Two Colorado Bills Protect Habitability for Tenants

Amidst the array of bills passed by the 2023 Colorado General Assembly are two tenant-protection measures that did not garner a great deal of media attention. HB 23-1254 requires a landlord to have a residential premises remediated to meet applicable standards for clean-up after damage due to an environmental or public health event. The act also clarifies how a tenant must give notice to a landlord if there are habitability issues with the tenant’s residence. The act prohibits a landlord from retaliating against a tenant for making a good faith complaint about the conditions of the residential premises and provides conditions by which a tenant may terminate a lease if a habitability issue is not remediated. The other bill, SB 23-206, requires a landlord of residential real estate to provide the following to prospective tenants: a written warning statement about the dangers of radon and the need for testing; any knowledge the landlord has of the property’s radon concentrations and history; and the most recent brochure published by the Department of Public Health and Environment that provides advice about radon in real estate transactions. If a landlord fails to provide the written disclosures or fails to mitigate an elevated radon level, the tenant may void the lease in accordance with the statutes governing the implied warranty of habitability. Colorado law requires a radon professional to be licensed. But this act exempts a tenant from needing a license when he or she is the one testing the property. To read about additional legislative bills passed in 2023 affecting renters in Colorado, see our AgeWise Colorado article at https://agewisecolorado.org/blog/category/legislative-issues/.