Trinidad eyes crackdown as vacant property list reaches 205

Trinidad’s vacant-property list has climbed to 205, a figure that puts a hard number on a problem residents have been seeing for years: empty and deteriorating buildings are no longer isolated nuisances, but a citywide safety concern. The City of Trinidad is now signaling a tougher stance on dilapidated properties as blight continues to shape downtown blocks and nearby streets.

The city’s Building Department says it is working to control blight “for the safety and welfare” of Trinidad, and it is leaning on the anti-dilapidation ordinance in Chapter 5, Section 5-45. That ordinance is meant to prevent and remedy deterioration and neglect in buildings that threaten public health, safety and welfare, and the city says violations can be punished with fines and penalties for each day a violation continues.

That matters because the vacant-property count reflects more than a paper inventory. In Trinidad, neglected structures can invite trespassing, falling debris, fire danger and a growing sense that parts of town are slipping out of control. Earlier City Council meetings already showed how closely those concerns overlap, with community members, business owners, council members and the Trinidad Police Department raising questions about unhoused people, vagrants downtown and the role dilapidated houses play in that broader picture.

The pressure is landing in the middle of larger housing and redevelopment debates in Las Animas County. Trinidad has been working on downtown redevelopment planning and revisions to land-use code, while Colorado reporting has described Trinidad and similar southern Colorado communities as places where housing stock exists physically but is too deteriorated to be livable without major rehabilitation. Trinidad State College has also been tied to that effort through a construction-training program, part of the Colorado Partnership for Education and Rural Revitalization, that pays students to renovate rundown homes.

The city’s most visible preservation fight remains the Jaffa Opera House. The building has sat unused for about 20 years, Trinidad began issuing citations tied to it in January 2024, and a recent survey found the northwest corner failing. In May 2025, the Jaffa Opera House Foundation received nearly $1.9 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to help clean up asbestos at the site.

For residents living next to these properties, the next phase should bring more than talk. Trinidad already has the enforcement tool it says it intends to use, and the vacant-property list suggests the city is preparing to apply it more often as it tries to decide which buildings can be repaired, which need stronger intervention and which have gone too far to remain in place.