Other vouchers are project-based. Vouchers are attached to all of Espero’s 40 apartments and all of the 50 in the first phase of The Commons. That means tenants will pay 30 percent of their income toward the rent — or nothing if they have no income — while the federal government makes up the rest, up to limits set by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. The mashup is not unusual, and means landlords such as Salkind and Roalstad who rely on a flow of federal rent subsidies are able to devote other funds to support programs.
In 2012, the Adams County housing authority got help from a LIHTC program to buy and renovate a 200-unit complex in Thornton known as the Village of Yorkshire. This year, thanks to a project-based voucher, Shanita Waldrop and her three children were able to move from Aurora into the Village of Yorkshire.
Her new apartment is “warm, friendly and inviting,” Waldrop said.
“It was spacious. That was a big thing for me,” she added, saying she has been working from home in her job as a customer service representative since the pandemic struck. “I have my space to actually work.”
Even bigger for her, the rent will never take up more than a third of her earnings. Waldrop had been coping with market rate rents rising $200 or $300 a year.
“It’s almost impossible to live here without multiple jobs or multiple incomes. It’s very stressful,” the single mother said. “It’s very hard when you’re paying $1,300, $1,400 on rent, especially on a place you feel it’s not even worth it.”
She has set out to save toward buying her own home.
“I’m able to somewhat live comfortable and actually work on my goal of homeownership,” she said. “I very much feel like it’s attainable now.”
Waldrop has in the past added her name to waitlists maintained by some landlords who keep their rents below market rates. Waldrop said she’s been told to expect to wait four or five years. She had also been entering voucher lotteries in the Denver area every year since 2011, without success. When she found out she won one at last, she “thought it was an error.”
Across the state, many more people apply for vouchers than receive them.
An estimated 177,000 Colorado households spend at least half their income on rent, according to Jennie Rodgers, vice president and Denver market leader for Enterprise Community Partners, an affordable housing nonprofit. That doesn’t leave much of a cushion, if any, for health care, transportation, other expenses and for savings.
So about 63,000 households rely on federal rent subsidies, Rodgers said. With those subsidies, which increase or decrease according to need, those households are guaranteed to spend no more than a third of their income on rent.
But in Durango, where Housing Solutions of the Southwest supports about 200 households with various kinds of vouchers, Salkind said there is a lengthy voucher waiting list. Likewise, in Adams County where Waldrop finally got lucky this year, about 4,000 people applied for the February voucher lottery, and so far about 50 new vouchers have been issued.
In Denver, nearly 23,000 people entered the annual lottery conducted last month by the Denver Housing Authority. Last year, after a similar number of entries, DHA issued vouchers to fewer than 1,000 people.
Across the country, an estimated three out of four people who are eligible for the housing subsidies are not served because of budget constraints.
Presidential candidate Joe Biden has pledged to provide housing vouchers to every eligible household, saying he will devote resources to both vouchers issued to individual households and those attached to projects such as Espero or The Commons.
The Trump administration has expressed skepticism that more government spending will solve the nation’s housing problem. The drafters of a report released in October by the US Interagency Council on Homelessness argued that “the provision of subsidized or dedicated housing has not led to reducing the total population of people experiencing homelessness,” noting that the number of people living on the streets across the country increased 20 percent between 2014 and 2019.
Robert Marbut, who was appointed last year by President Donald Trump to head the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, has long called for recipients of housing aide to be required to accept services such as mental health care and drug rehabilitation.
The Trump administration has touted its Opportunity Zone program created in 2017 as a way to address the low incomes that prevent people from paying for stable housing. Under the program, wealthy investors can avoid the federal capital gains tax if they reinvest the gains in funds used for development in or near areas where poverty has been entrenched.
Luxury apartments and trendy businesses have sprung up in Opportunity Zones. Peter LiFari, who heads the housing authority in Adams County, is among those who have called for tweaks to the program, such as adding incentives to get developers to form the kinds of partnerships with community organizations typical of LIHTC projects to ensure local needs are met by development undertaken in Opportunity Zones.
LiFari said the Opportunity Zone program should not be seen as an affordable housing program, but as an economic development program that could complement LIHTC.
“LIHTC can serve its specific purpose and OZ’s can serve theirs,” LiFari said.
Ismael Guerrero recently left the helm of Denver’s housing authority to take over Denver-based Mercy Housing, which has housing complexes in 41 states and is one of the country’s largest nonprofit developers and managers of housing that is rented at below market rates. Guerrero said that while Opportunity Zones were worth evaluating to see how they could be more effective, he thought the focus should be on expanding LIHTC and housing vouchers.
“Let’s grow what we know,” Guerrero said.
A legislative effort led by Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, is working to grow LIHTC. Her Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act , introduced last year, would, among other things, increase LIHTC allocations by 50 percent over five years. Gomez, of the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, said the change would mean 400 to 500 more affordable rental units could be created every year in Colorado.
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How Your Vote Could Help Alleviate Colorado's Housing Crisis - Colorado Public Radio
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