The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce is no longer opposing House Bill 1017, which calls for voluntary rent-control agreements following the addition of an amendment yesterday. The bill, by state Representative Daniel Kagan, a Denver Democrat, seeks to alter a provision in state law to allow private developers to enter voluntarily into rent-control contracts on their properties with counties and cities, according to the Denver Business Journal. The amendment prevents local governments from denying development permit applications if applicants decline to enter into rent-control agreements. Kagan (pictured) had complained in a guest column in the Denver Daily News that the bill was under siege: “My bill is a time-tested way to clear a legal bottleneck that has choked off the development of new affordable housing and threatened to let speculators destroy the affordable units we have already built. I urge all Coloradans to support it.” A Highlands Ranch man who owns rental property in Boulder is taking steps to prevent the bill from being enacted, because it “attempts to undermine the current statewide ban on rent control that has been in effect since 1981,” he tells The Denver Post.