From Oct. 27 to Dec. 1, Zella Makela tried to reach her landlord so many times, she made a spreadsheet to track all her failures.
She sent 16 emails to the property management company, Redstone Residential, and used a website contact form another 14 times. She called 27 times. Her final tally: After 57 attempts in a month, she says she received no written responses, and only got someone on the phone twice.
In the meantime, her toilet continued to leak. Whenever she tried to cook, it tripped the circuit breaker if she used too many appliances at once. Trash and dog poop piled up in the small dog park below her balcony.
But mostly, she just wanted to plug in her toothbrush. The electrical outlet in her bathroom didn’t work, sending her downstairs to brush her teeth or blow-dry her hair.
“It’s just dehumanizing, honestly,” said Makela, a tattoo artist who owns her own business. Before she and her partner moved out last week, they paid about $3,100 a month for their two-bedroom apartment in Denver’s Speer neighborhood — plus hundreds more in fees.
“You mean you can’t even have a conversation with me?” she said. “It’s crazy.”
Over the last eight years Democrats have held control of the Colorado state legislature, lawmakers have steadily expanded protections for tenants. They made it harder for landlords to evict renters without cause, bolstered tenants’ ability to file class action lawsuits and strengthened the state’s habitability laws.
Another significant law took effect Jan. 1, requiring price transparency in rental listings and banning landlords from charging fees for pest control, maintenance and other expenses that consumer advocates say should be included in the rent.
“Part of the point of the tenants’ rights legislation we’ve done is greater clarity about everybody’s rights,” said state Sen. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat who cosponsored the price transparency measure, House Bill 1090. “Hopefully so that the broad elements of a fair deal are clear, tenants know what they have to pay, and they know that they’re going to get a safe legal dwelling in exchange for that.”
Meanwhile, rents have leveled off and even fallen in parts of the Denver metro area, as new construction eases the supply crunch and gives renters more power to negotiate — at least those who are willing to go through the hassle and expense of moving.
But in practice, many tenants still find it hard to reason with out-of-state investment firms when they need maintenance or face questionable charges on their monthly bill.
Around Thanksgiving, Makela put up flyers around the complex, urging her neighbors at Summit at Wash Park to contact her. They started a group text and began swapping stories. People had spotted rodents. Packages were reported stolen from a “secure” locker system that hadn’t been locking properly for weeks.
And, with rent due in a matter of days, the web portal tenants use to pay their bills, access their lease and submit maintenance requests was down, with no explanation.
Tenants issue demands
On Dec. 1, Liza Nielsen, who lives in Makela’s building, found a packet of letters taped to her door.
One announced that Summit had been sold from 90 S LOGAN EXCHANGE 1 DB LLC to HSR LOGAN LLC — a pair of shell companies owned by two California-based firms, DB Capital Management and Hill Street Realty. Another letter introduced HSR as their new landlord, with a warning: “All existing lease terms and conditions remain unchanged, including the requirement to pay rent promptly.”
According to Nielsen’s lease, a copy of which was shared with The Colorado Sun, rent was due that day — but she had no way to pay it. The web portal with all of her account information was still down.
Eventually, HSR assured residents they could wait to pay their December rent until they could log in. But after weeks of limited communication and maintenance, the tenants at Summit had had enough.
In a Dec. 15 letter signed by 14 tenants at the 46-unit complex, they asked for half off their rent for two months, a clear timeline for when maintenance requests would be resolved, and a refund of package fees that had piled up on their credit cards while the locker system was malfunctioning.
They also wanted the apartment to stop charging them $75 a month for internet that was unreliable at best — unusable at worst. Tenants told The Sun it was like using the Wi-Fi at a coffee shop. The internet went down frequently. Everyone in the complex shared a login, and no one had their own router.
Many, including Makela, had to pay a second internet bill to meet their needs. Her partner works from home, and they are both avid gamers, so they spend another $85 a month for more reliable high-speed service.
HSR did not respond to messages from The Colorado Sun requesting an interview or comment for the article.
In an email to tenants that was provided to The Sun, HSR said it was working to track outstanding maintenance requests and address them in order of severity — and tenants say some repairs have been made. The company also agreed to discuss “billing-related questions” involving the lockers and Wi-Fi on an individual basis. But the company denied financial responsibility for any problems that occurred before they took over the complex Dec. 1.
“We can understand the frustration with prior ownership, and we want to acknowledge that many of the experiences described have caused undue stress,” Carley Benson, the company’s regional manager, wrote in the email. “While we cannot retroactively resolve or provide financial concessions for matters that occurred before our management began, we do take seriously our responsibility to stabilize operations and improve conditions moving forward.”
On Dec. 30, the tenants sent another letter demanding an in-person meeting last week with management. The company refused, tenants said.
Redstone, which managed the property before the sale, did not respond to messages seeking comment for the article. Neither did DB Capital Management, which owned Summit until December. DB Capital sold it to HSR for $17.7 million — about $1.4 million more than the firm paid for it in 2020, according to BusinessDen.
This wasn’t the first time Nielsen has been “ghosted by management,” she said. In 2023, when she signed her first lease at Summit, no one gave her any instructions for how to move in. That was about the time Redstone took over running the building, she said.
“I had no idea where anybody went. I didn’t know when I could move in. I didn’t know where to pick up my key,” said Nielsen, a labor organizer. “And then once I did get in the building after intense harassment, I didn’t have access to the internet. My electricity wasn’t turned on.”
To her, the two episodes, just over two years apart, illustrate a broader pattern with the growth of corporate landlords in Colorado.
“When these acquisitions and building sales happen, tenants get left behind,” Nielsen said.
$25 for vinyl flooring
Shortly before Christmas, Summit’s tenants regained access to their rent portal.
Their old maintenance requests were gone; so were their payment histories. That left tenants worried about how they’d prove any of their claims in court, if it came to that.
Something else was different, too. Makela’s account featured three charges she’d never seen before, all labeled “amenity rent,” with no other detail.
When she asked for a more detailed ledger, here’s how the charges broke down: $100 for her apartment’s loft; $50 for a mountain view; $25 for vinyl flooring. Nevermind that her damaged floors were one of the things she wanted repaired.
Zach Neumann, a Denver attorney who has reviewed countless tenant ledgers in his eviction defense work, said the charges were “the most egregious set of fees” he’d ever seen on a rental bill.
“I’m like kind of aghast,“ said Neumann, cofounder of the Community Economic Defense Project. “Those aren’t amenities. Those are just features of an apartment.”
Makela said her rent didn’t go up — they simply broke her bill into a base rent, plus the supplemental charges. She’s convinced they just wanted to make the rent appear lower than it is — a practice that flies in the face of the state’s new price transparency law, which was set to go into effect within a week of the charges showing up.
To Neumann, any changes to a tenant’s bill midlease raises red flags.
“It puts more responsibility on the tenant to review the ledger and think about all the constituent pieces of their rent,” he said. “That is not a good practice, and it doesn’t feel like a fair one, even if the amount is the same in the end.”
HSR did not respond to emailed questions seeking an explanation. But after Makela complained, the “amenity rent” charges were taken off her ledger.
Some fees banned by new law
Days after the new charges appeared, seven tenants met at a bar down the street to discuss their next move.
Some had researched new state laws and contacted friends with law degrees. They were convinced that Redstone’s disappearing act and some of HSR’s response had to be illegal — they just weren’t sure what they could do about it.
At least two of the fees tenants pay at Summit are explicitly banned by state law: a $15 “real estate tax” fee and a $10 pest fee. Under House Bill 1090, landlords aren’t allowed to charge tenants fees for property taxes or for services they’re required to provide under state habitability laws, like keeping living spaces free of rats and bugs.
But while the law took effect Jan. 1, 2026, it doesn’t say whether it affects leases that were signed before then. Tenants said their landlord argued it didn’t apply to older leases. A bill sponsor referred The Sun to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office for clarity on how the law will be enforced, but an agency spokesperson did not provide an answer in time for the article’s publication.
Neumann said tenants have a number of ways to enforce tenant laws, like filing habitability complaints with government agencies or bringing a class action suit. Tenants can also demand that illegal charges are refunded.
The residents considered a rent strike — but ultimately, the fear of eviction outweighed the financial leverage they thought they might gain. Instead, Nielsen said they’ve been working with the Denver Metro Tenants’ Union to come up with a less risky strategy.
Most landlords try to follow the law, Neumann said.
“They try to take care of their tenants,” he said. “But when you have a landlord that’s just unwilling to do that, and that’s built into their business model and their economics, unfortunately, court is the only way.”
Moving on
Makela didn’t need a spreadsheet to remember one of her earliest phone calls.
It was Oct. 31 — her wedding night.
She had eloped with her partner on the Scottish countryside, but amid the celebrations, she had a gnawing anxiety: Redstone’s billing system wasn’t accepting her rent, and she didn’t want to miss a payment while she was abroad, with limited cell service and internet access.
She kept calling, and finally got someone on the phone two days later to process her payment. Within a few weeks, the portal would go down completely for the entire complex.
After all the problems, HSR let her break her lease without penalty, Makela said. She moved out last week, into a house in Congress Park.
Her rent’s about the same, but the place is much nicer, she said. They have a backyard — and, as far as she knows, the electricity works in the kitchen and bathrooms. But the newlyweds couldn’t afford it on their own. They got help from their parents to cover the thousands of dollars they needed for movers and a new security deposit.
HSR refused to give her any concessions on her rent, she said. But Summit’s new website, now up and running, offers a deal for new residents.
Move in to one of the many vacant units listed online, and you can get up to eight weeks free.