defined as households earning 30% of the area’s median income. An extremely-low-income household in Denver is a household of one earning $24,650 a year or a household of four earning $35,150.
The Denver Housing Authority manages 12 different waitlists for public housing, which can take anywhere from one to four years from the time someone joins the list to the time they’re asked to submit an application to qualify for a unit. How long it takes depends on the size of the unit needed — places for bigger families are typically harder to come by — and any other considerations like disability accommodations, Crawley said.
When Jada Galassini arrived to live at Warren Village in 2019, the staff advised the young mother to immediately add her name to the myriad subsidized housing waitlists available throughout the region. Housing advocates at the nonprofit know how long it can take to move up the waitlist, so they make that a top priority for new residents, who can stay at Warren Village between two and four years.
“I just got so lucky with how everything worked out,” Galassini said. “I know if I didn’t have my daughter and didn’t have Habitat’s help, I couldn’t afford to live in Colorado, where my family has lived for generations. I sometimes look around my neighborhood and feel like I don’t even belong here.”
Davis and her children checked into an extended-stay hotel in Centennial while she looked for work, cared for her two children, enrolled them in school and undertook the daunting task of navigating subsidized housing programs. Part of SafeHouse Denver’s mission is educating landlords on the rights of domestic violence survivors and explaining their residents’ circumstances to hesitant property managers, Williams said