Colorado Survivor Lease-Break and Lock-Change Rights 2025

HB25-1168 defines the protected category as victim-survivors of unlawful sexual behavior, stalking, domestic violence, or domestic abuse, referencing the specific conduct described in Colorado Revised Statutes sections 18-6-800.3, 13-14-101, and 16-22-102. This broadens Colorado's prior housing protections, which had centered more narrowly on domestic violence, into the wider category of gender-based violence the bill's title reflects.

[Cite: HB25-1168, amending Colorado Revised Statutes section 38-12-401]

A tenant can establish survivor status through any one of four documentation paths: a self-attestation affidavit stating their status and that the abuse caused the alleged lease violation; a letter signed by a qualified third party, including a victim advocate, attorney, social worker, medical professional, faith leader, or mental health provider; a police report from the prior 120 days; or a valid civil, criminal, or emergency protection order or restraining order. The statute is explicit that a landlord can't demand additional documentation beyond one of these.

[Cite: HB25-1168, amending Colorado Revised Statutes section 38-12-402(2)(a.5)]

The self-attestation option matters in particular for a survivor who hasn't filed a police report or obtained a protection order, situations that are common given how survivors often weigh the risks of formal reporting. A landlord's screening or dispute process needs to accept any one of the four paths as sufficient on its own.

A survivor can terminate their lease early based on fear of imminent danger arising from the abuse. Financial responsibility for that early termination is capped at one month's rent following vacating the unit, and that amount is only due within 90 days, and only if the landlord actually documents the damages and provides written notice of them within 30 days.

[Cite: HB25-1168, amending Colorado Revised Statutes section 38-12-402(2)(b)]

That's three separate conditions stacked on top of each other: the cap itself, the 90-day payment window, and the landlord's own 30-day documentation-and-notice deadline. A landlord who misses the 30-day notice window loses the ability to collect the charge at all, not just the ability to charge more than the cap.

There's a specific carve-out worth flagging clearly: if another tenant remains on the lease after the survivor terminates their portion of it, the landlord can't collect the one month's rent charge from the survivor. This protects a survivor who's one of multiple tenants on a shared lease from being charged an early-termination amount when the unit isn't actually being vacated and the landlord isn't losing the tenancy itself.

[Cite: HB25-1168, amending Colorado Revised Statutes section 38-12-402(2)(b)]

A survivor can change the locks, including electronic locks, and take other reasonable safety precautions without the landlord retaliating or charging a fee for it. Any lease provision that would prohibit changing locks is void and unenforceable.

[Cite: HB25-1168, amending Colorado Revised Statutes section 38-12-402(7)]

There's a balancing requirement: the survivor generally has to provide the landlord with access, meaning a new key or access code, within 14 days of the change. That requirement has one specific exception: it doesn't apply when the landlord is the abuser. A landlord in that situation isn't entitled to the standard 14-day access window.

[Cite: HB25-1168, amending Colorado Revised Statutes section 38-12-402(7)]

When unpaid rent is connected to documented survivor status, a landlord has to offer a written repayment plan within 3 business days of serving a demand for the unpaid rent. That plan has to require at least $25 per month, can't run longer than 9 months from when it's established, and can't carry any fees, interest, or penalties.

[Cite: HB25-1168, amending Colorado Revised Statutes section 13-40-104(4)(e)(I)]

The tenant's side of this has its own deadline: the tenant has to accept the plan or propose an alternative within 7 days. If they don't respond within that window, they waive the ability to raise survivor status as a defense to nonpayment. That's a real consequence worth surfacing clearly, since it puts a tight clock on a tenant who might already be dealing with a difficult, fast-moving situation.

[Cite: HB25-1168, amending Colorado Revised Statutes section 13-40-104(4)(e)(I)]

HB25-1168 isn't confined to Colorado's landlord-tenant statute. Beyond amending Colorado Revised Statutes sections 38-12-103, 38-12-401, 38-12-402, and 38-12-1302, it also touches multiple sections of Title 13, Article 40, the statute governing eviction procedure: sections 13-40-104, 106, 107.5, 108, 110, 110.5, 111, 112, 113, 115, and 122.

[Cite: HB25-1168, 2025 Colorado Session Laws]

That breadth reflects how the bill's protections interact with the formal eviction process, not just the terms of the lease itself. A landlord's eviction filing and rent-demand procedures need to account for these changes, not only the lease-termination and lock-change provisions covered above.

Most of HB25-1168 took effect upon passage, which lines up with the Governor's signature and the May 22, 2025 date this article treats as the general effective date. A specific subset of the bill's sections, numbered 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11 in the enacted text, instead took effect August 6, 2025.

[Cite: HB25-1168, 2025 Colorado Session Laws]

Neither this article nor the sources reviewed for it map those numbered sections back to specific topics within the summary above in a way that can be stated with confidence. Property managers working through a compliance review of this law should treat the full set of protections as already in force since August 6, 2025 at the latest, and confirm with counsel which specific provisions applied from the earlier date if that distinction matters for a particular situation.

The practical work here touches several separate processes: a lease-violation or nonpayment review process needs a clear path for a tenant to submit one of the four documentation types without demanding more; a move-out and damages process needs the 30-day notice deadline and one-month cap built in, along with the shared-lease exception; a maintenance or security policy needs to stop treating a lock change as something requiring landlord approval or a fee; and a rent-demand process needs the 3-business-day repayment plan offer as a standard step whenever survivor status is documented.