Lowincome housing scores win
AURORA» The metro area’s affordable housing crisis was laid bare once again this week, with a battle over a lowincome housing project in Aurora bringing dozens of people out to city hall until the early hours of Tuesday morning.
In the end, the vote couldn’t have been closer, with Aurora City Council voting 65 early Tuesday morning to approve the proposed 50unit Providence at the Heights after hearing nearly five hours of testimony from residents on both sides of the issue.
Many neighbors who live near the site where Providence would be built — behind Elevation Christian Church at the southwest corner of Alameda Parkway and Joplin Street — said the 1.4acre plot was too small for the threestory structure. They also expressed worries about the safety of their children and neighbors given that Providence would house people experiencing homelessness, including those have served time behind bars.
They said the Second Chance Center, a group that helps those released from prison reintegrate with society, hadn’t provided neighbors with sufficient details about the project before going to the city for approval. Second Chance, which will oversee Providence at the Heights, teamed up with a developer to buy the land from Elevation Christian Church for $475,000.
“My property is blatantly ignored and disrespected,” said Ray Wendt, who lives behind the church property on East Custer Place. “I am that neighbor, this is my home.”
Many of Wendt’s neighbors pointed to a decision in July by the Aurora Planning and Zoning Commission to unanimously deny the project a site plan, citing a lack of parking capacity as a major concern. They appealed to the city council to honor the ruling of the planning commissioners.
“It’s a great project at the wrong location,” said James Taylor, who lives just blocks from where Providence would be built.
Proponents of the project, who far outnumbered opponents at the council hearing, said if Aurora ever hopes to close its deficit of nearly 12,000 affordable rental units for those at the lowest end of the income scale, it needs to be open to projects like Providence.
“We have an opportunity to stop this cycle,” said Amy Petré Hill, director of mental health and inclusion ministries at Mountain View United Church in Aurora. “We can’t zone (homelessness) away.”
Hassan Latif, executive director of Second Chance Center, said the land is zoned for multifamily housing, and his organiza tion worked hard to amass millions of dollars in federal and state tax credits to pay for the purchase of the land and construction of the building. And even though the number of homeless people in Aurora counted in the annual PointinTime Survey showed a drop from 459 in 2017 to 357 this year, Latif said the problem is still significant.
“No one can deny the need for affordable housing in Aurora,” he said in an interview. “Providence is for families experiencing homelessness.”
The battle in Aurora in many ways echoes other recent disputes that have centered on proposals for homeless shelter construction and expansion in the metro area, as increasingly valuable real estate — the average price of a singlefamily home in the metro area eclipsed the halfmilliondollar mark for the first time earlier this year — makes housing those without homes a tougher proposition financially and socially.
Late last month, neighbors in Denver’s River North neighborhood grappled with whether a plan to expand the Salvation Army’s Crossroads homeless shelter to eight stories was compatible with a neighborhood boasting an explosion in topdollar apartment rentals.
In Longmont, neighbors this summer objected to a church providing homeless services near their homes, which they said had attracted transient homeless people to live in a nearby city park.
And in Lakewood, a drawnout fight over a proposed 500 to 600unit homeless housing project on a piece of vacant federal land near the Federal Center has raised the hackles of neighbors and businesses near the site.
The organization’s president, John Parvensky, praised the Aurora City Council for stepping forward and approving “this critical housing for 50 homeless individuals.”