This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Satire and Opinion section. It employs parody, irony, and fictionalized scenarios for comedic effect; as such, it should not be interpreted as a factual news report. At Yellow Scene, our opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud (sometimes with a dose of irony).

Americans breathed a collective sigh of relief last Tuesday after the latest CPI report showed inflation was increasing only because of soaring energy prices, war in the Middle East, collapsing supply chains, and a slowly unraveling global economy.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumer prices rose 0.6% in April and 3.8% year over year, marking the highest inflation reading since 2023 as gasoline prices, airfare, shelter costs, and basic consumer goods continued climbing.

“Honestly, this is the best-case scenario,” said one visibly exhausted Federal Reserve economist while pouring lighter fluid directly onto a stack of economic forecasts. “At least inflation isn’t being driven by something scary like strong consumer demand or wage growth. This is just geopolitical instability, oil shocks, and broad-based pricing pressure spreading through the entire economy.”

Markets initially fell following the report before rebounding slightly after investors remembered there is no alternative to pretending everything is fine.

Economists noted that gasoline prices surged more than 28% year over year as oil prices remained elevated amid continued tensions involving Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.

“This is temporary,” explained one Wall Street strategist. “And by temporary, I mean until the next temporary inflation event happens.”

Meanwhile, Americans reported adapting to higher prices through a variety of practical measures, including canceling vacations, driving 11 fewer miles per week, replacing beef with despair, and pretending eggs are now a luxury item similar to caviar.

At press time, the Federal Reserve was reportedly debating whether to hold interest rates steady, raise rates again, or simply walk into the ocean.

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter — and get our print edition delivered to your home each month.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. For 25 years, we’ve told the truth — your support helps us keep doing it for the next four and beyond. Administrations come and go. Our team stays ready to lead, no matter who’s in charge.

The post Americans Relieved Inflation Rising Due to Civilizational Collapse appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

For years, I traveled the country as a financial planner. I sat across kitchen tables, conference rooms, and union halls, helping people chart their paths toward retirement. I met with teachers in Kentucky, counting their pension years; postal workers in Michigan, trying to understand their 401(k) statements; and members of the EPA in Boston who, while appreciating my financial guidance, had alternative thoughts about my love of big trucks.. Each conversation was unique, but they all revolved around the same fundamental question: Will I have enough?

In the fall of 2018, I met Donna, a postal worker going on 33 years of service, who was contemplating retirement at 58. Like many federal employees, she had spent decades contributing to one of America’s most reliable retirement systems, yet she still felt uncertain about taking the leap. That uncertainty, it turns out, was entirely justified, though perhaps not for the reasons she initially thought.

As I reconnect with former clients, like Donna, it’s clear that retirement security is under strain. Rising living and housing costs, combined with uncertainty around Social Security and Medicare, have made retirement feel far less predictable for many.

A Retirement That Almost Didn’t Happen

Retirement is a huge step, and no matter how many corny jokes I would tell to break the ice, it’s still awkward strategizing your finances for the rest of your life with someone who’s ultimately still a stranger. 

But Donna and I got past the small talk and formalities and got a plan in order. At 58, with 33 years at the post office under her belt, Donna was eligible to retire. But she was terrified of making the wrong choice. “I never thought about it until about a year before I actually retired,” she recalls. “People kept telling me I was too young.”

That skepticism wasn’t unfounded. Conventional wisdom says Americans should work until at least 65, ideally longer, to maximize Social Security and let savings grow. But Donna had something many workers do not: a federal pension system. With proper understanding and management, it could support an earlier exit from the workforce.

“I had no idea what a great retirement I had until I talked to someone,” Donna says. She only realized she had such good benefits after consulting an advisor. “I would totally recommend getting an advisor,” she emphasized. She notes that a friend, also from the federal government, retired before her, but did not do what she did, and was very unhappy.

In May 2019, Donna took the leap and retired. She had caught what she now recognizes as a crucial window of opportunity. “I got out at the right time,” she says. Less than a year later, COVID-19 would upend the world and transform retirement decisions for millions of Americans.

The pandemic became an unexpected inflection point for retirement in America. For Donna, watching friends continue working through lockdowns, sanitizing mail trucks, and navigating constant exposure risks confirmed her timing had been fortunate. Tragically, some colleagues didn’t make it to retirement at all. Their deaths were stark reminders that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, and working ‘just a few more years’ isn’t always possible.

Even with her strong federal pension, Donna has not been immune to the financial pressures reshaping retirement. The stability she thought secure has been eroded by forces beyond her control, reshaping what retirement means for an entire generation.

When the Safety Net Frays

Retirement in 2026 looks drastically different from what previous generations experienced. The traditional three-legged stool of retirement: Social Security, pensions, and personal savings, has grown wobbly. One leg is nearly gone, and the remaining two show troubling signs of instability.

Consider the numbers that retirees are facing this year. Social Security benefits received a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment for 2026, translating into an average monthly increase of approximately $56 for retirees. For reference, the average monthly Social Security benefit in 2025 was about $2,012.30. While that is a modest increase, it only tells half the story. 

In 2026, Medicare Part B premiums jumped by nearly $18 per month. This 9.7% increase consumed roughly one-third of the COLA, marking the largest erosion of the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment by Medicare premiums since 2017. As a result, what appeared to be a 2.8% raise turned out to be just 2.1% in actual purchasing power.

For retirees living on a fixed income in Denver, these numbers are the difference between comfort and anxiety. When I asked Donna about the cost of living and her expenses, she said she considered downsizing to cut expenses, but Denver’s housing market stopped her cold, “If I sold my house, I wouldn’t be able to replace it.”

Denver’s median home price now hovers around $575,000. In recent years, it has appreciated at a modest 1%-3% annual clip—a “cooling” from the breakneck double-digit gains during the pandemic era. However, this figure remains substantially higher than when Donna retired in 2019. According to Zillow, average rents in Denver hover around $2,200 per month, effectively pricing even modest rentals beyond the reach of many on fixed incomes.

The housing trap of being unable to sell and relocate without sacrificing quality of life is a major challenge facing retirees. Retirees like Donna have their equity effectively locked; converting it into more flexible or affordable housing comes with a steep penalty. Millions of American retirees face this dilemma: home-rich, cash-poor, and unable to access the wealth built over decades because replacement housing costs far exceed their means.

The irony is that downsizing was once a reliable strategy for retirees: sell their home, move to something smaller, pocket the difference, and enjoy a more comfortable retirement. But when the “something smaller” costs as much or more, the strategy collapses. Donna’s story reflects a larger problem: assumptions about retirement that held for Boomers are failing for their successors.

The Looming Cliff

As challenging as the current landscape is for retirees, the future looks even more precarious. The specter hanging over every retirement conversation today is the projected insolvency of Social Security’s trust funds.

According to the most recent Social Security Trustees Report, the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which pays benefits to retirees, is projected to be depleted by 2033. Recent legislation, including the Social Security Fairness Act and provisions in other budget bills, has accelerated this timeline. Some analysts now project the retirement fund could be exhausted as early as late 2032.

What happens when the fund runs dry? Payroll taxes will keep coming in, but Social Security will be forced to cut benefits, paying only what it collects. For millions relying on these payments, that means a painful reduction of about 77% of scheduled benefits from 2033 onward, dropping to 72% by 2099 if Congress doesn’t act.

For a dual-income couple with medium earnings, retiring just after insolvency would mean an annual benefit reduction of roughly $18,400. That’s not a policy proposal or a worst-case scenario, but what current law requires if the trust fund is depleted and no legislative fixes are implemented.

The political paralysis around Social Security reform comes from the painful solutions. Closing the funding gap means raising the payroll tax rate by about 3.65 percentage points, reducing benefits, raising the retirement age, or means-testing benefits to cut payments to wealthier retirees. Each option is politically toxic, so Congress has spent decades studying the issue without acting.

The real toll of inaction is measured in sleepless nights, not just benefit cuts. When what once felt solid becomes fragile, every plan feels shaky. How much more must someone save if Social Security falters? For those who cannot work longer or save more, the questions keep piling up, each one heavier than the last.

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Donna admits when asked about retiring now versus in 2019. The question reveals an uncomfortable truth. Those who retired before the current convergence of crises – pandemic disruption, accelerating inflation, and the approaching Social Security cliff – occupy a slightly more secure position than today’s retirees. While Donna made it across the finish line before the course changed, for those still running, the destination keeps moving farther away.

The Planning Gap

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of America’s retirement crisis is that it increasingly can’t be solved through individual effort alone. The question of whether planning alone is enough for people to retire, or whether systemic issues are at play, has become the central dividing line among retirement experts.

The statistics paint a sobering picture. Nearly 45% of Americans are projected to face retirement funding shortfalls if they retire at 65, according to a 2024 Morningstar study. About 46% of Americans have no retirement savings. The median retirement account balance for Americans aged 55 to 64, those on the cusp of retirement, was just $71,000 as of 2022, according to Vanguard data. That’s enough to generate perhaps $3,000 to $4,000 in annual income using conservative withdrawal rates, nowhere near sufficient to maintain most pre-retirement living standards.

The challenge becomes even clearer when you examine what adequate retirement planning actually requires. Financial advisors typically recommend that retirees have saved enough to replace 70% to 80% of their pre-retirement income. For someone earning $60,000 a year, that means needing an annual retirement income of $42,000 to $48,000. Social Security might provide around $24,000 of that for an average earner, leaving a gap of $18,000 to $24,000 that must be covered by savings. Using the common 4% withdrawal rule, which requires a nest egg of $450,000 to $600,000. The highest median retirement account balance is $200,000 for those aged 65-74, which doesn’t even come close.

For those who cannot afford professional financial planning, fees typically run around 1% of assets under management, or several thousand dollars for comprehensive planning. Resources do exist, though they require initiative to find and navigate. Organizations like the Foundation for Financial Planning offer free services to financially vulnerable populations, including wounded veterans, domestic violence survivors, and cancer patients. The Financial Planning Association and local non-profit credit counseling agencies sometimes provide low-cost or free retirement planning workshops.

Government resources include the Social Security Administration’s retirement estimator tools, available at ssa.gov, which allow individuals to model different claiming strategies and estimate their benefits. The Labor Department and IRS websites offer free calculators and educational materials about retirement accounts and required minimum distributions. Many libraries now offer free access to financial planning software and databases through their digital collections. AARP provides free retirement planning resources and calculators for those 50 and older, along with workshops and counseling services through its foundation.

Yet the existence of these resources highlights, rather than solves, the underlying problem: our retirement system has become so complex that it requires professional expertise to navigate, expertise most Americans can’t access. The very people who need help the most, those with limited savings and complex financial situations, are the least likely to be able to afford the guidance that could help them maximize what little they have.

Donna’s experience stresses this reality. Her federal pension was always there, a valuable benefit earned through decades of service. But in her own words, she had no idea what a great retirement she had until she talked to someone who could explain it to her. How many Americans are sitting on benefits or opportunities they don’t understand? How many are making costly mistakes simply because they don’t know what questions to ask?

Living With Uncertainty

For those who worry that retirement is slipping out of reach entirely, the reality is even more complex than simple affordability. Over half of American workers, 59%, now plan to work in some capacity during retirement, although this isn’t necessarily by choice. It’s often a financial necessity driven by inadequate savings, rising healthcare costs, and the reality that Social Security alone typically replaces only about 40% of pre-retirement income for average earners.

The average retirement age has crept upward, from 57 in 1991 to 64 for men and 62 for women today. Expected retirement age has similarly increased, from 63 in 2002 to 66 in 2022. The data suggests that Americans aren’t retiring later because they want to, but because they must.

This extended working life comes with its own risks. Health often deteriorates faster than financial circumstances improve. The physically demanding jobs that many older workers hold become increasingly difficult to perform. Ageism in the workplace can make finding new employment challenging for those who lose their jobs in their late 50s or early 60s. 

A growing part of the retirement problem isn’t just how much people earn or save, but how little clarity they’re given along the way. Too often, people reach their final working years without a clear understanding of what their employer provides, what it doesn’t, and what gaps they’re expected to fill on their own. 

Working with an advisor can help, but guidance only goes so far if people don’t understand their own benefits. If you don’t know whether you have a pension, how your employer plan works, or whether any other income streams exist, it’s difficult to make informed decisions. That uncertainty often leads to inaction, which compounds over decades.

The difference is clear when you look at workers who do have structured support. Donna’s retirement worked because federal employees are part of a system designed to prepare them. In addition to a pension and the Thrift Savings Plan, many receive the FERS Supplement, a monthly payment based on what they are expected to receive from Social Security at age 62, funded by the federal government. That bridge provides stability and the ability to plan.

Most retirees don’t have anything comparable. The earlier they realize this, the earlier they can adjust for it. Without clear guidance or built-in systems, people need to know that more responsibility falls on their own savings and investments.

A System Under Stress

Donna’s story represents both the promise and the limitations of the American retirement system. She had access to one of the country’s remaining robust pension programs. She sought professional guidance to maximize her benefits and made her decision at a fortuitous moment before a global pandemic reshaped the working world. But even with all these advantages, rising costs have constrained her retirement in ways she didn’t anticipate.

For the tens of millions of Americans without federal pensions, the vast majority of workers, the situation is more precarious still. The shift from defined benefit pensions to 401(k) style defined contribution plans has transferred risk from employers to individuals, requiring workers to become amateur investment managers, calculating how much to save, how to invest, and how much they can safely withdraw without outliving their money.

The 401(k) was originally designed as a supplement to pensions, not a replacement for them. But for decades now, employers have systematically eliminated traditional pensions, leaving 401(k)s as the primary retirement savings vehicle for most American workers. The problem is that 401(k)s only work well for people who can afford to contribute consistently over decades, understand investment principles well enough to allocate their assets appropriately, and who don’t need to tap the money early due to emergencies. While certainly not impossible, that’s a lot of conditions.

The confluence of factors straining retirement security, depleting Social Security trust funds, rising Medicare costs outpacing COLAs, housing prices that trap retirees in place, and the simple fact that Americans are living longer than ever while saving less than ever, suggests that individual planning, however careful, cannot fully address systemic failures in how we support older Americans.

When housing costs consume an ever-larger share of retirement income and healthcare expenses rise faster than Social Security benefits are adjusted, even the best individual planning can do only so much. You cannot budget your way out of a failing system.

When asked how she feels about her retirement now, more than six years after leaving the postal service, Donna’s perspective reflects both gratitude and realism. She has a pension that provides a foundation. But even she recognizes that the margin for error has narrowed, that unexpected expenses or further cost increases could upend even careful planning. She understands, perhaps more clearly than many who haven’t yet reached retirement age, how lucky she was in her timing and how different things might have been had she retired even a few years later.

A whopping 79% of Americans believe we have a retirement crisis, up from 67% in 2020. The question is no longer whether a crisis exists, but how severe it will become and how many Americans will be caught in its wake. For every Donna who makes it to a stable retirement, there are countless others who won’t. People who worked just as hard, who tried just as diligently to save, but who lacked access to a federal pension or who retired at the wrong moment, or who faced medical emergencies that wiped out their savings, or who simply earned too little to save meaningfully in the first place.

For future retirees, Donna recommends getting an advisor. Understanding your situation is imperative to successfully navigate retirement. Einstein once described compound interest as the “eighth wonder of the world,” but as anyone who doesn’t file their taxes in a timely manner will tell you, compounding interest works both ways, and its effects aren’t just exclusive to money. Coughing up money for an advisor or cutting down on expenses in your thirties, forties, and even early fifties may not be fun, but scrambling to fix decades of procrastination a few years before retirement is a far worse alternative. 

The promise of retirement, that after decades of work Americans could look forward to a period of rest and security, is changing. Not because of one single thing, but through a series of small changes that have reshaped what retirement looks like. Donna benefited from a system that worked when she needed it to. For many others still working toward that goal, the path is less certain, and understanding the reality of today’s retirement landscape matters more than ever.

By the Numbers – The State of Retirement in 2026

Social Security & Medicare:

• 2026 Social Security COLA: 2.8% ($56 average monthly increase)
• Medicare Part B premium increase: $17.90/month (9.7% increase)
• Net effective COLA after Medicare: 2.1%
• Social Security trust fund depletion: Projected 2033 (possibly as early as 2032)
• Benefit cut upon depletion: Approximately 23% to 24% across the board

Retirement Readiness:

• Americans with retirement funding shortfalls: 45%
• Americans with no retirement savings: 46% (2022 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances)
• Median retirement savings for ages 55 to 64: $71,000
• Highest median retirement account balance (ages 65 to 74): $200,000
• Workers planning to work during retirement: 59%
• Average retirement age: 64.7 (men), 62.1 (women)
• Americans who feel behind on retirement planning: 53%
• Americans who believe there’s a retirement crisis: 79% (up from 67% in 2020)

Denver Housing (2026):

• Median home price: $575,000
• Year over year price change: Down 2.0%
• Average monthly rent: $2,200
• Average days on market: 43
• Home price vs. national average: 29% higher

Income & Inequality:

• Median household income in Denver: $91,681
• Workers earning $150K+ contribute 13x more to retirement than those earning under $50K
• Bottom 25% wealth: $3,500 median net worth
• Top 10% wealth: $3.8 million median net worth

Sources: Social Security Administration, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Zillow, Redfin, Morningstar, Vanguard, Survey of Consumer Finances, Center for Retirement Research, Kiplinger, National Institute on Retirement Security

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter — and get our print edition delivered to your home each month.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. For 25 years, we’ve told the truth — your support helps us keep doing it for the next four and beyond. Administrations come and go. Our team stays, ready to lead no matter who’s in charge.

The post Silver Security: A Generation Nearing Retirement, Without Certainty appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

We are two days out from Christmas, and it does not feel like it.

If you are feeling a little down this holiday season, you are not alone. On both a local and national scale, this year’s holidays feel strained and harder to settle into. Christmas has long been the dominant holiday in the American cultural imagination. Corporations roll out glossy ad campaigns, storefronts glow with red and green, and for a brief stretch the country appears to move in sync. Even for those who do not celebrate Christmas itself, the season has traditionally carried a sense of shared pause and collective ritual.

That sense of unity has become increasingly rare. As monoculture continues to fracture and Americans struggle to feel aligned on much of anything, the holiday season has remained one of the few moments where a shared national rhythm still exists. This year, even that feels disrupted. For Coloradans especially, the season has continued a year defined by dislocation.

According to CPR, Colorado experienced its second-latest first snowfall since 1882. This December has broken multiple heat records, ranking among the warmest in state history. The familiar markers of winter are missing. There have been fewer snowy mornings, fewer opportunities for sledding, fewer moments that anchor the season in place. These changes are not flukes. Climate watchdogs have long warned that as climate change accelerates, Colorado will face worsening heat, drought, and wildfire risk. What feels unusual now is quickly becoming the new normal.

Climate change is often discussed in terms of sweeping systems and future projections, but it also produces quieter losses. Fewer white Christmases. Fewer snow days. And fewer children who will have memories of snow angels and warming cold hands around a mug of cocoa.

The broader national mood has only deepened the dampening of the holiday spirit. In the past two weeks alone, the country has watched a string of violent and disturbing events unfold. On Saturday, Brown University students Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, were killed in a mass shooting on campus that left nine others injured. Just days later, MIT physics professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was killed at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Then came the killings of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, who were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home. Their son, Nick Reiner, has been charged with two counts of murder. In response, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social mocking Reiner’s death, suggesting it was caused by his past criticism of the president. The post drew condemnation across the political spectrum. When shown a screenshot of the post, 72 percent of Americans said it was inappropriate, while just 17 percent said it was appropriate.

Much has already been written about how the United States has entered a new era of normalized violence, both political and otherwise. Mass shootings and high-profile killings have become grim fixtures of the news cycle. Still, there is something particularly jarring about this level of brutality unfolding during a season traditionally associated with warmth, reflection, and goodwill. Rather than lowering the temperature, national leadership has often chosen to inflame it, reinforcing a sense that even the holidays are no longer insulated from political cruelty.

Economic pressure has further dampened the season. Prices continue to creep upward, making holiday shopping more difficult for families already stretched thin. Analysts predict those costs will keep rising in the year ahead. Despite repeated rhetoric about economic relief and support for working families, the numbers tell a different story.

With the country facing the strong possibility of another government shutdown, meaningful legislative intervention appears unlikely. While the holidays have never been a time when political conflict disappeared, the combination of economic strain and relentless political hostility has cast a long shadow over this year’s celebrations.

There is data to support the sense that this season feels heavier. A Gallup poll released yesterday found that just 24 percent of Americans are satisfied with the direction of the country, while nearly half describe current economic conditions as poor. Another poll suggests that this sense of political and economic doom is taking a measurable toll on Americans’ mental health. The share of people who say they are experiencing holiday season stress in America this year has risen sharply compared to last year, with much of that anxiety centered on affordability. Polls cannot capture every emotion, but they point to a public that feels anxious, strained, and worn down.

So what do we do with a holiday season that feels off-kilter?

Despite the doom and gloom, reports show that many people still experience an increase in mood during the holidays. That joy has not disappeared entirely. Coloradans do not need to turn away from the realities unfolding around them, but those realities do not need to consume every moment either. There is still joy to be found in celebrating with family and friends. Holding onto those moments may be the only way to enter the new year with any sense of steadiness at all.

The ones who dared to fight City Hall.

 When Boulder denied public access to police body-cam footage, we took it to court. Our fight for transparency is now before the Colorado Supreme Court — because accountability doesn’t stop at the city line.

Through December 31, every gift to Yellow Scene will be matched — dollar for dollar — through the Colorado Media Project’s Matching Grant. Give & Get Democracy this Holiday Season. Your $8 recurring monthly support not only gets you YS delivered to your house, but it’s matched for the entire year, bringing that $8/month to $192.

Because Independent journalism isn’t just about telling stories. It’s about protecting your right to know, holding power accountable, and keeping democracy in the light. This is #newsCOneeds Becoming a sustaining supporter today for $8 a month!

The post A Strange Christmas in an Unsettled America appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

In April of 2024, I left Broomfield for a job in Summit County. I had spent 33 years living on the Front Range, and I was ready to try life in the mountains. For close to a year, I did my nine-to-five at 9,100 feet, in one of the defining regions of the Colorado Gold Rush. I met some wonderful people, and a few people who would have made the most hardened prospector or card shark curl into a ball.

For those who have wondered what mountain life is like, sit down and let me tell you all about it.

A photo from when I visited the “Gay Basin” event at A-Basin in May. Quite a friendly crowd.

The most enjoyable part of life in Summit was how walkable it was. From my apartment in Silverthorne, I could walk to groceries, the post office, the library, and restaurants. This was a far cry from my life in Broomfield, where nothing was within walking distance. Where I lived on the Front Range was a food desert; the closest food was a gas station out by the interstate. A few towns in Summit have these dense, walkable town centers, and I was happy to leave the urban sprawl behind me. 

Summit has an active and healthy press. There is a quality newspaper, the Summit Daily, which can be found on every street corner. I liked living somewhere with a newspaper big enough to cover local issues, and small enough to print wildlife photos from readers. Unlike Boulder’s Daily Camera, most of the articles are not AP wire stories. When private equity is draining the blood from local newspapers and picking over the bones, the Summit Daily reminded me how things ought to be.

It was hard to beat the views. I didn’t have to pray for rain to be free of the brown haze that hangs over Denver; every day, the peaks appeared clear and close. I loved staring up at the shadowed walls of Tenmile Canyon. The drive past Green Mountain Reservoir, where the hills open up to flatland, has a peaceful, subtle beauty to it. There was an unusually good leaf season last fall, and the hills outside Frisco were bathed in gold. It didn’t compare with the rugged San Juan Mountains near Durango, or the Sand Dunes of Alamosa, but it was pretty darn good.

I saw bighorn sheep and mountain goats almost every week. I saw golden-haired porcupines waddling fearlessly along the road shoulders. At the turnoff for Peru Creek, where the road gets really hairy, I could always count on seeing a family of deer. I saw hawks riding thermals, and a herd of three dozen elk in the moonlight at Beaver Creek Golf Course.

A porcupine spotted along Montezuma Road.

I would tell friends that I lived in a dangerous neighborhood. I wouldn’t want to walk around there at night–because of the moose. After sunset, Summit belongs to the moose. Moose would run ahead of my car on Montezuma Road, go out for family meals in Keystone, or haul themselves dripping wet from a pond after a late-night swim. A moose and its calves once blocked traffic in Breckenridge because even a juvenile moose is over three feet tall and can outrun a human. 

Whatever you do, don’t call the moose “local”; they were imported from Utah and Wyoming in the late 1970s. In Summit, there is a relentless focus on the word “local”, such that even the moose might not qualify. There are Locals in Summit, and “non-locals” who are, at best, tolerated. In the summer of 2024, the Summit Daily ran a front-page story about the sale of a coffee shop in Silverthorne.

The article, in breathless verbiage, related that this was a local coffee shop being purchased by another Local. It was not the new owner’s success in the coffee biz that qualified them, but their localness. I thought this particular shop’s drip coffee was quite good, but I will note that a) I have enjoyed refreshment and a good book in many-a Starbucks, b) Their baristas could be just as aloof as the non-local variety, and c) The locals still treated the shop as an economy workspace, camping with their $3,000 MacBooks for the price of a scone.

I remember the day I started to realize how deep this Local supremacy went. A coworker had asked me for help with log cabin restoration. I immediately suggested Jeremiah Log Homes in Dumont. If anyone knew about log cabin logistics in the Colorado mountains, it’d be them, right? I watched my coworker stare off into space, as if Dumont, west of Idaho Springs, was as far away as Nome or Jakarta. Finally, they replied, “Let’s try to find a place in Summit County.”

The definition of Local is also incredibly narrow. Before moving to Summit, I thought of “mountain people” as a category, whether you lived in Estes Park or Telluride. Boy, was I wrong. In Summit, the “Front Range” means anything east of the Eisenhower Tunnel. If you lived in Georgetown or Idaho Springs, you lived on the Front Range. People from Fairplay were honorary locals because the winters in Park County were harder. Folks from Kremmling in Grand County were also honorary locals, but less so than Fairplayers. I observed that the people who felt strongest about being local were not necessarily people who were born in Summit. Local supremacy was strongest among wealthy people from Texas or Arkansas who had vacationed in Summit for many years before retiring there.

Summit County must account for half of all Cybertruck sales. They were everywhere.

In June of last year, I mentioned to my coworkers that it had been twenty years since the Marvin Heemeyer rampage. In 2004, Heemeyer drove an armored bulldozer through Granby, destroying much of the town. It made the national news, and I can still remember where I was when I heard about it. Granby is one county over, but my boss, a fierce, hardcore Local, had never heard of it. The entire event was news to them. 

On a different day, my boss was talking to me about the Snake River, which runs from A-Basin down into Lake Dillon. I casually mentioned that it wasn’t *the* Snake River, of course.

“What’s that?” asked my boss.

“You know,” I said, “the Snake River in Wyoming and Idaho? It goes through the Teton Range and into the Columbia?” My boss stared back at me. “The river from that Ansel Adams photo?” I continued, “The photo of the Snake River with the Tetons in the background? It’s one of the most famous photographs of all time?” Finally, I brought up the photo on my office computer, the photo that embodies everything remote and wild about the American West. My boss looked at the photo for a moment before giving their assessment: “Huh.”

If Vail was ever mentioned, it was with a sneer of contempt. Vail people were pretenders, stealing attention away from Summit’s superior ski resorts. Beaver Creek was beneath all consideration, and Monarch or Wolf Creek may as well have been on other planets.

In addition to wildlife, Summit is a great place to see income inequality. The inequality is by no means the worst in the world, but I’ve never seen it so pronounced firsthand. There is a very clear distinction between the wealthy who call the shots in Summit and the large underclass who keep things running. In Summit’s public schools, roughly 40% of students identify as Hispanic, and 25% speak Spanish as their first language, but this is not reflected in Summit’s tourism branding. The locals’ sense of identity, divorced from any real demographics, is focused on gold miners, resort builders, and winter sports athletes. 

I remember walking back from a hike in Keystone and finding a makeshift wooden shelter just off the path. These shelters are called “wook nooks”, built up branch-by-branch over the years against the bitter cold. Just across the road from the wook-nook was a string of million-dollar homes, each with its own antler chandelier. 

A “wook nook” shelter spotted near Keystone.

Lastly, Summit can be a lonely place. I had more than one coworker tell me how difficult it was to find friends there. One reason is the high cost of living. It’s so expensive to live in Summit that you spend most of your time working to make rent. In my experience, $1,800 gets you just over 400 square feet of living space. As of this week, gas was $3.33 in Silverthorne, compared to $2.75 in east Boulder County. 

The high cost of living and gas prices are compounded by long commutes. I was fortunate to live close to work, but long drives are taken for granted up there. Here are a few real commutes from people I met in Summit: Acorn Creek to Frisco (19 miles), Georgetown to Dillon (25 miles), Leadville to Dillon (35 miles), Silverthorne to Kremmling (37 miles), Black Hawk to Silverthorne (48 miles). These drives come with whiteout blizzards, black ice, traffic jams, road work, and runaway trucks. Weather, road repairs, and unprepared drivers regularly close the Eisenhower Tunnel, turning I-70 into a parking lot for hours at a time. A 40-hour work week, plus hours of driving every day, leaves very little time for socializing. I found society with a book club in Silver Plume, and late nights playing pool at the Snake River Saloon or the CO Bar in Frisco.

I also lucked out with a co-worker who invited me to join a tabletop roleplaying game. I pretended I was a talking mushroom aboard an insectoid airship, alongside a reincarnated captain, an iron golem, a sentient spider nest, and a demented goblin. I felt blessed for our adventures together. It reaffirmed for me that when relationships are scarce, you value the friendships you do make even more. 

By the end of March, I had moved back to the Front Range, the real Front Range, where you can look west and see fourteeners. You would be amazed how much can fit in a Subaru hatchback. 

The Front Range is my home, and if not for my time in the mountains, I don’t know if I would have learned that. My time as a “local” also taught me: how to clean a shower drain, how to repair a bicycle, how to typeset a book on an IBM Executive, how to take apart and reassemble a bed frame, how to get a box-spring up a narrow staircase, how to apply for a TWIC card, how to play pool, how to think on my feet, how to fill out a DND character sheet, and a smattering of dirty jokes, courtesy of Dee at the Mint Bar & Grill. Most importantly, I learned what Eleanor Roosevelt meant when she said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Another story for another time.

And no, I didn’t learn how to ski, or snowboard, or snowshoe that year. Why do you ask?

Like journalism like this? Support the local press that’s been telling the truth for 25 years. Become a sustaining member and get our monthly print edition at home. We’ve weathered 9/11, floods, fires, economic crashes—and some deeply chaotic years. With your support, we’ll keep going. Because democracy still depends on journalism.

The post My Year in Summit County: Reflections on Life as a Local appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Pennrose LLC to build senior affordable housing. 

The town of Superior has approved the development company, Pennrose, LLC, to build senior affordable housing units downtown near Discovery Office Park. The units will be called Kite Route Crossing. Along with this approval comes a rebate opportunity. 

According to Superior’s Planning and Building Director, Lisa Ritchie, this will be the first affordable housing project for the town. She says it will be a three-story structure with roughly 50 apartments. These units will be set aside for individuals aged 55 or older.  

“The town approved it,” Ritchie told Yellow Scene. “We haven’t acted on it yet because they haven’t pulled a building permit.” 

The pre-development agreement proposes to rebate 47% of permit and plan review fees to Pennrose. Applicable fees include inspection fees, system development fees, and impact fees. The estimated rebate amount is around $725,000. The reimbursement would occur after project development. If the company cannot secure a building permit by Dec. 31, 2025, the rebate/pre-development agreement will be terminated. 

“As is the nature of affordable housing, there is a financial gap on this project of roughly three million dollars,” Ritchie said in a town board meeting on Sept. 23, 2024. 

Kite Route Crossing will be located in the alluring location of Downtown Superior. Within a few blocks of the lot are public transportation options, a grocery store, medical services, retail stores, and more. Included will be 36 one-bedroom units and 12 two-bedroom units. 

Kite Route Crossing’s location is an upside for potential residents, especially those who don’t own a car. One anonymous Boulder resident says the location of their affordable housing unit has made a huge difference. It is within walking distance of a bus stop, their doctor, a market, and a pharmacy. 

Commercial and office space near to Kite Route Crossing, photo by Hope Munoz.

“I can get to Denver and anywhere in Boulder County on the bus easily,” an anonymous resident said. “I can also ride my bike.” 

Although the location of this resident’s home is ideal for them, they say the apartment hasn’t come without downsides. They live in a mixed facility with seniors and people with disabilities. When units opened up, they noticed that many who went there were transitioning from incarceration. They said that some relapsed, and others became violent. 

“The reason why I stayed where I live so long, even though it’s been very unpleasant, even unsafe, from time to time, is the location,” they said. 

In future housing units, the resident feels it would be beneficial to units build that are smaller and exclusively for seniors. Being around younger people brings up a slew of issues, according to the resident. They cited communicable diseases and differences in lifestyles as some of their concerns. Kite Route Crossing shouldn’t encounter mixed facility issues as it is set to only accept seniors for its units. 

Although the situation has not always been ideal, the affordability and location of the housing have greatly impacted this resident’s life. They enjoy that the rent costs slide up and down with their income. Now that they are retired, those costs provide a lot of stability in the later stages of their careers.

According to the Boulder Community Foundation’s trends report, the median home rent has nearly doubled since 2000. In 2000, the median cost was $983 per month and was at $1,893 in 2023. The current median rent costs exceed that of the rest of Colorado and the United States as a whole. Colorado’s is $1,693, and The United States is $1,348. In Superior, the median home rent is $2,355 per month. 

“As for Superior, I think that sounds great,” says the resident. “They need to have some options prioritizing seniors versus middle-income people. I think that’s next. I think those are two key populations.” 

On Jan. 27, 2025, Superior adopted its first-ever Housing Needs Assessment and Strategic Plan. The plan states that in 2018, the town committed to making 12% of its units affordable by 2035. It also says that the 2021 Marshall Fire destroyed 390 residential properties and exacerbated housing needs. Now, housing demand is high, and vacancy is low. 

Neighborhood of proposed construction, photo by Hope Munoz.

Superior’s affordable housing objectives include: 

1. Increase housing choices for people.
2. Support and promote local and regional affordable housing efforts.
3. Remove housing barriers for people who often encounter them.

The property for Kite Route Crossing is currently under contract. Pennrose recently requested a Letter of Support from the Superior Town Council for an application to the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. If the plan moves forward, Superior will soon have its first affordable housing units. 

In the Sept. 23 presentation, Brad Weining, a developer with Pennrose, shared the anticipated timeline of the project. It predicts that construction will begin in the spring of 2026 and open in the summer of 2027. Updates on the project can be found on Pennrose LLC’s page.

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter (and get our printed copy monthly at home.)

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post Superior’s First Affordable Housing Units in Pre-Development appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

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.

The post Why a Wealthy Community Sees So Many People in Need appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Cristine Ruch found the building that would become Fresh Thymes Eatery in 2013. Before it opened several renovations were needed; including opening up the kitchen and putting in a massive marble countertop. Ruch hired a contractor, got the necessary permits, hired staff, and ordered the needed equipment by opening day just four months after signing the lease.

Fresh Thymes Eatery became an instant hit, earning Daily Camera’s “People’s Choice Award” for the best new restaurant. The menu was completely gluten-free, the ingredients came from local purveyors, and Ruch worked with nonprofits that helped food-insecure families.

Fast forward to 2021, and she had the opportunity to expand her business by opening up a grab-and-go bodega-like store. “When I signed the lease I was optimistic. Surely, the pandemic is going to be over soon, right? It’s been over a year.”

What Ruch found was a permitting nightmare. “During Covid, everyone went remote,” explained Ruch. “They made no effort to prioritize small business projects.” By the time she was able to open the adjoining restaurant a full year had passed. She was paying rent for nine months — she was given a three month reprieve — while not making any money. With tripled shipping costs, supply shortages, and rising wage expenses, it proved impossible to keep the lights on.

After nearly 10 years, she closed Fresh Thymes Eatery on December 16, 2022 and the newly-opened Bodega closed in January 2023. While there were many factors at play, Ruch blamed Boulder government officials for not being able to get her permits, inspections, and approvals done in a timely manner. “This caused a highly respected, decade-old business that was doing good for the community to close because they couldn’t get their act together.”

Closing after closing

Fresh Thymes Eatery was just one of many restaurants over the past years to shut its doors. Staples like Mateo (2024) — which was one of Boulder’s oldest restaurants — Murphy’s North (2021), Minor’s Tavern (2021), The Local Boulder (2024), and 1914 House (2024) all either closed or will be closing. Many cite similar reasons to Ruch — labor costs, rising rents, inflation, energy costs, and the lengthy permit process.

Shine Restaurant & Potions Bar, owned by three triplet sisters, Jill, Jessica, and Jennifer Emich also closed in 2021 after opening in 2018 — prior to that they had several other restaurants and gathering places in Boulder for 23 years. Similar to Fresh Thymes Eatery, Shine’s menu was entirely gluten-free, and almost entirely organic, and community oriented. “We worked with local farms for our ingredients; had art on the wall from local artists; and we had live music, poetry, and networking events. It was a place for locals to gather, share their gifts, and shine from within. That’s where we got the name,” said co-owner Jill Emich. In 2020 everything came to a grinding halt. Like many restaurants Shine pivoted to takeout. “It felt like we were missing the community aspect of Shine.” Both she and Ruch emphasized that they respected Covid concerns but the constant rule changes surrounding reopening put an incredibly difficult strain on staff.

Emich found if they wanted to stay afloat, they would need to compromise standards. “We served really healthy food made with high-quality organic ingredients. That costs money.  I felt like I was going to have to start making sacrifices for sub-par ingredients and I wasn’t going to do it.” Couple that with the rising cost of everything else, when they did decide to close it was “Honestly a blessing,” said Emich. The sisters have since pivoted to Shine Living Community, which offers classes in yoga, dance, breathwork, and nutrition. “It’s the same vision with a whole new format that reaches far beyond the four walls of the restaurant,” says Emich.

Looking Forward

“The consequences go far beyond the crime of not being able to afford to stay in business because of Boulder County errors,” said Ruch. “I have had so many personal ramifications because you don’t just close a restaurant like that.”

Many of us have put Covid in the rearview, but the restaurant industry hasn’t. Going out to eat is expensive. And it’s likely going to stay that way. “I don’t think consumers understand what it takes to put that plate of food on the table,” Emich said. “Especially in the post-pandemic world that we live in where costs have gone up. We need to form a deeper understanding and perhaps pivot to making going out to eat a special occasion.”

Like in any community, small businesses are a vital component of Boulder’s makeup. It’s likely safe to say Boulder County residents don’t want to walk down the sidewalk and just see chain after chain. “I hope people continue to support local,” said Emich. “I always tell people when you spend your money you’re voting with your dollars of what you want to see more of in our world.”

The post Restaurants Across Boulder County Permanently Close | In the Cups appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

With 17 candidates on the ballot this race isn’t like any in recent memory. The introduction of the Fair Election Fund has allowed more people than ever to run, and Denverites are taking advantage of it. The consequence of everyone trying their hand at running for mayor is that voters have never been so split. No candidate has yet received more than 8% of the vote, and the vast majority of voters are still undecided. If you’re reading this from Denver, the chances are you don’t know who you are putting on the runoff ballot yet (it will come down to the top two). Yellow Scene Magazine interviewed candidates on the most important issues facing the capitol to help you make an informed decision. 

YS isn’t based in Denver, we focus on North Metro and BOCO, so we don’t have a dog in this fight. We are disconnected observers so we can give you perspectives different from the other organizations covering the race. However, don’t think that we don’t care about the outcome of this race. We may be based a little further north, but this race still matters to us. Denver is the center of Colorado, and the policies there will impact all the surrounding towns eventually. For Denverites, the race is even more critical as it will decide what direction the city goes after Mayor Michael B. Hancock. With affordable housing and homelessness on everyone’s minds, now is the time to get invested in the election.

No candidate has more than 8% of the vote, which means Denver’s next mayor might not have the support of over 90% of the population. If you live in Denver, the only way you can stop this outcome is to get informed. Luckily, we’ve got the details to prepare you for election day, as well as our endorsements for who we think will be best for the job. Good luck and Happy Voting.

Primary Contenders

In a race as tight as this, it’d be presumptuous to assert that any one candidate is a clear front-runner. However, some are definitely pulling ahead of the pack. These primary candidates have developed policies, possess relevant experience, and secured funding for their campaign. 

 The candidates and their responses to the questions are listed below. Additionally, underneath their responses will be a small editor’s note for each candidate to contextualize our positions on them. Although YS doesn’t typically explicitly comment on the candidates in our election guide beyond giving endorsements, a sizable pool of top candidates combined with a largely undecided voter base has led us here to believe it best to provide our insight.

(D) Lisa Calderon – ENDORSED

Life Experience and Leadership: I am a fourth-generation Denverite who grew up in poverty from teenage parents, a Mexican American mother, and a black father. We lived in the projects on food stamps. I really understand that our public housing system really needs to be overhauled. If we go to a social housing model, that means that someone like me growing up could have been in a housing unit where you couldn’t tell who was rich or poor just from the looks of it. Everyone would have great amenities and buildings would be up to code.. 

I was also homeless as a teen when I was put out of the house by domestic violence from my parents, and in some ways, it felt like a safer option. Of course, that created its own problems: lack of food, shelter, and couch-surfing. I experienced all of that.

I’ve been a 20-year service provider for 12 years as a domestic violence legal director and advocate. I also ran the city’s Reentry Program. I know the perspective of having experienced homelessness and having provided service for decades for people in that area. I really take the other candidates to task when they don’t know what they’re talking about, especially when they are trying to criminalize people for being poor.

Top 3 Issues: Homelessness & Affordability, Safety, and Inflation

Homelessness: Hancock’s housing and homelessness policies have been a disaster. I’d completely revamp our approach. 

I’d immediately repeal the encampment ban and replace the sweeps with crisis intervention responders. Instead of just moving people, they’d assess the needs of the unhoused and get them into housing.  

I’d also focus on converting motels and hotels to permanent housing. I think temporary measures like tiny houses and safe outdoor sites could also be valuable. However, I want to mainly concentrate on permanent housing. I think we need to transition from a shelter first approach to a housing first approach if we want to see long term change.We also need to audit all our city land and buildings to see which ones are being used to their maximum capacity.

A broader policy we need to push for are social housing development authorities. It would be similar to what has recently been done in Oregon. A city-funded independent authority would be created to manage housing development.

I’m also a big supporter of rent control and a range of rent stabilization tools. I would also support landlords who are providing low-income housing units and struggling with paying their own mortgages. 

Cities to Learn From: The number one city we need to learn from is Houston. They had a rising homelessness problem, but through the housing first approach, they understood that you need to give people homes with keys that they can lock. Houston’s plan included scaled-up coordination including city agencies — but also working as a coordinating entity with the nonprofits, providing resources for the nonprofits.Houston also scaled up. Denver tends to dabble in many different approaches instead of sticking to what works and scaling it up.

Harm Reduction and Safe Injection Sites: I can’t believe we haven’t implemented them yet. The ordinance was passed in 2017, but it’s still not legal because of our state law. Our current state law focuses on treating addiction as a crime and stigmatizing it when [policy]  should instead focus on saving lives. We must look at substance abuse through a public health lens instead of a criminal justice or legal system lens. Once the state legislature approves it, Denver should go through with developing a safe injection site; I support it 100%.

Policing and STAR: I’m a big fan of STAR, but I also think the city is putting a massive burden on a tiny little program. We need to give it resources and scale it up. As far as community policing, I think that it’s a great concept in theory that has not worked in the long term. There are many reasons for that, but mainly it’s because the institution of policing must be reimagined. We are two years past the death of George Floyd and nationally we still have more people being killed by police than before his death. That tells me that our next police chief needs to truly be a visionary and really reimagine the institution of policing.

Economic Vision for Denver: My vision is a Denver where everyone has the opportunity to thrive, whether you are someone who came here for the tech industry or you’re someone who makes their goods at home. I’m particularly supportive of small businesses. One of the reasons Denver has recovered from recessions historically better than other economies is because of our small businesses. We’ve been able to be nimble and adapt to changing circumstances. 

Cost of Living:  I want Denverites worried about the rising cost of living to know I’m fighting for you. You need to elect me because nothing is going to change. I waited because I wanted to see a candidate who reflected my values fully in terms of the social justice lens. And what I saw instead were candidates backed by the same people of the current administration. I knew I couldn’t do another 12 years without knowing I’d tried everything to get a seat at the table. The face of the mayor may change, but their policies are rooted in the same thing that we’ve been dealing with in an increasingly unaffordable city. So I stepped in to do something. I need support and votes, so I can help the people of Denver.

Downtown Recovery: I think we need to stop looking at downtown primarily as a business and tourist area. We need to see it as a community. Obviously, there are residences down there, but we need to make sure there is a spectrum of incomes — this is  where social housing comes in. We should promote diversity downtown, so we can have that vibrant community life because we know that society is better when we feel more connected. Additionally, our transit systems need to be expanded so that exploring downtown doesn’t require a vehicle, but we’re not there yet. Improving public transit would be a priority for my administration.

Editor’s Note

Calderón has strong positions on the principal issues of the mayoral race and well-developed solutions. Homelessness and broader affordability issues are weighing on the mind of every Denverite, and Calderón has one of the most holistic approaches to the issues. Many of the candidates implement a part of the many policies Calderón has at her disposal to address homelessness in Denver, however most of the contenders simply lack policies with the same depth as Calderón’s. This likely is in part due to her years of experience working with the unhoused.

Beyond policy, Calderón has proven herself a competent communicator as well as someone dedicated to Denver. She also has strong performances in the political debates she has participated in. In her YS interview, she performed similarly well. Calderón has an earnestness not always seen in politicians as well as an ability to engage in real conversation. She is not limited to a script where she spouts a few talking points. Calderón has the policy, experience, and personality fit for the mayor of Denver.

(D) Mike Johnston – SECONDARY ENDORSEMENT

Life Experience and Leadership: I’ve served as a principal, a Senator, and even a CEO. I think what I was trying to do in each role was build supportive, encouraging communities where people feel like they can be at their best. As an educator, I often had to find the balance between high expectations for people in the community and high levels of support because if you provide expectations without support, then you set people up for failure. And if you give support without expectations, you set people up for mediocrity. I think the goal is to support people in fulfilling their dreams. That means we give them the support and expectations they need. Whether it’s around the school community, public safety, or a micro-community. I think those are all places where we want to find that balance of expectations and support so people can feel successful.

Top 3 Issues: Homelessness, Affordability & Housing, and Public Safety. I’d say homelessness is the single most important issue we’re facing.

Homelessness: . I think we’ve seen things that have worked and others that haven’t. What hasn’t worked is trying to move people one at a time across town. I think the attempt to sweep people off the streets has not worked when there’s no place for them to go because they don’t have access to housing. However, I also don’t think we should leave people sleeping in tents on the side of the street, where they can freeze to death.

I think what we know works is providing housing to the unhoused. That means building what I’ve described as micro-communities— half-acre sites that have 40 to 50 tiny homes on them— where people can get full wraparound services, mental health support, addiction treatment, workforce training, and long-term housing support. They’ll be places where people can be in safe, stable, heated, and protected environments. I would build those around the city. The thing that I think we’ve missed is how this plan respects communities. When people are part of a community that is on the streets, they want to preserve it when moving to a healthier, more stable place. So this allows them to open to a micro-community with 40 to 50 units, so we transition clusters of people to a safer and stable environment. That’s an approach that we know we’ve used before and has worked very successfully and can work at scale.

Cities to Learn From: I think I learned the most when I was in Austin, Texas. They have a place there called Mobile Loaves and Fishes. It has tiny homes, mobile homes, RVs, and all different structures. However, it also has a real sense of community and stability. It’s a much larger site, a 60-acre campus, so I think that part of it is not practical for us. But I’ve seen the places where this housing exists, where people live in safety, stability, and a community. When you add the wraparound services, it feels really dignified and protected, and successful. And that was part of what inspired us to try that here in Denver. I was the head of the foundation for the last three years, and we led some pilot projects with partners to do this. It was very, very successful. So I mean, this is not just an idea that we think might work. It’s an idea we know has worked. We’ve already shown it to work

Harm Reduction and Safe Injection Sites: I support harm reduction as a strategy, but I don’t currently support safe injection sites. I don’t think it’s the first important step for Denver to help take on this problem. I think the much more essential step is to help get more people access to treatment and focus on reducing the public use of drugs and the distribution of it.

Policing and STAR: I think my entire focus on policing is built around community policing, on reestablishing relationships and partnerships with neighborhoods. I want officers to protect and serve while also being community members. I’m also an advocate for restorative judgment. I think it’s important for people to focus on repairing the harm they’ve done because it’s the most important thing to come to grips with. I think it’s really helpful for offenders and victims. I’m a big believer in STAR as well. It’s worked really well to have first responders with mental health and law enforcement because sometimes an officer can trigger a more extreme reaction from someone in a mental health crisis. 

Economic Vision for Denver: My vision is to build a city that is economically thriving, and that is equitably thriving. That means creating an ecosystem that encourages people to launch and grow businesses. It means an ecosystem where people can get access to job training they need to get into middle class jobs. And it means one where we see that growth reaching all corners of the city, and not just select neighborhoods or demographic

Cost of Living:  I was the lead author of Proposition 123, a ballot measure we passed last year to try to provide statewide funding for affordable housing because we have such a crisis in Colorado. Right now. 50% of Denverites can’t afford to live in Denver. The biggest driver in people’s costs is housing. That’s why I would build 25,000 more permanently affordable housing units in Denver, meaning you would never have to pay more than 30% of what you make to your income in rent. That is my biggest priority in housing and affordability. If we get that right, we can make Denver the first big city in America where working-class folks can still afford to live. My second priority is to move us away from fossil fuels and onto electric energy. Utility bills are another large expense for people that can be lowered with a move towards electric energy that is more green and affordable.

Downtown Recovery: Downtown must be revitalized because once the center collapses, the city dies from the inside out. Resolving homelessness is critical since it’s perceived as a major reason to avoid downtown because people don’t feel safe or comfortable. That also comes with a more significant police and first responder presence downtown, so people feel like they can go for a run at nine o’clock at night. It’s about a lot of incentives to bring workers back downtown. I’ll reduce fares on public transit for commuters and incentivize childcare facilities to be put on-site in workplaces; so people have a reason to come back down with their kids. We’ll look at how we can reuse some buildings occupied for residential or other public goods. We have a real obligation to revive downtown very quickly. 

Editor’s Note

Johnston is another candidate that has put in strong efforts in developing a plan to tackle homelessness in Denver. He has been tested and has proved the merit of micro-communities before, so we are interested to see how his project scales up. If he can meet even one of his high goals concerning affordability, Denver will be in great shape. We also appreciate his focus on community both the housed and the unhoused. We don’t agree with every position held by Johnston, but he’s a quality candidate with well-thought-out beliefs. During our interview, he was able to clarify and answer tough specifics on his plan — something most candidates are not prepared to do. There are a lot of candidates trying to split the difference between progressiveness and centrism. Johnston is the only one that threads the needle well.

(D) Kelly Brough

Life Experience and Leadership: I’ve worked for the city two times in my career. Early on, I worked for the Denver City Council and the personnel department for the city. Then I came back for the Hickenlooper administration. I was the head of HR  again in the personnel department and his chief of staff. I think I’ve learned from my experience just how huge the city is. More than that, I understand how incredible the city’s workforce is. I have such respect for them. I love being one of them.

Top 3 Issues: Homelessness, Affordability, and Community Safety

Homelessness: When encampments pose a public health problem, the city notices that they have to move [unhoused people]  along, so we sweep them across the street, down the block to the next neighborhood. We do it all again a few weeks later. I think it’s incredibly inhumane and ineffective. It doesn’t improve the living conditions for people who are unhoused or the neighborhoods where they’re living. It was also expensive. We just keep doing it: sweeping people. I’ll end sweeping and instead focus on getting people to housing and shelter at safer locations. To do that I will temporarily sanction safe outdoor sites so we have a safer place for everyone. We can’t get everyone indoors right away.

Cities to Learn From: Houston realized that you can stabilize unhoused people with jobs really quickly if you get them into homes again. I think that was a good lesson about getting people rehoused quickly. Washington DC and Kansas City have taught us important lessons about prevention. It’s much less expensive to support families before they lose their housing. It’s all about whether we can predict who may be at risk and partner with them before they lose their housing. These cities also highlight the importance of collecting more data on the unhoused, so we can make more informed decisions.

Harm Reduction and Safe Injection Sites: My husband struggled with addiction our entire life together, we were married for 25 years. I know how hard it is every single day to figure out how to love and support someone but not enable behaviors that are destroying someone you love and your family. My personal experience causes me to say I don’t support safe injection sites because it crosses that line of enabling that was just so hard for my family. That said, I also don’t pretend that any one of us knows exactly how to best support someone who’s struggling with an addiction. So I have visited the Harm Reduction Center to learn more, my heart is open, and my priority is saving lives.

Policing and STAR:  I’m particularly interested in restorative justice; I think it’s powerful. I got the chance early in my career to work with a woman who really has led this work, and that experience stuck with me.Concerning the STAR program, I’ll just add when you look at the data in our 911 Call Center, it’s clear, we can expand that STAR program. I would expand it by at least 50% right out of the gate based on that data, and I would monitor it to see if our 911 calls continue at these volumes. I think there’s an argument to be made to grow it even more, and I would grow it based on the data.

Economic Vision for Denver: We need companies to choose us to bring in great jobs. One of the things I would do as mayor is make sure I’m helping sell our city as a place where companies should make that investment. I also know what really builds a great city is the diversity of the city. Meeting people they wouldn’t have otherwise met and experiencing each other’s culture is powerful. They are the things that build a powerful city. Every single decision I make about our city’s future would be around how do you build a city, so social capital is naturally occurring? You’re removing the inequities we see of race and gender in our economy. We’re creating this really sustainable city, and by sustainable I mean in every way, not just environmentally sustainable, economically stable for all of its residents. That’s my vision.

Cost of Living: I’m interested in building entry-level homes for our own residents instead of trying to get the private sector developers to make them. I want to take publicly owned land, the parking lots to libraries, rec centers, police stations, and public schools, and build on them. I saw this in Germany, where they built on top of a parking lot while maintaining the parking. They had basically these big pillars that took four parking places, and they had 100 units.Additionally, our downtown has a lot of office buildings that don’t have enough people. I would look into transitioning those office buildings to residential buildings. Not only could we now build a real neighborhood downtown, but we could even build it with income levels that invite all the workers who work downtown to decide if they’d like to live there.

Downtown Recovery: On one hand, we need to accept that things have changed, and working from home is the new normal for many. However, I think we should invite small businesses and young entrepreneurs to use space downtown to start their businesses. Since there’s so much vacant space, I think this could be really a way that we revitalize our downtown and make it not only bring people back into it but also introduce a whole another generation into business opportunities. I also would make sure that we continue to keep businesses down there making investments in our downtown, whether it’s the retail or restaurants, or the companies in the office buildings, that we address the concerns that are causing them to leave downtown. We need to make it so you feel comfortable riding the trains to come into downtown, so that we continue to ensure we have vibrant sports and cultural experiences.

Editor’s Note

This doesn’t seem like the right moment for a candidate like Brough. Denver needs someone who can dramatically shake things up, and she isn’t that type of candidate. It’s likely few things would change under her administration. While we’d usually be happy to see someone running with experience, Brough’s status as a long-time political insider only further cast doubt on her ability to move away from the status quo. Brough’s time as  CEO of the chamber of commerce further begs questions about her commitment to business interests.

Strong policies could shake any doubts we had, but we have many concerns about her policies, and her interview with YS did not ease them. When we got into the nitty-gritty of logistics there was just a lot of uncertainty about Brough. We are particularly skeptical of Brough’s plan to seize the parking lots of libraries, rec centers, and police department’s develop affordable housing. She claims she can build on these lots without losing significant parking spaces. She also claims she funds these buildings with no increase in revenue. Brough also isn’t one of the candidates advocating an audit. We simply don’t know how the math will work out, and our interview did not ease this or any other of our policy concerns. Beyond this, we don’t think Brough is pushing for a large enough change to put a dent in this issue. For homelessness, Brough advocates for involuntary commitments, wrap-around services, and sanctioned outdoor temporary camps. Brough’s policies lack the vision or detail of Johnston or Calderón’s plans.

(D) Chris Hansen

Life Experience and Leadership: I have an interesting mix of experience as someone who has worked both in the private and public sectors. Not a lot of people can say they’ve seen both worlds as I have. To run a city you need to be able to come at these issues from a variety of perspectives. I already know this well from my time as Senator. I think that my mix of experiences gives me a balanced view that allows me to better consider the tough issues facing Denver today.

Top 3 Issues: Homelessness & Affordable Housing, Public Safety, and Environmental Sustainability.

Homelessness: What I advocate for most is balance. We need to acknowledge both what is and isn’t working. We cannot be successful if open camping is allowed. To keep people from sleeping on the streets, I support the sweeps. However, I think an encampment ban must be combined with the appropriate wrap-around services. We’re currently failing to connect resources for shelter, services, and support to those who need it. We must do more to bridge this gap.I’d also like to see Denver revalue its budget. We’re spending $250 million trying to address homelessness despite not seeing major improvements. That’s why I advocate for an audit of our major programs. I think we need to reevaluate how we’re spending our money and really look at what the data is saying. That’s why I’ve advocated for evidence-based budgeting here as well as at the state level.I want to bring focus and consistency to Denver’s approach to the unhoused.

Cities to Learn From: San Antonio has made impressive strides in reducing homelessness. San Antonio has found success by using many of the policies I advocate for. They’ve banned public encampments while connecting their homeless population to relevant services. They’ve also sanctioned an outdoor area for the unhoused to easily find these services. We need that combination of housing, a camping ban. and wrap-around services.

Harm Reduction and Safe Injection Sites: I’m in favor of harm reduction, but I’m not currently supportive of safe injection sites. The current data suggests that they are not effective ways of dealing with addiction. Safe injection sites just don’t seem to be very efficient.

Policing and STAR:  So far, we’ve lost about 3 million dollars from lawsuits against our police department. That’s just not effective spending. I’m for restorative justice and community policing. I also want accountability for our police. We need to rebuild and reinvest in our police, so they can be better equipped to protect our city.I’m also supportive of the STAR program. It seems to be effective. Our police cannot and should nor respond to every crisis situation and it’s great we have another option.

Economic Vision for Denver: I envision a Denver that is interconnected by public transit. That’s green pushing toward its sustainability goals. And most importantly, that’s safe. Where people feel comfortable going on jogs or letting their kids run around.

Cost of Living: Denver doesn’t look like Denver anymore. That’s a concern I often hear echoes when talking to voters. As the rising cost of living pushes out our working-class families, Denver becomes more and more unaffordable. These fears only grow more reasonable. I want voters to know I hear their concerns and have the policies that fix them. I will push for an expansion of public transit. This will allow people to access more of the city without needing to spend gas money. I will also push for the expansion of new affordable housing units. Another important piece here is sustainability. Moving away from fossil fuels isn’t just good for the environment, it’s something that can easily promote the economy. We’ll see an increase in green jobs, and movement away from fossil fuels will decrease the utility bills of citizens. Other candidates don’t often give much air time to green issues, but I think it’s a key part of the puzzle.

Denver will again move towards being more livable. I will not let our working-class families get pushed out. During my time as a senator, I’ve proven again and again my proficiency in balancing the budget. I will take Denver down the path to be a place we can afford to live. I will help Denver stay in Denver.

Downtown Recovery: We’ve definitely seen a hit downtown since the pandemic. The next mayor needs to focus on bringing companies back down town. We need a balance of both big companies that bring high-paying jobs and smaller businesses that bring culture and community to downtown. We also need to see the expansion of public transit. When it’s cheaper and easier to return downtown, we’ll see an increased amount of people return. We also must continue to enforce the camping ban, so downtown remains safe and appealing.

Editor’s Note

Hansen has a focus on balance metaphorically and fiscally that can come off as delightfully pragmatic. However, Hansen looks less appealing next to other candidates. His answers have often had a more narrow look to them. He’s not a candidate going for a dramatic change or any visionary solution. He’s not the worst candidate, but if you’re looking to see change, his incremental approach won’t get you there.

(D) Leslie Herod

Life Experience and Leadership: We need a mayor that knows how to get things done. As a legislator, I took the bold steps necessary to lead the moment and ensure that we are making changes that affect people’s real lives. I’m really proud of that work and I know that we can work in partnership to tackle some of our toughest issues today. 

I also come from my single mom and the army. We struggled to live; I was on food stamps in college. I put myself through school working two jobs. I know what it’s like to struggle and my real lived experience forms my politics. My sister was incarcerated, and that was predominantly due to mental health challenges and sexual trauma that was never addressed. I know what happens when we push people away — those people are my family. I will ensure that Denver has a more humane approach to politics.

Top 3 Issues: Affordability, Homelessness, and Safety.

Homelessness: Denver’s current plan to address homelessness is completely broken, and it’s just not working. I believe we need a more humane approach to addressing and working with our unhoused population. People on the streets right now are asking for housing. They’re asking for mental health support. They’re asking for jobs, and I think it’s essential for the city to address the challenges from a human perspective.

Cities to Learn From: We need to look towards cities that focus on a humanistic approach to addressing the unhoused. We don’t just have to look outwards. We can also look inwards to see what’s already working in Denver. I created Caring for Denver, which funds organizations that provide mental health and substance abuse services. Now in partnership with Caring for Denver, we have the opportunity to really change the infrastructure of support and make sure that our providers, unhoused, and families are cared for. 

Harm Reduction and Safe Injection Sites: I support safe injection sites and harm reduction. It’s an essential piece of a comprehensive strategy for addressing substance abuse and mental health problems in our community.

Policing and STAR: Caring for Denver is what we (congress) funded to create STAR. We set out, we stood up, and we championed STAR. We did it alongside community leaders also pushing for the program. We made it happen, and I’m proud of that work. I support expanding STAR. I also support community-based policing. And I support restorative justice when done right.

Economic Vision for Denver: I believe in a city that supports and embraces every single one of us. I  especially believe in our duty to ensure that those who have been disproportionately impacted by race are supported. That means more support for our small businesses of color. That means more support for our historically disadvantaged neighborhoods and business districts and that we actually have an economy that supports each other.

Cost of Living: The number one thing that we have to do is make sure that we have a diverse housing stock across all of our communities in Denver. That’s anything from a triplex, to duplexes, and below-market-rate housing in the city. Right now, we’re building for the wealthy rather than ensuring our communities can stay. I’ll focus on making sure communities are centered in the conversation.

Downtown Recovery: We must make sure that we activate downtown. We’ve got to make it a place people want to go to again. We need our small businesses to be able to open up downtown together because when they open up in isolation, it doesn’t drive the traffic. I believe we could set up a program like what we did at DIA, where our local small businesses, especially those of color, are incentivized and supported in opening their satellite location. Or opening right in the heart of downtown Denver. In the first 100 days, I will start to work to bring businesses back down, get workers back downtown, and ensure that it’s thriving.

Editor’s Note

Herod received a lot of praise for her work in the house of representatives in pushing for bipartisan support for bills. She has popularity and political experience on her side without being considered an insider. However, Herod seems to have underestimated the difficulty of the transition from congress to mayor. During her YS interview, Herod failed to really flesh out concrete policy suggestions. We agree with Herod on the problems she’s identified, but compared to her peers, she lacks a real policy to get the city out of the crisis. Her interview was dramatically shorter than the other candidates reflecting the lack of depth in her answers. She’s done great work as a house rep, we feel her skills serve the public best there for now.

(D) Debbie Ortega

Life Experience and Leadership: A lot of my life experience comes from my family. My dad was a coal miner and was killed in a mine cave-in when I was young. When he was alive, I saw how he helped his colleagues when they were injured and the impact he had on their lives. I also saw after my dad passed that those same people came back to provide the same love and assistance to my family. My mother also impacted the community. She worked in food banks, and lots of times that food ended up on our table. The impact my parents had on families in our community is ingrained in my DNA and who I am. I’ve never considered myself a career politician; I have been a dedicated public servant. And I do this because it’s been a labor of love.

Top 3 Issues: Crime and Safety, Housing Affordability, and Traffic Congestion. I think crime is right at the top of everybody’s mind. We’ve seen unprecedented car theft across our city. We’ve seen deadly drugs, traveling all across the US that are in our city, or on our streets, or in our schools. Guns are causing a lot of violence and crime across our city.

Homelessness: When our city brought forward this no-camping ban, I did not support it because we didn’t bring services to the table. We’ve seen a proliferation of encampments in our city since that time.  We’ve been housing people for two years. So we have to have an exit plan. I believe that the exit plan helps bring together our workforce tools with our service providers that get grant funds to be helping people get back to work to be training them, and we’ve got, you know, the skilled trades. We have a number of organizations out in the community that are doing other kinds of training programs. For me, it’s always about wealth, building opportunities, and moving people to self-sufficiency. 

As long as we can help people do that, they’re going to be successful standing on their own two feet, and then we can convert that housing to long-term housing for people that will lead it. In Denver. We also need different price points for housing because over time we’ve become very expensive.

Cities to Learn From: So I’ve been to a couple of different cities. I’ve been to San Francisco to see their Delancey Street model, which is more specific to an offender population. But it’s a great model built around social enterprises focused on giving people amazing skill sets and promoting independence. By the time they leave, these people all have skills as managers of different businesses, they understand the financial aspects of it, and they’ve had to order the supplies for the restaurant. They then can use their new skills to be successful in a plethora of professions.

Another incredible model is The Mobile Loaves and Fishes site down in Austin. It’s a combination of tiny homes and trailers that are serving a community. Toyota helped build a facility there where they trained people from the community to work on cars.

Harm Reduction and Safe Injection Sites: I supported legislation for a safe injection site, but we couldn’t do anything to move our harm reduction facility to a safe injection site until the state legislature took action. I know that’s a piece of legislation being talked about right now. Whether that passes or not. I don’t know. We can’t do that until the legislature acts. If they do act, we’ve already passed the legislation that would allow that to happen.

Policing and STAR: I support community policing. I want cops to know people in these neighborhoods at the grassroots level, and it’s important for our kids. It’s important to have preventative programs for our young people of all types, not just recreation, but a whole host of offerings for young people.

I also believe that our police must be held accountable for their actions. I also think that a lot of people in our community want the laws to be enforced. We’ve had too many people affected by their cars being stolen.

Economic Vision for Denver: I want to create a Denver where people have opportunities for the connection that leads to wealth building so that people can reach economic stability. As we’ve seen our city grow, we haven’t the economic wealth be spread equally beyond neighborhoods, and that’s something I want to make sure is resolved.

Cost of Living: The economy and its impacts affect everyone. Our city is no longer affordable for everyone. We need to return to having all different pricing levels of housing. That’s why I’m focused on manufactured housing as a way to bring down costs for renters.

Downtown Recovery: We bring back downtown by focusing on many things I’ve already discussed. We need affordable housing. We need improved public transit to mitigate traffic congestion and ease of movement. We also need to welcome small businesses and offer training programs to promote their development. All of that ties back to the economy, but we need to be intentional in our actions.

Editor’s Note

Candidates like Ortega are in an interesting place. She has the boost of being one of the few candidates with extensive political experience. However, like Brough, she’ll be scrutinized as someone who may be satisfied with the status quo to help Denver. Not helping matters is Ortega’s approach to communication. She struggles to answer questions. She’s struggled in debates to answer questions directly, she’s struggled in her YS interview, and she has struggled in other interviews. While we enjoyed the conversation with her, she was the only candidate that pushed us to repeat a question multiple times. She’s done great work as a councilwoman, but as long as she is so hesitant to take strong positions on anything worthwhile, we can’t give her our endorsement.

(R) Andy Rougeot – RADIO SILENT – TOO EXTREME

Editor’s Note

Under no circumstances could we endorse Andy Rougeot. His views on the unhoused are extreme and he approaches problem solving like a hammer.

Fair Contenders

These candidates aren’t front-runners, but they still might have a shot at the mayoral seat. Their responses to our questions are below.

(D) Ian Tafoya

Life Experience and Leadership: Every step I take is another step on the path of my ancestors and my immediate family. My mother, a social worker and union steward, raised me to love and support my neighbors. Growing up in Denver’s diverse West Side, I connected with so many incredible people, including my own Chicano community, and I’ve carried that connection into my leadership today. 

Growing up Denver’s city programs mentored me and shaped me. I rode the bus to my first job at the Museum of Arts and Sciences. I took advantage of the free concerts, arts programs, and youth activities. I went to the Metropolitan State University of Denver where I majored in Political Science with a minor in Native American Studies. These experiences have motivated me to organize policies that improve the lives of my communities: the marginalized and resilient groups traditionally left behind by policymakers. 

And as an indigenous person, I am called to reach out in all four directions and bring people together for the sake of our planet and one another. It’s time to make policy with the urgency our communities deserve and for the benefit of the next seven generations.

Top 3 Issues: Environmental justice, Housing, and Public Health & Safety. 

Homelessness: I don’t believe our city is investing in effective solutions to our housing crisis. First, I’ve always opposed Denver’s sweeps of homeless encampments. After years of wasting taxpayer money cruelly forcing people from one block to another and back again, the unhoused population has tripled. I founded an organization to provide water and trash pickup to encampments because the sweeps don’t address these public health issues. Second, many of the “solutions” our city invests in, like shelters, are more of a band-aid. We need to audit how we are spending funds and make sure they’re going to effective long-term solutions, and we need to do it in collaboration with unhoused communities themselves. 

Research shows the fastest, cheapest way to get people off the streets is to get them into housing with wrap-around services. In 2020, I presented a community plan that leveraged regional cooperation to rapidly get folks off the streets, and as Mayor, I would implement it while expanding programs that have actually been proven to work in Denver. We also have to address our housing crisis so nobody becomes homeless in the first place. 

Cities to Learn From: The Cauf Society released a report in 2022 on four cities that have essentially solved homelessness: Helsinki in Finland, Vienna in Austria, Columbus in Ohio, and Salt Lake City in Utah. They all dramatically reduced the number of people who were unhoused by simply housing them rather than providing temporary shelter or preconditions for treatment. Investing funds up-front in a Housing First Model puts a roof over someone’s head first and supports their recovery after that point. Utah reduced the number of unhoused people by 90% from 2005-2015.

Harm Reduction and Safe Injection Sites: I strongly support safe injection sites and view harm reduction as a crucial tool in reducing addiction and drug-related deaths. We can’t punish our way out of addiction and trauma, we have to guide people towards healing. Supervised drug use is the first step to prevent fentanyl overdoses and other dangerous overdoses, as well as reduce the public health risks of using dirty needles and needle disposal. Harm reduction is more than just safe use, though. I would build on Denver Harm Reduction’s existing efforts to supply methadone to help people fight addiction, counseling services and trauma-informed care. We need consistency of care for both inpatient and outpatient addiction services.

Policing and STAR: I strongly support the STAR program, and sat on the task force overseeing its implementation. As Mayor I would expand the STAR program so that they can truly replace police as a response to mental health crises. We need to pair STAR with broad systems of mental health support to ensure continuity of care. I’ll work with communities, experts and law enforcement to identify other areas where we can lessen the burden on police and reduce contact with the criminal justice system. 

I also strongly support restorative justice. This is an incredible way to heal our communities, disrupt cycles of trauma and keep people out of jail. Incarceration as it currently rarely solves the social problems and cycles that trap offenders at the onset. In contrast, restorative justice provides opportunities for everyone involved to heal and grow. Iit gives real mental health interventions and treatment a chance to work. Indigenous communities like the Jicarilla Apache have used restorative justice successfully for ages.

When it comes to Community Policing, I need to learn more about the data on its impacts. On the one hand, I believe it can never hurt to have officers understand a neighborhood and care deeply about it. But community policing alone isn’t a solution to our community’s ongoing, chronic, and persistent concerns about police violence. Police brutality still happens in Community Policing models. And communities of color can still be over-policed under a Community Policing model. Finally even the best police officers are not necessarily the best solution to many of the problems we expect them to address. I believe we need to also invest in non-police, community-based violence prevention programs that proactively prevent conflict in the neighborhood before it happens.

Economic Vision for Denver: I envision a clean, green city accessible to all, including pedestrians and disabled commuters. We’ll have reasonable rent for small businesses and mixed income apartments where all Denverites enjoy a comfortable home, not just the wealthy. We do this by passing rent control and a vacancy tax, using public banking to build more housing for working families and changing zoning so we can build on parking lots and commercial lots. We’ll make sure there are safe bike lanes, expand electric bus networks and thriving downtown parks. A creative arts scene is visited by locals and tourists alike. We’ll increase well-paying union jobs by supporting collective bargaining for all city workers and as we build a renewable transition we’ll invest in local workers with the highest labor standards. Too often “revitalization” in this city pushes our working families out or leaves them behind. I would make sure current residents lead the way on our city’s economic growth and get to enjoy the results. 

Cost of Living: I’m worried about it too. I too am a renter, this is one of our most urgent crises. We need swift leadership that puts people before corporations to address it. First, we need to make sure people can stay in the homes they have by passing rent control and a vacancy tax, so corporations can’t use empty buildings for write-offs. I recently co-led the coordinated campaign to pass ballot initiatives like Waste No More and No Eviction Without Representation, and we need to make sure that initiative is fully funded and enact a moratorium on evicting tenants without legal representation in the meantime. Then, we need to expand transitional housing programs and housing that seniors, the disabled, and working families can all afford. I served on the Inter-neighborhood Cooperation Zoning and Planning Committee, Blueprint Denver, and the task force implementing Colorado’s first inclusionary zoning law. It’s time to take that experience to the Mayor’s Office and push things further. We need heavy requirements and incentives for building actually affordable units for working families, allowing commercial zoning to become residential and ease permitting so people can build single-family homes to fit more people. 

All this housing construction is a huge opportunity for that construction to be sustainable. It’s also an opportunity to invest in local workforce development and contracting local businesses with the highest labor standards. 

Downtown Recovery: We need to lower rent so small businesses can stay downtown, and provide incentives for new local small businesses to move in. By expanding electric public transportation we can also make it easier for both tourists and residents of other neighborhoods to enjoy those businesses and a thriving arts scene. I propose to invest in support for local artists, especially artists of color, to invigorate the downtown cultural scene. 

Addressing our housing crisis will also help get folks housed and avert the public health crisis that is the downtown encampments. This will most importantly help the unhoused downtown residents, but also make things easier for downtown businesses.

(D) Al Gardner – RADIO SILENT

(D) Thomas Wolf

Life Experience and Leadership: Fourth in a family of five, with education in science and a graduate degree in finance, broad work experience with most depth in finance, nonprofit work in affordable housing, art, and education, gives me a circumspect grounding in how the world operates and how government can best serve its citizens.

Top 3 Issues: Encampments, Encampments, Encampments.

Homelessness: Should our laws be enforced and should we deliver shelter to our neediest? YES! Are we properly confronting this crisis? NO! This crisis requires the proper allocation of resources to divide and conquer. Since this population has been measured as chemically dependent, mentally ill, and criminal, the appropriate corresponding resources are clinicians, social workers, and police officers, respectively. This triage is the remedy to this crisis. We must acknowledge this as a humanitarian crisis and get this population sheltered; anything less is inhumane and inexcusable.

Shelter is the answer provided by your city on its land and within its surplus buildings. To not shelter Denver’s neediest is inhumane and inexcusable. The big picture is demand exceeding supply. A couple smaller fixable issues are the state needs to address the length of time builders are liable for construction defects, and our city needs to expedite P&Z, building, and fire reviews to lower costs. I also think there is an opportunity with the city balance sheet to assist credit-worthy renters with home ownership and equity creation, which is a double win because it frees up a rental unit. 

I have a plan to broaden access to affordable health insurance, which should improve citizens’ budgets for housing.

Cities to Learn From: I have been successful in my business career by setting attainable goals, problem solving within budgets, and having a bias to action. My plan speaks specifically to encampments, an identifiable most needy subset of homelessness, and the solution is city provided shelter. Most cities that are making any progress on this issue see this as the most humane and cost-effective approach.

Harm Reduction and Safe Injection Sites: I am for shelter for those in encampments, so that they then have a chance to make better life decisions and have access to rehabilitative care. To enable bad life decisions has not shown positive longitudinal outcomes so I would oppose these sites.

Policing and STAR: Our city has been paralyzed with lawlessness for the past three years and it is getting worse while we continue to spend over a quarter of our budget on safety. Safety’s job is to enforce laws, protect and keep our streets safe, this department like all departments needs to be instructed on their deliverables, held accountable for their work, and measured on their outcomes. I have met with DA Beth McCann and have attended a fundraiser on restorative justice, the initial outcomes and cost/benefit appear favorable and if indeed proves to be, should be expanded. 

To the extent the STAR program helps confront and end encampments by triage of care from social workers, clinicians, and police, when necessary, I am supportive. To the extent it just gives water and socks to enable a continuation of bad life decisions, it is definitely not a compelling allocation of budget. 

Economic Vision for Denver: A vibrant internationally recognized mecca that functions effectively and equally for all of its diverse inhabitants. A safe clean smart oasis that benefited from fresh strong competent leadership’s fiscal optimization which in turn generated social awareness and a greener city, with the flywheel of these attributes continuing to compound for the city and the region.

Cost of Living: I would applaud them for their foresight and being budget conscious. Their next step needs to be figuring out how to live within their means, or ideally below, so that they can build savings and equity, to be more resilient to adverse economic trends.

Downtown Recovery: As stated above, the root cause is encampments which make our streets dangerous and filthy, these needy citizens must be removed and sheltered. It is a vivid tale of two cities, upper downtown and lower downtown. Our upper downtown has a high concentration of office space, compounded by the fact that majority of the tenants are car commuters, whereas lower downtown has a mix of office, residential, retail and entertainment, along with a transit hub. We need to support redevelopment of upper downtown to have a winning mix of real estate types and uses. Surface parking lots that are poorly maintained and not landscaped, strike me as upper downtown’s smile that is missing a few teeth.

(D) Trinidad Rodriguez – TOO EXTREME

Life Experience and Leadership: My experience is fundamentally intertwined in how I view the needs of our community, especially given that I’ve been exposed to so many places and moments in this place. 

Homelessness is a particularly personal issue for me. In addition to my single mom and me experiencing housing insecurity when I was growing up, my godfather struggled with addiction and was unhoused. All I remember thinking was “I hope there is someone who can protect him from himself and others.”

Top 3 Issues: Homelessness, Crime, Affordability

Homelessness: I support many of Mayor Hancock’s approaches to homelessness, including the urban camping ban. As Mayor, I will continue sweeps to protect health and safety. I’ll also continue the city’s support of the ecosystem of human service and housing providers providing services and housing options. What I will add to the Mayor’s approach is concrete action toward addressing mental health and substance misuse abuse disorders where access to adequate treatment is currently extremely limited. 

One of my first acts as Mayor will be to institute a state of emergency response to manage the unhoused crisis in Denver with specific disruptive and transformational proposals to address the crisis. Under my state of local emergency proposal, the city will identify a location and build a temporary field treatment center employing similar strategies to what Denver developed to prepare for COVID surges. Teams will be deployed with qualified mental health clinicians to admit persons who are a danger to themselves and/or others either voluntarily or involuntarily. 

We will work with Denver’s Legislative delegation to adopt laws that enable involuntary holds to be used in Colorado to support the completion of the standard of care for mental health and substance addiction disorders necessary to meet a high ethical burden. And to enforce this, I will expand the STAR program to be both proactive and responsive. 

Cities to Learn From: There are a number of other major metropolitan cities committing to voluntary and involuntary commitment of treatment-resistant folks living unhoused: San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. As I mentioned previously, this is the right approach and Denver should commit as well. 

Harm Reduction and Safe Injection Sites:  I do not support these sites, there are more effective alternatives to make a meaningful difference.

Policing and STAR: I support the STAR program, in fact I hope to expand it. Rebuilding trust between our law enforcement community and the Denver community at-large is essential for the success of our city. Our officers need to be doing the job they are trained to do, not more. I also support making STAR more proactive than its current state of responsiveness to help address the homeless crisis on our streets as I previously laid out in my plan.

Economic Vision for Denver: My economic vision is tied to my vision overall is to build a city where every Denverite, regardless of the neighborhood they’re in, can achieve their version of success. This vision is rooted in equity and fairness to achieve affordability and can be summarized with this equation:

Household Income – Expenses = Control of the Future + Stability of Families.

My economic plans are designed to implement this vision by working to boost income by creating and expanding our city’s educational assets to invest in our people’s knowledge and skills while equally accelerating and expanding our efforts to mitigate household expense pressures on the largest line items including housing, food, utilities, and transportation.

Cost of Living: I would say it’s unacceptable. The cost of living has skyrocketed in Denver, and wages aren’t keeping up. I will accelerate the creation of the total housing supply and its diversity, particularly housing stock to meet the needs of the workforce and lowest-income families. Having served on the board of Denver Housing Authority for over 11 years, I helped lead the organization through its first affordable housing bond backed by the city of Denver to speed up the delivery of 5,000 units in Sun Valley, Westridge, and other neighborhoods, and open new opportunities in permanent supportive housing land banking. Denver should innovate this approach to support this development amidst today’s market realities. My involvement on the Blueprint Denver Task Force for three years and my knowledge of capital and development markets have positioned me to catalyze private sector momentum in the supply of so-called missing middle housing types that can be priced to be affordable to moderate-income households. These can be built in medium and medium-low density along high-frequency transit corridors and nodes becoming a large-scale opportunity for our city. Denver also needs to cut red tape and accelerate the permitting process, which involves investing in logistics plans and accountability, which can be through independent contracting and/or resource alignment.

Downtown Recovery:  I will prioritize implementing my plans to reverse escalating crime and spiraling homelessness happening downtown. I believe doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results must be avoided.

I aim to convert surplus commercial buildings to vertical mixed-use communities that will add greenhouses, artistic spaces, housing, and office spaces to liven our community. I also want to develop our mobility system to maximize downtown’s full potential as the region’s mass transit hub working with RTD to deliver convenient and efficient alternatives to single occupancy cars.

I have committed to bringing city and county of Denver employees back to the offices, and I see more activation Downtown as a key to making working in offices a worthwhile choice for workers. I’ll be working with many partners to produce weekday Ciclovias, mass wellness activity events including shared streets, and other unique opportunities. As Mayor, I’ll actively push for collaboration between the public and private sectors and community to bring their unique contributions to the table to ensure our Downtown is a success.

Less Prominent Candidates

These candidates are dragging behind in both polling and funding. We don’t foresee these candidates having a strong showing in the election.

(D) Kwame Spearman – TOO EXTREME

Life Experience and Leadership: My parents instilled in me the value of public service, my father worked for the city, and my mother was an educator who rose to be an assistant superintendent of Denver Public Schools. As a proud graduate of Denver Public Schools, I know firsthand the transformative power of a quality education and have always been committed to giving back to my community. 

My parents also instilled the values of public service, a driving force in my life. As a Denver native, I have seen this city change and grow throughout my life – and it’s made me fully recognize what a crossroads our city is now at.

As a business owner and CEO, I understand the importance of making tough decisions and identifying new opportunities. My experience turning around the Tattered Cover has given me firsthand knowledge of what it takes to manage a successful enterprise and how to grapple with making tough choices when they are necessary and need to be made. We must be realistic about the issues our city faces and make some pragmatic decisions.

Top 3 Issues: Neighborhoods, Public Safety & Homelessness, and Housing Affordability

Homelessness: Though I commend Mayor Hancock for his work to address homelessness in Denver, I believe that we need to take a step back and take a much more strategic approach to solve this complex issue. 

We need to approach homelessness in Denver as a segmented problem, where different populations need different solutions. And we must face the tragic reality that rampant drug abuse is fueling a chronic issue of camping in public spaces. To start with, the camping ban must be enforced, along with our other existing laws.

As mayor, I will accelerate better segmentation and more individualized services for those who need and want them, with a streamlined system to access services such as mental health, addiction, housing, and workforce support. I also believe in expanding the STAR program to improve responses to mental health crises. We can expand on Mayor Hancock’s amazing efforts by creating more units and assigning STAR units in specific neighborhoods across Denver. This will help to provide necessary care to those in need while also addressing the root causes of crime.

We also must coordinate our efforts, launching an audit of current programs so we understand what is working, and reinvesting it. And cease spending on ineffective programs. 

Though I believe in enforcing the camping ban, I also believe that we need to take a compassionate approach to address the many causes of homelessness. 

Cities to Learn From: I’ve looked at cities across the country to see how they are addressing homelessness and there are both promising practices Denver can learn from as well as cautionary tales. Cities like San Francisco have struggled to address the homelessness crisis, and I fear Denver is headed in that direction. An example of a city taking a better approach to homelessness is New York City. The city provides shelter for anyone who needs it, while also enforcing a stricter approach to public camping and using tools like involuntary holds when absolutely necessary for those dealing with mental health crises.  Another example is Salt Lake City, which has had some success working with the state on housing first.

Denver can learn from New York City and Salt Lake City’s approaches, but I also think we need to be mindful of the fact that Denver is very different than both of these cities, and that the solutions that work in the context of New York or Salt Lake City might need to modified to work in Denver, or might not work at all. We need to take a better approach that is more innovative and data-driven to find out what works in Denver. Our current approach is not.

Harm Reduction and Safe Injection Sites: At this point in time, I don’t believe safe injection sites are an appropriate solution for Denver. We need to consider the legality of this in the United States, which has previously prevented Denver from moving forward with this proposal. But even then, I believe that this is not the right way to address the problems Denver faces over the long run.

Policing and STAR: I am committed to ensuring that our communities feel safe and secure. To address the increase in crime that we’ve seen, I believe that we need a clear plan that includes both restructuring the Denver Police Department and expanding our successful STAR program.

To restructure the Denver Police Department, I plan to incorporate policing into my overall Neighborhood Plan, so that police officers specialize in certain neighborhoods and become an active part of the community. This will allow for better relationships to be formed between law enforcement and residents, which can decrease crime and negativity towards the police. I believe that neighborhood policing is the best approach for addressing community safety, and I’m committed to making it a reality in Denver.

Additionally, I believe that expanding our STAR program is an essential component of addressing community safety. This successful program has already shown results, and we must build on that success by dramatically increasing its scope. By assigning STAR units to specific neighborhoods across Denver, we can improve response times and ensure that those in need receive the help they require.

Economic Vision for Denver: As a small business owner, I know that local businesses and workers power Denver’s economy. As the next Mayor, I am committed to building an economy that works for everyone, which starts with supporting, hiring, and building locally.

I have firsthand experience with the challenges that businesses and entrepreneurs face, having saved an independent bookstore, the Tattered Cover, during the height of the pandemic. To help ignite Denver’s economic renewal, I will work to remove barriers that stand in the way of local businesses. There are a number of important policy proposals that I will implement as mayor to power our local economy: 

Creating a city fund for seed and emergency capital for locally owned businesses. This capital will be provided with low interest rates and mandatory timelines for efficient deployment. And it will help foster businesses aligned with our Denver neighborhoods.

Seeking to influence large Denver-based organizations to become “anchor institutions” via leadership and partnership incentives. Anchor institutions will pledge to source goods, workers, and IT from Denver neighborhoods.

Elevating the city’s infrastructure to provide worker training for marginalized and student communities, and incentives for local businesses to employ these workers.  

Using sales tax dollars to emulate the federal government’s Employee Retention Credit program, which gave tax dollars back to businesses that kept their employees on payroll during the pandemic. 

This policy will allow companies to continue increasing minimum wages to their employees, while also lowering their effective labor rates.

Cost of Living: The biggest thing the Mayor can do to impact the overall affordability in Denver is to work on housing affordability. There’s not much a mayor can do about inflation, but as mayor, I can do things to make housing more affordable for people in Denver. My policies include the Vienna Plan, which is a strategy for the creation of affordable housing units. Additionally, I want to streamline the permitting process so that more housing units can be built in a shorter amount of time. This will help to increase the supply of affordable housing and drive down prices.

Denver has grown an incredible amount since I was a kid, and with that has come some growing pains. But there are many exciting opportunities for how we can address this issue. For example, there is still a large amount of unused and underutilized land in Denver, much of it owned by the city.

I will conduct a full audit to see how this land can best be put to use to build affordable housing.

Downtown Recovery: As the CEO of a business with multiple downtown locations, I am particularly aware of the challenges that the pandemic has presented to Denver’s downtown. But now that the pandemic is behind us, we are still seeing downtown being far less active than it was before. The biggest blocker for downtown getting back to where it was is public safety and homelessness. The next mayor has to address these problems and they can no longer be ignored. It’s especially urgent because we are finding ourselves in a vicious cycle where retail shops closing only makes these problems worse.

My focus as mayor will be on improving public safety and addressing homelessness in a compassionate yet effective manner. This means increasing the number of police officers and homeless outreach workers on the streets, creating safe spaces for people experiencing homelessness to access services, and enforcing the camping ban to ensure that our public spaces are clean and accessible to all.

As part of my Neighborhood Plan, I will direct the Police Department to implement more neighborhood policing, where police officers will be assigned to neighborhoods and implement policing policies aligned with the diverse needs of Denver’s many neighborhoods.

(D) Aurelio Martinez –  RADIO SILENT

(D) Robert Treta – RADIO SILENT

(D) Terrance Roberts – PENDING RESPONSE

The post 2023 Denver Mayoral Election Guide appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The post 2016 Election: State Congressional Candidates and CU Regents appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.