Trickling up: How housing is becoming less affordable for more Coloradans
By Tayler Shaw and Luke Zarzecki
A home means everything to Shelley Gilson, a 50-year-old single mother of three girls who works as a guest service agent at an airline.
"It's one word: priceless," she said.
The rising cost of housing in the Denver area has made it difficult for her to afford a home. She spent years bounding around working for low pay, including to several affordable housing communities across the state.
Eventually, more than a decade ago, she found a home at Orchard Crossing Apartments in Westminster. It is an affordable housing community that includes voucher-based housing, a federal government program that provides vouchers to low-income families, the disabled and elderly so that they can afford housing.
From work to school to neighborhood events, the program has created a way for Gilson's family to be a part of a community. With housing and communities come resources, though not all are created equal.
Gilson explained her prior communities were predominantly made up of people of color and people of a lower socioeconomic status, which systematically led to a lack of accessible resources like academic opportunities and mental health services.
This story is from Colorado Community Media. CBS News Colorado is a newsgathering partner with CCM, a network of two dozen newspapers and online publications serving eight metro-area counties on the Front Range.