FOX 31 ran a story last night focused on an Edgewater family who has been locked out of their rental home on Marshall Street. From the story, it sounds like the landlord evicted the family without going through the necessary court processes. The assumption made is that the landlord wants to raise the rent on the home. Though the full story of this situation is not yet known, affordable housing is becoming harder and harder to find as rents are rising in Edgewater.
New reports show that the Denver area rental rate hikes seem to be ebbing, but they are still much higher than last year. A one bedroom, 950 square foot apartment at Terra Village in Edgewater is now $1230 a month. We are hearing from families in our local schools that they can no longer afford to live in Edgewater and have to move elsewhere to find affordable housing for their families.
Home sale prices in Edgewater continue to rise as well making it hard for families to afford to buy in Edgewater. According to the Denver Post, most homes sold in the last year in Edgewater were over $250,000.
Rising rents and home prices bring up some interesting questions for our community. What are the values that drive us as a city? Do we value economic and racial diversity? What is the role, if any, of the City of Edgewater in making sure there is an adequate percentage of affordable housing? What can we do as a community to make sure there is affordable housing in Edgewater? Or do we just let the market do what it does and sit back and watch? Is there a way to improve community life in Edgewater with justice? Homeowners want to see the value of their home increase, but what if that means the renting family next door has to move out of town because they can no longer afford to live here?
Edgewater, what do we want our community to become? Neighborhoods that exemplify the beauty of diversity or homogenous homes only attainable to a few?
What do you think? Feel free to share your opinions and experiences below. This is an important community dialogue that needs to continue.
Joel has been a resident of Edgewater, Colorado with his family since 2012. He is the Executive Director of local education nonprofit Edgewater Collective and Editor of the Edgewater Echo.
Valid and very real point. I dislike the assumption of the correlation between racial diversity and rent – assuming that the author was indicating that people of color can’t afford to live in Edgewater. Certainly there are, and to the point my neighbor, a white family, could not afford rent and moved further into Wheat Ridge. Point being, that class and race, while sometimes have patterns, is really a false dichotomy for this article’s intent. All intellectual BS aside – I have seen some success of mixed income developments where a portion of the housing is subsidized by programs like HUD’s Urban Redevelopment: (https://www.phoenix.gov/housingsite/Documents/mh_hist.pdf ) – this would take a strong movement from the Municipality to push for this and make it a priority. One thing I would say is that a mixed income development is the only way to go – having entire areas for Section 8 housing or projects won’t help and is unlikely to happen.
I live here because I love the old homes and variation of home styles. I would not live in a cookie cutter planned community. How do we preserve the feel of the neighborhood is an issue I am concerned about.
If it’s affordable is not really something that I am concerned about. I love my neighbor, but life is hard for everyone (including me) and we all do what we must do to house our families. Moving may be the decision that needs to be made. Real estate is all about location and everyone pays to live in premium locations and neighborhoods. With the growth we are seeing in the metro area and Edgewater’s ideal central location, this can be a premium neighborhood. I am all for that. I invested here.
BTW
There is a Corvette parked in the section 8 housing across the street, everyone has priorities. Mine was homeownership.
I am a long time resident of Edgewater. Myself since 1964, my wife was born here.
Embrace the high prices we deserve it. Edgewater was way underpriced for years. We are not the keepers of the underprivileged. Edgewater problems have always been the apartments north and south of us. I for one look forward to more homes being scraped and rebuilt.