Why a Wealthy Community Sees So Many People in Need

When we live in affluent areas, people seem to think that there are no people in need, struggling in poverty. We do our best to keep people like this out of our peripheral vision. We want to believe that our wealth has been spread around equally, to all residents. Indeed, Boulder County and the surrounding areas are wealthy. Boulder County ranks as the 6th most wealthy in the state and the 60th most wealthy in the country. Why wouldn’t that wealth trickle down to the people who need it the most? Ronald Reagan promised us it would, after all, didn’t he? Well, it turns out it doesn’t actually work like that.

“If you look at all cities in the country by affluence level and measure homeless rate and graph the two together, it’s a perfect line,” explains Andy Schultheiss, chief development and communications officer at an organization called All Roads, which is formerly the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless. “So it’s the only correlation — price of housing — which, of course, goes with the affluence of the community, is the only social characteristic I’m aware of that predicts homeless rate. So the more expensive the housing is in a community, the more homeless people there are. There [are] many, many homeless people in New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles and Denver.”

How bad is Boulder’s homeless crisis?

Indeed, the homelessness rate in Boulder County is higher than you’d expect from looking around at some of the more idyllic neighborhoods. The most recent numbers from the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative found 727 unhoused individuals in Boulder County, with 193 of them experiencing unsheltered homelessness, but there are caveats around that number.

The 727 comes from what’s called a Point in Time or PIT Count, which is when one random night is picked to count all the unhoused individuals in the area. PIT Counts are the most common method of measuring homelessness in any area, but there are known limitations to them, including the fact that counting homelessness on one single night doesn’t bring into account those who are cycling in and out of homelessness during the course of the year. So 727, while already a number that’s higher than it should be, is likely a low estimate.

“At any given time in Boulder, we have around 500 more unhoused people than we have beds to serve them,” explains Lisa Sweeney-Miran, CEO of local homeless shelter and outreach program Haven Ridge. Her organization includes several different programs that house unhoused women, transgender adults, and children throughout the city and county of Boulder, but she says the need for services in the area far exceeds their capacity. “If we were able to triple in size the number of guests we take in in each program, we would still have incredibly long waiting lists. It’s almost impossible to overstate how high the need is, how many people we meet who are homeless, how many we meet who are in poverty, how many people we meet who are housing insecure, who are on the verge of losing their housing. It’s an epidemic.”

Why affordable housing won’t fix everything

According to the City of Boulder website, the city has a long-term plan to increase affordable housing in the area as part of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. The goal for the city is for 15% of all homes to be affordable housing by 2035. The city boasts a lot of progress because, as of January 2023, they’re halfway there with 3,940 affordable homes. But how much will that affordable housing help those struggling with poverty and homelessness in the area? Considering what can be defined as affordable housing in Boulder County, making 15% of all homes “affordable” may not be as helpful as it seems on the face of it.

Lily Kapiloff, the director of development at Boulder Housing Coalition, points to the lack of actual affordable housing options, as Boulder’s high housing prices skew what can be considered affordable housing in the area. “The way the city determines what is affordable is based on median income,” she explains. “So in a place like Boulder that has so much wealth, what is considered affordable is still pretty expensive. We keep our houses on the low end of what the city requires, but housing in Boulder that can be marketed as affordable housing can still be pretty out of reach for a lot of people.”

According to the most recent census data, the median household income in Boulder County is $99,770. That’s significantly higher than the median household income for the country as a whole, which was $80,610 in 2023. That means that what Boulder County considers to be affordable housing is still more expensive than affordable housing in some other areas, with affordable housing listings on the county website listing one bedroom/one bathroom apartments at $1,642 per month. As Boulder County defines a home as being affordable if you spend 30% or less of your income on rent, one needs to be making $65,680 per year to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment, which is over $6,000 a year more than the national average income. Someone working full-time at minimum wage in Boulder County makes $32,600 per year.

Government failure theory

Famed economist Burton A. Weisbrod did a lot of work in the 1970s explaining why voluntary nonprofit organizations even exist in the first place. Weisbrod developed the aptly-named government failure theory which suggests that governments will always cater to the demands of the median voter, thus failing to account for the demands of those who fall outside of that median range. Thus, political minorities are often ignored by the government, and the nonprofit sector is forced to step in to fulfill the needs of those who the government fails to account for.

While it’s important to note that government failure theory has a fair number of critics, it’s still easy to see, just from the statistics mentioned before on homelessness, that our government is responding to the needs of the median voter first and foremost. Even Boulder County’s affordable housing options are geared towards people who make significantly more money than those on minimum wage. While the city of Boulder pats itself on the back for making 15% of its housing “affordable,” who is there to help those for whom affordable housing is out of reach?

While it’s a shame that nonprofit organizations need to exist in the first place, the Boulder area is full of wonderful nonprofits who are offering assistance to those of whom the government has failed. Until the day comes when our government can help everyone, even the most vulnerable in our community, these organizations depend on your support to keep going.

November is typically thought of as “giving season,” both due to it being the beginning of the holiday season and because Giving Tuesday usually falls at the end of November or beginning of December. (It’s on December 3 this year.) So as you start to think about where you want to help out locally, here are a few important organizations that could definitely use your support.

Charity guide

Haven Ridge

Haven Ridge, as noted above, is an organization focused on homeless shelters and outreach, and their various programs house unhoused women, transgender adults, and children. Started in 1982 as “Mother House,” the focus of the organization for many years was on pregnant people and single parents of small children. The Mother House program still continues to this day, not only providing housing but providing support and education to help support pregnant people in need. “And we do shelter work, case management, employment counseling, housing counseling, 24/7, wrap-around services, education, everything that you can think of on that site,” explains Lisa Sweeney-Miran.

Sweeney-Miran explains that the move to expand Haven Ridge’s focus beyond pregnant people came largely out of repeated requests for other services. “Not only was our wait list for Mother House growing, but we also consistently had people who didn’t qualify for our services because they weren’t pregnant, but who were women or trans and who didn’t feel safe in traditional shelters, asking us if we could make an exception for them,” she explains. “And that was difficult. We understood that they had a need that wasn’t being met, [but] we didn’t have any additional space in our facilities. [We started] going around the county trying to get someone to open a women’s shelter because there hadn’t been any in several years, and when no one was willing to take up that cause, we asked our board for a little bit of room. On $40,000 we started an overnight program during COVID where people were sleeping on mats on the floor of a synagogue, so that we could try and find some way to meet this need.”

That overnight program at a synagogue developed into what is now known as The Lodge at Haven Ridge, an overnight shelter for women and transgender individuals. The Lodge houses about 20-25 individuals every night, providing clients with meals, case management, physical and mental health services, and a navigator to help clients develop a plan for the future.

Haven Ridge also runs its Family Donation Program where the community can donate items that would be useful to new parents in need. “Anybody in the county in need, if they need a crib, a stroller, a breast pump, formula, they can get in touch. And anything that we have or that we can source, we will donate,” Sweeney-Miran explains. In addition, their navigation program can help low-income mothers in the community find all the resources available to them to meet their needs.

The most recent addition to Haven Ridge’s services came just a few weeks ago when local homelessness outreach organization Feet Forward was brought under the Haven Ridge banner. “We know that if we don’t meet people where they’re at in both a literal and figurative sense, that we don’t have the opportunities to help in a meaningful way,” says Sweeney-Miran. “So we’re excited. Feet Forward has been doing incredible work for years, and the team there, led by Libby Ogletree, is just doing fantastic stuff. They do the Tuesday distribution in the park, and that serves about 100 people a week with meals, socks, hats, scarves, hand warmers, bottles of water, Band Aids, whatever it is that people need. And then the rest of the team, which is two and a half full-time employees, they’re engaged in peer support. So although our Tuesday distribution is the most visible, it’s really a way to [foster] trust in the community and get to know people.”

According to Sweeney-Miran, Boulder County’s funding to health services programs this year has decreased just as the organization is expanding, making monetary donations to Haven Ridge more important than ever. If you’re looking to give time rather than money, Haven Ridge can use volunteers, especially for the new Boulder Feet Forward program which is primarily volunteer driven. And, in terms of in-kind donations, the Haven Ridge website lists its most urgently needed items, which currently includes things like hand warmers, baby wipes, tampons/pads, socks, RTD ticket books, and diapers.

Boulder Housing Coalition

Back in March of this year, Yellow Scene Magazine did a feature on Boulder Housing Coalition and did an in-depth profile on their affordable rental cooperatives that have been revolutionizing affordable housing in Boulder County. “In our houses, everybody has their own private bedroom but shares all common space, pools money for food, divides up chores, cooks for each other,” explains BHC’s director of development, Lily Kapiloff. “Each house has between 12 and 25 adults living in it, and they have meetings weekly to make decisions by consensus as to how to run their home. Each house is pretty autonomous, and then each of those houses has representation on our board of directors, which meets monthly to make decisions, again, by consensus, as to how to run the whole organization and anything that affects all four houses.” With this model, even though the residents are just renting, they have what’s called “right commensurate with ownership” so they can have more authority over the building and organization.

Boulder Housing Coalition also helps residents learn new skills with its fall training series, which include social justice work and helping people understand systems of oppression, mental illness, facilitating meetings, and consensus decision making. That social justice focus in their skills training goes hand-in-hand with their commitment to creating diverse communities within their cooperatives, which are happy to embrace people of any race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, background, and age.

The Boulder Housing Coalition may face the same funding cuts as other nonprofits in the area, but some recent changes in Colorado state law have led to the organization expanding the scope of its mission at the same time. “We started just for Boulder County,” Kapiloff explains, “and that’s been our mission statement as the Boulder Housing Coalition. And just last year, we decided to expand that mission to Colorado’s Front Range and start looking at properties beyond Boulder. And then this past spring, with the bill that passed that banned occupancy limits across Colorado, that essentially made co-ops legal across Colorado, which has been a big barrier to us. Those two things — changing our mission statement and that bil l— have opened up doors for us to expand. We’re actually under contract for a fifth house that will be our first one in Denver, and that contract closes Dec. 6.”

While the co-ops that Boulder Housing Coalition runs are largely sustained by the rents paid by residents, that doesn’t mean that the organization isn’t still heavily dependent on donations. “Right now, our model is sustainable based on residents’ rent,” says Kapiloff, “and all the residents are working with us each year to look at that budget and be like, ‘How low can we keep rent? How much do we want to allot for emergency maintenance? How much do we want to pay staff, mediators, things like that?’ The residents are all helping us crunch those numbers, and any funds that we get from donors helps take some of that pressure off and let us keep rent lower while still maintaining the buildings and making sure that everybody is safe in their home.” In addition, thanks to Colorado Gives Day, all donations through December to BHC are being boosted.

In addition to monetary donations, Kapiloff wants people to spread the word about the viability of Boulder Housing Coalition’s cooperative model. “There’s definitely still a mentality in Boulder of, ‘Do we really want these low income people living in our city? What is it going to be like if we have 20 low-income residents in a house? They’re going to take up all the parking. They’re going to have parties or be dirty or whatever it is.’ We really work hard to disprove that.” As far as the parking, Kapiloff says that people who are drawn to co-ops aren’t necessarily “car people” and BHC offers incentives including bus passes and discounted car rentals. But as far as the people who Boulder Housing Coalition brings to the area, “The people that are living in our houses are really valuable people that everyone in Boulder should be excited to welcome to Boulder. We serve a lot of teachers, artists, activists, therapists, people getting their doctorate degrees at CU, really amazing people who might not otherwise be able to live in Boulder at all.”

Broomfield United Methodist Church

As our readership often extends a little bit beyond Boulder County, we wanted to highlight another important program in the nearby area that’s doing some real good for the community. Nearby Broomfield United Methodist Church started their Colorado Safe Parking Initiative during the pandemic to provide a safe place for unhoused individuals who are living out of their car. “The simple thing is, we are a church that has a parking lot that’s primarily not used throughout the week to its fullest capacity,” explains Nathan Heimer, the church’s director of Connectional Ministries, “and we know, unfortunately that there are people that are experiencing homelessness, that are living out of their cars that needed a place to park that was safe.”

To maintain the safety of everyone involved, guests can only stay in the parking lot if they’re referred to the site by a participating service provider and must undergo a background check to ensure they’re safe to other guests and the nearby community. Additionally, the rules don’t allow drugs, alcohol, or tobacco to ensure everyone’s safety.

The parking ministry isn’t the end of what Broomfield UMC does for the community, as the church has been dedicated to helping out other organizations in the community. “One of the big things we do is called Serve Weekend,” Heimer says, “where we gather with other faith communities. This year we had 192 participants from five different faith communities, along with the city and county of Broomfield, and we served 12 different organizations within mostly Broomfield, some slightly outside Broomfield like Westminster and Arvada.”

Heimer says that the church is always accepting donations to help with things like their parking ministry, but they’re also happy to connect people who want to donate to the other organizations they work with that might be in need of money and manpower.

All Roads

Formerly known as Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, All Roads is the main homeless shelter in Boulder County that takes all adults, including those without families, who are looking for a place to stay. But the shift in name from Boulder Shelter for the Homeless to All Roads reflected the organization’s expansion into other ways of supporting those in need of housing. “Now, we actually serve more people in permanent housing, in apartments around the county, than we do at the shelter,” explains Andy Schultheiss, All Roads’ chief development and communications officer. “We are very firmly housing-first driven. What that means is, whenever we meet a homeless person who needs our help, we try and get them off the streets into housing, whether that is with a family member in a different city or with one of our housing options that we have.”

The organization runs on volunteers, with Schultheiss describing their current count of 400 volunteers as still “not enough.” But, perhaps more crucially, All Roads was hit with the same funding cuts as other organizations, and Schultheiss explains that the organization will be forced to put 20 more people back out on the streets if they aren’t able to make up the difference in funding. “It’s the most important season of giving we’ve ever had,” he urges. “We’ve got to make that money back.”

More ways to help

While we focused on organizations assisting unhoused individuals, there are still many other organizations that still largely serve the same populations in the area:

Community Food Share does really important work in Boulder and Broomfield counties, collecting unused items from grocery stores and distributing them to people who are food insecure, thus not just helping people who need food but also reducing food waste in the local community.

The Emergency Family Assistance Association provides housing for unhoused families with children as well as food, financial assistance, and case management for families struggling with poverty.

It’s important to remember that, as fortunate as many of the residents of Boulder County and the surrounding areas are financially, that fortune paradoxically creates an urgent need for many other people in the community. As the heroes that run these nonprofits swoop in to help those in trouble, they need the support of the community urgently.