Thirteen candidates answered questions about topics they might face as the Denver's next mayor.
There wasn't a laugh track at the second mayoral debate, hosted by 9News. That was just moderator Kyle Clark's quick wit bringing forth the laughs.
Candidates sparred over some familiar issues like enforcing the camping ban, but new discussion emerged as they were pressed on rent control.
Of the 13 members present, seven raised their hands in support of some form of rent control. According to City Councilwoman Deborah Ortega, Denver already has a form of rent control in place. She supports Denver's expanding housing affordability program, which looks for market-based solutions for new affordable housing development.
Rep. Leslie Herod called affordability the "No. 1 crisis" in Denver, and wanted to see all options on the table. Lisa Calderon agreed, calling on Denver to look at an array of options.
"It's not rent control in a vacuum, we also have to look at eviction defense and fund that. We need to look at just cause eviction. We need to look at higher wages. All of that will help people to stay in their homes," Calderon said. "It needs to all happen together."
But there was an important aspect that Ean Tafoya said many candidates were missing: What rent control means for someone renting.
Tafoya was only one of two candidates who rents a home. The worry of rent being "jacked up" hundreds of dollars per month means "you absolutely want some form of rent control."
While his fellow legislators fell on different sides of the argument — Sen. Chris Hansen opposes rent control while Rep. Herod supports it — former state Sen. Mike Johnston offered a different, balanced approach. There is new legislation in the statehouse that seeks to repeal a ban on rent control. It recently cleared a House panel by an 8-5 vote.
"We can control rents and have prices not go up without having to have rent control, which stops new development. That's what we did in proposition 123," Johnston said. "What this does now, is this allows us to build new affordable units, and those affordable units, you never have to pay more than 30% of what your income is."
Deed-restricted units mean your rent won't go up unless your income goes up, he said. Calderon met Johnston's claims with skepticism, asking what people are supposed to do if they cannot get into those units. She said the city needs a broad solution, and not just a few thousand units here and a few thousand there.
The other problem brought up was that dense new housing projects are often luxury units, whcih do little to address Denver's housing crisis. Johnston readily admitted this is the case, but said he'd build 25,000 permanently affordable units.
Hansen remained opposed to the idea of rent control.
"It's never worked. In the history of the world it's never worked," he said. "Every time you put in rent control, investment in new housing goes to zero."
Though affordability is not the root cause of homelessness, it is a major contributor to it. Homelessness has been a major thorn in Denver's side for years and recently those numbers have only gone up.
Current city policies are "mean spirited," according to Calderon. While she doesn't think any of the mean spiritedness is intentional, she said, that's the impact of the current camping ban, which many candidates support.
"We have plenty of data that shows the camping ban does not work," she said. "What does work is what I would do: Replace the street enforcement teams with crisis intervention responders so that we aren't just leaving people out there."
While not alone in his support of the camping ban, Thomas Wolf has made it one of his campaign focuses. He said too much of the burden has been placed on area nonprofits.
Wolf also said homelessness must be confronted head on. He is one of two candidates who wants to aggressively enforce the camping ban.
"The numbers say when you're confronting, or trying to help these people, it breaks between chemically dependent, mental and criminal and sometimes all three," he said. "You need to triage, you need to bring the right resource to bear in a different situation."
He recognized that law enforcement is not always the right response and said the first two, chemical dependence or mental, require a clinical healthcare response. The third requires "law and order," he said, something the city has been lax about.
It's time for a change in course, he said, and offered an "armistice" with the homeless population. During his armistice, Wolf said, homeless people would be given a warning to move on or move to a shelter before laws would be enforced.
The idea of law and order was also discussed, and Hansen found himself under fire for his campaign's first advertisement. The ad deals with public safety, and in the first several seconds features security camera footage of a fight breaking out, a homeless tent and someone stealing, of all things, a mailbox.
Tafoya called Hansen out for the ad, saying the ad showed people of color in a very negative light. He asked the candidates to raise their hands if they were "disgusted" by the ad. All 12 did.
"I cannot believe that he would make this ad," Tafoya said. "I am so disappointed in you. We've worked on things together. I hope that you will denounce it and take it away."
Hansen defended the ad.
"I took actual footage from around town. It is not just people of color that are featured in this ad," he said. "(Public safety) is the No. 1 issue on voters' minds. To have some accusation that it is a racist ad I think is totally overwrought. It doesn't make any sense."
Denver's municipal election is April 4. If required, the top two candidates in each race will face off in a runoff election in June.
