As expensive housing moves in, Aurora residents fear displacement

A set of crutches teetered on top of cardboard boxes and black trash bags amassed on the front yard. A fan lay upside down, flung below them in the pile. Draped across heaps of other household items, a rug. A hollow filing cabinet stood nearby, emptied of its drawers.

For roughly a week, the home’s ousted owner slept outside in the December air, spending day and night guarding all his worldly belongings.

“I can’t even use the bathroom without someone stealing stuff,” Mr. Wilson said.

The Del Mar Parkway resident, who asked to be identified by his last name only out of concern for his privacy, was losing his Aurora home of nearly four decades.

For years he had lived with his mother, working on cars and doing odd jobs, he said, inheriting the home with its mortgage fully paid upon his mother’s passing in 2014. He kept up with property taxes for a couple of years.

Then a combination of medical incidents, economic downturns and the COVID-19 pandemic — during which Wilson was at higher risk of serious illness because of multiple heart stents — made it difficult for him to bring home income. In that same time his annual property tax dues increased by the hundreds, he said.

“It’s just one thing after another,” Wilson said.

A tax lien on his property sold. Crews arrived. Men stuffed his things into bags and boxes and hauled them outside. Whatever he could not get moved to a storage unit within a few days would be taken to a dump, he said. He scoured the pile to find family keepsakes before they were trashed. He hunted for his wallet. His social security card. His mother’s ashes. Some items he found. Some he did not.

People told him he would recover, he said, but at 54 he could not see how he would start his life over.

“I will never be alright. This will never be OK,” he said.

A brewing debate

Residents along the East Colfax Avenue corridor in Aurora have long been feeling the pressure of rising rents and house prices, and the recent approval of high-cost housing developments in the heart of their communities again raised fears that their neighborhoods will soon no longer have a place for them.

Protesters took to Denver streets. Aurora’s City Hall chamber filled with families pleading for councilmembers to hear their case. If new and expensive housing affects surrounding property values, residents worried insurance, rents and property taxes will rise enough in the coming years that they will be forced out.

At stake, they said, is an area on the dwindling list of enclaves in the Denver metro area where at-risk and low-income residents can scrape by in a crushingly expensive housing market. So, too, is the character of their neighborhoods, they said, a decades-long hub for immigrant and refugee communities.

Citywide, rents and home prices have climbed annually with Aurora’s population growth. In 2020 the city council approved a new housing strategy and housing study that laid out a slew of recommendations and strategies for addressing the housing crisis.

At the time of the study, the median renter income had increased by 36% between 2010 and 2017 while home values increased by 71%.

A person had to make at least $50,000 to afford average rent in the city, $10,000 higher than the median renter income for Aurora. The city was short 7,500 rental units for renters earning less than $25,000 a year as of 2017.

In 2016 and 2017, 56% of for-sale units sold for under $300,000. In 2018 and 2019, that number fell to 35%.

Aurora has been known historically as an affordable city, but population growth is stressing its limited affordable housing resources, City spokesman Michael Brannen said in an email.

The city has funded a total of 5,066 existing affordable housing units. About 650 more units are available than five years ago, Brannen said. Another 1,400 units are in development, mainly in city Wards I, III and IV. Ward I, which serves North Aurora, has the majority of affordable housing units in the city. 

The Del Mar neighborhood became one of the latest focal points in the debate about metro-area gentrification with the Aurora City Council’s approval in November of a site plan for dozens of townhomes there. The approval came on the heels of a condo project greenlighted a few blocks away across the border with Denver.

The Aurora townhomes, located minutes from where the Del Mar resident was losing his house, were slated to sell for $550,000. The Denver condos were expected to sell at $600,000 a unit.

Voices that rose against the specific housing projects or raised broader concerns about gentrification wanted to be clear — they are not anti-development. What they want is low-rent and deeply affordable housing provided in neighborhoods at risk of displacement, they said.

But amid the debates also came calls for Aurora to take seriously issues of safety within neighborhoods along the East Colfax corridor. New development replacing blighted lots and crime hotspots offered hope for multiple residents who supported the Aurora townhome development.

A majority on the divided city council said the project would do good in the area. The city is working on affordable housing projects throughout Aurora, and is interested in bringing more to the corridor, councilmembers said.

Gaining approval

Politics swirled as city councilmembers considered an appeal to the approval of the townhome site plan in Aurora.

Accusations that Denver-based activists manipulated residents into opposition came down from the dais. Suggestions that the mayor and majority councilmembers buried the agenda item and intimidated the development’s critics followed.

Councilmember Alison Coombs said the site approval plan was a last-minute addition to the agenda, that it was placed late on the night’s packed schedule, and that a grant approval for one of the coalitions organizing critics was singled out and postponed during the meeting.

The move smacked of intimidation, she and other minority councilmembers said. Council ultimately voted 7-4 to uphold the planning commission’s decision to approve the site plan for 53 townhomes.

The project will be built on vacant lots that had long housed boarded-up buildings described by Mayor Mike Coffman as “crime-infested.”

Nathan Adams, owner of redT Homes, emphasized the development was a use-by-right project, meaning the project was permitted under the area's zoning. Use-by-right zones means if the developer complies with that particular zone's rules (industrial, retail, residential - for example), city planning departments and city councils must approve it. The reasons given for appealing the site plan were not part of the approval criteria, he said during the November council meeting.

“The opposition has been disingenuous about our project to scare the community, and that is unfortunate,” he told city council.

If he could make the townhomes for less, he would, Adams said. The average price in the metro is closer to $700,000 and the land for the townhomes alone cost $57,000 a door. So far, his company has invested $20 million in the project.

“I personally hate that $550,000 is an attainable price point, but here we are,” he said.

Making the units available for $110,000 to $220,000 — the amount appellants said single and dual income families in East Colfax can afford to pay — is not economically possible, Adams said.

If council believes in the need for attainable housing, better-constructed homes and environmentally safe products — the townhomes are LEED certified products — then they should vote to approve his site plan, he said.

Resident perspective

Local residents fell into two camps. There were those concerned the project would spur gentrification, and some who hoped it could solve issues of crime on the property.

One of the residents who appealed the planning commission’s decision said what the neighborhood needs is low-cost rental units. None of their children or grandchildren will be able to afford the townhomes, she said.

Numerous people who offered public comment regarding the development spoke little-to-no English and addressed council with the help of three different translators. Several people grew emotional as they spoke about living on a fixed incomes in a difficult economy while trying to build a life in the United States.

One man earns between $500 and $600 a week and pays $1,300 in monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment, he said. A woman who came to the United States from a refugee camp in Thailand earns $18 an hour trying to support her children, but rent keeps rising, she said. A mother of nine shared a story about caring for her children in an apartment while her spouse works to support them.

Residents who live directly adjacent to the site said the property was plagued by crime.

Sindi, who rents a house near the development and asked to be identified by her first name only, was at first scared the project would lead to her family’s displacement, she told The Denver Gazette. Sindi heard developers wanted to buy nearby houses, including hers. She did not know what that would mean for her future rent, or if the house would be used as a rental property moving forward.

She was later assured her house was not selling, and became more optimistic about the project because police have not taken crime there seriously, she said.

Maria Dominguez has rented a home a few doors down from the project site for six years. A person once died on the lots, she said.

“I think it’s going to be better because they had a lot of homeless and people drinking and doing drugs,” she said.

Among the voices in support of the development at the city council meeting was Yuliana Ramirez. The mother of three lives across the street from the project, where she spoke to The Denver Gazette about concerns for her children’s safety.

Ramirez has heard gunshots and at all hours of the day, she said. The property sat littered with trash. It lacked adequate lighting. People speed along the streets. She believes the new housing will help address those issues.

“I need this project because my kids need this change,” she said.

Getting approval

Mayor Coffman described the site as “crime-infested” and a blight on the neighborhood. Residents reached out to him with safety concerns before the city knew the property was planned for redevelopment, he said. People living adjacent to the site “just want it to stop.”

“It’s one thing if we were tearing up, tearing down low-income property to replace it with higher-income properties,” he said.

Councilmember Steve Sundberg said with naturally-occurring affordable housing in the area, some variety could be a good thing. The city also has 20 affordable housing projects in the pipeline, he said.

Councilmember Francoise Bergan spoke about using state grants and other strategies to bring down the cost of new housing and expressed a desire to do more affordable housing for the area in the future. The townhome project still had her support, she said.

There is a housing shortage at every price point, Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky said, and the new-build project could prevent future buyers from getting trapped in bidding wars. The councilmember was willing to stand up against commercial developers she believed were displacing longstanding local businesses, she said, but she did not see how the townhome development on vacant land would displace any residents.

“I think that it will bring more eyes and ears into the community to help keep people safe,” she said.

Councilmember Curtis Gardner sharply criticized Denver residents for speaking at the meeting and the Denver-based groups that helped organize residents. Those residents were misled about how the site plan approval process works, he said.

Gardner emphasized he did not believe council could legally vote against the site plan, which he said met the criteria for approval. Rejecting the application would risk a lawsuit, he said.

“You were told that this was about affordable housing. You were told that this was about gentrification. You were told that this was about displacement, and it’s about none of those. And for those of you who were lied to by some of the organizations, I really want to apologize,” Gardner said.

‘The squeeze is coming’

Critiquing Denver residents did not go over well with Councilmember Ruben Medina, who represents the city’s Ward III. Neighborhoods on Colfax at the border of Aurora and Denver are interconnected communities, he said. He saw the comments as out-of-touch, and he appreciated the meeting turnout.

The city’s immigrant and refugee population often “live in the shadow” for numerous reasons, he said. 

“I was glad to see them get vocal,” he said.

He felt disheartened seeing residents support the development. Although he understands they hope it will curb crime, Medina said there is no data proving new development will boost safety. Cleaning the site up might prevent people from congregating there but it could spur different types of crime if high-end housing becomes a target, he said.

“When it starts to gentrify around you, you will not be able to afford it either,” he said.

He has no question gentrification will dramatically change North Aurora and neighborhoods near East Colfax in the next 10 to 15 years, he said. Building takes time and the shift may be gradual, but the process has begun, he said. Medina saw the first signs with the opening of the Anschutz Medical Center to the east, and the Stanley Marketplace to the north, he said.

“The squeeze is coming,” he said.

He would like to see more trailer parks, entry-level housing, and even co-ops in Aurora so that people can own land. He’s researched zoning that might clear the way for tiny homes. He is also supporting a local organization mapping out city-owned land that might be prime for development.

Mapping the city

Mateos Alvarez, the executive director of the Aurora Economic Opportunity Coalition and the Dayton Street Day Labor Center on East Colfax Avenue, said addressing the area’s affordable housing crisis will require a partnership among city leadership, affordable housing builders, community leaders and nonprofits. Leaving the work up to developers, he said, won’t work. The same is true for expecting nonprofits to manage the crisis alone, or city government.

Alvarez believes local leaders are supportive of working on affordable housing, but that the level of collaboration needed to address the shortage at this scale is not happening.

“The city owns, in northwest Aurora, lots of open land,” he said.

The coalition’s mapping study, which received a Gates Family Foundation grant, seeks to further understand what vacant land is available in northwest Aurora and how it might be used to benefit the community.

The labor center is one of the organizations that make up the East Colfax Community Collective, which helped lead opposition to the Aurora townhomes. Co-Founder and Executive Director Brendan Greene was one of the three appellants.

“The main core principle that we are lifting up is that development in this neighborhood of North Aurora should be for the residents who live in North Aurora,” Greene said.

Greene does not believe Aurora has any “sort of neighborhood plan for this area.” The coalition wants to bring light to housing problems in the area but also be part of the solution, he said, adding there's ample overlap between residents’ desires and the city’s housing strategy.

Construction workers are some of the highest-paid people living in the area of the townhome project, he said. Most residents there work in construction, retail, healthcare, food services and administrative and waste services. The questioned begged, he said, who is the city building for? The top earners in East Colfax cannot afford house payments on a $550,000 mortgage, he said.

“They can’t afford a mortgage of $400,000, or $300,000,” he said.

A changing district

Greene's coalition wants to see Aurora make an “aggressive investment” in land banking, Greene said. A concerted and greater effort at land banking is an idea that attracts Councilmember Crystal Murillo, who represents Ward I and the Del Mar neighborhood. She sees it as one way to help developers curb the cost of bringing new projects to Aurora, to hopefully keep new housing more affordable.

Murillo wants an Aurora Community Land Trust, one of the housing strategies’ recommendations. She also wants the city to incentivize mixed-use projects.

Aurora does not have a community land trust set up for affordable housing, but in September the city acquired its first land banking parcel that will be dedicated to affordable housing, Brannen said. The city is monitoring land that could be purchased in the future for affordable housing land banking, and identify property Aurora already owns that could be used for affordable housing, he said. 

During council’s debate about the townhome project, Gardner and Murillo both cited a memo from the interim police chief sent to council a week prior. The department had been focusing on community policing to address crime in the neighborhood and was generating results, they said.

APD reported a 60% reduction in average crime events, zero homicides, a 75% reduction in drug crime and a 60% reduction in motor vehicle theft as a result of the initiative, Gardner said. He wanted people to know the city was already taking steps to improve safety.

'Day to day'

Wilson, the Del Mar resident, was able to move his belongings to a storage unit, although his life still felt thrust into chaos, he said.

He tried to secure hotel vouchers through local services but could not find a provider with any available, he said. With the help of his sister, Wilson was able to book several days at a local hotel, where he would spent the New Year. He sought help at the Aurora Day Resource Center where he met with a social worker, and could get a hot meal. 

Still, all of this was new to him. Wilson had never needed to navigate the system before, he said. He didn't know who to call, or when, or for what assistance, he said. Life now, is day by day, Wilson said.

"Everything is in the air right now," he said.