ISSUE #2
By Alex Yukhananov
There was a sense of cautious optimism at Tom’s Starlight among NEWR (No Eviction Without Representation) volunteers. It was a mild night in Denver, and volunteers from Initiated Ordinances 305, 306, and 307 came together for an election night party. Future political hopefuls were politely and awkwardly shilling, volunteers were huddled over phones, and newcomers were just happy to be there. A free drink can set a tone.
Talking to fellow volunteers at the party, I gleaned a hopeful yet nervous certainty. Some volunteers felt that Initiated Ordinance 305 would pass with a sizable margin, however, there were a few notable hold outs. NEWR veterans Robert Adams and Ryan Rasmussen tempered their expectations. Their enthusiasm was quelled by the conversations they had with everyday voters. They knew predictions meant little in the face of $528,246.96 in opposition spending, while NEWR, the organizing force behind Initiated Ordinance 305, spent $141,463.54. They knew how the opposition defined the narrative and how it impacted everyday voters. I was hopeful it would pass, perhaps too hopeful. We all were.
At 7 PM on November 8th with 23.7 per cent of the votes counted, 39.68 per cent for and 60.32 per cent against Initiated Ordinance 305. The official result came on November 21st, 42.51 per cent for and 57.49 per cent against Initiated Ordinance 305. It was a devastating loss; however, every failure has the potential to blossom into something greater. The long and rich history and tradition of economic justice movements informs us that we will fail more often than we win, but when we win, we shift the needle ever so slightly toward a more just and fair world. NEWR sparked a chapter in Denver Democratic Socialists of America (DDSA) Housing Justice Committee (HJC) and brought about new opportunities and avenues for the HJC.
Four months after the November 2022 election, I contacted Robert Adams and Ryan Rasmussen to understand how NEWR formed, NEWR’s struggles and successes, how NEWR shaped DDSA’s Housing Justice Committee, and how NEWR shaped their activism.
In early 2020, members of the HJC helped organize a building in East Denver. “We made pretty good progress. We made news, held meetings, and the tenants were ready to submit a petition to the property managers, but then COVID-19 hit,” said Rasmussen. “The fight went from organizing tenants to how am I going to pay for my apartment.” He noted that the eviction moratorium did not go into effect immediately. The CDC’s moratorium began on September 4th, 2020, nearly six months after Colorado’s first batch of recorded COVID-19 cases.
Shifting from tenant organizing to providing assistance to tenants facing eviction, the HJC began tracking evictions using a web scraper maintained by Rasmussen. “We started scraping eviction cases from the court’s docket and reached out to tenants directly,” said Rasmussen. In 2020 and 2021, there were 2,912 and 4,894 eviction filings in Denver County respectively, a relative decrease from preceding years due to increased government assistance and enacting the eviction moratorium. Even with this decrease, effectively mitigating evictions in Denver was a monumental task. It was far from sustainable and something needed to change.
In late 2020, two developments would nudge members of the HJC to adopt NEWR in Denver and to ultimately embark on a proactive electoral strategy. The first development occurred on November 3rd, 2020 in Boulder. Voters in Boulder approved Ballot Issue 2B, providing legal representation to tenants facing eviction, by a large margin. The measure passed with 58.61 per cent of the vote and established Ordinance No. 8412. Ordinance No. 8412, or No Eviction Without Representation, mandates the city of Boulder to “establish, run and fully fund a program to provide legal representation to tenants who face the loss of housing in eviction and administrative proceedings” and “provide rental assistance for persons that are vulnerable to eviction.” Additionally, it creates a tenant’s committee comprising of five members. It’s funded by a $75 per year license fee on rental dwelling units, resulting in an estimated $1.9 million per year for the program.
The second development happened on December 1st, 2020, when HB 20-1009 went into effect. HB 20-1009 requires Colorado courts to suppress eviction records while in legal proceedings and to continue suppressing these records if the tenant wins. This law partially combats tenant blacklisting, an insidious practice used by landlords and property managers to leverage housing court records against prospective tenants and using these records as a pretext to deny rental applications.
HB 20-1009 hindered HJC’s eviction outreach capabilities. NEWR passing in Boulder however, was an example of what is possible. Adopting a NEWR-like campaign was the next logical step in the HJC’s evolution. It was HJC shifting from retail, door-to-door eviction mitigation, to wholesale and city-wide systematic reform.
“We had to learn how to put a measure on the ballot, we had to start from the basics,” said Rasmussen. Learning on the spot, Rasmussen and other HJC members sought professional guidance. They consulted and worked with Mike McCorkle, a lawyer and a fellow Denver DSA member. They learned how to properly operate a campaign in Denver, manage finances, gather signatures, meet critical deadlines, mobilize, and organize.
In the summer of 2021, Robert Adams joined the NEWR campaign and became a member of NEWR’s three-person steering committee, serving with Mary Imgrund and Mitch Weldon. “We started as a flat hierarchy and eventually had a need for more direction.” Recognizing the power of both vertical and horizontal hierarchies, NEWR settled on something in between. However, by not fully committing to either organizational structure, the campaign at times lacked a clear division of labor. On top of that, Adams added “we also had an enormous amount of work. We had a very ambitious scope, relative to the number of people involved. In retrospect, we did a lot with the capacity we had.”
Leveraging the organizational capacity of DDSA and other organizations, NEWR superseded the number of signatures required and successfully got on the ballot for the November 2022 election. It was an enormous effort and NEWR leaned heavily on the support of over one hundred volunteers and countless small dollar donations. The ballot initiative in Denver mirrored Boulder’s Issue 2B. A key difference was increasing the number of members on the tenant committee from five to seven.
I asked Rasmussen what NEWR could have done better. “The loss margin was proof that it wasn’t one thing,” said Rasmussen. “The obvious answer is not enough organizing and more canvassing, but that’s pretty much the case for every campaign. The TABOR language and opposition spending likely did the most harm.”
Rephrasing my question to Adams, I asked if he would change anything. He shared similar sentiments to Rasmussen and added more context. “If I were to change anything, I would have reframed the ballot language to be as palatable as possible. Polling suggested voters in Denver were more likely to agree that landlords were justified.” Even though the average voter in Denver has more in common with a tenant getting evicted than a landlord carrying out the eviction, there is more of a semblance of personal responsibility in Denver. It’s more of an “if you didn’t pay rent, then you deserve it” attitude, without much consideration for the underlying causes of evictions, and not fully understanding that evictions can stem from a multitude of factors outside of non-payment exclusively. In addition to this general underlying sentiment, the opposition launched a generic “No On 305” campaign, bombarding social media with ads containing a very simple and powerful pain point for voters: rental prices can increase if this succeeds, why risk it.
Roberts added, “I think the fee likely confused some voters too.” Roberts referred to the $75 yearly fee on landlords and surmised that voters possibly confusing it for a monthly fee. More so, Denver voters may have intuited that this fee would result in an increase in rent. The initiative made no guarantees that this fee passed via increasing rental costs and renters already have little power in negotiating the cost of rent. The astronomically high cost of rent in Denver likely made tenants more sensitive to any legislation that suggested imposing a fee on landlords. Time and time again, landlords simply increase rent without a viable reason. When they have a reason to increase it, they will use it in a disproportional manner. Voters in Denver likely thought, “I know I’m not going to get evicted, why risk raising my own rent?” The open secret is, landlords can and will increase rents disproportionate to the value they add and they do it without reason. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
In the aftermath of NEWR, both Rasmussen and Adams echo similar takeaways from the campaign. They don’t regret doing it, and NEWR was a necessary effort that grew DDSA’s capacity and tested what the HJC was capable of. However, if they had to do it again they probably wouldn’t to that extent. Neither Rasmussen or Adams want to dedicate their time exclusively to one colossal effort again. This is an understandable sentiment, considering they spent between one to two years of their life, essentially embracing a second full time job. It is extraordinarily difficult and an uphill battle, but without NEWR and the push toward electoralism, the HJC would not be where it is now. NEWR did amazing things with the resources available, and it pushed DSA to be more active in electoral and legislative pursuits.
For example, DDSA is a part of the Colorado Homes for All (COHFA) steering committee, a working coalition made up a wide swath of organizations dedicated to guaranteeing housing as a human right in Colorado. COHFA helped craft and drive house bills 23-1115 and 23-1171. The former would lift the state ban on local control of rents and the latter would require just cause for evictions. Both bills passed their respective committees and HB23-1115 recently passed the house, with 40 representatives voting for it and 24 voting against it. This is a huge development in housing justice in Colorado, and NEWR set the HJC toward this direction.
Rasmussen and Adams both prefer working toward smaller victories and pursuing a multipronged approach to housing justice. Rather than dedicating their time to an all-or-nothing strategy, they are focusing on DDSA’s legislative efforts, working on promoting and supporting DDSA endorsed candidates, tenant organizing, continuing on growing the Housing Justice Committee, and generally building power outside of electoral politics.
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Alex Yukhananov is a member of the Denver DSA Steering Committee.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was written in spring 2023 as part of an issue on local elections and the midterms (Issue #2) which was not able to be published at the time due to capacity constraints. It is now being released from the vault.
Denver DSA 