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obstacle for us to maintain service levels and serve our mission,” he said. Farther north, in Fort Lupton, the Weld R-8 School District has faced similar pressures. Superintendent Alan Kaylor said the annual salary for a rst-year teacher in the district is about $41,000.

Kaylor bought his home in 1995 for $72,000. He said a home across the street from his was recently listed at $685,000. e price of that house across the street rose more than four times faster than the pace of in ation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ in ation calculator.

“How can any family a ord that?” he asked. “Something has to give. After a while, you have to wonder how long people will tolerate living on teachers’ wages.”

Even for some residents making a larger income, housing remains elusive.

West of Denver, in Evergreen, husband and wife Bill and Charm Connelly bring in a combined six- gure salary.

Bill Connelly is an insurance agent and blackjack dealer for a Black Hawk casino. Charm is the front-house general manager for Cactus Jack’s, a bar and restaurant in Evergreen. e two rent a three-bedroom home and are struggling to save for a house. Even downsizing to something smaller, they said, would likely increase their spending by roughly $400 a month. e two currently pay $2,200 per month on rent.

“I feel like a failure. I nally get a good full-time job making great money, and eight years ago, 10 years ago, we could easily have gotten something,” Bill Connelly said.

“Between the two of us, I see what we make,” Charm said. “We are making decent money, but I want to be able to save money and not blow it all on rent.”

For Adam Galbraith, a Cactus Jack’s bartender, the only way to keep his rent a ordable is to live with others.

“ e only reason I’m able to save money is because it’s a 1,100-squarefoot place and we crammed four people in it,” Galbraith said, adding monthly rent is about $1,500. “If you’ve got roommates, that’s the only way you’re going to save money.”

A housing ‘limbo’

Near the end of 2019, Laney, the Littleton bartender, was beginning to feel more con dent about reaching his

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HAPPY goal for a down payment. He’d paid o his car and credit-card debt and said he “worked hard to keep it that way.”

His savings account was beginning to bulk up. en came COVID-19.

Years of careful saving and unyielding restraint on spending evaporated in months. Laney was forced to drain his savings account during the beginning of the pandemic amid lockdowns. He received nothing from the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, though he would gain $3,200 from stimulus checks in the months to come. Still, he was hanging on.

It was “the community around Jake’s, our regulars, who kept us alive,” Laney said.

“I was there every single day, for damn near a year,” he said, with the bar able to do curbside orders even as its indoors remained shuttered.

Before the pandemic, Laney estimates he brought in about $4,000 each month before taxes. By the end of the month, after paying for rent, utilities, groceries and gas, he would be left with just $200 to $300, which usually went into his savings.

Living that way was “terrifying,” said Laney, who always felt he could be on the edge of losing his housing should he have a bad month. e pandemic only exacerbated the uncertainty.

As his savings depleted, Laney’s dream of owning a home never seemed further away.

But his resolve didn’t waver and he used what federal relief he had to rebuild his savings because, as he put it, “I had a goal: I wanted a house. When I came out of the tunnel I knew what I