What if all the People Who Can’t Afford to Live Here Left?
The housing crisis here in East Boulder County is affecting people from all walks of life: teachers, service business workers, nurses, Veterans, the elderly, disabled people, and historically disenfranchised groups who experience racism. What would our community be like if all these different people who struggle with affordable housing had to move away?
Everyone deserves a safe and decent place to lay their head without an arduous commute. But local policies have not created the housing we need, and that needs to change. Local job growth is happening much faster than housing growth - especially of affordable housing.
Please support ECHO between now and Dec 7th, Colorado Gives Day, so we can work to create homes for all of our workers. This is ECHO’s first fundraising initiative and we are asking for your support. During the campaign we have a generous donor who will match all donations up to $5000. This means, your donation will be doubled if you give to us now!
As a newer organization that just received non-profit status in May of this year, ECHO has accomplished so much in the first few months of our existence. We are organizing community members to speak up where they live and show their support for a diverse community with housing for all. We have had several major successes and these are typical of how your contribution will be put to good use:
Louisville and Superior have created their first-ever ordinances to require affordable housing in new developments. Both are entertaining new Transit Oriented Development projects that will include affordable housing, and we are at the table supporting good design and high-quality projects.
Lafayette, Louisville and Superior are all in various stages of preparing to issue an RFP for a housing study to determine best possible next steps
Boulder County has revived it’s stalled Willoughby Corner 400-unit affordable housing development project in Lafayette.
Erie has passed a resolution in support of a 12% affordable housing goal and is working on a new ordinance to come before the town board. We are providing input into that process.
Longmont staff are working with community members through ECHO to improve their inclusionary housing ordinance to better serve the residents, and have dramatically improved their community dashboard to let community members know how they are doing to achieve their goals.
We developed and published a candidate questionnaire on affordable housing which brought much-needed attention to this issue among local government candidates.
We partnered with other community organization-coalition members to provide an online training on how to support affordable housing that was attended by 250 people.
There is still so much to do to achieve our regional housing goal of 12% affordable by 2035.
And in the meantime: more than 50% of local workers commute from outside the county because they can’t afford to live here, families are struggling, waiting lists are long, and homelessness is growing.
With your support, there is so much more we can do.
Please support the work of ECHO to train and support community members to knowledgeably speak up for affordable housing. Because we have a generous donor who will match all donations up to $5000, your donation will be doubled if you give to us now. Please help us make this first ever Giving Tuesday - Colorado Gives Day a success by generously supporting our work. Your help will enable us to expand our work toward reversing the years of inequitable policies that have brought us this housing crisis. Without policy changes, the crisis will continue, and more of your friends and family will be forced to move away. Whether it affects you directly or someone you know or care about, everyone knows someone struggling with housing.
Thank you for considering a generous donation to ECHO - which will be doubled now through Dec 7th!
https://www.echocolorado.com/giving
