About the Community Economic Defense Project (CEDP)

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered unprecedented eviction risk for U.S. renters. Nationwide, more than 20M people may be at risk of eviction, with more than 300,000 at risk in Colorado alone. The Community Economic Defense Project (CEDP) was formed in April 2020, by The Community Firm, a Colorado non-profit, social enterprise law firm. Our mission is to Keep Coloradans Housed. We do this by helping to prevent mass evictions and homelessness. While the need escalated during the pandemic, we will provide these services well after the pandemic ends.

Traditionally, eviction defense has focused on legal services. At CEDP, we are scaling a “managed care” approach to eviction prevention that centers the legal and financial needs of housing-insecure families and uses a variety of tools to keep them housed. Our team of housing lawyers, economists, data analysts, policy-experts, organizers, social workers and technologists provides three services:

Legal aid and financial assistance for tenants facing eviction;
- Data and research published in conjunction with the Bell Policy Center & the Aspen Institute
- Advocacy and public policy services

Our focus in 2021 is on providing rental assistance and legal services to help at-risk individuals and families gain access to state and private rental assistance dollars. After proving the efficacy of this effort in two 2020 pilots, we are scaling the effort in 2021 targeting the distribution of several million dollars in rental assistance by the end of Q2 2021.