David Zalubowski/AP Photo
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis speaks after signing a for-cause eviction protections bill, April 19, 2024, at the state Capitol in Denver.
Last Thursday, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis vetoed the No Pricing Coordination Between Landlords bill (HB25-1004), a measure against price-fixing that would have put more restraints on anti-competitive rent-setting software used by companies like RealPage.
The decision marks yet another consequential veto from Polis and a legislative pattern that’s become all too familiar in Colorado. On the same day as the price-fixing veto, Polis rejected a bipartisan bill that would have protected patients from surprise ambulance bills by private equity–owned health care firms, something that passed both houses of the legislature unanimously, on the grounds that it may raise individual insurance premiums by $2 a month. And earlier in May, he opted to veto a labor-backed bill that would have repealed the state’s de facto right-to-work law.
Given that all three bills were rejected by Polis after Colorado’s General Assembly adjourned its legislative session, they can’t be sent back to legislators for a potential veto override. In the case of the unanimously approved surprise ambulance billing legislation, the two-thirds vote required for an override would be practically guaranteed.
Other bills Polis has vetoed this session include a rideshare safety bill that would have strengthened background checks for drivers and allowed customers to sue companies over assaults that occur during their rides; and a social media bill that would have required takedowns of accounts related to illegal activity.
The common thread here is that these bills would have burdened Big Tech, private equity, and large employers in the state. Like many previous vetoes, the decisions mark Polis’s unwavering commitment to maintaining his reputation as a pro-business Democrat, regardless of whether it comes at the expense of renters and working people.
The veto of the rental price-fixing bill in particular deprived tenants of potential relief on a highly salient issue in Colorado and across the country. As the Prospect has documented, RealPage and other firms use pricing algorithms to recommend higher rental rates to landlords and property managers. Often, these recommendations utilize nonpublic information and data about competing rents and vacancies, allowing landlords to create artificial bottlenecks in supply and push higher prices on renters than they would be able to by acting independently. Critics argue that the use of this software constitutes price-fixing, and that landlords who use it are colluding to illegally inflate rental prices.
The veto shielding RealPage marks a loss in one of the only arenas where bills favorable to the interests of the general public currently have a chance of passing.
“In the old days, folks would coordinate in smoke-filled rooms or over the phone. And now they don’t even need to talk. They use ominously named tools like YieldStar and RENTmaximizer to secretly collude,” said Sam Gilman, co-founder of the Community Economic Defense Project (CEDP). “And these algorithms help landlords increase prices like a billionaire’s rocket ship. When new supply forces prices to fall, the algorithm works like a net and stops their fall. And who pays the price? It’s working families.”
Colorado renters have had to grapple with rapidly increasing housing costs. According to a 2024 study from the Biden administration, anti-competitive pricing algorithms like RealPage have increased the cost of rent by $136 per month in Denver, where the company has its third-largest share of multifamily rental units. Eviction filings within the city have also increased, jumping from 1,236 in March to 1,493 in April.
In his justification for the veto, Polis, who was a technology mogul before coming to politics and is worth $400 million, claimed that the bill’s potential to curb non-collusive behavior in the future outweighed the negative impacts currently faced by Coloradans.
“We should not inadvertently take a tool off the table that could identify vacancies and provide consumers with meaningful data to help efficiently manage residential real estate to ensure people can access housing,” Polis wrote in his veto letter. “If signed today, this bill may have unintended consequences of creating a hostile environment for providers of rental housing and could result in further diminished supply of rental housing based on inadequate data.”
The bill’s sponsors, however, argue that they had already taken several precautions to account for any of the unintended consequences Polis professed to be concerned with.
“That was something that was laboriously worked on, particularly by our House sponsors, to ensure that data entered into the public sphere, analysis conducted with public data, and tools of that nature could be able to continue unhindered,” said Nick Hinrichsen, a co-sponsor of the bill in the Colorado Senate. “And so to see that brought up with zero specifics and zero proposals for what that might somehow look like, in addition to what was already done, is really disheartening.”
RealPage’s victory in Colorado takes place at a time in which the company is already under heavy legal scrutiny amid numerous state and federal lawsuits. At the time of writing, eight states (including Colorado) have joined the Department of Justice in suing RealPage for price-fixing and illegally raising rents, and several localities, such as Berkeley and San Francisco, have already passed varying degrees of local bans.
The veto is expected to act as a lifeline for the company, which praised Polis’s decision in a statement to Denver7. “RealPage applauds Governor Polis for his courageous leadership in doing the right thing,” the statement reads. “We want to thank Governor Polis and the broad array of supporters of housing affordability who instead advocated for the responsible use of technology and tools like RealPage’s algorithmic pricing software to find fair pricing, ultimately benefiting all Coloradans.”
As the federal government continues to quash consumer protections, and with the House budget bill’s provision banning state AI regulation looming, the Polis veto shielding RealPage marks a loss in one of the only arenas where bills favorable to the interests of the general public currently have a chance of passing. Polis has aligned himself with the “abundance” agenda for lowering costs, but critics argue that this veto does exactly the opposite.
“With this veto, [Polis] made his priorities clear,” said Pat Garofalo, director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project, in a statement. “The governor talks a big game about affordability and abundance, but when given the chance to take real action—at no cost to taxpayers—he protected profiteers and let families keep paying a 13th month of rent. It’s a betrayal of the values he claims to champion, and Colorado renters won’t soon forget it.”
