This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Renaissance Children's Center, which serves low-income families and those experiencing homelessness with infants and children up to the time they enter kindergarten.

Susan Dunn, director of the center, said many kids who have spent time in the 6,600 square-foot facility in Lakewood have lived in transitional housing, in cars, or have camped out with their parents as they work to get back on their feet.

"The children are coming here while the parents are looking for work, and going to school, and just rebuilding their lives. And it's a safe place for the children to be and learn and grow," she explained.

Launched in 2005 and operated by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, the center has eight naturally-lit classrooms and two outdoor play areas. Kids get breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack prepared onsite by a professional chef. Children have space to direct their own learning experience. And a social-skills curriculum helps prepare kids to succeed in school and beyond, by building emotional competence and strengthening their ability to play and solve problems with others.

The center's staff is trained in trauma-informed education, and mental health services are available for children and parents. Dunn said most of the trauma kids experience stem from living in poverty. Many have been separated from their parents because of behavioral-health issues or incarceration, and adds that consistency is key to their recovery.

"They know when meals are served. Everybody sits down at the table and eats together, so there's that community. And then our classrooms are very home-like. It doesn't look like a schoolroom as much as it looks like a living room and a home," Dunn continued.

The center's woodsy outdoor spaces serve as a natural-learning classroom, which promotes math, science, literacy and other skills. Dunn said children get to connect to nature and experience new ways of learning.

"A lot of the kids, they don't really have a big backyard, and so our playgrounds are their big backyard. They get to use their muscles and their skills to climb and check out bugs and rocks and all kinds of things like that," she said.

Once homeless and suffering from addictions himself, Joplin's mayor now leads a crusade to help others overcome the same hardships.

About 53,000 people live in Joplin, where a 2023 study found more than 600 individuals experienced homelessness, largely driven by the effects of the 2020 pandemic, high housing costs and mental health challenges.

Keenan Cortez, mayor of Joplin, has partnered with shelters and local nonprofits to offer support in response, which includes access to recovery services, job training and housing initiatives. Cortez said faith and determination led him from living on the streets to similar programs.

"I just got on my knees and I said, 'Help me,'" Cortez recounted. "I was able to get into a drug and alcohol treatment plan and then being able to be exposed to 12-step programs that, to this date, have been able to help me maintain my sobriety."

Between 2018 and 2023, homelessness in Missouri rose by about 22.8%.

Cortez expressed his excitement about partnering with Vita Nova Village, a Joplin nonprofit building affordable tiny homes. He emphasized the initiative will provide more than just a roof over people's heads. It will offer essential training and resources to help people address the root causes of their challenges and work toward stability.

"Do they need specific training so that they can get into a career that will offer them income?" Cortez asked. "Do they need mental health services, or do they need simple health services, so they can get healthy enough to get back into the workforce?"

Cortez added the city has recently approved a parcel of land so Vita Nova Village can purchase inexpensively from the city and the nonprofit has also raised money to begin building the tiny homes.


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Denver's homeless population hit an all-time high in 2024 but there is actually no shortage of available housing units, according to a new report.

Omar Ocampo, researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies and the report's co-author, said much of the housing built over the past two decades is not homes for people. Those units, many of which remain vacant, are being used by hedge funds and the wealthy as a safe and profitable place to park large sums of untaxed wealth.

"We have seen, over the past decade or so, a boom in luxury real estate," Ocampo observed. "Basically, the only people who can afford it are people who are ultrahigh net worth, or at the top of the income distribution."

The report showed how corporations and wealthy investors from across the globe have amassed large tracts of single and multifamily residential units since the housing market crash in 2008. The scale of the purchases has put upward pressure on prices, causing rents to skyrocket and putting homeownership out of reach for millions.

There are 16 million vacant homes across the U.S., which means there are 28 homes for every American experiencing homelessness.

Developers can apply for tax incentives to build affordable housing but the profit margins for luxury units are simply too large for all but nonprofit builders to resist. Ocampo pointed to the Homes Act, recently introduced in the U.S. House, as one way to turn things around for the vast majority of Americans who cannot afford what the marketplace is building.

"We need public investment and to establish a housing development authority, which authorizes hundreds of billions of dollars to develop permanently affordable housing," Ocampo contended

Corporations have also increased their earnings by converting rental stock into short-term vacation homes. Ocampo noted a shareholder report by executives at Blackstone, which now owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., promising profits as rental stock went down.

"Chronic housing shortages meant their ability to raise prices and be able to extract more wealth from vulnerable working-class tenants," Ocampo added.


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A package of New York City bills can help preserve affordable housing.

The Community Land Act creates more pathways for communities to purchase and control land. Two of the bills would allow nonprofits and community land trusts to make a first offer on any multifamily property or public land up for sale.

Will Spisak, senior program associate for the nonprofit New Economy Project, said the bills help build community wealth and let people have control over their neighborhood's future.

"Renters are no longer kind of at the mercy of these slumlords that often neglect the building, extract wealth from the community, and don't reinvest in the living conditions of those properties," Spisak explained. "It creates a way for people to be directly involved in controlling their housing situation."

He added it also creates opportunities to develop permanent affordable housing. Some real estate developers and investors are opposed to the bills, primarily about the transparency measures of the legislation. Spisak countered tenants are tired of not being in control of their housing and feedback for the bills has been overwhelmingly positive. The goal is to have the New York City Council pass the bills in 2025.

Although opposition from the real estate industry has thrown up some barriers, other challenges loom ahead. Spisak noted aside from public education to ensure people know about the measures, there is also the challenge of providing resources to groups looking to take advantage of the bills.

"We need them to be really efficient with how they get the money out to groups," Spisak pointed out. "As well as making sure community groups have access to other resources such as technical assistance professionals who can assist with doing appraisals, doing inspections, and things like that as well as financial resources."

Another element of the Community Land Act is a resolution saying the city supports the state's Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, which could give tenants the first right to collectively buy their building if and when the landlord sells it. Although housing advocates support it, the bill failed in committee during the previous legislative session.