Homelessness and housing insecurity are hot-button issues across the country, and are increasingly of concern in the Roaring Fork Valley where living costs are some of the highest. While more and more people become at risk of homelessness, KDNK and The Sopris Sun highlight the nuances of this complex issue in an ongoing series by Lily Jones.
Lynn Kirchner is one of the founding members of Carbondale Homeless Assistance, and also happens to be a local realtor. Carbondale was recently featured in Forbes Magazine for being the municipality with the highest home appreciation values over the last 20 years. Skyrocketing real estate prices are making it hard to retain housing in the area, and Kirchner said, it’s a problem no one likes to talk about.
“Almost homelessness is of a growing concern in our community,” she stated. “Of the people who may have housing … how secure is it?” Take rental properties, for instance. Some people may have “been renting the same property for 10, 15, 18 years,” she continued. “And, all of a sudden, [they] get a phone call” that the owner has decided to sell or increase the rent.
Kirchner added that whatever a former tenant may have been paying, a landlord could take the market opportunity to even double the rent.
“I mean, it’s just unheard of to go from $1,000 a month to $6,000 a month,” said Kirchner. “Yet, there’s a line out the door of people — maybe, you know, three roommates that want to each pay $2,000 or a family that will pay $6,000 to take that house.”
It’s not just rent spikes that can cause financial upheaval. Personal emergencies or even the weather can have a ripple effect that can destabilize someone’s job and housing security. A snowstorm or a sick day can derail the finances of a family living paycheck to paycheck and without sufficient savings.
She offered a common scenario of when youngsters get to enjoy a snow day but their parents have to deal with the ramifications thereof. Take “two parents … both working to make the rent, pay for the groceries, pay for heat, electricity, put gas in the car, and [then there’s] a snow day. Their kids aren’t old enough to stay home by themselves. What happens?” Well, she pointed out, it’s likely that “one parent doesn’t go to their job” that day. “And the difference of that income could be the difference of making a full rent payment or not.
The general rule of thumb for emergency expense preparedness is to have three to six months put away. But that’s not common. According to a study performed by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, Colorado is among the most expensive states — another obstacle for saving.
“When I do … educational seminars, I’ll [ask of] the room, ‘How many people here have two years worth of money saved up [so] that if something were to happen to you today, you’re protected financially?’ No one raises their hand,” she said. “‘Alright, what about 18 months? What about 12 months?’ No hands go up.”
It isn’t just Colorado grappling with this worrying trend. Last year was one of the worst for homelessness that the United States has seen as a whole. The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress stated that over 700,000 individuals experienced homelessness on the streets, in a crisis shelter or other unstable location.
The demographic that experienced the biggest growth in homelessness was children, followed by families with children. The report cites rising inflation and stagnating wages as two of the biggest causes across middle- and low-income groups.
Real estate prices are rising while wages fail to keep pace across the country. Across Colorado, Denver, Boulder and Grand Junction are experiencing some of the highest price to income ratios in the West. The Census Bureau reports that, in 2022, the average income in Carbondale was just over forty thousand, trailing behind the average home value of over one million dollars.
Visit www.kdnk.org for the audio version of this story.