PRICES

belonging, there’s no sense of ownership, and all of those are negative impacts on a community, the wellbeing of a community.”

Searching for a home

After leaving the house he owned near Houston, Texas, more than a decade ago, Laney knew buying a home in Denver would be a nearimpossible feat.

He was making good money at a medical diagnostics company and had been able to purchase a brandnew home in a Houston suburb for less than $150,000. But his mental health was su ering and he knew he needed a change. With friends living in Colorado at the time, Laney decided to move more than 1,000 miles north to Denver.

With his fresh start came the opportunity to dive into a longtime passion: wine. He took classes to become a sommelier — a trained wine professional. He sold wine to businesses across the metro area, worked parttime at a cozy wine bar and restaurant in the heart of Littleton’s historic downtown, and eventually landed a full-time job at Jake’s.

Laney settled on wherever he could nd the most a ordable apartment — something hovering around $1,000 per month, in places around Denver. e ones he found in Littleton were too run-down. As rents around the region rose, Laney moved ve times in six years.

“During this whole process I knew I wanted a house,” Laney said. “I wanted something that was my own, and it’s hard to build a home in an apartment, especially when you keep moving.”

Laney’s experiences came as Littleton residents expressed less condence that their city was a ordable.

From 2012 to 2022, residents who cited a ordable cost of living as a reason for living in Littleton declined from 30% to 14%, according to biennial city-issued surveys of hundreds of residents. Over those same years, residents who said a ordable housing and rental rates were a reason for living in the city went from 20% to 9%.

Laney said he worked, saved and kept his spending habits to a minimum during those years, staying laser-focused on his ultimate prize. Credit-card debt from college “really destroyed a lot of opportunities,” he said, but he kept “working, working, working.”

Even though Laney estimates he was making about $48,000 yearly, he says he was far short of what he needed for a down payment on even the least expensive of homes in Littleton.

He wasn’t alone. A 2020 analysis from Denver-based contractor Root Policy showed that individuals who earned $29,000 to $95,000 yearly in the metro area could not a ord the average price of a home, which was nearly $420,000 that year.

“It’s a pretty serious situation,” said Corey Reitz, executive director of Littleton’s housing authority, South Metro Housing Options. “ e list of folks who can’t continue to live here continues to grow.” at list, according to Root’s analysis, includes workers in health care, education, construction, food service and more.

Essential workers risk being priced out Sta ers at Swedish Medical Center in Englewood say the housing problem also a ects them. ey blame the shortage of essential hospital workers they’re contending with, in part, on the cost of housing.

“Absolutely the rising cost of housing here in Colorado is a topic,” said Dena Schmaedecke, the hospital’s vice president of human resources. “Colleagues are often bringing up those stresses.” at housing-cost factor has caused hospital leaders to o er a $10,000 housing stipend to incentivize new employees, Schmaedecke said.

In Brighton, northeast of Denver, Michael Clow, chief human resources o cer for 27J Schools, said the cost of housing has impacted the district’s ability to maintain and support sta .

“We hear from candidates and from our new hires that the cost of housing and their ability to nd housing is a real problem,” Clow said. “

We recently had two math teachers (husband and wife) join us. ey were excited to live their dream and move to Colorado. After just one year and realizing they could not a ord to raise a family here, they moved back to their home state.”

Clow said the crisis has restricted the district’s pool of applicants graduating with teaching degrees, creating intense competition for sta and teachers.

“ e cost of housing is becoming a serious 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, hus- band and wife Bill and Charm Connelly bring in a combined six- gure salary. e two currently pay $2,200 per month on rent.

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.

“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 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 wanted.”

By 2021, he started looking again. A townhome might come up on the market — far from perfect, but within Laney’s means — and he would ready himself to put down an o er. It never was enough.

“Someone comes in and puts 20k cash on the o er, or 30k or 40k,” Laney said. “I went through about a year and a half of that and I knew in my head I was not going to be able to get a house.”

A real-estate agent who came into his bar told Laney to apply for a $300,000 bank loan. He had good credit, the agent told him, and would be a shoo-in for the money.

“ ree hundred thousand dollars does not get you a townhome,” Laney thought to himself.

He was frustrated. More than frustrated. He felt depressed.

“I’d done everything right, everything I was supposed to do and it still didn’t matter,” he said. “I’m just stuck, like the hundreds of thousands of other people, in limbo.”

Laney’s luck began to turn near the end of 2021 when he heard there were about to be dozens of singlefamily homes for sale in Littleton for less than $300,000. He thought it was too good to be true.

‘We can’t all win the lottery’ at year, South Metro Housing Options, which manages a ordable properties throughout Littleton, sold 59 of its single-family homes to Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver, which pledged to renovate the units and sell them at a below-market price.

Laney’s hourly wage had slightly increased since the pandemic from $8 to $10, though 90% of his income still came from tips, he said. Still, Laney believed he met the nancial requirements for a Habitat home, which would only sell to people who earn no more than 80% of the area’s median income.

But when Laney applied to be on a waitlist at the beginning of 2022, he was quickly denied. He was told his income, roughly $56,000 when he applied, exceeded the cap by less than $1,000.

Laney said he was actually making less than that, about $54,000, but because Habitat counted his “unrealized interest gains,” such as money held in stocks, Laney was over the threshold.

Habitat was also only looking at the income of recent months, Laney said, rather than his income over the past year. is made it look like he made more than he did because his monthto-month income would uctuate dramatically based on tips.

He applied again and was denied form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing.”

“ ere’s this illusion that you need this stick to connect people to services,” Howard said. “ at’s a lie, it doesn’t work. You can just look back at the last 10 years of Denver to see the reality of that lie. It’s meant, rst and foremost, to push people out of sight, out of mind.”

According to one national study from 2013, criminalization can create a cycle of incarceration that perpetuates itself.

Noting a loop of jail time and homelessness, the report says: “Incarceration has been noted to increase the risk of homelessness” as it can weaken community ties, limit employment opportunities and make it more di cult to get public housing.

“ is bidirectional association between homelessness and incarceration may result in a certain amount of cycling between public psychiatric hospitals, jails and prisons, and homeless shelters or the street,” the report concludes.

A homeless count across the metro area

Nationwide, at the start of every year, a count is taken to try and estimate the unsheltered homeless population.

At the same time, a count is made of people who have stayed in a participating shelter at some point across the country. ese counts are run by HUD through volunteering shelters and local governments.

In the 2022 point-in-time count across Je erson, Broom eld, Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas and Denver counties, there were nearly 2,000 people living unsheltered, and just over 3,000 in emergency shelters.

According to the data, most of the homeless population is in Denver. HUD’s de nition of homelessness includes those who are in imminent risk of losing their housing. However, the annual report does not include that data or consider people who are couch sur ng, or temporarily living at a friend or family member’s home.

Jason had been working, but with a broken back, he could no longer work or a ord needed medical care.

Like Garner, Jason requires a wheelchair to get around, which creates another level of di culties for those experiencing homelessness.

The cost of a disability

One day in the spring of 2018, Gar-