During last session’s Real Advocates Tell All, we opened up the conversation by asking “How are you? Are you okay? How’s your therapist?” So same question: How are you? Are you okay? How’s your therapist? 

Tash:  My therapist? She’s great. She’s phenomenal. Highly recommend 10 out of 10. Can’t forget to thank my little SSRIs sprinkled on there. With that combination, you can make it through the legislative session. 

Kiyana: Honestly, I think they’re great. I think they were worried if I was going to come out of this alive, but I did. And did. I’m thriving too, right? It’s not that we weren’t always doing great, do you know what I’m saying? But now, we’re winners! 

Tash: Yeah, we’re winners! 

Kiyana: And we came out on top. Just know that. 

Kiyana, this was your first legislative session as the policy manager at New Era Colorado. How would you describe it?

The biggest thing I’ve learned is that information is key. Information is money.

At the Capitol, the more you’re up to date on what’s happening under the Dome, the more you know about the specific policy and the ins and outs of the bill, line by line. Really understanding the policy and the information about it prepares you for the conversations you’re going to have and the moves you could make. 

Let’s get into the deets. Tell me about New Era’s priority bills. 

Kiyana:The first bill that we got passed and got the governor to sign is HB24-1007 Prohibit Residential Occupancy Limits. That bill really focused on increasing occupancy limits—meaning how many unrelated people can live within a particular unit or apartment or house. So what this bill does is prohibit cities from enforcing occupancy limits, which often have roots in discriminatory housing policies like redlining, so people can live with their chosen family roommates without discrimination, and change our housing laws to focus more on health, safety, and welfare. 

There are really restrictive discriminatory occupancy limit laws out there, like U + 2 in Fort Collins. What prohibiting the number of people who can live in an apartment building or house really does is hinder young people, people of color, as well as queer and trans folk, from living with their chosen family and creating an even heavier cost of living burden. We all know rent is way too damn high. what Occupancy Limits does is to change our legal landscape to one where more people can share those costs. 

Just imagine a Real Housewives’ house and how big those houses are—

Tash: McMansions! 

Kiyana: Now imagine if all those rooms weren’t filled by people. That’s what this bill is trying to solve.

Tell us more about For Cause Evictions, New Era’s other priority bill. 

Tash: This was our second year advocating for For Cause Evictions, introduced in the 2024 legislative session as HB24-1098 Cause Required for Eviction of Residential Tenant. We are a part of a coalition, Colorado Homes for All, which has three majority priorities. The first one is rent control (which is an ongoing priority that we’ll come back to). So, this year, we took a second chance at For Cause Evictions. 

What does that mean—For Cause Evictions? How does this bill impact young people? 

Tash: For Cause Evictions means that there are rules that landlords have to follow that prevent them from evicting people. Because, previously, there were no real rules in the books in Colorado that dictated the eviction process. This bill was modeled after a lot of other legislation across the United States in states like New Jersey and California that essentially prevents people from getting evicted for silly fucking reasons.

We know that across the state young people are really concerned about the cost of housing—it’s one of our biggest issues. We know that the majority of young people pay more than 30% of their household income on rent. So we joined the Colorado Homes for All Coalition to help pass this bill because young people are so cost-burdened by housing right now, in addition to everything else like student loans, health care, and a terrible minimum wage. We needed to engage in this bill because young people, particularly young people of color and queer young people, are at super high risk of getting evicted. What we wanted to do (and did!) was create protections for them so that they would not be evicted for stupid reasons.

Now that these two bills have passed, how do they drive progress on the Youth Agenda? 

Kiyana: The Youth Agenda really focuses on economic justice, and what that means—and the point of these housing bills for us—is that young people care about how much they’re paying for a place to live. 

Tash: It’s a really big deal because economic justice is the simple idea that we should all be able to afford to live and afford the necessities of life, whether that’s housing—which is a human right—or going to the doctor. Without stable housing, people are really living in precarious positions. You need stable housing to live, you need it to be able to thrive. 

Kiyana: Keep Coloradan’s Housed, baby! 

Each year at the legislature, we see anti-abortion activists trying to undermine or eliminate a person’s right to choose when to parent or not to parent. That’s a big part of the reason why we worked with our friends at COLOR last year to pass SB23-190 to stop anti-abortion centers’ deceptive tactics that targeted young Black and brown people. What were anti-abortion extremists’ responses like this year? 

Kiyana: Shaking my head. This year, there were two bills that tried to get rid of the right to an abortion for people in Colorado (bill titles). Both of these bills died in committee, and I’m so proud of the work we did there. We showed up at the Capitol, and we testified to really explain how harmful these bills are to Committee members—because if they passed, Coloradans’ reproductive rights would’ve been taken away, and that felt really important to name. Those bills failed, as they should. 

Tash: The only thing I would add is that I think the fucking mother fuckers who want to try to take away people’s right to reproductive care and abortion in the state are now pivoting to removing the rights of queer people, trans people, and especially young queer kids who are coming into their gender identity. That’s a big concern we have for future legislative sessions. 

People are entitled to do what they want with their bodies and to bodily autonomy—and bodily autonomy is one of the most important tenets to reproductive care. Which does encompass a lot of things like gender identity and sexual orientation. When people try to take those away from young people—well, that’s when we say “Go fuck yourself.”