DENVER _ Macy Valdez works in Denver but for a long time didn't think she could afford to live here. She earns $38,000 a year as a receptionist at the Saint Joseph Hospital cancer center, too little to afford rent in many downtown apartments.
Yet since January, Valdez, 28, has been living in a one-bedroom apartment seven blocks from her office in a building complete with a game room, a gym and a pool. She moved in thanks to a city program that blends public and private funds to subsidize rents for lower-income workers.
City leaders nationwide have been calling Denver to learn about the Lower Income Voucher Equity program _ "LIVE Denver," for short _ since Democratic Mayor Michael Hancock announced the first-of-its-kind partnership in 2017. The program has been profiled in national newspapers, and Denver officials regularly tout it at housing conferences.
But nearly two years in, LIVE Denver is serving only three households and might never achieve the scale city leaders promised. Saint Joseph Hospital is the only employer to partner with the city so far. City officials now expect the program to serve about a hundred households, a quarter of the 400 households they initially estimated.
Valdez pays $1,100 a month, $100 more than she previously spent in a town 10 miles away. Still, she considers the rent a steal, given the location and the fact that she's no longer living with a roommate. Through the program, a small portion of her rent payments are set aside in a savings account.
Asked whether she could have afforded her apartment at the market rate, Valdez laughed. "Absolutely not," she said. One-bedroom apartments in her building start at $1,600.
Denver's struggles might offer a lesson to other cities seeking to launch an affordable housing subsidy, particularly one aimed at middle-class residents. "What we're seeing now is cities are on the front line of dealing with the housing affordability crisis," said Elisha Harig-Blaine, program manager for housing at the National League of Cities.
Denver leaders say they're rolling out the program slowly so they can get things right. "We want to make sure that, as we're exploring and pursuing those innovative approaches, we're doing so very thoughtfully and very intentionally," said Laura Brudzynski, director of housing policy, programs and HOPE Initiative at the Denver Office of Economic Development and Opportunity.
But the slow progress has frustrated many of the program's private sector supporters.
Tracey Stewart, family economic security investment director at Gary Community Investments, a philanthropic funder of LIVE Denver, said her organization is still excited about the pilot. But, she added, it will serve only a fraction of city residents struggling to pay for housing.
"Even though this is an interesting and pretty innovative project _ you're just going to hear a lot of people say, 'So what?' "
