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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Construction will begin early next year on new affordable housing dedicated to low-income Oregon farmworkers. This project is the latest by the Farmworker Housing Development Corporation, a nonprofit that is partnering with Energy Trust of Oregon to make their housing more energy efficient. This year, the FHDC hosted workshops teaching more than 200 families how to save energy at home.

Ramon Martinez, communications and advocacy coordinator with the FHDC, said the payoffs are significant. Along with receiving more than $20,000 in incentives to help reduce energy use across their properties, residents' bills are down.

"During the cold months, some people are afraid to turn on the heater, right? But its been great because I've heard successful stories about residents seeing $200, $300 bills, lowering it down to the $100 range," he explained.

Research shows that most farmworkers in Oregon do not have access to affordable housing and often live in over-crowded conditions.

In Oregon and Washington, 32% of farmworker households live in poverty, which is more than twice as much as the general U.S. population. The Farmworker Housing Development Corporation manages 460 units across the central Willamette Valley, providing affordable housing to more than 2,000 people. Along with rental housing, it also helps farmworkers who are interested in becoming homeowners.

Christian Meneses-Zurita, senior asset manager with the FHDC, said it has hosted homebuyer resource fairs and recently started a fund to help farmworkers find housing and pay for education.

"Our affordable housing options can be a stepping stone," Meneses-Zurita said.

More information about the Ramon Ramirez Fund is at www.FHDC.org.

In early 2025, construction will begin on new affordable housing dedicated to low-income Oregon farmworkers.


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One life-altering situation turned a North Carolina woman's stability into homelessness and now, she is sharing her journey to humanize homelessness and advocate for solutions to affordable housing.

Tonya Adams-Ruffin, 54, never imagined she would end up on the streets. A combination of domestic violence and a work accident left her without a home, a situation from which she is still recovering as she transitions into new housing.

"That was one of the hardest things that I had to do," Adams-Ruffin explained. "Not knowing if someone is going to try and hurt you, not feeling safe."

With support from the Interfaith Council for Social Services, Adams-Ruffin is using her experience to lead and advocate for change. After receiving leadership training from the council, she has taken on roles such as working the polls in her community and raising awareness about the realities of being unhoused.

Another way Adams-Ruffin is raising her voice to dispel myths about homelessness involves creating signs to raise awareness, with messages like "We may be homeless, but we're not helpless." The signs are part of her larger effort to spotlight the struggles faced by homeless individuals, challenges extending beyond appearances to include barriers in accessing essential resources such as safety, food and shelter, even from organizations designed to provide them.

"Just because you're homeless, you don't want to have to be in a situation where you can't bathe, eat, lie down when you need to and feel safe," Adams-Ruffin pointed out. "What I would do is say, 'Look, we need to do more with affordable housing.'"

Adams-Ruffin stressed her advocacy thrives through partnership with the council, which helps her amplify her vision for community impact. She is also raising awareness about a national grant to support those facing homelessness.

Alyssa Hinton, voter engagement project lead for the council, said the organization is providing the resources and support Adams-Ruffin needs to make a difference.

"There is a national grant that is up for $25,000 for anyone who has faced or is facing homelessness right now," Hinton noted. "We are priming and prepping our members to be able to apply for that grant. We have ideas. We can get this money. We have a place to do this. Let's do it together."

In 2023, nearly 10,000 people in North Carolina were homeless on any given night.


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Low-income Montana residents are getting help accessing legal aid online.

In some cases, updates to automated legal forms could help residents facing eviction stay in their homes, and also assist people who need help with family law issues.

Montana Legal Services Association will use the $275,000 technology assistance grant to overhaul and redesign its most-used automated, online legal forms.

MLSA's Community Legal Education Coordinator Linden Howard-Murphy said the information from those forms will be integrated into the state's court systems.

"We know that not everyone can afford a lawyer, and we also know that navigating the court system on your own can be extremely overwhelming," said Howard-Murphy. "One of the cornerstones of our work here at MLSA is empowering Montanans with the tools they need to handle their civil legal problems pro se. Pro se means without a lawyer."

MLSA data show there is only one legal aid attorney for every 8,900 Montanans who need civil legal help. Howard-Murphy said upgrading the online forms will help improve those numbers.

Ron Flagg - president of the Washington, D.C.-based Legal Services Corporation, which awarded the grant - said streamlining the online help low-income Montanans can access could be the difference between staying in their home and being evicted.

"And if you're living on the edge, that means you're one medical expense, one fender-bender from not being able to pay your rent," said Flagg. "And having legal assistance available in those cases is a game changer."

The Legal Services Corporation funds 130 nonprofit legal aid programs nationwide.