Monica Gallegos didn’t plan to miss work for two months, but then she received the diagnosis: The pounding headache she thought was a migraine had been caused by a brain aneurysm behind her eye, and she needed surgery.
That was early June.
When Gallegos returned home a month later to the Westwood apartment she shares with two teenage sons, the rent was already overdue. No paycheck was in sight, and she would have to wait a few weeks for clearance to return to her job as a dental assistant.
“Everything hit me at once,” said Gallegos, 43. “I’m single, and I didn’t have any help. … I honestly thought I was going to be homeless.”
She made it through the crisis with help from a new city program that has provided short-term assistance to hundreds of Denver residents who were temporarily at risk of losing their homes over rent or utility bills. The program has been among the most visible efforts of Denver’s 10-year, $150 million affordable housing fund since its launch at the start of 2017.
After Gallegos contacted Brothers Redevelopment, one of two nonprofits carrying out the assistance program, it covered her $1,165 rent for July. With that stress gone, she’s now back at work.
On Monday, the City Council is poised to approve an expansion that will double the city’s $15 million annual commitment to the housing fund, in part by raising the city’s special retail marijuana tax by 2 percentage points. The city, working through the Denver Housing Authority, also plans an upfront $105 million surge in funding by issuing bonds that will pay for large DHA redevelopment projects and land purchases across the city for future private and public projects.
$24 million in spending and commitments so far
Even as city officials prepare to expand the fund, it’s too soon to fully assess the performance of the original plan. But it has been used already to set a raft of project subsidies and new programs in motion.
Information requested by The Denver Post shows that the city so far has spent or committed nearly $24 million from the fund, which draws on property taxes, new development impact fees and city budget transfers. The bulk is going toward loans and other subsidies for housing projects that, when finished, will provide more than 1,000 new apartments and for-sale homes to low- and middle-income people. Some projects are now under construction.
Gallegos and other people helped by the assistance program offer tangible accounts of its impact.
“I’ve never asked for a handout,” Gallegos said, “but they were very kind and just very eager to help.”
Before the fund’s expansion, it had been projected to produce or preserve about 6,000 income-qualified housing units over the next decade. That’s about four times what city officials thought would have been possible otherwise.
But in the last year, Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration has responded to pressure from council members and housing advocates to ramp up the effort. They argued that the funding plan wasn’t nearly sufficient enough, given the scope of Denver’s continuing population boom and the resulting housing affordability crisis.
So the expansion will boost and accelerate the program — especially in the first five years when officials expect to set in motion DHA and private projects that will result in 6,244 apartments, homes or other housing units.
But nobody portrays the new plan as a full solution.
The city’s latest estimate is that Denver has 92,000 households that are considered “cost burdened.” That means they are paying more than 30 percent of their monthly incomes toward rent, a mortgage or other housing-related costs.
“In doubling this fund, we’re not done,” Councilman Albus Brooks said during the council’s Aug. 20 meeting. “It’s going to take the private sector, it’s going to take government, it’s going to take nonprofits and it’s going to take the community to grow this.”
For his part, Hancock points to economic forces beyond the city’s control — as well as the limited resources it can muster — in defending his administration’s approach.
“I think sometimes it’s lost on people that the evolution of the city’s engagement on housing has been underway only about six years,” he said. “Six years on this journey may seem like a long time, but to get to this point where we’re even outpacing the state on our investments speaks volumes about the people of Denver.”
The city’s efforts so far have focused on three areas: housing project subsidies, investments in existing buildings to keep affordability covenants from expiring, and programs to aid renters and homeowners. Here is a look at how Denver is using the housing fund so far.
$15.8 million for new housing projects
Before the housing fund’s creation, the city drew mostly on traditional federal and other outside funding sources to subsidize the building or preservation of thousands of homes. But the new fund already has amped up the results, at least in terms of funded projects.
The first 18 months have seen subsidies or commitments made from the fund for eight projects that will result in the development of 1,071 new units. Those include a DHA senior housing apartment project near Sloan’s Lake, a private developer’s apartment complex in far northeast Denver, another developer’s plans to spruce up the vacant First Avenue Hotel on Broadway in central Denver and Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver’s upcoming plan to build 32 for-sale duplex homes in Elyria-Swansea.
Some projects are getting city loans, while others are set to receive performance-based (or forgivable) loans that will turn into grants so long as the developers deliver their projects as promised. A couple still need council approval.
“We would not have been able to acquire the property at 43rd and Elizabeth without this forgivable loan from the city,” Heather Lafferty, Habitat’s CEO, said about $1.8 million in city aid to buy vacant land from DHA at 43rd Avenue and Elizabeth Street.
Homebuyers there will be limited to households making up to 80 percent of the metro area’s median income, or about $72,000 for a family of four. Some of the rental projects will limit tenants to lower-income brackets.
$4 million for housing preservation
Among Denver’s existing apartments and homes with income-qualification restrictions, more than 1,800 — or 8 percent — have restrictions or covenants that are due to expire in the next five years or so. The risk that those will be bought and converted to market-rate properties is among the city’s chief housing challenges.
The city has used its new fund to help finance private purchases of two older buildings that will extend restrictions on 279 apartments for decades. The city has pledged $2.6 million toward Jonathan Rose Companies’ $31 million purchase of the Juanita Nolasco Apartments in west Denver, and it has agreed to provide nearly $1.4 million toward Gorman & Co.’s $8.2 million purchase and planned renovation of Capitol Hill’s Colburn Hotel, which long has housed homeless people.
$3.8 million for new programs
So far, the city’s least costly program has helped the most people. Denver spent $865,000 to launch the Temporary Rental and Utility Assistance program — the one that aided Gallegos — last fall. The first phase aided 486 low-income households with rent assistance, averaging $1,200 apiece, and others with utility bill payment help. The second $1 million phase is expected to help about 800 households through the end of the year, said Britta Fisher, Denver’s chief housing officer.
The city also tapped $900,000 from the fund to help pay for a $3.8 million joint city/state home-improvement program to shield families living near Interstate 70 from noise and dust during a four-year highway project.
And soon, the city plans to launch a pilot program that will “buy down” the rents on market-rate apartments for 125 low- and middle-income households, making them more affordable.
Later this year, as the local housing fund expands, Denver will solicit ideas for other new programs.
“The important thing is to do what’s working well — where we see results — and to keep innovating,” Fisher said.
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