Macy Valdez works in Denver but for a long time didn’t think she could afford to live here. She earns $38,000 a year as a receptionist at the Saint Joseph Hospital cancer center, too little to afford rent in many downtown apartments.
Yet since January, Valdez, 28, has been living in a one-bedroom apartment seven blocks from her office in a building complete with a game room, a gym and a pool. She moved in thanks to a city program that blends public and private funds to subsidize rents for lower-income workers.
City leaders nationwide have been calling Denver to learn about the Lower Income Voucher Equity program — “LIVE Denver,” for short — since Democratic Mayor Michael Hancock announced the first-of-its-kind partnership in 2017. The program has been profiled in national newspapers, and Denver officials regularly tout it at housing conferences.
But nearly two years in, LIVE Denver is serving only three households and might never achieve the scale city leaders promised. Saint Joseph Hospital is the only employer to partner with the city so far. City officials now expect the program to serve about a hundred households, a quarter of the 400 households they initially estimated.
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5 comments:
I think it is a good program. The individual has a good job and needs help finding affordable housing. Not like Section 8 housing.no job - that's okay - you deserve affordable housing because you are breathing - Not!
3k a month is considered low income in Denver?
One bedroom studio apartments average over $1400 per month, so almost half of a $3000 wage is required for rent. Nothing else is cheap in Denver, either.
The only problem is when an actual person in needs rents one of these apartments and then the boyfriend, girlfriend, cousin or whatever moves in lives free as they sell drugs, rob the other apartment or steal from the cars in the parking lot.
Unannounced visits should be permitted to see that only the rightful people are living there, and not some freeloaders. This keeps it safe for all tenants.
A major city - I would say 38K a year may get you by. What is the average in Salisbury.
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