Daniel torres

Apartment rents slid a little and vacancy rates rose as metro Denver absorbed a historically large number of new apartments during the third quarter, according to a market update Wednesday from the Apartment Association of Metro Denver. The metro area has added 9,713 new apartments in the first nine months of this year, a 35 percent increase from the same period in 2016, which was a big year. Of this year’s new supply, 4,315 units came online in July, August and September. “It’s equivalent to completing a new 48-unit apartment community every day for three months straight. That’s great news for a city struggling to keep up with demand for housing,” Teo Nicolais, a real estate instructor at the Harvard Extension School, said in a release accompanying the report. The metro area will easily smash through the 10,000 new units mark this year, the first time that has happened in more than three decades, said Nicolais. “We are going to hit the supply crescendo,” said the report’s … [Read more...] about Modest relief for apartment dwellers: Metro Denver rents slip as new units flood market

Jaime Aguilar remembers when he left the office to work at home — March 13 — and can tell you the precise number of days he’s been away. “They gathered us around and told us starting tomorrow, we are going to work from home until we figure out what is going on with this pandemic. They talked about coming back in July. And then July passed. I have been working from home for 186 days now, but who is counting,” he said last week. The transition was “very exciting” at first, said Aguilar, a digital communication specialist at the Community First Foundation in Arvada. But it didn’t take long for problems to emerge and frustrations to mount. Early on, his old computer didn’t prove robust enough to handling video meetings. When Aguilar’s wife, Denver City Councilwoman Jamie Torres, joined him in the home office, it strained the broadband connection. The pair had to juggle who got the office for Zoom and Microsoft Team meetings, and how to allocate Wi-Fi. Some problems involved … [Read more...] about Mental health challenges rise as remote work arrangements drag on

A $9.5 million proposal would outlaw locking people in jail when they are picked up on mental health holds and bolster the state’s network of crisis-response teams, walk-in treatment centers and transportation from rural Colorado. A bill under consideration at the statehouse would ban the use of jails to house people who are a “danger to themselves or others” but have not committed any crime. Colorado is one of only six states that allows putting people who are suicidal or having mental health episodes behind bars. “It’s a massive injustice,” said Sen. Daniel Kagan, a Denver Democrat and sponsor of the bill. “It only makes a person’s mental health far, far worse to be not only in a state of crisis but now in jail.” The legislation, combined with state human services department requests for marijuana tax funds totaling $9.5 million, describes a multilayered plan to provide better treatment for people with mental illness. The funds would support two-person mobile crisis teams, … [Read more...] about Colorado would outlaw using jails for mental health holds, increase services under $9.5 million proposal