Colorado’s new law shields renters from fees, businesses say protections should be next

By Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun

The Colorado legislature banned CAM fees — charges for common area maintenance — in residential leases starting Jan. 1.

Without warning, Le’Toya Garland’s landlord tripled the common area maintenance fees she owed on her hip-hop dance studio in Aurora.

In June 2024, the $300 to $500 a month she had paid throughout her lease jumped to $1,693.

And while she managed to scrape together the funds to cover her new monthly tab — including the $2,900 she already owed in monthly rent — she couldn’t afford what came next: a $9,000 bill for back-charges she’d never been told she had to pay.

“It just showed up in our account,” said Garland, who co-owns the School of Breaking. “It was the first time ever that we’ve gotten a bill like that, and it was a very large amount of money for a small business to have to come up with in a short period of time.

“And,” she added, “there was no clear explanation of what the fees were for.”

Common area maintenance fees, or CAM fees, long a staple of commercial real estate leases, have become a focus of consumer protection efforts at the Colorado Capitol, as legislative Democrats look to crack down on hidden charges they view as anti-competitive and predatory.

Under a new law passed earlier this year, residential landlords will be banned from charging CAM fees starting Jan. 1, 2026, while commercial property owners will be subject to new transparency rules aimed at helping small business owners like Garland understand what they owe — and why.

But while advocates say the new law should help, it remains to be seen whether it goes far enough to address what consumer protection experts say is the fundamental challenge faced by renters and small business tenants alike: an imbalance of power and knowledge.

“We would not have signed the lease if we had known that this would have been part of our experience,” Garland said.

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