ability to foreclose on people’s homes because of unpaid fines.

Colorado HOAs have the authority to place “super liens” on houses that even trump bank mortgages. That often leads to people losing their homes as well as the equity they had built while still owing their bank for the loan. The HOAs still can place liens on homes and seek foreclosure under state law, but the homeowner equity bill would give people a shot at holding onto some of the investment they have in their homes, she said.

“We’re trying to give them a leg up during a difficult time in their lives,” Ricks said.

The bill also includes provisions that would require HOAs to send advisements to delinquent homeowners about credit counseling available through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and to begin sending data on liens and foreclosures to the state. Right now, there is little foreclosure data, which could help inform lawmakers about how severe the problem is and guide what other policies might be needed, Ricks said.

The bill has been approved by both chambers but is returning to the House of Representatives for a vote after the Senate added some amendments. It’s expected to be approved this month and then will be sent to Gov. Jared Polis for signature.

“Too many homeowners have been forced out of their homes with nothing left to start over,” said bill sponsor Sen. Tony Exum, D-Colorado Springs. “We want to let homeowners have a fair chance to retain the equity they have in their homes.”

However, advocates for HOA reform in Colorado expressed disappointment over the bill.

The Colorado HOA Forum, a grassroots organization pushing for more control over the bodies that govern neighborhoods, wanted the bill to do more to help homeowners avoid going to court, said Stan Hrincevich, the forum’s president.

The HOA Forum had proposed a system where homeowners facing foreclosure could receive credit counseling and then attend a hearing before their HOA board to work out a settlement agreement. That would avoid the courts and save homeowners money because HOAs typically force members to pay for the associations’ attorney’s fees on top of the fines and late fees owed, Hrincevich said.

“That stinks of more court costs and attorneys fees,” he said of the bill.

Ricks said the idea is that a simple form would be created for homeowners to file to the courts asking for the nine-month stay. That should not require them to hire their lawyers, she said.

While the HOA Forum was disappointed in the bill’s changes, Hrincevich said the group will support it.

“It¶¶Òőap a good step toward ending the abusive practices of foreclosures whereby a homeowner’s equity is stripped,” he said.

The alternative dispute resolution bill — — would require homeowners and their HOAs to enter mediation before HOAs file complaints in court. It is expected to get a second reading in the House this week, said Ricks, who is sponsoring both HOA bills.

“That bill says the dispute resolution process must be exhausted between the HOA and the homeowner before going to court,” she said. “We are trying to attempt to solve these disputes and keep them out of court.”

The lack of HOA oversight in Colorado became a hot issue in 2022 when a rash of foreclosures filed by the Master Homeowners Association for Green Valley Ranch shocked residents and triggered swift condemnation from elected officials and Denver housing advocates.

Those involved with Colorado’s housing industry said it was the perfect storm: an aggressive association operating in a field with no regulation. Some said the foreclosures were predatory in their targeting of Black, Latino and Asian residents.

Since then, the legislature has tried to reign in HOA power. It has capped the amount of money residents can be charged in delinquent fees for things such as garbage cans left out too long, grease stains in driveways or damaged window blinds that can be seen from the street. Written notices also are required before fines can be levied. The legislature barred HOAs from auctioning homes because of unpaid fines for community covenant violations.

In Colorado, homeowners associations operate without oversight from any state regulatory agency, including the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, whose real estate division oversees agents, brokers, developers, mortgage lenders and appraisers. More thanÌę2.3 million ColoradansÌę— about 40% of the population and about 61% of homeowners — live in communities with HOAs.

The situation for HOA members has improved, Ricks said, but more needs to be done. She would like to see a statewide office created to regulate HOAs because unscrupulous groups still exist. For example, after the state began requiring written notices of violations in a homeowner’s preferred language, Ricks received reports of HOAs charging residents $25 or more for the letters.

“They need a better way of monitoring, managing and ensuring that homeowners are being treated fairly because there’s a lot of predatory HOAs out there,” she said.

Jason Pardikes and Mary Moore sat at a table on a backyard patio at a home in Todd Creek Farms, an upscale subdivision of 370 homes nestled among rolling hills near Brighton and stretching over 780 acres.

The settings are different, but the four, like many Coloradans, live in homes governed by homeowner associations. And they believe their communities would be better with changes in how HOAs work.

“I’m a retired teacher and I’m trying to supplement my income with substitute teaching,” said Cynthia Masters, whose monthly HOA dues at her Lakewood townhome are nearing $700. “This is just insane if your house payment is $1,200 and you’re adding $700 more on that.”

Masters said the board attributed the increases in dues to more expensive insurance. Older multifamily buildings have been hit particularly hard as some insurers have exited the market or significantly hiked their rates.

While the owners of single-family homes or condos in an HOA typically have their own insurance, , such as roofs, pools and other structures or shared assets managed by the HOA. The policy also also provides general liability coverage if someone is injured on common property, according to insurance.com.

Garcia and Oquendo and other residents in the eight units on the west side of the Cornerstone Condominiums HOA in Longmont said they’re dealing with another common complaint of HOA members: lack of communication. They said the association and the management company won’t respond to questions about the termination of a landscaping service they believe they’re still paying for. They said they can’t get answers about rising monthly dues and the association’s finances.

Now, the residents face a vote that would cut their units out of the HOA that includes four homes on the east side of the street.

At Todd Creek Farms, attempts to update the HOA’s covenants and polices have spawned three lawsuits and death threats. Pardikes, the HOA board president, supports reforms and believes legislators can do more to ensure that homeowners aren’t at the mercy of rogue boards or management companies.

“The ability for an HOA to actually change its covenants to meet its needs is really, really difficult,” said Pardikes, who wants to see the threshold for changing association policy lowered, perhaps to a vote of 50%-plus one of the households.

And he’d like to see oversight of companies that manage HOAs. D-Arvada, that would have revived licensing requirements for the companies failed in the last legislative session.

Titone and Rep. Naquetta Ricks, an Aurora Democrat, are looking at reintroducing their HOA bills that didn’t make it out of the 2024 Colorado General Assembly. on a home to ensure that the owner walks away with some equity.

An investor can snap up a property after paying attorney’s fees and the money owed to the HOA, leaving the former owner with the mortgage and no return on the investment. Ricks’ bill would have factored in the home’s fair market value when setting a bid.

Homeowner associations are second only to property tax entities when it comes to collecting debt in a foreclosure on an HOA property.

“The bill’s coming back. We cannot sanction equity theft in Colorado,” Ricks said. “I don’t want people entering into homelessness because they’ve owned a home and the home gets sold for a little bit of nothing.”

The 2024 legislative session was chock-full of bills on housing and homeowner associations. Colorado is grappling with a crisis in housing affordability and availability. Homeowner associations and metro districts, taxing authorities created by subdivision developers, remain under scrutiny after reports of people being foreclosed on for unpaid fines and attorney’s fees for violating rules. Infractions like having cracked blinds or an oil-stained driveway have led to liens on the property.

for failure to pay fees or fines for violations. The law requires certain notices and caps attorney’s fees. An HOA can still impose liens for nonpayment of fines and foreclose for nonpayment of monthly and special assessments. Ricks was a main sponsor of the bill.

HOAs: They’re everywhere

Homeowner associations can seem like a mystery, like a social group where sparsely attended meetings start with a secret handshake. They can be a mystery even to the people who live in one.

And a lot of Coloradans live in HOAs. Between 40% and 45% of the state’s population lives in a homeowners association, according to the . At the end of June, there were 8,217 registered HOAs with a total of 906,225 units.

Using a U.S. Census Bureau formula of 2.57 people per household, an estimated 2,328,998 Coloradans live in buildings, complexes or subdivisions governed by HOAs. The number likely is higher because there are 3,000 associations considered inactive that might have disbanded or simply haven’t registered, said David Donnelly, an education, communication and policy manager with the state Department of Regulatory Agencies, or DORA.

Although the HOA center is in the Division of Real Estate and housed in DORA, it isn’t a regulatory agency. Associations are governed by what’s called a declaration of covenants and a board of homeowners elected by other homeowners.

“Across the nation, there are very few states that have any real level of regulatory authority over homeowner associations. The primary reason is because the vast majority of them are created as nonprofit corporations,” Donnelly said.

The state HOA center takes complaints about associations but doesn’t investigate them or mediate disputes. The complaints are included in an annual report that helps track trends and is a resource for legislators in drafting bills. The center also provides information to homeowners on their rights and responsibilities.

The center got 328 complaints last year and the most common concerns dealt with lack of communication, followed by maintenance issues, excessive fees and assessments and foreclosures. About 70% of the complaints were lodged against the board and 29% against a manager or management company.

“Access to HOA records is one of the most common complaints that we receive in our office,” Donnelly said.

People complain of boards refusing to hand over records, saying the records are lost or being quoted a large fee for the documents. Masters said the HOA board at her Lakewood townhome complex initially quoted the price of $1,500 for requested records. After objections, the price for copies dropped to $70.

The spells out some basic standards and requirements. The law applies to voting, meetings, finances and insurance for an HOA community’s common structures, such as swimming pools and roofs on condo buildings.

Titone wants Colorado to require management companies to be licensed to provide more protection for homeowners. Her bill in 2019 to extend the requirement was vetoed by Gov. Jared Polis, who said he wasn’t convinced the legislation would protect consumers in a cost-efficient manner.

Polis ordered DORA to make recommendations about licensing and protecting homeowners’ rights.

“You’re trusting the people who are volunteering to be on a board to be working in the best interest of the community, as well as the management company that they’re hiring,” Titone said. “But that doesn’t always happen. When there is a breach of trust, in either the board or the management company, it can create chaos in a community.”

Wendy Vernon-Dzaman hopes legislators will turn out for a rally calling for HOA reforms that is planned from 3 to 5 p.m. Sept. 14 on the state Capitol’s west steps. Vernon-Dzaman was on the HOA board for a short time at Club Valencia condominiums in Arapahoe County. She was among 160 families displaced by a fire there in 2023.

“It’s just been a bunch of us, talking about all the things we’ve gone through and realizing, ‘Wait a minute, there are a lot of flaws and we need reform and we need representation,’ ” she said.

Death threats and lawsuits

Pardikes was elected to the HOA board at Todd Creek Farms in 2019 after settling with the board in a lawsuit over fines for alleged violations and attorney’s fees. He said the former board attorney refused to say what some of the charges were for.

After other new members joined, the board held meetings and mailed notices on proposals to update the HOA’s bylaws, which a majority of the community supported, Pardikes said. The amendments included a ban on foreclosures for violating the rules; allowing solar panels; and jettisoning rules that were outdated or conflicted with state law,

“We found more than 14 liens on people’s homes. Most of them should have been released years and years ago,” Pardikes said.

Retired school teacher Connie Hicks, who was dealing with serious health problems and couldn’t finish repainting her house, had about $3,600 deducted from her account to cover fines. She told the management company she planned to finish painting but she couldn’t stop the automatic payment she had set up for her monthly dues.

“When they just keep zapping you for money, then you can be to the point where you don’t have the money to do it,” Hicks said.

Pardikes talked to her about the fines that had piled up and the board refunded the money. “Then I was able to hire some people to come and paint the front of the place,” Hicks said.

While Hicks called the new board’s approach “a breath of fresh air,” some residents sued on grounds that the board elections and bylaw changes violated the HOA’s covenants and state law. One lawsuit was settled and one was dismissed.

A third lawsuit filed in Adams County District Court by 21 households accuses the board of breach of contract as well as violations of HOA bylaws and state law. The trial is scheduled for April 2025. So far, the board has spent approximately $150,000 on the lawsuit, Pardikes said.

Three of the plaintiffs were on the board when Pardikes sued over the fines he was assessed. He said most of the people suing supported an effort in 2022 to recall the new board. The attempt failed.

For now, the amendments to the covenants are on hold. Hicks and former HOA board member Stewart Setchfield wrote in an opinion column in The Denver Post that reforms “depend on the statutory cover that only the legislature can provide.”

Pardikes has received anonymous letters and a T-shirt with the words “A liar and a cheat” emblazoned on it. In April, someone sent a letter in bold block letters that warned him to move before an accident happens, adding “You can’t out smart (sic) my bullet.”

Pardikes reported the letter to the police.

Moore, elected to the board five months ago, said she decided to run despite the turmoil because she cares deeply about the community. She felt the board could benefit from her 28 years of experience in accounting and information technology.

“One of the things I believe in is if you don’t like what’s happening, then become involved and put your best effort forth to change it,” Moore said.

Weeding out the bad actors

Lee Freedman spends a lot of time trying to get more people involved in HOAs. Freedman, an attorney, is on the Colorado Legislative Action Committee of theÌę, or CAI, an international organization with state chapters that represents HOA management companies, association boards, homeowners, attorneys and contractors who do business with HOAs.

The organization lobbies legislators on bills as well as sponsors forums and workshops and provides resources for HOAs and industry professionals. The institute has a program that issues its own certification for management companies that go through certain levels of training.

“The goal is to provide education and ultimately weed out those that are bad parties or are putting a black eye on the industry,” Freedman said.

The institute was involved in writing the initial bill requiring that HOA management companies in Colorado be licensed, Freedman said. But given Polis’ opposition to renewing the requirement, Freedman said it makes sense to focus on education or some kind of certification instead.

“I have gotten judgments against bad managers. We are pushing to look at all the ways to deal with those individuals that would pass muster with Gov. Polis,” Freedman said.

Legislation that limits attorney’s fees doesn’t pass muster with CAI. Two of those are the 2022 law restricting the basis for foreclosures and a bill approved this year, , that limits attorney’s fees for collecting assessments, such as monthly dues, or other charges a homeowner owes.

If the fees are capped, those costs could get passed onto homeowners because lawyers will do what they need to serve the best interests of their clients, Freedman said. He believes the discretion to determine awards should stay with judges.

A priority for CAI is looking at whether HOAs are properly maintaining buildings and funding their reserves. Freedman said putting off maintenance at the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Fla., likely contributed to the building’s collapse in 2021 that killed 98 people.

are looking at construction flaws in the building’s pool deck.Ìę to comply with new regulations since the disaster and monthly dues are increasing to cover higher home insurance rates.

Needed: A new governing model

“I think they’re here to stay, so if they’re here to stay we have to find out how to make them work better.”

That’s how Connie Van Dorn’s summed up HOAs. Van Dorn became an advocate for HOA reform after bad experiences with an association board at a Denver-area development where she had bought her “dream retirement home.”

“Four of us who tried to work with the board decided to sell,” Van Dorn said.

She helped start the Colorado HOA Homeowner Advocates, which played a prime role in writing House Bill 1137, the 2022 legislation dealing with foreclosures. She would like to see an alternative dispute resolution process set up so people don’t have to resort to court.

Van Dorn sat on that reviewed homeowners’ rights and complaints and made recommendations to legislators. She said the report “offered no meaningful findings” and that a deeper analysis of the data is required.

“I don’t know what the answer is, but I think we need a new governing model,” Van Dorn said.

She was the homeowner representative on the Rocky Mountain chapter of CAI for a couple of years. Van Dorn believes the organization’s focus is looking out for a multibillion-dollar industry rather than protecting homeowners.

Data from a CAI-associated foundation show that in Colorado in 2023 to maintain the communities.

Steve Horvath is founder of , a homeowner advocacy group based in Washington state that tracks trends and legislation nationally. Homeowners are frustrated with cost increases, Horvath said, but many times they don’t understand where the money is going.

“I don’t see there being excessive fees or really anything wrong with the increase in assessments,” Horvath said. “It’s simply passing along the cost of doing business that has been done for years. It¶¶Òőap just that the cost of doing business is getting more and more expensive and the less the cost is understood by the people paying for it, the more angst there is about what those costs are.”

Starting from scratch?

Garcia and other residents of Cornerstone Condominiums who bought Habitat for Humanity homes in the Longmont neighborhood said they have failed to get answers from the HOA management company about maintenance, monthly dues increases and overall finances.

Now, the owners of the eight homes must vote soon on a proposal to de-annex their units from four homes across the street.ÌęSeparating from the other homes is scary and the residents don’t know how to start an HOA from scratch, Garcia said. “But I believe we need to separate because I think it’s probably for the best.”

Garcia said the push to break resulted from people on her side of the street balking at a special assessment to pay for work on the other side.ÌęPeter Dauster, an attorney working with the HOA, didn’t respond to a question about how the proposed separation came about.

Dauster also didn’t respond to questions about whether the eight units are still paying for a landscaping service that ended in March

However, Dauster did write in an email that if residents asked that materials be made available in Spanish, “the association would have been (and is) happy to make that accommodation as required by law upon request.”

Garcia said she does what she can to keep residents who don’t speak or read English informed. “We’re all Latinos on the west side and we have been very frustrated. We feel we have been discriminated against from the beginning.”

Taking over the HOA

Residents of Pioneer Hills in Aurora were staring at special assessments in the thousands of dollars range for hail damage to roofs. Steven Bartkowski, who has lived in the development for two years, said the HOA board first said in late 2023 that the work could be done without additional money from homeowners.

A week later, Bartkowski found out the repairs would cost him $18,900. The board also said that the regular monthly dues would rise from $320 to $640.

“I didn’t know there was damage on my roof. I didn’t see anything. We never saw any documents from the management company, board or roofing company,” Bartkowski said.

Homeowners couldn’t get records showing that the board voted to levy the assessment or got bids for the job. Bartkowski and about 10 other residents pooled their money to hire a lawyer and, following state law, requested a special board meeting. When the board refused, the homeowners held their own, voted out the board and elected new members.

The new board is sorting through records, financial statements and other documents.

“They’re starting to actually be transparent with our community members and make serious changes to our bylaws,” Bartkowski said.Ìę“I think the moral of the story is that you have the right in the community to take over your board and figure things out, which is cool.”

He is torn about whether to sell his home. His real estate agent told him there’s a red flag on his community because the HOA dues are among the highest in the area.

“The silver lining in all of this is that difficult times brought the community together,” Bartkowski said. “Now, we’re trying to rally around the community and just make it better.”

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As the one-year anniversary of the 2021 Marshall fire approached, Kyle Brown was serving as a city councilman in Louisville, a Denver suburb that had been devastated by the blaze.

Brown’s own home had escaped damage, but hundreds of his neighbors had lost everything to the costliest and deadliest fire in the state’s history, which caused more than $2 billion in damages and destroyed more than 1,000 structures.

Despite Brown’s efforts to help the victims, . Displaced residents were struggling to secure insurance payouts and scrape together cash to rebuild their homes, and most couldn’t afford the jacked-up rents in the area. The City Council was supposed to be helping these victims, but instead it was locked in a dispute with them over whether they should have .

Brown was desperate for a way to do more. When the incumbent state representative in the area resigned after it emerged that she didn’t live in the district, he saw an opportunity and put his name forward as her replacement.

What happened next is one of the rare disaster recovery success stories in recent U.S. history. After securing a seat in the state legislature, Brown, a Democrat, spent the next two years working with a highly organized group of survivors to pass a suite of ambitious bills that have made Colorado a national leader in responding to climate disasters.

Many of the same issues crop up across the country after fires and floods, but survivors rarely succeed in getting lawmakers to pay attention to any of them, let alone all of them. Brown, however, was able to gain bipartisan support for bills that give fire survivors leverage against insurers, mortgage companies, homeowners’ associations, and rental property owners, elevating concerns that have often been ignored in other disaster-prone states.

This legislative success wasn’t thanks to any political horse-trading or inspiring rhetoric on Brown’s part. Rather it¶¶Òőap the result of a hand-in-glove collaboration with a well-organized and often militant group of fire survivors — drafting bills based on their recommendations and needs, and allowing them to tweak and strengthen legislation where necessary.

“We needed to accelerate the pace of recovery, so I just listened,” said Brown in an interview with Grist, a nonprofit, independent newsroom that focuses on climate and environmental reporting. “I took notes on everything they said, and I turned it over, and I turned it into bills.”

This combination of organized advocacy by disaster survivors and ambitious lawmaking by sympathetic politicians could become a model for other disaster-prone places, but it was only possible because many well-heeled Marshall fire victims had the resources to organize and press for change after the fire, a luxury most disaster-stricken communities don’t have.

Lower-income communities around Colorado may benefit from the Marshall legislation, but it may be difficult for survivors in other parts of the country to emulate it.

The Marshall fire wasn’t like the massive forest fires that have tortured Northern California or the desert blazes that rage across Texas and New Mexico each year. It ripped down from the Front Range in December of 2021 and all but vaporized a fast-growing segment of metro Denver, bringing about what climate scientist Daniel Swain

High winds whipped the grass fire to full size in a matter of hours, igniting vegetation that had dried out during a severe drought of the kind that global warming is making more common. In contrast to California, where burned communities have often been rural and less well-off, the affected suburbs, Louisville and Superior, are dense and suburban, filled with well-to-do lawyers and consultants.

For that reason, there were several fire victims who had the time and money to become volunteer recovery advocates. One of those survivors was a patent lawyer named Tawnya Somauroo, who was galvanized to action when she learned that Louisville had not issued an evacuation order for her subdivision, .

She spent months bird-dogging the mayor’s office and local law enforcement on her own time to ask about their evacuation procedures, but found herself making little progress.

“I didn’t even know where City Hall was before the fire,” Somauroo told Grist. “I just started calling City Council members and talking to them and getting not a very good reception at first. It just became this narrative of, ‘the survivors versus everyone else.’ ”

In other words, elected officials were weighing the need to finance the rebuilding of public parks and facilities against the need to help the hundreds of displaced homeowners.

As Somauroo watched local Facebook groups devolve into hubbub and confusion, she turned to a less commonly used app to make order out of the chaos — she downloaded Slack, the messaging platform normally used in white-collar workplaces, and . The app allowed survivors to create individual message threads to discuss specific insurers, specific permits and specific federal aid deadlines.

“People would join a certain thread, and then someone would pop up who had the same problem, and then coach them (on) how they solved it,” she said. “And you know, little by little, we started identifying problems that way.”

Meanwhile, a former Boulder resident named Jeri Curry moved back to the area from Virginia to help aid in the long-term recovery. She and a group of fellow volunteers in an office park, opening it up about 10 months after the fire as FEMA and Colorado wound down their recovery operations.

In addition to providing free food and computer access, the center provided guidance to survivors navigating the process of filing an insurance claim and applying for FEMA aid.

“The big thing that we believed the community overall needed was a gathering place, a central place where people could get everything that they needed,” she said. “The agencies put their mission first, their service delivery and resource delivery first, and they don’t put the survivor in the middle.”

These casework conversations alerted volunteers to the dynamics holding back the recovery — lowball cost estimates from insurers, delays in securing claim payouts and construction material sales taxes that many residents were struggling to pay.

Frustrated with the response from city officials, the survivors’ group — now incorporated as a nonprofit — decided to get in touch with their new state legislator, Brown, who was looking for ways to help fire victims.

Brown had worked for Colorado’s insurance department while serving on the Louisville council and had experience dealing with complex policy issues, but property insurance and housing law were new to him. So he relied on Somauroo’s expertise, letting her and the other survivors guide the bills he wrote and introduced.

This strategy soon produced a number of laws that gave immediate financial relief to fire survivors who had been struggling to rebuild. Brown passed a bill that stopped mortgage servicers from from customers who were waiting to rebuild, eliminating a delay that stopped many survivors from rebuilding for months.

He passed a bill that required insurers to take into account the state’s own estimates of rebuilding costs, a measure designed to stop them from lowballing homeowners trying to rebuild. Bills that gave survivors grants for rebuilding with fire-safe materials, provided them with , and plowed resources into all sailed through the legislature with ease.

“It feels really good to be listened to,” said Somauroo. “I would just sort of brief him on, like, people with this problem, that problem, that problem, and he would go move the bill forward.”

Beyond assisting Marshall survivors, Brown and the survivors’ groups also took on other institutions that hampered fire recovery in general. Somauroo had become incensed that homeowners’ associations in Louisville maintained design rules that prohibited residents from replacing the flammable wooden fences that had ferried the fire across the city.

Somauroo’s own subdivision had a decades-old deed covenant that in theory could have allowed any other resident to sue her for rebuilding with a fire-resistant fence. She took her concerns to Brown and he drafted , which represent more than half of Coloradans, from impeding a fire-safe rebuild.

One of Brown’s most difficult fights was against multifamily property owners, whom he accused of price gouging after the fire.

Some renters reported , as displaced homeowners competed with existing tenants for a tiny number of available units, mimicking a dynamic that had emerged in California years earlier. In theory, there is a simple legislative solution to this problem — bar apartment owners from raising rents after a fire — but few jurisdictions have enacted it, in part because property owners have lobbied fiercely against such moves.

Earlier this year, Brown passed a strong bill that , including with some Republican support.

Many of the bills Brown introduced faced initial objections from insurers, banks and landlords, all of whom had an established presence in the state Capitol. In other circumstances, this opposition might have doomed the laws, but the survivors of the Marshall fire acted as a political lobby; rather than just plead for help, they tweaked bills in response to industry criticism and ensured lawmakers knew they were paying attention to their votes.

Still, not everyone is happy. Betty Knecht, the executive director of the Colorado Mortgage Lenders Association, a trade group representing banks and other lenders, says she worries the legislature veered too far to the left in addressing the fire recovery.

“You had a very unbalanced legislature, which unfortunately allows for a lot more to be passed,” she said, referring to the large Democratic majorities in both chambers. She also pointed out that more than two dozen legislators at one point in their careers were appointed to fill vacancies, like Brown, rather than elected.

Knecht argued that Brown’s price-gouging legislation wouldn’t hold down rents and that the new pressure on insurers might make many leave the state, as has happened in Florida. However, she praised him for workshopping his mortgage-servicers bill with her group before it went up for a vote and adjusting the payout requirements.

The group didn’t end up endorsing the bill, but it didn’t come out against it either.

The Marshall fire victims secured a far bigger legislative response than the victims of past Colorado fires. The district adjacent to Brown’s had suffered a disaster of its own a few years earlier when the East Troublesome fire roared through , leaving hundreds of underinsured residents without the means to rebuild.

That district¶¶Òőap representative, Judy Amabile, had worked for most of 2021 on a bill that , but it still hadn’t come together when the Marshall fire struck that December.

Frustrated with the lack of progress, Amabile used the surge of attention around the Marshall fire to push through the bill that was designed to help the East Troublesome survivors. The experience of seeing her bill pass with bipartisan support made her realize that the Marshall fire had opened a window for big-picture lawmaking that no other disaster had.

“If you have more resources, you have more time to invest in the recovery effort,” said Amabile. “There was some pushback, like, ‘All these rich people in Boulder are getting all this stuff.’ But they were a force. They really made stuff happen for themselves.”

Somauroo and Curry, two of the lead post-fire organizers, acknowledge that the high education and income levels in the cities impacted by the Marshall fire helped the rebuilding effort move faster.

Two and a half years after the fire, Brown says around 35 percent of displaced homeowners are back in their homes, which is a far higher rate than communities like Paradise, California, have been able to achieve after fires of comparable magnitude. This is in part because the community had more resources to begin with, but it¶¶Òőap also because survivors had enough political clout to secure financial relief that other survivors have not obtained.

Curry’s disaster recovery center also managed to pull in $1 million from faith-based organizations and nearby businesses, allowing the center to stay open until this past June. The Boulder Community Foundation alsoÌęraised more than $43 million to help victims, much of it from wealthy private donors, and used some of that money to fund case workers at Curry’s recovery center.

The irony is that while this effort would likely never have happened in a lower-income and less-educated area, it will benefit future fire survivors in worse-off areas of Colorado.

The mortgage-servicer delay and rent-gouging laws will only apply to survivors of future fires, which are far more likely to start in the state’s rural mountain communities than in the suburbs of the Front Range. It may have been Democrats who pushed the bills through, but the benefits will reach Republican sections of the state, and Brown and Somauroo have talked with people in other states about authoring copycat bills.

“There were no lobbyists, there’s no big money running these bills,” said Brown. “We got this done through sheer community advocacy. We talk about policies, and then I run bills, and they show up and testify and make their voices heard.”