[Colorado] Poverty on the rise in Boulder

From The Rocky Mountain News

Many low-income residents members of the 'working poor'

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News

BOULDER - Tucked behind the mansions, not far from the BMWs, one in seven people here live in poverty.

That's a rate equal to Denver and Aurora, twice as high as Lakewood or Longmont, three times higher than Arvada, and five times higher than Boulder's neighbor, Louisville.

Not counting University of Colorado students, some 10,000 of Boulder's 70,000 residents earn less than the federal poverty level - $19,350 for a family of four. During the 2002-2003 recession the number of those considered poor grew by 38 percent.

People like the married couple in their 40s, children grown, who never asked for public assistance in their lives. But he lost his job and fell into depression. The co-pays alone on his medical insurance upset the delicate monthly balance between income and expenses.

They both had office jobs. His paid just $1,200 a month, full time, and hers paid $800 a month, part time, said their caseworker, Margie Rotkin, who runs family shelters for Emergency Family Assistance in Boulder, Lafayette and Longmont.

She's looking for extra hours at work and can cut back some on their food budget, but that still doesn't leave enough to cover the essentials. So, last month they asked EFA for help on their $700-a-month rent and got it.

Rotkin has been helping Boulder's poor for 20 years, but she's never seen anything like she's seen the last couple years.

"When I first came here, someone would ask for help while they were looking for a job," Rotkin said. "It would take a couple weeks, they'd get a paycheck, rent a place and move out" of the temporary shelter.

Many working poor

Nowadays, the typical client already is working. But a crisis comes along - car trouble, medical bills, loss of health insurance.

"They will have been evicted, or are about to, because they can't afford to pay the high rent," she said. "Boulder has become more and more difficult to live in" without a secure high-paying job complete with medical benefits.

Rotkin's boss, EFA Director Terry Benjamin, said most Boulder residents in poverty fall under the broad category of the "working poor."

"Our economy lost a lot of good jobs during the last recession and they're not coming back," Benjamin said. "They're being replaced by either very high-paying or low-paying jobs in service, tourism or retail. The middle class in Boulder is diminishing."

He expects an avalanche of calls the next two or three months as households find they can't make ends meet - not with $200 to $300 monthly heating bills.

EFA helps with utility bills and lets people stay at shelters for about seven weeks. Increasingly, though, more people need long-term transitional housing. EFA owns or operates 42 units with rents of $500 a month, where the average length of stay is 13 months.

Benjamin worries about "the slow, steady erosion of affordability" in a city where the average house sells for a half-million dollars.

How'd it happen?

Certainly, the cost of housing has outstripped increases in wages over the past couple decades.

Also, Boulder has clung to the idea that it shouldn't force out its disabled or elderly or working poor, shouldn't subtly suggest they'd be happier in Longmont or Erie or Thornton, where housing is less expensive.

"The ordinary middle class isn't making it - not here," Rotkin said. "But do you want to say, 'This area is too rich, go somewhere else?' "

Changing face of poverty

Over the past 15 years, the face of poverty in Boulder has changed.

In 1990, there were about 3,000 Hispanics in Boulder. Now, there are about 8,000.

Some 27 percent of Hispanics here live in poverty, bringing their share of the poverty total up from about 8 percent in 1990 to about 14 percent today.

In a city where 85 percent of the adult population has at least some college, and most have a college degree, master's or doctorate, 45 percent of Hispanic adults don't have a high school education.

"More of the clients at the community agencies are monolingual Spanish speakers," said Richard Johnson, director of community services for Boulder Housing and Human Services. "It puts a strain on our human services network.

"Most are families who are employed at very very low-paying jobs. The parents aren't educated or don't have full use of the English language."

More than half of the Hispanics in Boulder were born in a foreign country, primarily Mexico. While the average household size in Boulder is 2.2 people, the average for Hispanics is 3.6.

Still, more than half of the people in poverty in Boulder live alone. Just 42 percent live as a family. Some are disabled, some have chronic mental illness or physical problems.

Boulder Housing Services helps out on rent for 1,111 units, either in public housing or the federal government's Section 8 Housing program. In the more than 500 units of public housing, the tenants pay 30 percent of their monthly incomes on rent.

In addition, there are about 2,600 units in the city that are permanently or long-term affordable.

Making housing affordable

Boulder spends $3 million to $4 million a year to subsidize housing for the poor and working poor.

Also, 20 percent of all new residential development must be committed to affordable housing. Developers can either make two out of 10 new units permanently affordable or can pay cash to the city's affordable housing fund.

The city, in turn, gives the money to a nonprofit that might buy a condo and set the rent at a price that is no more than 30 percent of the household income of a working family.

Some of the fund is directed toward home ownership, rather than rent subsidies. The city lists about 20 homes that, with the subsidy, are priced at $140,000 or so. Some 100 people at a time are income-certified as qualifying for those homes, so there is always a big scramble for the latest available.

City Council member Andy Schultheiss said the council takes the problem very seriously.

Part of the problem, he said, "is to convince Boulder residents that we have a problem. Boulder's self-image, and external image, has been a certain way for a long time, and that image doesn't include a lot of poverty."