Building boom still isn’t enough

Developers have ramped up construction of apartment buildings this year, which could eventually help to ease the crunch. But it’s likely to take a while before that’s reflected in the market.

Meanwhile, high rents are disproportionately hurting low-income residents across the country, said Ben Martin, research director of Texas Housers, a non-profit organization that works on housing justice.

In May, rental prices in Dallas and Fort Worth were up 21.6% from last year, according to Redfin data. In Austin they were up 48.4%. One major reason is that high-income people from coastal areas like California and New York moved to Texas during the coronavirus pandemic, when they realized they could work remotely and live more cheaply. In December of last year, for example, Tesla moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin.

“People who make the lowest incomes are paying more of their total pie of money,” Martin said. “Which means that they don’t have money for anything else: school supplies, groceries, gas, clothing, all of the essential stuff that you need to live.”

Renters in Aurora and beyond struggling with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic have been buoyed by federal efforts like Emergency Rental Assistance — tens of billions of dollars were set aside by Congress in 2020 and 2021 to prevent evictions and keep mortgages from lapsing.

A nationwide moratorium on evictions was introduced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but ended in August 2021. Aurora and overlapping counties have overseen the distribution of some ERA funds, though the city and Arapahoe County both said they are holding off on accepting new applications, as federal aid dollars dwindle.

What hasn’t dwindled, though, is the price of housing — websites like ApartmentList,com, Rent and Zumper show that the average cost of an apartment in the Denver metro area in September 2022 is comparable to or higher than the average in September 2021.

At a policy committee meeting earlier this month, City Council members asked staffers what it would mean when the city’s ERA funds are used up.

“There’s still the ongoing affordability crisis that we have in the city,” Councilmember Juan Marcano said. “I’m just kind of concerned that we are literally going to be leaving people out in the cold here over the next few months.”

Alicia Montoya, the city’s housing and community development manager, said Aurora was talking with counties and the state about the distribution of about $40 million in leftover ERA funding controlled by the Department of Local Affairs.

Director of housing and community services Jessica Prosser mentioned marijuana tax dollars as another source of rent assistance. Montoya said $300,000 in marijuana taxes had been disbursed as rent assistance since the start of the pandemic, along with more than $1.8 million from the CARES Act and other sources besides ERA.

Montoya said that, as of Sept. 1, the city had processed close to 2,000 applications for help through ERA and was tasked with managing more than $14 million in aid. Besides running out of money, other reasons for closing applications for ERA included the threat of fraud and a rise in applicants seeking help for reasons other than the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have some concerns about the program’s integrity, because we are seeing a spike in applications that are fraudulent, or we are getting documents that are just fake documents,” Montoya said. “We’re trying to protect the integrity of the program and make sure that the funds are placed in the hands of the people that actually need it.”

Eligibility has been limited to those making no more than 80% of the average median income and the reasons for the request for assistance must have been related to COVID, she said.

Separately, she said the city was awarded $1.75 million through the state’s Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program, which may be used to stave off foreclosures and help homeowners behind on mortgages, property taxes and utility bills.

“This would be focusing on another area in the community that is very vulnerable,” Montoya said. “We’re trying to prevent foreclosures, really, with this program.”

She said the city hoped to train employees on administering the program by mid-October.

Arapahoe County spokesman Luc Hatlestad said the county’s moratorium on new applications for ERA aid went into effect Sept. 1. A week after that date, he said the county had received the first two-thirds of its second load of ERA funding, worth about $9.64 million in total, and had spent roughly half of its allocation. As of July, the county said it had helped 2,703 households with rental and utilities through ERA.

“Requests for assistance have stayed consistent since its inception, though requests in 2022 are much more likely to be secondary requests for assistance,” Hatlestad wrote in an email. “Only people who are already in the court system (via an eviction notice) can currently apply. Once the current applications are processed, the County will evaluate how much funding, if any, is remaining for additional applications.”

Nicole Samson, the Adams County staffer overseeing that jurisdiction’s Emergency Rental Assistance funds, said their application is still open, although Aurora residents aren’t eligible to apply.

“We’re recommending people go through the state if they live in Aurora,” she said.

Hatlestad also said that the county’s Eviction Clinic Pilot Program is still open and offering free legal help to families facing eviction.

The clinic began in May in partnership with Colorado Legal Services, and is modeled off a similar program in Adams County.

Megan O’Byrne, the attorney heading the program, told The Sentinel in July that most people seeking help are facing eviction proceedings because they fell behind on ent.

“Low-income families are still bearing the brunt of the effects of the pandemic,” she said.

In addition to cutting basic expenses, renters are also cramming more people into apartments, Martin said.

Increasingly, people can’t afford their homes at all and are now facing eviction. Governments have ended eviction moratoriums and rental assistance programs that allowed people to stay in their homes during the pandemic.

The Eviction Lab, a research organization at Princeton University, is seeing record numbers of evictions that have surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

In Houston, where the eviction moratorium ended in July 2021, there were 7,242 eviction filings in July of this year, 51% above average, according to The Eviction Lab. Other cities such as Los Angeles have extended eviction moratoriums until the end of this year.

Tenants who can’t afford rent increases but also can’t afford to move are often forced to choose between paying rent and covering basic necessities. An eviction stays on a renter’s record, making it harder to find housing in the future.

“The threat of eviction is the looming problem,” said Nick Graetz, a postdoctoral research associate at The Eviction Lab. “Part of the reason renters sacrifice so many other things to try to pay unreasonable high rents every month is because of the constant threat of being evicted from their home.”

— The Associated Press contributed tothisstory.