By Ilana Newman for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

Kevin Connor spent a few months living in the Bridge Homeless Shelter transitional housing when he first moved to Cortez, Colorado, after getting out of La Plata County Jail. The Bridge has 12 transitional housing units with most residents paying under $200 a month for housing. 

After leaving the Bridge, Connor lived in a hotel for a bit but was paying more than $400 a week and found it unsustainable. After that, he lived in a storage room at one of his workplaces for four months. 

Connor couldn’t afford a rental in Cortez even while holding multiple jobs.

According to a housing needs assessment, presented at a city council meeting for the City of Cortez, Montezuma County, Colorado, has had the greatest rate of housing cost increases in the State of Colorado between 2018 and 2022 — 16% per year.

Most importantly, for people like Connor who need an affordable place to rent, there are very few rentals that fit the definition of “affordable housing,” which means that they are available for less than 30% of the area median income. In Cortez, for a one-person household, this is around $863, according to Colorado’s Baseline Assistance Tool. During the time of this reporting, the Daily Yonder was able to locate fewer than five rental offers on local rental websites that fit that price range.

In 2022, Colorado voted to approve Proposition 123, which modified the state’s affordable housing programs to create a State Affordable Housing Fund. Several hundred million dollars will be available for municipalities, counties, and tribes to implement affordable housing. To receive the funding, however, municipalities, counties, or tribes have to commit to raise their affordable housing by 9% in three years above a baseline number, determined by the Baseline Assistance Tool. 

Numbers Matter

The issue is that some of the data provided by the Baseline Assistance Tool is wrong. 

According to the tool, the town of Dolores (also in Montezuma County), which has a population of 805, has 334 available units, and 282 affordable units. But the Town of Dolores has 543 households, which would mean that half of the households in Dolores are living in affordable rentals, which is untrue. According to the Tool, this means that Dolores needs to create 30 new affordable units in the next three years.

“There’s not a place to put 30 units in Dolores,” said Shalako Powers, who is currently working on updating this incorrect data. “It’s confined by walls of the canyon on both sides and then a hill coming out on the west and a river canyon on the east. Where are you going to put 30 units in Dolores?”

Powers works for Region 9, the economic district that contains Montezuma County as well as the neighboring four counties that make up Southwest Colorado. Region 9 is a nonprofit community economic development corporation that works closely with the counties and cities on projects like housing, broadband, transit, and other types of economic development.

When Powers spotted the discrepancy in the data, which was originally presented in a publicly available spreadsheet, he worked with the Colorado Division of Housing to develop the Baseline Assistance Tool. Municipalities are required to use this data, but the Baseline Assistance Tool allows the user to adjust for inflation, housing size, and other variables. This means the number can get closer to what feels reasonable for municipalities to commit to. 

But even after committing to Proposition 123, municipalities are then only eligible for the money from the Affordable Housing Fund. Nonprofits, developers, or governments can apply for the grant but are not guaranteed funding. Powers is worried that even if the towns or counties in Southwest Colorado did commit to Proposition 123, they would not receive the funding. 

“Proposition 123 failed in Montezuma County,” said Powers in a Daily Yonder interview. “It did pass as a state but it failed here. My concern is that we’re going to see what we always see. The taxpayers of our rural areas aren’t going to get their money back in their tax refund and none of that money is gonna come back here to provide housing and the people here are just going to get screwed like they always do.” Powers referred to how Proposition 123 passed by 52.6% for the state of Colorado, but lost by 54% in Montezuma County, reflecting the community’s conservative-leaning politics and lack of belief in the solution behind Proposition 123. 

Powers thinks that cities and counties on the Front Range — where the population centers of Denver, Colorado Springs, and Boulder are located — will get the majority of the money because they have grant writers who can pursue it, compared to the more rural areas on the Western Slope where there are fewer staff able to pursue funding. Municipalities have until November 1, 2023, to submit their commitment to qualify for funding. 

A Universal Problem

In the days following the Daily Yonder interview, Connor secured housing – a $750 trailer in Cortez. But he said about the unit that “The entire park should have [been] condemned 20 years ago. These places are almost 50 year old dumps. I also think what I’m in right now was condemned at some point.”

Daniel Stern, communications and outreach manager for the Washington, D.C.-based Housing Assistance Council, said that other rural areas around the country are facing similar challenges around housing availability and affordability. The common issues he sees are lack of supply, aging supply, and a challenge with scaling construction in rural areas. 

“In a rural area, if you need 40 homes or a multi-family house, it’s harder to make that profitable for construction,” Stern said. “That’s why you see so much luxury construction because that’s what pencils out the most unless you use some of the federal programs that are built for building out affordable housing. But those programs… really, really work once you get to a certain scale and that scale is hard to achieve in rural areas.”


Ilana Newman wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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Orange County's Supreme Court reversed a decision letting the city of Newburgh implement state tenant protections.

The city declared a housing emergency in 2023 when a study showed a vacancy rate less than 4%. The lawsuit overturning the protections found that the study was flawed, leading the court to invalidate it.

Daniel Atonna, political coordinator for the group For the Many, said this leaves tenants in a precarious position.

"This rips away protections for tenants in over 730 apartments in the city of Newburgh," he said, "at a time when tenants all across the Hudson Valley, all across New York, are facing difficult conditions as landlords are trying to evict them and raise their rent."

The petitioner's attorney said if unchecked, the city's actions would have made drastic changes to the rental market without legal basis.

This ruling also keeps Newburgh from setting up a rent guidelines board to decide whether rent-stabilized tenants' rents should stay the same, increase or decrease. Atonna said he hopes the city redoes the survey and implements these protections.

Atonna thinks Newburgh should opt into the newly passed Good Cause Eviction protections. This could better protect tenants, although some housing advocates feel these protections are ineffective. He said many residents support having tenant protections.

"Because it's meant stabilization for the community, right? It means a strong community where their neighbors aren't getting uprooted and evicted every couple of years," he said. "So, this was something that was going to be good for everyone."

A 2021 survey found 77% of Newburgh residents would leave the city because of high rents. It also found that people spend more than 30% of their income on rent.


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The Supreme Court case Grants Pass v. Gloria Johnson could upend homeless populations in Connecticut and nationwide.

The case centers around whether municipalities can fine or ticket people for sleeping outside when there is no shelter available. Connecticut had an eight-year decline in homelessness, but the last two Point-in-Time snapshots indicated it is rising again.

Sarah Fox, CEO of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, said ticketing and fining homeless people only harms them.

"It in fact prolongs their experience of homelessness," Fox asserted. "Once someone is engaged with the criminal legal system, it impacts and affects every other part of their life and their world."

She argued the state needs to work proactively to reduce homelessness, such as tackling the affordable-housing crisis. Connecticut has a shortage of more than 98,000 affordable rental homes. Fox suggested an interagency council on homelessness can ensure homeless people have better access to services and emphasized more funding will create a more effective system for sheltering homeless people.

Homelessness has risen 6% nationally since 2017.

Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said affordable housing and services are key to ending homelessness. She stressed along with state- and local-level work, federal investments can help squelch rising homelessness.

"Investments by Congress in housing affordability, that means rental assistance for everybody who is eligible for rental assistance," Oliva stressed. "Right now, only one out of every four households that's eligible for federal rental assistance can get it because of funding challenges."

Based on the Supreme Court's ruling, she feels ordinances criminalizing homelessness could increase. Even so, Oliva added all three levels of government should be aware of actual solutions to curb homelessness.


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Residents in a rural North Carolina town grappling with economic challenges are getting a pathway to homeownership.

In Enfield, the average annual income is about $25,000, while the average home price in the state exceeds $300,000. The significant gap between income and housing costs makes homeownership unattainable for many residents.

Mondale Robinson, mayor of Enfield, said it is an issue with which he is all too familiar, having grown up in the town. He acknowledged the dire housing conditions faced by many residents.

"Housing there is third-world," Robinson asserted. "And I know that term is not politically correct, but I use it intentionally to remind people that while we may be in the so-called richest country in the world, my people are suffering from houses that are killing them."

He pointed out many people in the town are living things like severe mold or failing foundations. Recognizing the challenges posed by limited resources both on a town and federal level, Robinson explained he is tackling the issue by forming partnerships with construction firms and lending institutions. He noted through the Horizon Project, they aim to build energy-efficient homes priced affordably at about $105,000.

Robinson highlighted historically, the majority of Black residents there have been marginalized from experiencing positive changes in their neighborhoods. He explained previous investments focused on constructing homes that were unaffordable for the community. Robinson expressed optimism the initiative will serve as a foundation for achieving long-term equality and stability.

"We had a qualification seminar where we brought people in to see if they qualify for homes," Robinson recounted. "Of those 400 people that showed up, 174 already prequalified and have already started ordering their model homes and on the process to become homeowners."

He added families who qualify will receive smart homes with two to four bedrooms, an opportunity most people living on an hourly wage in the town would not have had access to.

In addition to the housing aspect of the project, Robinson emphasized the importance of economic development and sustainability. He said they will offer training to help new homeowners maintain their property.

He stressed another major part of the Horizon project is meant to help promote growth in the town and return ownership to the people who live there.

"When all of these new houses pop up in this rural space, we know what's to follow, businesses to follow," Robinson projected. "Also, we're looking for the mental victory that folk feel when they've purchased a home, alleviating the fact that you have a landlord that is not concerned with how your health is affected by the house you're living in."

By addressing housing affordability and promoting economic empowerment, Robinson hopes the Horizon Project will serve as a blueprint for similar initiatives across North Carolina and beyond. Qualified families will move into new homes by June, while ongoing support aims to assist others in future qualification.


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