The Unrepentant Tenant
Resources for Boulder renters
'Tis the season for Boulder’s population to significantly increase, mostly with student renters. Given that migration, dance with me as I pivot from rent...
Boiling frogs
Editor’s note: Welcome to the first installment of The Unrepentant Tenant, a biweekly column diving into the history, mythology and impact of rent control...
The bigger picture of rent control
A recent letter to the editor about my column (see The unrepentant tenant, “Rent control: Why or why not?” March 24, 2022) raised some points...
The worst thing that can happen to a tenant
One of the worst housing crises — if not life crises — a tenant can face is eviction. The U.S. is in the throes...
Who knew? Rental deposits are strongly protected
Overall, Colorado doesn’t have a lot of tenant protections — it regularly ranks near the bottom when it comes to evictions, right to repairs...
The fantasy of inflation increasing rents
It seems that locally and nationally, housing prices may have peaked, in that there are fewer bidding wars over units for sale, and houses/condos...
Do tenants have a right to a habitable home? Yes, but…
The most common problem for tenants by far is not getting their deposit back—but that subject will have to wait for another column.
Probably the...
A bright spot for Boulder renters on repairs
In my last column (Unrepentant Tenant, “Do tenants have a right to a habitable home?”, Sept. 8, 2022), I wrote about the history of...
Help for tenants facing eviction
A quick clarification of something I wrote in my Sept. 8, 2022 column about the warranty of habitability for renters: While CU students can...
The downward mobility of owning a mobile home
A couple of weeks ago, a ground-breaking Colorado bill, HB 1287, passed out of committee, bringing forward an extension of badly needed protections for Colorado...
The hidden history of tenant activism in Boulder, part 1
I'm now going to switch focus from rent control to the broader issue of tenant issues. Tenant protection receives relatively little media coverage, even...
Is your lease fair, and what’s the alternative?
In my June 30 column (The Unrepentant Tenant, “Interest on deposits and repairs for tenants”), I was skipping through the issues the Boulder Tenants...
