The Long Way Home: Colorado Community Media examines the impacts of the housing crisis

Staff Report

People across the metro area are struggling to afford a place to live. Minimum wage earners might spend upwards of 60% of their paychecks on rent. Many millennials, now entering their 40s, have accumulated less wealth than prior generations and are struggling to find a first home they can afford. At the same time, those who might sell, baby boomers, are prone to hold onto their homes, unable to downsize in the supercharged market.

These and other factors, including homelessness, a history of racial disparities where 71% of White Coloradans own homes but only 42% of Black Coloradans do, and a slow down in building that began more than a decade ago during the Great Recession, add up to constitute what some experts call a crisis in housing affordability and availability.

Over the last six months, two dozen journalists, editors and staff at Colorado Community Media worked to answer questions on why this is happening, how we got here and what the solutions are.

The work to find the answers carried our journalists along the Front Range to talk to mayors, housing authorities, experts and, most importantly, lower- and middleclass families experiencing the crisis first hand.

Our reporters and editors talked directly with prospective homebuyers, like the single mom worried that another rent increase could land her in her car and the real estate agent who understood the problems but worried about a lack of solutions.

Colorado Community Media’s the Long Way Home series provides an in-depth look at how the current crisis impacts our communities.

Contributors to theproject include:

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Image courtesy of Bang Up to the Elephant! website.

Vive Float Studio+

Vive Float Studio+ celebrated its ve-year anniversary in January. It is located at 250 Steele St., Ste 110, in

Leaders in Training Camp for ages 12-14. Registration for Day Camp also opens, which is for ages 5-15, depending on the site. Before camp care is o ered at select locations. e spring sport o erings are: volleyball, basketball, soccer and baseball.

Spring sports registration opens on Feb. 13.

To learn more about the YMCA’s summer camp and sport o erings, or to locate a YMCA near your neighborhood, visit denverymca.org. Courtesy logo.

Urban Peak

Urban Peak broke ground on Jan. 23

Denver’s Cherry Creek North.

Owner Andi Sigler opened the rst Vive in Frisco, and the Cherry Creek North location followed in January 2018. Sigler opened her third Vive in Chicago in March 2018.

Vive Float Studio is a rest and recovery wellness center that provides mental and physical restoration through its various therapies. Learn more at vive oatstudio.com.

Andi Sigler, founder/owner of ViveFloat Studio+, 250 Steele St. Suite 110, in Denver’s Cherry Creek North. Photo by Christy Stead- on its new campus for youth experiencing homelessness commonly known as e Mothership.

Once it opens, the new campus will replace Urban Peak’s former shelter facility and will be able to provide case management, medical and mental health care, and education and employment services all on the one campus. It will all also provide temporary shelter for youth ages 15-24 and will have graduated, apartment-style housing. e project is estimated to cost about $37 million and is being funded through a variety of public and private sources.

Urban Peak is a local nonpro t that serves youth experiencing homelessness. To learn more, visit urbanpeak. org.

Urban Peak broke ground on a new campus in January. Courtesy of Evan Semón Photography.

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BY LUKE ZARZECKI LZARZECKI@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

For the past 20 years, talk of addressing mental health issues within the health care industry circled around without much emphasis. at’s beginning to change, and it’s starting with the ne arts.

At the Colorado Resiliency Arts

Lab at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, a team of doctors, therapists and literary scholars are doing just that: exploring how the ne arts can help nurses, doctors, surgeons and other healthcare workers heal from trauma.

The numbers e team found that creative arts therapy not only decreases anxiety, feelings of burnout and depression, but also helps keep medical workers in their eld. e study, published in the American Journal of Medicine in 2022 found that anxiety, depression, total PTSD and emotional exhaustion measurement scores decreased by 27.8%, 35.5%, 25.8% and 11.6%, respectively.

Katherine Reed, an art therapist for the program, said that 12% saw a reduction in the desire to leave the profession.