Apryl Hallberg flinched each time a car drove down her street.

The 56-year-old sat on her porch two weeks ago lighting up cigarette after cigarette, waiting for Denver sheriff’s deputies to remove her from the rental property she and her husband have called home since January.

Hallberg applied for rental assistance from the city at the beginning of the year.

Because her circumstances weren’t yet dire, she said Denver officials told her they didn’t have the resources to help. Months passed stuck in the bureaucracy of the city’s Temporary Rental & Utility Assistance program, which warns on its website of long waits due to a high volume of applicants.

Hallberg fell behind on her $2,530 monthly rent payments. After finding an eviction notice taped to her front door in mid-July, she felt like she was in a race against time, wondering what would come first: rental assistance or homelessness.

“Every five seconds, I’m just like, ‘Lord, please help me,’” she said. “The stress, alone, is more than I can handle. I’m not sleeping. I’m not eating … I just want a normal life.”

Less than a year after Denver set a new record for eviction filings, Colorado’s most populous city is on pace to shatter that mark in 2024. Tens of millions of dollars in rental assistance from city and state policymakers have helped thousands of Coloradans stay housed this year, but it hasn’t been enough to stop an eviction crisis fueled by high rents and untethered from long-gone pandemic-era protections.

Now firmly into its second year, the crisis shows no signs of abating. Though Denver’s increases have been sharpest, eviction filings have risen statewide, too, and are similarly on pace to eclipse last year’s totals.

“Housing prices in Colorado are very, very expensive, and (many) people don’t make enough money to comfortably pay their rent,” said Zach Neumann, the co-founder and executive director of the Community Economic Defense Project, which provides legal aid and state-funded rental assistance to at-risk tenants. “Which means that a single $500 emergency — a flat tire, an unexpected medical bill — means that someone is suddenly in the position of either having to make a hard choice or not being able to pay their rent at all.”

In November, Colorado lawmakers set aside $30 million in emergency rental assistance for tenants at immediate risk of eviction. That money began moving in February and was fully spent by June 30, the end of the state’s fiscal year. It benefited more than 3,500 households — or nearly 8,000 people — according to the Community Economic Defense Project.

But that money’s now been exhausted. As of mid-July, the state had roughly $13 million left in pandemic-era rental assistance that it’s spending in bursts. Starting near the end of the year or early 2025, the state plans to devote $24 million in existing housing money to rental assistance, though the exact contours of that plan remain unclear, said Maria De Cambra, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs.

That program would then become permanent and operate as the state’s ongoing rental assistance effort. A spokeswoman for the agency said they hope to stretch the remaining dollars — less than half of what was available earlier this year — so there’s no gap between exhausting what little is left now and rolling out new funds in several months.

Simultaneously, Denver officials have doled out more than $12 million of their own rent and utilities assistance to 1,500 households this year, said Melissa Thate, the city’s housing stability director. The City Council approved $29 million in rental aid for 2024, and the city has already received more than 10,000 applications for assistance, roughly 4,700 of which came in January alone. Thate said about 30% of those were duplicates or were made by people outside of Denver.

Despite the money, there have already been 9,055 eviction filings in Denver so far this year, 32% more than at this point in 2023. The city is projecting more than 15,500 eviction filings in 2024, which would be 20% higher than last year’s record-breaking total. In other words, just as city leaders focus on their response to homelessness, thousands more Denverites are expected to be at risk of losing their housing in the coming months.

Statewide, there have been more than 25,300 eviction filings in 2024, 10.5% more than at this point last year. Beyond their immediate impact of displacing people from their homes, evictions negatively impact tenants’ health and employment. While some tenants face multiple evictions and not every filing leads to a person losing their housing, advocates say that filings are nonetheless an undercount of actual displacement.

Drew Hamrick, general counsel and senior vice president of the Colorado Apartment Association, said filings had ticked up, in part, because of expiring rental assistance. But that assistance, he argued, was always supposed to be temporary and had artificially affected the eviction process

But he said part of the surge in evictions could be attributed to an increase in new rental units in the metro area. That’s helped curb recent rent hikes, he said, as more units have come online and increased supply. But, he argued, it means there now are more units from which to evict people.

Hamrick criticized some legislators’ recent attempts to slow or change a process that, he argued, is a fundamental part of the landlord-tenant relationship.

“There’s just plain a relationship between the number of units that are out there and an expected default rate,” Hamrick said. “In a perfect world, there will always be defaults on obligations to pay, and there will always need to be a way for people that loaned that property to get it back.”

The grim eviction data comes after a legislative session that saw marquee land-use reforms and landmark displacement protections signed into law. But the land-use reforms will take years to benefit Colorado renters, and the new tenant protections won’t stop evictions for tenants who can’t afford their rent.

Neumann said the $30 million in state rental assistance made a “tremendous difference.” But it still wasn’t enough. Attorneys at his group’s legal aid clinic stay hours longer than they’re scheduled. The city also offers legal aid and landlord-tenant mediation, Thate said. Those services are busy, too.

“I think what’s so damning and so hard about this moment is that it’s become such a big problem, you have to ask the question of whether the state budget could effectively account for every single eviction,” Neumann said. “Do we have the budget, do we have the financial bandwidth?”

A vicious cycle

Hallberg’s three-bedroom, two-bathroom rental unit near the Denver International Airport was clean and organized the July afternoon she awaited displacement.

She hadn’t packed. She couldn’t face the threat of eviction, instead hoping rental assistance would come through.

Her grandson’s toy box was tucked away, overflowing with trucks and balls. A gray cat, Saber, perched on the windowsill. A note on the fridge from Hallberg’s daughter congratulated her mother on nine years of sobriety.

“It would be so easy to go back to drinking right now, but I don’t because of my grandson, because of my daughter,” said Hallberg, who cares for her baby grandson a few days a week.

Hallberg has worked as a mortgage loan processor since 2008, and her husband is employed by a plumbing wholesaler. She often helps wealthy people buy investment properties, she said. The irony is not lost on her.

The loan business took a nosedive, she said, as interest rates have spiked since 2022.

Now, she takes out payday loans to make ends meet.

Hallberg admitted she hadn’t always made the best financial choices, but she feels stuck in an unsurmountable “vicious cycle.”

Years ago, Hallberg filed for bankruptcy for a fresh start. The move ruined her credit, she said, and it has never recovered.

Finding a place to live with bad credit limits choices significantly, Hallberg said. About five years ago, the Hallbergs bought a townhouse, but got behind on homeowner association fees. Ultimately, the HOA foreclosed on them, court documents show.

In December, Hallberg said the landlord for their Centennial property increased rent by nearly $1,000. Unable to afford the bump, the Hallbergs packed up and found a new place to rent in Denver. They had qualified for rental assistance in Arapahoe County that would have covered the first month’s rent and the deposit, but Hallberg said she did not realize that assistance would not transfer to a property in Denver.

Panicked, Hallberg applied for Denver’s Temporary Rental and Utility Assistance program in January after moving to the place where they now live. Because she hadn’t been served an eviction notice yet, Hallberg said her application was put on the back burner for months.

Brothers Redevelopment Inc., a Colorado nonprofit that offers housing-related services, said the organization could not comment on Hallberg’s specific case.

Thate, Denver’s housing stability director, said the demand for rental assistance in the city was significant. She said Denver prioritized the most at-risk tenants — meaning people imminently facing eviction — to maximize impact. She said she anticipated the city’s Department of Housing Stability spending the roughly $17 million in remaining rental and utilities assistance by the end of the year.

“This year, most of what we’re doing is those most urgent cases,” she said. “When we do serve those urgent cases, it is really effective. It is preventing people from being removed from their home, from having evictions.”

That approach, used by both the state and Denver officials, is a nod to a stark truth. During the pandemic, the federal government spent enough money to stand up robust rental assistance programs. National and state eviction moratoria stopped most filings in the earliest days of the emergency: There were more eviction filings in Denver during the first four months of this year, for instance, than in all of either 2020 or 2021.

But those moratoria are long gone, and neither the city nor the state have the funds to to match the federal government’s rental assistance.

The result is a triage approach to rental assistance that tries to send money to the most at-risk and leaves the slightly less at-risk waiting for things to worsen. Hamrick, of the apartment association, suggested that some property owners were quicker to file eviction paperwork because it meant their tenants would be eligible to receive aid.

The $30 million in state assistance prioritized tenants facing evictions and was doled out on a lottery basis. Applications for the money now being distributed by the state are open for a few days at the end of each month and then awarded based in part on random selection.

“I get that they’re inundated,” Hallberg said of Denver officials. “What I don’t get is people like me keep getting shoved to the bottom until it becomes code red.”

When Hallberg isn’t working or watching her grandson, she’s trying to avert homelessness. Wading through scam housing advertisements on Facebook and fielding housing application rejections due to her credit can feel like a full-time job in itself.

Hallberg has utilized every resource she can find. She reached out to the Denver mayor’s office asking what help they could offer to speed up her rental assistance application. She involved a Denver City Council member, Stacie Gilmore, who represents the far northeast District 11.

Last year, Gilmore resigned as chair of the city’s safety and housing committee because she didn’t trust Mayor Mike Johnston or his administration to be transparent about his strategy to combat homelessness.

Gilmore told The Denver Post she frequently hears from residents in the throes of housing distress and does her best to point them toward the proper resources.

“The need we have far outweighs the resources we have available,” Gilmore said. “We really need the state’s help to assist with making sure that we have proper resources around keeping people housed. It’s a public health concern when we are seeing evictions of this sort and we need more moneys available.”

“Hard to even exist”

Shane Gomez, 31, got behind on rent payments last year after an injury forced him to take time off work as a handyman.

He applied for and received rental assistance from the state.

“It was extremely helpful at the time, but it basically just bought us some time,” Gomez said.

Gomez still had trouble catching up on rent payments this year as he lived paycheck to paycheck with his girlfriend and baby. To avoid an eviction on his record, Gomez and his family left the apartment they were renting in Auroraand have been hopping from hotel to hotel since March.

Officials who work with at-risk tenants said they see more and more cases like Gomez. Before the pandemic, many households facing eviction needed one-time assistance to catch up on rent. From there, they were fine.

Now, though, the aid is acting like a Band-Aid on a long-term illness. Rental assistance is vital to stopping the immediate threat of an eviction. But deeper underlying problems — high rents, low wages, constant risk of emergencies that can wreck already thin finances — remain unresolved and lurking.

“There are a cohort of people whose jobs just don’t pay them enough to afford rent,” Neumann said.

Colorado is the eighth most expensive state to find housing that’s affordable relative to available wages, according to a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Comfortably affording a one-bedroom apartment is out of reach for vast sections of the state’s workforce, ranging from cashiers to nursing assistants, office clerks to maintenance workers, the report said.

Roughly a third of Colorado are renters, and nearly half of them pay more than 30% of their income on housing, according to the Local Affairs Department. Half of renters nationally are similarly cost burdened — an all-time high, according to a recent Harvard report, that forces “financially vulnerable renters to make dreadful choices.”

De Cambra, of the state Department of Local Affairs, said her agency is working to fine-tune the next batch of rental assistance money — $24 million in ongoing funds from Proposition 123, the massive, voter-approved affordable housing program — into a program that provides longer-term assistance for people who need it or links them to other state agencies offering more services. But that money won’t become available for several months.

“So we want to make sure — how can we design a program that actually makes it so people do stay housed?” she said.

The state is working to analyze data to see whether the rental assistance money spent this year was effective at keeping people housed long-term, De Cambra said.

Gomez lost count of the number of hotels they’ve occupied but estimated at least 10. To pay for those rooms, Gomez worked maintenance jobs, donated plasma and delivered food as a DoorDash driver while his girlfriend stayed home with their son.

“I have to pull through because, without me, they really can’t make it on their own,” Gomez said. “I’m always working. It’s up to me to make sure we eat.”

Gomez grew up in Denver but said he doesn’t know how regular people can afford to live here anymore. He has watched in fear as housing costs continue to rise.

“It’s hard to even exist,” Gomez said. “You’re constantly slaving away working only so you can pay for a place to sleep for a few hours before you go back to work. It’s hard for the common person to afford anything.”

Rent prices have stabilized in recent months, according to state and national data. But they remain high: Prices in Denver have increased more than 17% since 2020, to $1,721 a month for a one-bedroom apartment and $2,270 for a two-bedroom, according to a city dashboard. Statewide, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment increased 23% to $1,646 between 2020 and 2022, according to Census Bureau data. Colorado’s 2022 median was $346 higher than the nationwide figure.

To afford a two-bedroom rental home at fair market rent, the National Low Income Housing Coalition report found someone earning Colorado’s minimum wage of $14.42 an hour would need to work 104 hours per week.

The report estimated fair market rent, or what a household could actually expect to pay for a modestly priced, decent rental home.

In Colorado, the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,948, the report said. To afford that housing without spending more than 30% of income on rent, tenants must earn $6,495 per month or $77,940 annually.

Gomez and his family recently were accepted into Section 8 housing in Broomfield. Section 8 housing is a federal program that pays a portion of a low-income person’s rent.

“If rent wasn’t so expensive in the first place, falling into a couple month’s debt would seem viable, but now just two month’s rent is $7,000,” Gomez said. “It’s hard to get out of that debt.”

A wave of relief

On Monday, two emails lifted the weight of the world off Hallberg’s shoulders.

The grandmother received all the rental assistance she needed to catch her up on late payments, lifting the threat of imminent eviction.

She attributes the happy ending to being the squeaky wheel by involving elected officials and being persistent.

“There are no words to describe what this means for us,” Hallberg said. “‘Thank you’ is not enough. When I tell you I am never going to have us in that position again, it’s not just words.”

To avoid future disaster, Hallberg plans to work nights and weekends. Ultimately, she would like to move somewhere with cheaper monthly payments, although she knows finding someone to rent to her is still a hurdle.

“Rent payments are just astronomical right now,” she said.

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Originally Published: August 11, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.