The Landscape of Residential Habitability Concerns in Denver

Background Context

In December 2024, a city inspector within DDPHE found “ambient temperatures ranging from 63 to 66 degrees in three units inside of Grand Lowry Lofts” and issued a violation, for breaking Denver’s housing code which mandates heat to be able to reach at least 70 degrees inside units. This inspection was only triggered by Grand Lowry Lofts tenants filing complaints with DDPHE. As reported by 9News, maintenance requests had clearly gone unattended to by the property, owned by Jonathan Rose Companies; one tenant in the building had pages of maintenance requests she had sent to the landlord.

According to Colorado’s Warranty of Habitability Law, which Denver Metro Tenants Union helped pass through the legislature in spring of 2024, landlords must respond within 24 hours with the efforts they’re taking to resolve the issue and help the tenant. Still, it is apparent that many of these issues go unresolved and tenants pay the price–suffering unhealthy, unsafe, and uninhabitable conditions–with little opportunity for recourse.

At present, tenants main pathway for resolution is to file a complaint with Denver Department of Public Health and Environment, whose stated mission is to “collaboratively with city, state and community partners to conduct education, community engagement, and enforcement to ensure healthy people, healthy pets, and a sustainable environment. Our mission is to empower Denver’s communities to live better, longer.”

DDPHE started a pro-active inspection program in 2021, but as of January 2025 they’ve only conducted 36 of those inspections, citing the time intensiveness and complexity of the process. As of this year, DDPHE has said they will add two more staffers, made more complicated by the historic firing of municipal workers by Mayor Mike Johnston in the fall. “We want to see proactive investigations be better supported. They’re really important,” said Eida Altman, director of DMTU in response.

“We want to see proactive investigations be better supported. They’re really important,” said Eida Altman, director of DMTU in response.

On the ground organizing by Denver Metro Tenants Union has shown that many of the buildings with the worst conditions and the fewest meaningful remedies are inhabited primarily by immigrants and refugees. As a result, we hypothesized that census tracts with the highest numbers of DDPHE complaints and violations would correlate with census tracts that had higher numbers of immigrant and undocumented residents (looking at the foreign born category of the ACS 5 year census).

Unexpectedly, we found that to be untrue. Areas with comparatively large populations of immigrants and refugees did not have higher numbers of DDPHE complaints and violations. We were surprised, given the large number of immigrants in Denver and how the number has grown in the last three years. No city in America welcomed more migrants per capita over the last three years than Denver, with more than 40,000 arriving since 2022, according to Axios. After some research, we now hypothesize that there is likely significant underreporting of habitability complaints because of the precarious condition of many immigrants and refugees and the high risk of retaliation and deportation.

On the ground organizing by Denver Metro Tenants Union has shown that many of the buildings with the worst conditions and the fewest meaningful remedies are inhabited primarily by immigrants and refugees. As a result, we hypothesized that census tracts with the highest numbers of DDPHE complaints and violations would correlate with census tracts that had higher numbers of immigrant and undocumented residents (looking at the foreign born category of the ACS 5 year census).

Unexpectedly, we found that to be untrue. Areas with comparatively large populations of immigrants and refugees did not have higher numbers of DDPHE complaints and violations. We were surprised, given the large number of immigrants in Denver and how the number has grown in the last three years. No city in America welcomed more migrants per capita over the last three years than Denver, with more than 40,000 arriving since 2022, according to Axios. After some research, we now hypothesize that there is likely significant underreporting of habitability complaints because of the precarious condition of many immigrants and refugees and the high risk of retaliation and deportation.

A 2020 study found that undocumented immigrants are less likely to report crime, even when they are themselves victims of crime, for fear of deportation. (Comino, Mastrobuoni 2020) Comparing victimization surveys and administrative data around the 1986 immigration amnesty program, they found that only 17% of undocumented immigrants were likely to report crime to the police, as opposed to nearly 40% of native-born citizens.

Similar trends of under-reporting show up in the labor studies field, where undocumented immigrants are less likely to report workplace violations, including sexual harassment, for fear of legal repercussions and deportation. (Ontiveros1992)

The reporting behaviors of undocumented immigrants are still deeply understudied. Critical undocumented studies scholars point out that the liminality of citizenship (and all the various legal phases and identifications that exist up to citizenship, e.g. green card status, visa status, etc.) is often left out entirely by researchers who fail to consider variables like citizenship in their studies. (Chinga Pizarro, 2025)