Anti-Harassment Protections for Tenants

The Problem

Not every tenant who loses their home is evicted in court. Many are simply driven out. A landlord who wants a unit empty - to flip it, to raise the rent on the next tenant, to retaliate against someone who complained - rarely needs to file paperwork. There are faster, quieter, and more deniable tools available, and Denver tenants encounter all of them.

This is landlord harassment, and it is a distinct problem from eviction and from rent increases. Rent stabilization addresses what a landlord may charge. Eviction reform addresses how a landlord may use the courts. Neither reaches the landlord who never goes to court at all - who instead makes a home unlivable until the tenant “chooses” to leave.

The Tactics

The pattern is well documented in tenant-advocacy and legal-aid casework across the country, and Denver legal-aid attorneys describe the same conduct locally:

• Utility shutoffs. Cutting off heat, water, or electricity to pressure a tenant out. In Denver winters this is not an inconvenience - it is a threat to health and safety.
• Illegal lockouts. Changing the locks, removing a door, or otherwise barring a tenant from the home without going through the courts.
• Pretextual or abusive “nuisance” inspections. Repeated, unannounced, or harassing entries dressed up as inspections, used to surveil and intimidate rather than to maintain the property.
• Threats and intimidation. Threats to call immigration authorities, to report a tenant to other landlords, to “make life difficult,” or threats of physical harm - aimed at tenants who are least able to push back.
• Withholding repairs and services as leverage. Deliberately letting habitability problems fester, or cutting promised services, to make a unit miserable enough that the tenant leaves. This is constructive eviction: forcing a move-out by making the home uninhabitable.
• Buyout coercion. Repeated, badgering “cash for keys” offers and pressure tactics directed at long-term, below-market tenants.

Why Existing Law Falls Short

Colorado is not silent on the worst of this. CRS § 38-12-510 already makes it unlawful for a landlord to remove or exclude a tenant without court process, and defines unlawful removal to include “the willful termination of utilities or the willful removal of doors, windows, or locks.” A tenant who is locked out or has utilities cut off is entitled to actual damages plus the greater of three months’ rent or $5,000, costs, and reasonable attorney fees (Colorado Revised Statutes § 38-12-510, 2024).

That law is real and it is strong on paper. The problem is enforcement. It is entirely self-help: the burden is on the tenant - the person who just lost heat or got locked out - to find a lawyer, file a civil case, and litigate against the party who controls their housing. It covers only lockouts and utility shutoffs, not the broader pattern of threats, abusive inspections, and service withholding that adds up to constructive eviction. And there is no city office a Denver tenant can call to report harassment as it happens. The right exists; the practical path to using it does not.

Our Solution

A Standalone Denver Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance

Denver should pass a dedicated anti-harassment ordinance - separate from rent stabilization and from the Tenant Bill of Rights - that names prohibited conduct, attaches real penalties, gives tenants a clear way to sue, and creates a city office to enforce it. This follows the model that New York City, Oakland, and Seattle have already proven workable.

1. Defined Prohibited Conduct

The ordinance enumerates specific acts that constitute harassment when a landlord (or anyone acting on a landlord’s behalf) commits them in bad faith to influence a tenant to vacate or to surrender a right:

• Interrupting, terminating, or threatening to terminate utilities - heat, water, gas, electricity, or essential services.
• Removing doors, windows, or locks, or otherwise barring entry, outside of court process.
• Threatening or intimidating a tenant, including threats based on immigration or citizenship status, or threats to report a tenant to any authority in retaliation for asserting a right.
• Abusing the right of entry - repeated, unannounced, or harassing “inspections” not reasonably necessary for repair, maintenance, or a bona fide purpose.
• Failing to perform repairs or to provide required services in bad faith, or removing services or amenities, in order to induce a tenant to move.
• Removing a tenant’s personal property without consent or court process.
• Repeated, coercive buyout demands after a tenant has asked the landlord to stop.

2. Civil Penalties

The City may assess civil penalties per violation, with each harassing act treated as a separate violation and elevated penalties for repeat offenders within a defined look-back window. This mirrors NYC, where a court can fine a harassing landlord between $1,000 and $10,000 per incident (New York City Administrative Code; New York State Attorney General, 2023), and Seattle, whose municipal code authorizes civil penalties of up to $2,500 for prohibited acts (City of Seattle, Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections).

3. A Private Right of Action

This is the core of the ordinance. A tenant who has been harassed may sue the landlord directly in court - without waiting for the City to act - and recover statutory damages (set at a meaningful floor so the case is worth bringing), actual damages including emotional-distress damages, injunctive relief to stop the conduct and restore services, and reasonable attorney fees and costs. The attorney-fee provision is what makes the right usable: it lets tenants retain counsel they otherwise could not afford and gives legal-aid organizations the means to take these cases. Oakland’s ordinance, which lets a prevailing tenant recover the greater of treble damages or $1,000 (with higher floors for elderly, disabled, or seriously ill tenants), is the template (Oakland Municipal Code § 8.22.640, 2014).

4. Anti-Retaliation

It is a violation to harass, raise rent on, reduce services to, or move to evict a tenant because the tenant reported harassment, contacted the enforcement office, organized, or otherwise asserted a right under this ordinance. As in Denver’s Tenant Bill of Rights framework, adverse action within a defined window after protected activity creates a rebuttable presumption of retaliation, shifting the burden to the landlord.

5. An Enforcement Body

Stand up - or designate within an existing housing agency - a tenant-harassment enforcement office with authority to take complaints, investigate, mediate, and assess civil penalties administratively, with a multilingual intake line. Seattle’s model, where the Department of Construction and Inspections enforces prohibited acts and tenants can call a dedicated line to file a complaint, shows the value of a single phone number a tenant can call while the harassment is still happening rather than months later in a courtroom.

Evidence

Anti-harassment ordinances are not experimental. Several large American cities have enacted them, and the design choices that make them work are now well understood.

Three lessons stand out from these jurisdictions:

• Naming the conduct matters. When an ordinance lists specific harassing acts - utility interruption, abusive entry, service withholding - tenants and courts no longer have to argue about whether intimidation “counts.” New York’s enumerated list and Oakland’s specific harassment provisions both work this way (New York State Attorney General, 2023; Oakland Municipal Code § 8.22.640, 2014).
• The private right of action with attorney fees is what gives the law teeth. A penalty the City “may” impose depends on the City’s capacity and priorities. A tenant’s right to sue, with fees recoverable, does not. Oakland’s structure - and the attorney-fee recovery available under NYC’s harassment law - is what lets ordinary tenants and the lawyers who represent them actually enforce these protections (New York State Attorney General, 2023).
• A city office gives tenants somewhere to go in real time. Seattle’s complaint line and agency enforcement mean a tenant whose heat has just been shut off has an immediate, non-litigation option (City of Seattle, Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections).

We do not claim a single clean before-and-after displacement statistic for these ordinances; the published record is primarily legal and administrative rather than a controlled outcome study, and we will not invent one. What the record does show is that these laws are durable, have been upheld, and are used.

Local Context

Denver’s displacement crisis is usually measured in eviction filings - 15,953 in 2025, well above pre-pandemic levels (Denver County Court; Eviction Lab, Princeton University, 2025). But formal eviction is the visible tip. Every tenant pushed out by a winter utility shutoff, an illegal lockout, or a campaign of neglect and intimidation is a displacement that never appears in those numbers because it never reached a courtroom.

Colorado law gives Denver a strong foundation to build on. CRS § 38-12-510 already prohibits lockouts and utility shutoffs and sets steep statutory damages, and the 2026 General Assembly continued strengthening tenant protections - HB26-1047 (Protections for Residential Tenants) was signed into law, with additional measures such as HB26-1106 (Eviction Protections for Tenants) under consideration (Colorado General Assembly, 2026). A Denver anti-harassment ordinance complements this state framework: it extends protection beyond lockouts and shutoffs to the full pattern of harassment, and - crucially - it builds the local enforcement infrastructure that the state statutes assume but do not provide.

The tenants most exposed to harassment are the least able to fight it alone: immigrant families vulnerable to threats about status, low-income renters in older buildings with deferred maintenance, and long-term tenants in gentrifying neighborhoods whose below-market rents make their units a target for landlords who want them gone. An enforcement office with multilingual intake and a fee-shifting private right of action is designed precisely for these tenants.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is this different from the Tenant Bill of Rights? The Tenant Bill of Rights is a broad package covering right to counsel in eviction, notice periods, security deposits, the right to organize, and more. This ordinance is narrow and specific: it targets the coercive tactics a landlord uses to push a tenant out without going through any legal process at all. The two reinforce each other - the Bill of Rights protects you inside the system; this protects you from a landlord trying to avoid the system entirely.

How is this different from Rent Control? Rent stabilization limits how much rent can rise. It says nothing about a landlord who shuts off your heat or changes your locks. A landlord blocked from raising rent might instead try to force you out through harassment so they can re-rent at a higher price. Anti-harassment protections close that door, which is part of why they pair naturally with rent stabilization.

Doesn’t Colorado law already cover lockouts and utility shutoffs? Yes - CRS § 38-12-510, and it provides real damages. But it covers only lockouts and shutoffs, not the wider pattern of threats, abusive inspections, and service withholding. And it is purely self-help: there is no city office to call, and the entire burden falls on the tenant to find a lawyer and sue. This ordinance broadens the prohibited conduct and builds the local enforcement that makes the existing right actually usable.

Won’t landlords get sued over ordinary disputes or honest repair delays? No. The conduct is defined as harassment only when done in bad faith to drive a tenant out or to punish them for asserting a right. A landlord who is genuinely working through a repair backlog, or who lawfully enters with proper notice for a real purpose, is not harassing anyone. The ordinance targets coercion, not the normal friction of a tenancy.

Who decides what counts as harassment? The ordinance enumerates specific prohibited acts, so most cases are clear-cut - a utility was cut off, a lock was changed, an immigration threat was made. Disputed cases go before the enforcement office or, through the private right of action, before a court, which weighs whether the conduct was done in bad faith to influence the tenant to leave. This is the same approach used successfully in New York and Oakland.

How We Pay For It

Like most tenant protections, this is primarily a regulatory change rather than a spending program, and it is designed to be substantially self-funding.

• Enforcement office: An estimated $1.5-3M per year for intake staff, investigators, and administration. This can be housed within an existing housing or excise-and-license agency rather than built from scratch.
• Civil penalties are partly self-funding. Penalties assessed against landlords who harass tenants flow to the City and offset enforcement costs. As in NYC and Seattle, repeat-offender escalation increases recoveries from the worst actors.
• The private right of action costs the City nothing. Because tenants enforce the ordinance directly in court, with attorney fees recoverable from landlords who lose, a large share of enforcement happens at no public expense.
• Avoided downstream costs. Every tenant kept in a stable home through early intervention is a household that does not enter the far more expensive systems of emergency shelter, eviction court, and homelessness services.

References

• City of Seattle, Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections. (n.d.). Prohibited acts. Retrieved June 2026, from https://www.seattle.gov/sdci/codes/codes-we-enforce-(a-z)/prohibited-acts
• City of Seattle. (n.d.). Harassment protections - Renting in Seattle. Retrieved June 2026, from https://www.seattle.gov/rentinginseattle/renters/managing-the-rental-relationship/harassment-protections
• Colo. Rev. Stat. § 38-12-510 (2024). Unlawful removal or exclusion. https://colorado.public.law/statutes/crs_38-12-510
• Colorado General Assembly. (2026). HB26-1047: Protections for residential tenants. https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1047
• Colorado General Assembly. (2026). HB26-1106: Eviction protections for tenants. https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1106
• Eviction Lab. (n.d.). Denver, CO eviction tracking. Princeton University. Retrieved June 2026, from https://evictionlab.org
• New York City Council. (2008). Local Law 7 of 2008 (Tenant Protection Act). https://council.nyc.gov
• New York State Attorney General. (2023). Tenant harassment protections for tenants living in New York City. https://ag.ny.gov/publications/tenant-harassment-nyc
• Oakland, Cal., Municipal Code § 8.22.640 (2014). Tenant harassment (Tenant Protection Ordinance). https://www.oaklandca.gov/Community/Housing-Programs-Support/Tenant-Rights-Protection/Tenant-Protection-Ordinance