AURORA — She was eight months pregnant when she was forced to leave her Denver homeless shelter. It was November.

Ivanni Herrera took her 4-year-old son Dylan by the hand and led him into the chilly night, dragging a suitcase containing donated clothes and blankets she’d taken from the Microtel Inn & Suites. It was one of 10 hotels where Denver has housed more than 30,000 migrants, many of them Venezuelan, over the last two years.

First they walked to Walmart. There, with money she and her husband had collected from begging on the street, they bought a tent.

They waited until dark to construct their new home. They chose a grassy median along a busy thoroughfare in Aurora, the next town over, a suburb known for its immigrant population.

“We wanted to go somewhere where there were people,” Herrera, 28, said in Spanish. “It feels safer.”

That night, temperatures dipped to 32 degrees. And as she wrapped her body around her son’s to keep him warm enough that he could sleep, Ivanni Herrera cried.

Seeking better lives, finding something else

Over the past two years, a record number of families from Venezuela have come to the United States seeking a better life for themselves and their children. Instead, they’ve found themselves in communities roiling with conflict about how much to help the newcomers — or whether to help at all.

Unable to legally work without filing expensive and complicated paperwork, some are homeless and gambling on the kindness of strangers to survive. Some have found themselves sleeping on the streets — even those who are pregnant.

Like many in her generation, regardless of nationality, Herrera found inspiration for her life’s ambitions on social media. Back in Ecuador, where she had fled years earlier to escape the economic collapse in her native Venezuela, Herrera and her husband were emboldened by images of families like theirs hiking across the infamous Darién Gap from Colombia into Panama. If all those people could do it, they thought, so can we.

They didn’t know many people who had moved to the United States, but pictures and videos of Venezuelans on Facebook and TikTok showed young, smiling families in nice clothes standing in front of new cars boasting of beautiful new lives. U.S. Border Patrol reports show Herrera and the people who inspired her were part of an unprecedented mass migration of Venezuelans to America. Some 320,000 Venezuelans have tried to cross the southern border since October 2022 — more than in the previous nine years combined.

Just weeks after arriving in Denver, Herrera began to wonder if the success she had seen was real. She and her friends had developed another theory: The hype around the U.S. was part of some red de engaño, or network of deception.

After several days of camping on the street and relieving herself outside, Herrera began to itch uncontrollably with an infection. She worried: Would it imperil her baby?

She was seeing doctors and social workers at a Denver hospital where she planned to give birth because they served everyone, even those without insurance. They were alarmed their pregnant patient was now sleeping outside in the cold.

Days after she was forced to leave the Microtel, Denver paused its policy and allowed homeless immigrants to stay in its shelters through the winter. Denver officials say they visited encampments to urge homeless migrants to come back inside. But they didn’t venture outside the city limits to Aurora.

As Colorado’s third-largest city, Aurora, on Denver’s eastern edge, is a place where officials have turned down requests to help migrants. In February, the Aurora City Council passed a resolution telling other cities and nonprofits not to bring migrants into the community because it “does not currently have the financial capacity to fund new services related to this crisis.” Yet still they come, because of its lower cost of living and Spanish-speaking community.

In fact, former President Donald Trump last week called attention to the city, suggesting a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex. Authorities say that hasn’t happened.

The doctors treated Herrera’s yeast infection and urged her to sleep at the hospital. It wouldn’t cost anything, they assured her, just as her birth would be covered by emergency Medicaid, a program that extends the health care benefits for poor American families to unauthorized immigrants for labor and delivery.

Herrera refused.

“How,” she asked, “could I sleep in a warm place when my son is cold on the street?”

Another family, cast out into the night

It was March when David Jaimez, his pregnant wife and their two daughters were evicted from their Aurora apartment. Desperate for help, they dragged their possessions into Thursday evening Bible study at Jesus on Colfax, a church and food pantry inside an old motel. Its namesake and location, Colfax Avenue, has long been a destination for the drug-addicted, homeless veterans and new immigrants.

When the Jaimez family arrived, the prayers paused. The manager addressed the family in elementary Spanish, supplementing with Google Translate on her phone.

After arriving from Venezuela in August and staying in a Denver-sponsored hotel room, they’d moved into an apartment in Aurora. Housing is cheaper in that eastern suburb, but they never found enough work to pay their rent. “I owe $8,000,” Jaimez said, his eyes wide. “Supposedly there’s work here. I don’t believe it.”

Jaimez and his wife are eligible to apply for asylum or for “ Temporary Protected Status ” and, with that, work permits. But doing so would require an attorney or advisor, months of waiting and $500 in fees each.

At the prayer group, Jaimez’s daughters drank sodas and ate tangerines from one participant, a middle-aged woman and Aurora native. She stroked the ponytail of the family’s 8-year-old daughter as the young girl smiled.

When the leader couldn’t find anywhere for the family to stay, they headed out into the evening, pushing their year-old daughter in her stroller and lugging a suitcase behind them. After they left, the middle-aged woman leaned forward in her folding chair and said: “It’s kind of crazy that our city lets them in but does not help our veterans.” Nearby, a man nodded in agreement.

That night, Jaimez and his family found an encampment for migrants run by a Denver nonprofit called All Souls and moved into tent number 28. Volunteers and staff brought in water, meals and other resources. Weeks later, the family was on the move again: Camping without a permit is illegal in Denver, and the city closed down the encampment. All Souls re-established it in six different locations but closed it permanently in May.

At its peak, nearly 100 people were living in the encampment. About half had been evicted from apartments hastily arranged before their shelter time expired, said founder Candice Marley. Twenty-two residents were children and five women were pregnant, including Jaimez’s wife. Marley is trying to get a permit for another encampment, but the permit would only allow people over 18.

“Even though there are lots of kids living on the street, they don’t want them all together in a camp,” Marley said. “That’s not a good public image for them.”

A city’s efforts, not enough

Denver officials say they won’t tolerate children sleeping on the street. “Did you really walk from Venezuela to be homeless in the U.S.? I don’t think so,” said Jon Ewing, spokesman for Denver’s health and human services department. “We can do better than that.”

Still, Denver struggled to keep up with the rush of migrants, many arriving on buses chartered by Texas to draw attention to the impact of immigration. All told, Denver officials say they have helped some 42,700 migrants since last year, either by giving them shelter or a bus fare to another city.

Initially, the city offered migrants with families six weeks in a hotel. But in May, on pace to spend $180 million this year helping newcomers, the city scaled back its offer to future migrants while deepening its investment in people already getting help.

Denver paid for longer shelter stays for 800 migrants already in hotels and offered them English classes and help applying for asylum and work permits. But any migrants arriving since May have received only three days in a hotel. After that, some have found transportation to other cities, scrounged for a place to sleep or wandered into nearby towns like Aurora.

Today, fewer migrants are coming to the Denver area, but Marley still receives dozens of outreaches per week from social service agencies looking to help homeless migrants. “It’s so frustrating that we can’t help them,” she said. “That leaves families camping on their own, unsupported, living in their cars. Kids can’t get into school. There’s no stability.”

After the encampment closed, Jaimez and his family moved into a hotel. He paid by holding a cardboard sign at an intersection and begging for money. Their daughter only attended school for one month last year, since they never felt confident that they were settled anywhere more than a few weeks. The family recently moved to a farm outside of the Denver area, where they’ve been told they can live in exchange for working.

On the front lines of begging

When Herrera started feeling labor pains in early December, she was sitting on the grass, resting after a long day asking strangers for money. She waited until she couldn’t bear the pain anymore and could feel the baby getting close. She called an ambulance.

The paramedics didn’t speak Spanish but called an interpreter. They told Herrera they had to take her to the closest hospital, instead of the one in Denver, since her contractions were so close together.

Her son was born healthy at 7 pounds, 8 ounces. She brought him to the tent the next day. A few days later the whole family, including the baby, had contracted chicken pox. “The baby was in a bad state,” said Emily Rodriguez, a close friend living with her family in a tent next to Herrera’s.

Herrera took him to the hospital, then returned to the tent before being offered a way out. An Aurora woman originally from Mexico invited the family to live with her — at first, for free. After a couple weeks, the family moved to a small room in the garage for $800 a month.

To earn rent and pay expenses, Herrera and Rodriguez have cleaned homes, painted houses and shoveled snow while their children waited in a car by themselves. Finding regular work and actually getting paid for it has been difficult. While their husbands can get semi-regular work in construction, the women’s most consistent income comes from something else: standing outside with their children and begging.

Herrera and her husband recently became eligible to apply for work permits and legal residency for Venezuelans who arrived in the United States last year. But it will cost $800 each for a lawyer to file the paperwork, along with hundreds of dollars in government fees. They don’t have the money.

One spring weekday, Herrera and Rodriguez stand by the shopping carts at the entrance to a Mexican grocery store. While their sons crawl along a chain of red shopping carts stacked together and baby Milan sleeps in his stroller, they try to make eye contact with shoppers.

Some ignore them. Others stuff bills in their hands. On a good day, each earns about $50.

It comes easier for Rodriguez, who’s naturally boisterous. “One day a man came up and gave me this iPhone. It’s new,” she says, waving the device in the air.

“Check out this body,” she says as she spins around, laughing and showing off her ample bottom. “I think he likes me.”

Herrera grimaces. She won’t flirt like her friend does. She picks up Milan and notices his diaper is soaked, then returns him to the stroller. She has run out of diapers.

Milan was sick, but Herrera has been afraid to take him to the doctor. Despite what the hospital had said when she was pregnant, she was never signed up for emergency Medicaid. She says she owes $18,000 for the ambulance ride and delivery of her baby. Now, she avoids going to the doctor or taking her children because she’s afraid her large debt will jeopardize her chances of staying in the U.S. “I’m afraid they’re going to deport me,” she says.

But some days, when she’s feeling overwhelmed, she wants to be deported — as long as she can take her children along. Like the day in May when the security guard at the Mexican grocery store chased off the women and told them they couldn’t beg there anymore. “He insulted us and called us awful names,” Rodriguez says.

The two women now hold cardboard signs along a busy street in Denver and then knock on the doors of private homes, never returning to the same address. They type up their request for clothes, food or money on their phones and translate it to English using Google. They hand their phones to whoever answers the door.

The American Dream, still out of reach

In the garage where Herrera and her family live, the walls are lined with stuffed animals people have given her and her son. Baby Milan, on the floor, pushes himself up to look around. Dylan sleeps in bed.

Herrera recently sent $500 to her sister to make the months-long trip from Venezuela to Aurora with Herrera’s 8-year-old daughter. “I’ll have my family back together,” she says. And she believes her sister will be able to watch her kids so Herrera can look for work.

“I don’t feel equipped to handle all of this on my own,” she says.

The problem is, Herrera hasn’t told her family back in Venezuela how she spends her time. “They think I’m fixing up homes and selling chocolate and flowers,” she says. “I’m living a lie.”

When her daughter calls in the middle of the day, she’s sure not to answer and only picks up after 6 p.m. “They think I’m doing so well, they expect me to send money,” she says. And Herrera has complied, sending $100 a week to help her sister pay rent and buy food for her daughter.

Finally, her sister and daughter are waiting across the border in Mexico. When we come to the U.S., her sister asks, could we fly to Denver? The tickets are $600.

She has to come clean. She doesn’t have the money. She lives day to day. The American Dream hasn’t happened for Ivanni Herrera — at least, not yet. Life is far more difficult than she has let on.

She texts back:

No.

___

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Draft plans for Weir Gulch — which envision the acquisition of up to 70 residential properties — are now more than five years old. But they’ve attracted only limited public notice as city officials have discussed larger plans to revitalize the South Platte system.

City and federal officials emphasize that those plans are subject to change as they ramp up public outreach to impacted residents and get a clearer picture of what flood risk looks like in 2024 and beyond.

While some potentially affected residents in the Barnum and Barnum West neighborhoods told The Denver Post they were aware of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ 2019 study and property map, the risks and project recommendations were news to at least some who live a stone’s throw from Weir Gulch.

Miki Yang, who lives two doors down from the gulch on Perry Street, had no idea last week that her property was part of any federal environmental study or real estate plan. She has lived in her home for three years but has owned the property for over a decade, renting it out to others before moving in with her family.

“Kind of strange,” she said after learning from a reporter that her home was circled on the Army Corps map, recommended for acquisition. “I never heard about it.”

Improvements along Weir Gulch and Harvard Gulch are planned as part of a larger South Platte revitalization project that has won $350 million in federal funding for the city. The Post reported Sunday on the significant potential impact on the horizon as city officials, developers and nonprofits work on projects to improve the South Platte and build dense new neighborhoods alongside it.

Water-flow and habitat projects along the gulches, which travel through Denver neighborhoods on their way to the river, are still being solidified.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2019 published a report identifying roughly 70 residences — mainly in the Barnum neighborhoods — that may need to be acquired to make room for the expansion and improvement of Weir Gulch. The total value at the time was $23.1 million, the report says.

As for south Denver’s Harvard Gulch, the Army Corps determined that there was no economically feasible plan for acquiring structures. Instead, it recommended voluntary participation by some homeowners in flood-proofing measures, such as elevation improvements to their lots or having their basements filled in.

Reducing flooding during storms

Weir Gulch, a zig-zagging waterway, takes the form of a close-to-natural creek bed in some places. In other segments, it’s an open-air concrete basin or runs completely underground. It travels under roadways, park space with playgrounds and even some buildings as it ferries water from Lakewood to the Platte in the Sun Valley neighborhood.

Weir Gulch and the areas around it represent the largest unmitigated flood risk in the city, said Ashlee Grace, director of Denver’s Waterway Resiliency Program, an overall $550 million project.

“The intent is definitely to increase the conveyance capacity so (that) it keeps the flows in the channel, and not spilling into the community that surrounds it” after heavy rainfall, Grace said.

Despite that 2019 report, officials say it’s not a certainty that the city and its partners with the Mile High Flood District will need to acquire the homes identified by the Army Corps.

Design work is complete only for the portion of the Weir Gulch project in Sun Valley between where it meets the river and West Eighth Avenue, city officials say.

The city negotiated the purchases of five commercial properties last year to make that first phase possible, according to Nancy Kuhn, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. Of those parcels, two were vacant land and the others housed tenants including a construction company, a software firm, and a granite slab testing and storage business.

“Additional portions of Weir Gulch have not yet moved into the design phase, so it’s too early to know what, if any, property impacts there will be,” Kuhn wrote in an email last month.

In an emailed statement, Bert Matya, the project manager overseeing the South Platte River and tributaries work from the Army Corps’ side, also said that it was too early to specify property impacts beyond the Sun Valley section.

“The Corps looks forward to working alongside Denver to develop innovative approaches that deliver the intended benefits of the project to the community,” Matya said.

City-led outreach aimed at better determining the risk in those neighborhoods will begin in 2025, according to Kuhn, though she said the Mile High Flood District may start reaching out to people who live along the gulch sooner.

The study phase of the broader Waterway Resiliency Program dates back to the Obama administration, and the program has evolved over the more than 10 years since the Army Corps launched that assessment. It reached two major milestones in 2022, Grace said, when it was granted the $350 million in upfront federal money through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Denver became part of an Army Corps pilot program.

That pilot is aimed at overhauling how the U.S. government approaches massive infrastructure projects, with an aim of speeding up timelines and saving money. Part of that is accomplished by giving local governments more control.

“That puts Denver in the driver’s seat of project delivery and the Army Corps in the approve-review role, which is a complete role reversal,” Grace said.

Moving “would turn my life upside down”

In the Barnum West neighborhood, Caroline Cordova has had a portion of the concrete channel of Weir Gulch as a neighbor for 25 years. She knew her home on Quitman Street was on a map of potential acquisitions for the waterway project after attending some community meetings about it a few years ago, she said.

Her takeaway from those meetings was that officials hoped to avoid using eminent domain to acquire properties to make way for the work.

But Cordova has no interest in selling her home and moving. She said she’d never been affected by flooding even when the water was high in the channel next door. In the high-priced Denver housing market, she’s not even sure where she would go. Her house has tripled in value since she bought it.

“It would turn my life upside down if I had to move,” Cordova said.  “As far as I am concerned, I am there until the day I die.”

City Councilwoman Jamie Torres, who represents west Denver neighborhoods, said improving Weir Gulch is going to be a very challenging project that will require “potentially scary conversations.”

She emphasized that discussions about home acquisitions, should any be necessary, could still be years in the future.

But Torres has already advised one homeowner who lives near the gulch not to build an accessory dwelling unit on her property, at least not before the city has provided more clarity.

“I hate to think of my residents taking on additional real debt when we don’t exactly know what’s going to happen in this gulch area,” Torres said. “At the end of the entire process, though, we want to help create a much safer corridor. We want to help utilize this open space so it can be a better park system for residents (and) a better trail system for residents.

“So we’re just trying to make sure that we’re very honest and very careful about that conversation.”

Grace, from the city, said the city’s increased authority over how the project is run already is netting some benefits.

The section of the Weir Gulch that the city will get to work on next year in Sun Valley was eyed for a long box culvert in the 2019 study. Denver instead will build a bridge over an open channel at Decatur Street, a design change that Grace says will improve safety during high-water events and provide more accessible open space the rest of the time.

“One of the strengths Denver brings to the table is we know our community,” Grace said. “We’re in the midst of updating what was understood to be the conditions in 2019.”

Barnum and Barnum West have been identified by the city as neighborhoods vulnerable to economic displacement. After looking at the Army Corps’ map, Ean Thomas Tafoya couldn’t help but notice all the Latino last names listed on the properties identified for potential acquisition.

Tafoya is a former Denver mayoral candidate and the Colorado director of Green Latinos, which advocates for environmental justice issues. He also grew up in Barnum and remembers catching crawdads in Weir Gulch.

Tafoya said he supports projects that protect water quality and reduce flood risks. But he has seen Denver’s minority neighborhoods bear the brunt of the impacts of other large infrastructure projects, like the recent Interstate 70 expansion in northeast Denver.

He expressed hope that city leaders could find solutions that don’t uproot residents along Weir Gulch.

“In the middle of a housing crisis and a climate crisis, we think the solution is to displace historic Latino communities?” Tafoya asked.

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Our approach emphasizes overcoming challenges through addiction recovery, mental health treatment and job training, with the ultimate goal of securing employment that allows individuals to support themselves without being dependent on taxpayer assistance. It provides incentives to encourage each individual’s movement through the program, understanding their unique needs and focusing on the ultimate long-term goal of escaping homelessness. This strategy is both fair to taxpayers and meaningful for those experiencing homelessness through a mix of compassion, courage and commitment.

Aurora has purchased the former Crowne Plaza Hotel at I-70 and Chambers, using federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, along with ARPA funds from the state of Colorado, and Arapahoe, Adams and Douglas counties. The hotel will be repurposed as the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus (ARNC). The total cost, including renovations, is estimated to be $42 million. In exchange for funding from the state, Aurora has agreed to provide services to individuals experiencing homelessness across the 10-county metro area.

The former hotel’s 255 private rooms, large conference areas and smaller meeting rooms will be converted according to a plan I recently proposed to our City Council, which passed with a strong majority Aug. 26.

The plan reflects a “Work First” approach already proven successful in Aurora through the “Ready to Work” program operated by Bridge House, a Boulder-based nonprofit, since 2018. It divides the proposed ARNC into three distinct parts or “Tiers.”

Tier I focuses on compassion: In this tier congregate emergency shelter will be available for those who have not yet engaged with a case manager to develop a plan for moving out of homelessness and toward self-sufficiency. Only minimal services, such as meals, showers, laundry and pet sheltering, are provided in the Tier I emergency shelter to incentivize individuals to move to Tier II.

Tier II focuses on courage: In this tier participants must have made an individual decision to be actively participating in an approved plan under the guidance of a case manager, and in exchange, they will have access to extended-stay semi-private living accommodations and increased access to services. This plan involves programs that address their barriers to employment, such as job training, addiction recovery, mental health counseling, or a combination of these services.

Tier III focuses on commitment: In this tier there is further incentivization for achieving the goals set under Tier II and recognition of the individual’s efforts, with access to 235 private rooms in the hotel section of the ARNC for up to two years, reserved for those who are working outside the center but still need some services. Residents in Tier III will pay 30% of their income toward the cost of their temporary housing. The remaining 20 rooms in Tier III will be set aside for individuals experiencing homelessness who have been hospitalized and need convalescent care to recover from surgery or illness.

After moving through all three tiers, individuals are not just on a path to self-sufficiency, but have achieved it.

One objective of the ARNC is to secure recognition for the “Work First” approach from the federal government. Currently, the federal government recognizes “Housing First” as the primary strategy for addressing homelessness. As a result, Aurora must raise private funds to support the Tier III “Work First” portion of the ARNC.

The fact that Denver, with its “Housing First” approach, is a neighboring city presents a unique opportunity for the entire country to observe and compare the effectiveness of these two models.

I am confident in the effectiveness of our approach of compassion, courage and commitment make the outcomes both transparent and public, so policymakers locally, regionally and in Washington, D.C., can assess whether our “Work First” approach is effective, and we can obtain the recognition that “Work First” also deserves.

Dustin Zvonek is an at-large Aurora City Council member currently serving as mayor pro tem.

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Police have identified 10 people linked to the Tren de Aragua gang who are operating in Aurora, and six of those people have been arrested and are in custody, Aurora police spokesman Joe Moylan told The Denver Post.

Details on the identities of the 10 people and the nature of the charges against all of the six arrestees were not immediately available, though some are in custody in connection with a previously reported shooting on Nome Street in July.

Moylan said officers have not arrested any gang members on charges related to collecting rent from residents at three Aurora properties owned by CBZ Property Management.

The properties took center stage in the conversation about the Venezuelan gang in Aurora when CBZ Property Management claimed unlivable conditions at its properties were due to criminal activity by Tren de Aragua gang members.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and other city officials repeated the company’s claim, suggesting the apartment complexes “fallen to” the gang. The claim was then amplified by local and national media and fueled by a viral video showing men with guns knocking on a door in the apartment complex.

Other Aurora officials — and the properties’ residents — have said the unlivable conditions at the company’s properties were longstanding and the result of the company’s mismanagement, rather than an overwhelming gang presence. Aurora’s interim police chief on Friday said gangs had not “taken over” one of the complexes.

Aurora has a population of about 400,000, and a study of its gangs last year identified 36 separate gangs with 1,355 members, about .34% of the city’s total population.

The 10 identified people linked to Tren de Aragua represent less than 1% of Aurora’s identified gang members, though Moylan said officers expect the number of documented Tren de Aragua members to grow as investigations into the gang continue.

“Every day we learn more about TdA, how it operates and how we can identify suspected members,” he said. “…It’s still too soon to try to quantify TdA’s presence in Aurora one way or the other.”

Aurora police have “investigated numerous claims and allegations” about gang members collecting rent from residents at the properties, but “have not yet established probable cause or made any arrests,” Moylan said.

Moylan declined to comment on how many criminal acts connected to Tren de Aragua members are currently under investigation, citing the ongoing investigative work. He said the police department has been investigating the gang for a year and that the residents making complaints about the gang’s activity have largely been migrants who live in the buildings.

Aurora police have publicly tied just one crime this summer to the Tren de Aragua gang: a July 28 shooting in which two men were shot and a third broke his ankle at the apartment building at 1568 Nome St.

One of the suspects in that shooting, Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirinos, 22, is a known Tren de Aragua member, police said in a statement last month. He was arrested after the shooting and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

On Wednesday, Aurora police confirmed they also arrested Pacheco-Chirinos’ brother, 24-year-old Jhonnarty Dejesus Pacheco-Chirinos, on attempted-murder charges on July 29. Both are documented gang members and remain in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

Aurora police also arrested two other possible Tren de Aragua gang members on charges of tampering with evidence in connection with the July 28 shooting. “These two have gang ties and are suspected to be members of TdA,” police said.

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Calvarese, a former speechwriter and labor activist, repeatedly attacked Boebert’s congressional record, including criticizing the Republican for voting against a larger bill that included provisions allowing the federal government to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. She defended President Joe Biden’s marquee Inflation Reduction Act and called for an end to the “offshoring” of American manufacturing.

Boebert, who is seeking a third term — and her first outside of the Western Slope-based 3rd Congressional District — defended her record. She hit on familiar red-meat issues for the Republican Party, saying she wanted to cut taxes, “take our country back,” “bring back prosperity” and “secure our southern border.”

At one point, she derisively referred to American citizens born to undocumented immigrants as “anchor babies” and said they should not receive certain tax-credit assistance.

The debate, co-hosted by Colorado Politics/the Denver Gazette and the Douglas County Economic Development Corporation at The Club at Ravenna, focused on the economy and business issues.

It was the first debate since Boebert cruised to a June primary win over a crowded Republican field. Amid serious challenges from both Democrats and Republicans in her home district, she had switched from seeking reelection to vying in the 4th after then-U.S. Rep. Ken Buck announced he wouldn’t run for the seat again in the November election.

Though Boebert is new to the district, she is the odds-on favorite to win. The Eastern Plains-focused 4th District is Colorado’s most conservative district, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 2-to-1, giving her a greater advantage on paper than she had in her old district. The 4th takes in extensive farmland as well as south suburban Denver’s Douglas County.

On Tuesday, Calvarese sought to contrast her stated desire for partnership and compromise with Boebert’s approach, which Calvarese characterized as “defund, to cancel it, shut down the government if you don’t get your way.”

Despite being one of the most partisan members of a particularly partisan Congress, Boebert touted her own bipartisan efforts, including by pointing to her support for a bill backed by U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, a Colorado Democrat, that would allow federal land to be used for housing.

Here’s what else Boebert and Calvarese discussed Tuesday:

National debt

In response to a question about the growing national debt, Boebert said she wanted to go through spending individually, line by line. She said she wouldn’t support larger omnibus funding bills and instead wanted individual appropriations bills.

“I do not agree with Republican debt as much as I do not agree with Democrat debt,” she said.

Calvarese said she wanted to better tax corporations that hide “their money abroad” and repeatedly said that the “middle class needs a tax break.” She said the federal government should look for efficiencies, with help from artificial intelligence, to reduce unnecessary spending.

She also said she would support keeping the federal corporate tax rate at its current level, while Boebert said she wanted former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts to be continued and the rates “lowered significantly.”

Those individual income tax cuts are set to expire at the end of next year. If they were extended for another decade, they would add $3.3 trillion to the federal deficit over that time period, according to a nonpartisan fiscal analysis.

Veterans

The most extended scuffle of the debate came next. Calvarese accused Boebert of not supporting veterans, pointing to Boebert’s support for a bill that would have cut the Department of Veterans Affairs budget and her opposition to a bill that would’ve expanded health benefits for veterans exposed to toxic substances.

“Don’t sit here and tell us … that you are somehow for veterans,” Calvarese said.

Boebert defended her support for veterans and her vote against the toxic substances bill. She said she wasn’t able to provide amendments and that she wasn’t willing to spend “a billion dollars forever because we couldn’t get a couple of pieces of language right in the legislation.”

As for the VA, she criticized the department’s responsiveness and then criticized some Democrats’ support for a universal health care system.

Economic lightning round

Boebert and Calvarese were peppered with several lightning round questions, including on whether they supported increasing the federal minimum wage, which currently stands at $7.25 an hour, about half of Colorado’s minimum. Boebert said she opposed increasing it. Calvarese said she supported increasing the minimum wage — including for tipped workers — to $15 an hour.

Both said they supported a policy backed by Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race to end taxes on tips. Both also said they opposed privatizing social security benefits and would support legislation that would bar entities from foreign countries — like China or Saudi Arabia — from buying American farmland.

More debates?

In a brief talk with reporters after the debate, Calvarese called on Boebert to meet her again for at least two more debates, which would be televised.

“This was the beginning of what I think is a job interview for all of our constituents,” Calvarese said.

In a separate media gaggle, Boebert would not commit to additional debates and said Calvarese “had her debate today.”

“I debate Democrats on a daily basis,” she said. “It is my job.”

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But we have to agree with Denver city council members who expressed grave concerns about the plan to raise Denver’s sales tax to fund a new venture into affordable housing for the city.

“I will support it going to the voters but we have to be honest; good intentions exist but the clarity and specificity doesn’t,” Councilwoman Jamie Torres said this month while casting her vote to help place it on the ballot in November.

Denver voters should not approve this dedicated sales-tax increase, at least not without a more thoroughly vetted plan. Johnston does have a vision that he spent an hour sharing with The Post editorial board, but the Affordable Denver Fund needs more scrutiny than it has received in the weeks since Johnston first unveiled the proposal.

If voters approve the $100 million-a-year increase in sales tax, it will be up to Denver City Council to approve spending plans. In other words, this is a tax-first, get-the-details-later approach that has resulted in mixed success for city voters in the past.

For example, Denver’s preschool program was a smashing success that has helped thousands of kids access quality early childhood education since 2006. The Educate Denver sales tax is getting scholarship money into the hands of seniors graduating from Denver high schools but has amassed a $30 million fund. The fund has not moved to reduce its sales tax rate of 0.08%.

Denver needs more affordable housing – particularly housing for Denverites who are making less than $60,000 a year. These middle-class and low-income Coloradans are falling through the cracks. They can’t qualify for subsidized housing through Section 8 (Housing Choice Vouchers) or Denver’s many public housing units but also struggle to afford market-rate rents.

But the city needs a concrete plan to make a dent in the housing crisis, especially given that this 0.5% sales tax would be in place for the next 40 years. Johnston should go back to the drawing board and come up with a proposal that provides voters with more details for how $100 million a year will create affordable housing in Denver. As it’s written now, the ballot language says the money will be used to: increase “production, preservation, financing, acquisition, conversion, (and) subsidies” for housing deemed affordable for those making less than 80% of the area median income. It also could be used for a homebuyer assistance program for those making less than 120% of the area median income. Those income targets feel right, but the “First Year Plan” for how to actually spend the money will be created by the manager of finance and the Department of Housing Stability sometime between the November election and Jan. 30, 2025. Voters need that plan now to judge whether this is a good idea.

We do like many of Johnston’s ideas, especially his plan to emphasize the acquisition of existing affordable housing in Denver, either through direct purchase or the purchase of an easement, to protect it forever from becoming new luxury housing. Johnston understands the housing market and wants to leverage the tax to dollars with other state and federal funding to build new units, preserve existing units, help first-time homebuyers escape the rental market, and help renters on the verge of eviction.

In the meantime, Johnston should select one key initiative in his proposal, find existing funding, and run a pilot program to demonstrate how his Affordable Denver Fund will work on a $100 million-a-year budget. Then build a “First Year Plan” around that success. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Denver didn’t become unaffordable overnight. It’s OK if the mayor doesn’t solve this problem in his four-year term in office.

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Time to find a new job. Time to find a new school for her children. Time to find a place to live she can call her own.

She’s been living at a Motel 6 in Greenwood Village for a month — her husband and son in one room, she and her three daughters in another — after being evicted from an apartment in Aurora less than a year ago.

That puts Webster up against a city-imposed 29-day maximum for anyone visiting a non-extended-stay hotel in the affluent south suburban city of 15,000. If she is made to leave, the 29-year-old mother of four who grew up in Centennial said she’ll be back out on the streets.

What’s worse, the Greenwood Village City Council this month did away with a longtime exception to its hotel stay limit for “families in crisis” who are receiving housing assistance from a governmental or charitable entity. Webster was referred to the Motel 6 in July by the Community Economic Defense Project, a nonprofit born out of the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project that fights for renters facing removal from their homes.

Her son suffers from anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and ADHD, making the instability of being homeless even more challenging.

“Think about kids with disabilities, think about single mothers struggling to make ends meet,” said Webster, sitting at a table beside the motel’s outdoor pool on a recent afternoon. “Have an understanding that we don’t have it all. It takes time, it takes patience.”

Neza Bharucha, whose husband owns the Motel 6 at 9201 E. Arapahoe Road, said Greenwood Village has shown little patience toward the hundreds of families — many with disabilities — that she has provided temporary refuge to over the last few years. The city, she said, has targeted the motel with extra police patrols while allowing guests at other Greenwood Village hotels to stay more than 29 days at a time regularly.

It has led Bharucha, who along with her hotel duties is a licensed psychiatrist, to a singular conclusion.

“They do not want this group of people in Greenwood Village — people who are unhoused with mental health troubles and those who are in recovery,” she said.

Earlier this month, Bharucha and the Community Economic Defense Project sued the city in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, alleging Greenwood Village is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. They are asking for economic damages and for a judge to strike down the 29-day limit or grant exceptions to people with disabilities.

“Differential treatment by a governmental entity and its agents on the basis of disability cannot be justified by an arbitrary and irrational reason,” reads the lawsuit, filed by well-known civil rights attorney David Lane. “Defendants have arbitrarily and irrationally applied and enforced the 29-day ordinance on the basis of discrimination against people with ‘mental illness and/or addiction issues,’ which are disabilities as defined by the ADA.”

Greenwood Village spokeswoman Megan Copenhaver said the city won’t comment on the situation because of the active litigation. The Denver Post reached out to Mayor George Lantz and the two councilwomen — Libby Hilton Barnacle and Donna Johnston — who represent the district where the Motel 6 is located.

They either didn’t respond or said they were unable to comment.

“They were not going to stop”

Greenwood Village’s involvement with the 129-room Motel 6 at the busy East Arapahoe Road interchange with Interstate 25 goes back at least a decade. In 2014, city leaders passed their controversial 29-day hotel stay limit.

Amie Mayhew, president and CEO of the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association, said the only other city in the state she is aware of with a stay-limit in place is Wheat Ridge, which passed a 30-day maximum in 2021.

The rationale at the time of the measure’s passage in Greenwood Village was that conventional hotels and motels are not equipped to operate as long-term living facilities. Potentially dangerous use of hot plates and cooking implements in rooms not wired or designed to handle such items posed a fire hazard.

According to the new lawsuit, the city also said there were more calls for service by police to the Motel 6 and to a couple of other hotels where homeless people would typically stay.

Bharucha, who with her husband has helped run the motel her father bought in 2008 for the last several years (her husband took possession of it in 2021), said she doesn’t allow hot plates or other kitchen appliances in rooms. But she does have sympathy for those who find themselves in a tough spot and she wanted to use a portion of the property to help them.

“I work with this population,” she said of her job treating those with mental health challenges. “I see the problems when they don’t have housing.”

Bharucha, 34, has teamed up with several homeless advocacy groups over the last five years, including the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and SAFER, to provide rooms in her motel for those without a home. Her father lived in “charity housing” in India when he fell on hard times and she’s thankful someone was there for him.

“Someone gave him a hand up when he needed it and I want to do that,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here if someone hadn’t done that for him.”

The penalty for a hotel owner caught violating the ordinance is a $499 fine, though Bharucha said the city has neither booted anyone from her motel nor tagged her with a fine. But Greenwood Village has long attempted to impede her efforts to reach out to the homeless and disabled community in other ways, including asking to check the hotel’s guest lists for anyone with active warrants, the federal lawsuit states.

In 2022, a Greenwood Village municipal judge ordered the motel and the nonprofit organizations it worked with to provide documents about the rooms they were renting to clients with disabilities, the lawsuit said. And last year, Greenwood Village served Bharucha with a criminal summons for violating the 29-day limit, according to the suit.

The charge was later dropped.

“I realized they were not going to stop,” Bharucha told The Post in an interview.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Greenwood Village has enforced the ordinance against any other hotels; when asked, the city told The Post to file a public records request for the information.

At the heart of the case is what the city itself has allegedly said about its ordinance. Bharucha’s lawsuit states that city attorney Tonya Haas Davidson wrote in a 2021 letter to the motel that the city’s families-in-crisis exception wasn’t meant for those “suffering from mental health and/or addiction issues,” but more typically was meant to address victims of natural disaster.

That interpretation of the exception, the lawsuit alleges, forced motel management to “choose between discriminating against its guests with disabilities or seemingly violating the ordinance.”

Maddie Lips, an attorney who worked alongside Lane on the case, said because of the statement from Greenwood Village’s attorney in her letter to the motel, the city “has made this a novel case by being so blatantly open about the discriminatory intent of the 29-day ordinance.”

Making matters worse, according to the lawsuit, business travelers often stay at the city’s other hotels for longer than permitted by city regulation “and have not been subject to enforcement actions by the city.”

“There is no non-discriminatory distinction between a person staying in a hotel for an extended period of time because of business reasons as compared to a person staying for an extended period of time who has disabilities,” the lawsuit reads.

Cesar Jimenez, head of supportive housing for the Community Economic Defense Project, said the organization uses up to 10 rooms at the Greenwood Village Motel 6 to house clients temporarily. They’ve had a contract with Bharucha since February at a cost of $70 a night per room.

“Our main objective is to keep them safe while we find a home and services for them,” Jimenez said. “What Neza has created is a refuge for our clients.”

Homeless numbers up in 2024

Arapahoe County’s homeless population leaped dramatically from 2023 to 2024, according to recently released data from the Metro Denver Homelessness Initiative’s point-in-time survey taken on a single night in January.

The data shows the number of unhoused people in the county up from 442 in 2023 to 650 this year — a faster pace than the 10% growth the metro area as a whole saw in that same period. Twenty-nine percent of those surveyed said alcohol or substance abuse played a key role in their situation, the top contributor to homelessness in Arapahoe County.

Another 23% of respondents pointed to mental health issues or “disabling conditions” as chief reasons for their homelessness.

“We house some of the most vulnerable community members,” the defense project’s Jimenez said. “Our primary objective is to just provide them with temporary safe housing as opposed to them being in shelters or literally homeless.”

To Greenwood Village’s elected leaders, Jimenez said he would just say one thing.

“I would invite them to see the families,” he said. “You yourselves have families — would you want to be in this situation?”

Webster, the displaced mother of four currently living on the third floor of the Motel 6, said she doesn’t know how much longer it will be before she obtains a more permanent housing situation. But that day can’t come soon enough.

“Our kids are stuck in a room pretty much 24/7,” she said. “Nobody wants to be stuck in a hotel with kids.”

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CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment comes as insurance companies increasingly rely on technology to help them determine how big the wildfire risk is across the United States and, in turn, how much they need to charge homeowners to cover those risks while still turning a profit.

The problem, according to consumer advocates and industry regulators, is these modeling systems do not account for all of the mitigation work being done to protect properties from fires. It’s a problem Colorado Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway is trying to solve.

“What the majority of them don’t do at all is incorporate state-level or community mitigation,” Conway said. “They have been telling homeowners they have to mitigate to keep insurance affordable and available. But if they’re not going to take that into account, that’s a very big problem.”

Colorado homeowners have seen their insurance costs escalate faster than the rest of the country because of wildfires and hailstorms, according to a 2023 Colorado Department of Insurance report that looked at rates between 2018 and 2022. At least one analysis found home insurance rates increased in the state by 19.8% between 2021 and 2023.

The increasing costs are not just impacting those whose homes are at risk of burning in a wildfire. Every property owner in Colorado will pay more so insurance companies can cover their risk when a catastrophe happens elsewhere in the state. That makes people’s monthly mortgage payments go up as most homeowner insurance is paid by their banks through escrow accounts.

The increase also affects renters as landlords will charge tenants more to pay for their expenses.

Those rising rates are being driven by increased wildfire risk — a result of a warming climate — and inflation, said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, an advocacy group for consumers. But new technology that provides insurers with maps, graphics and piles of data also are contributing to enormous increases, she said.

The latest wildfire risk assessment was produced by CoreLogic, a tech company that creates risk assessments for wildfires and other natural disasters. But CoreLogic is just one of a handful of companies producing such assessments by using artificial intelligence, drones and mapping, Bach said.

For example, Verisk Analytics’ most recent analysis on the cost of home reconstruction after a disaster, which also is used by insurance underwriters, reported that Colorado had the second-highest increase in post-disaster reconstruction costs in the country, behind only New Hampshire. The cost to rebuild a house rose 9.05% in Colorado between July 2023 and July 2024, the analysis found. Colorado also had the second-highest jump — 11.57% — in rebuilding commercial properties.

“In the beginning, I thought it was climate change driven,” Bach said of rising homeowners insurance costs. “But now I believe it’s the tech factor that is equally causing a dramatic shift in the market.”

Wildland urban interface

CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment estimated that 2.6 million homes in the western United States are at least at moderate risk of burning in a wildfire, and the cost to rebuild those homes would exceed $1.2 trillion. Colorado ranked second with the most homes at risk while California was first and Texas was third, the assessment stated.

In Colorado, 68,928 properties in metro Denver are at risk along with 50,298 in the Colorado Springs area. Most of the homes in the state that are threatened by wildfire are in what insurance companies and firefighters call the wildland urban interface — in other words, houses built near open spaces or on the outskirts of mountain towns such as those that burned last month in the Stone Canyon fire near Lyons and the Alexander Mountain fire west of Loveland.

That growth around the wildland urban interface is contributing to rising insurance costs in Colorado.

Insurify, a digital insurance agent that compares quotes from more than 100 agencies, found that Colorado’s average annual home insurance rate is expected to increase by 7% to $4,367 in 2024 from $4,072 in 2023. In 2023, Colorado’s average home insurance rate was $1,695 higher than the national average.

Colorado’s continuing popularity and people’s desire to live near the mountains and foothills contribute to the state’s high ranking in the CoreLogic report, said Jamie Knippen, a senior product manager for the company. Since 2010, the number of homes built in Colorado in the wildland urban interface has increased 45%, she said.

“So as people have moved and development has increased within these areas, risk has also grown just due to the number of homes and the value of those homes,” Knippen said.

CoreLogic started producing the wildfire risk assessment in 2019 to help insurance companies figure out the risk they would take on when selling policies to homeowners in different areas of the country, Knippen said. The company also writes risk assessments for hurricanes and floods in other parts of the U.S.

The company wants to report accurate data so insurance companies and the general public understand risks, Knippen said. The risk assessment should start conversations about the perils homeowners face and how they can be taken into consideration when it comes to decisions such as buying a new house or protecting the ones people already have.

Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Association, said the various data reports generated by tech companies are really reflecting what insurance companies already know — hot, dry weather in Colorado is increasing the chances of wildfires and still people are building expensive homes in the mountains.

She disputed arguments that the various analyses cause rates to go up.

“What it really does is provide accuracy, first and foremost, for what your risk is,” Walker said.

Modeling isn’t new

Computer modeling for wildfire risk is fairly new to the industry, Walker said.

It is much more sophisticated than years ago when a homeowner would talk with their insurance agent about how far they lived from the nearest fire station and where fire hydrants were located in neighborhoods. Now, drones, satellite imagery and other data points can help analyze the slope on which a home is built, the vegetation around the house, construction materials and, yes, the distance to the closest fire station.

Those models also are helping with the science of mitigation, which is an increasingly big part of reducing wildfire risk, she said.

That means homeowners do as much as they can to reduce the chances their houses will burn in a wildfire. It involves everything from upgrading roofs to moving wooden fences farther from houses to clear-cutting dense brush around the perimeters of homes.

But that’s where the fight is centered. If insurance companies are going to ask homeowners to mitigate risk, then the homeowners should receive discounts for that work, Conway said.

So far, the risk analyses and modeling programs that insurance companies rely on are not taking into account all that work, he said.

For example, Colorado deployed a Firehawk helicopter for the first time to fight blazes that sparked this summer in Boulder, Jefferson and Larimer counties. The state’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control also has airplanes to map fires and carry water and retardants to extinguish them. Those aviation assets saved valuable property.

But the state and its homeowners do not get credit in risk assessments for those airplanes and the helicopter, Conway said.

The models also don’t take into account all the work that communities such as Boulder County have done to help reduce the level of destruction a wildfire can cause. For example, Boulder County collected $8.9 million last year through a sales tax dedicated to wildfire mitigation that funds projects such as using goats to graze on open space in Superior.

The same fight is happening in California, Bach said. It’s impossible to put the “tech genie back in the bottle,” so it is up to regulators like Conway to push the tech companies to change their models and predictions so mitigation efforts are included in the assessments, she said.

“That is the fight,” Bach said. “From my perspective as a consumer advocate, if you’re charging someone who has mitigated the same rate as someone who hasn’t, then you’re overcharging.”

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Violence wasn’t his focus, though he’s been issued a bullet-proof vest for protection. He stood in a halo of pale security light between the apartments and the bar’s back doors holding a beige box with a protruding sensor measuring sound levels. A man emptied bins of empty beer bottles, crashing them into a metal waste container. Amplified music spilled out the doors. Just the background din of traffic in the area exceeded the city’s 50-decibel limit for residential areas at night.

“There’s more people, more things making noise, more complaints about the noise. The denser Denver’s population gets, the more people are on top of each other,” he said at the site.

Complaints, made through the city’s 311 system, decreased during the COVID pandemic after a 2019 high of 667 but rebounded last year to 503, up from 300 in 2004. So far this year, 330 complaints have been filed.

Even more often, residents called the Denver Police Department, logging 35,795 complaints since 2019 about noise, according to police records.

Denver is now working on changes to its noise regulations. The latest proposal would let trash haulers, a main target of complaints, begin pick-ups two hours earlier (5 a.m.) in central Denver and an hour earlier (6 a.m.) everywhere else. A higher limit of 85 decibels, up from 80 decibels, for special events such as music festivals before 10 p.m. would give greater latitude. (That’s louder than a kitchen blender. The World Health Organization, Environmental Protection Agency, and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommend ear protection to prevent hearing loss from 8-hour exposure at 85 decibels.)

The city’s current exemptions from decibel limits would remain for lawnmowers, school marching bands, church bells, barking dogs, trash hauling, and construction — along with time-of-day restrictions. Noise law enforcers could rely on smartphone videos sent by residents as evidence of construction violations.

Denver spokeswoman Emily Williams characterized the overhaul as balancing the sounds that appeal to residents of a hip, music-loving city with hearing protection.

Nothing’s been finalized. City County members must vote on changes.

Noise investigators stretched

Whatever the outcome, the city’s plan to install tens of thousands of new housing units as part of high-density mixed-used development has LaMascus and the two other noise investigators anticipating heavier workloads. They’re tasked with responding to complaints within three days if possible.

That work carries them into an auditory odyssey, largely at night, investigating myriad disturbances: electronic bird chirps from parking lot gates, beeps from trucks backing up, the popping of pickleballs, portable toilet doors slamming at dawn, thuds as trash trucks slam garbage containers, the roar of air-cooling and heating.

“Most of this stuff happens before 7 a.m. or after 10 p.m. and has to do with people trying to sleep,” said LaMascus, a former music industry worker who has observed developers building “residential housing anywhere and everywhere” for seven years.

Living next to the bar in west Denver, the residents who complained said the high cost of housing meant they couldn’t move.

LaMascus had sent a warning letter to the bar owner. First offenses receive a warning. Noise law violators then face fines of $250, doubling up to $5,000 for repeated offenses.

As he measured sound levels in a glass-strewn parking lot, bar managers confronted him. LaMascus identified himself as a city noise investigator looking into complaints about amplified music and unruly patrons. He told them the trash dumping after 10 p.m. was illegal and must stop.

“We try to keep them out front,” a woman said, referring to patrons. “I hear you. I’ll get a message to the owner. The place is under new management.”

Denver public health authorities issued 138 tickets in 2019 for noise violations. The city hiked fines in 2021, raising potential penalties to $5,000. Since then, city officials have issued fewer than 60 tickets a year. Police records show 57 arrests made since 2019 with charges related to noise levels.

Denver’s density has increased since 2000 from 3,625 residents per square mile to 4,674 – a 29% spike that roughly matches the population growth, census data shows.

“I cannot enjoy my backyard, cannot sit out in springtime,” Joe Dentremont lamented recently in front of his house east of downtown between Colfax Avenue and the Montclair neighborhood.

Periodic night music events and exercise classes across the alley are to blame, he said. City investigators responded to his complaints, measuring sound levels — and eventually cited property owners for noise violations.

Dentremont said he needs tighter enforcement and stricter limits to live comfortably.

“There should be more city inspectors,” he said. “And when it is time to go to bed, go to bed. If you want to operate a nightclub, put it out on Colfax. If your business involves making noise, it needs to be in a designated area. This is a residential area.”

“Things will get noisier”

City leaders’ goal of installing 44,000 new affordable housing units over the next decade, interspersed with businesses and concentrated around transit hubs, will affect the overall urban sound environment, said Stuart McGregor, president of Engineering Dynamics, who has measured sound in cities for more than 30 years and provides sound-proofing solutions.

“Overall, things will get noisier,” McGregor said, though possible shifts to electric RTD buses and quieter cars could mitigate the impacts of increased population and density.

“We know that chronic noise exposure increases risks for cardiovascular diseases. It elevates the heart rate and increases stress hormones,” said internal medicine Dr. Megan Hiles, director of wellness and prevention clinics for National Jewish Health in Denver.

“Sleep disturbances can increase a whole host of health risks. I would suggest that folks engage in personal noise mitigation.” She recommends noise-canceling headphones – “make sure those are good fitting” – and “stress management – important for reducing chronic inflammation,” including installation of “sound-absorbing things” in bedrooms.

“Building with density, that’s probably done with an eye toward sustainability and affordable housing. Those are pretty important. But noise is a very underappreciated health risk factor,” Hiles said. “It should be at the top of the list as we consider these things.”

35 decibels for good sleep

Denver’s chief noise investigator Paul Riedesel advised ensuring sound levels at 35 decibels or less in sleeping areas. That’s less than half as loud as the nighttime 50-decibel limit for residentially zoned areas (55 decibels during day).

The sound limits were set to reflect activities most common in what once were separate parts of the city: 65 decibels (60 at night) in commercial areas, 75 decibels (70 at night) in “public space,” and 80 decibels (75 at night) for industrial zones.

Over the last two decades, Riedesel has wrestled with the progressive blurring of those zones. “Now we’ve got mixed-use everywhere in town – even more so due to office space that is not getting used that they are converting to residential,” he said.

“People are moving into noisier areas. The noise maybe isn’t new. But there didn’t used to be people living next to it.”

Nighttime chirping

Meanwhile, an overall background din, mostly from vehicle traffic, complicates the enforcement of point source noise limits.

LaMascus went to the transformed area around the former Gates rubber factory last week motivated by multiple complaints from residents.

They complained that an annoying electronic beeping alarm – like constant bird chirps — had been preventing their sleep. “At 3 o’clock in the morning, these residents hear it, and it is driving them crazy,” LaMascus said.

The chirping emanated from a broken parking lot gate, an orange box tagged with graffiti. Vandals had ripped down the bar, triggering the alarm.

He calibrated his sound-measuring device, then measured the background noise in this area by the intersection of South Broadway and Mississippi Avenue — registering 57 decibels. That was already louder than the residential limit without factoring in the constant alarm. In cases like this, Denver’s approach has been to accept the elevated background din as a higher baseline and only assess violations if a sound exceeds the baseline by 3 or more decibel points.

LaMascus measured the electronic chirping at 80 decibels close up, dissipating slightly depending on where he stood.

He could pursue a violation, which often takes months.

But he wanted to just stop the noise. The parking gate was made in Italy. He used his smartphone to look up a customer service phone number. He dialed, waited on hold for 15 minutes and, after identifying himself and describing the problem, waited another 15 minutes. A supervisor informed him he’d have to locate a U.S.-based installer.

“The investigation continues,” LaMascus said, shaking his head.

The constant chirping continued, too, for another five days. He had mailed a letter to the owner of the parking lot property. He had pressed the apartment building managers.

At the end of the week, he emailed a woman who’d complained, asking if she still heard the alarm.

It stopped,” she replied. “Thank you for all your help!”

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The lawsuit, filed Friday alongside seven other attorneys general in states including North Carolina and California, alleges the company is violating antitrust laws through its algorithm that landlords use to get recommended rental prices for millions of apartments across the country.

Rents across the U.S. saw a huge spike in 2021 and 2022, and though their growth has since tapered off, they remain stubbornly high for many tenants, thanks in part to a huge lack of housing supply.

Justice Department officials allege that RealPage is another reason for the high rents since the algorithm allows landlords to align their prices and avoid competition that would otherwise keep rents down.

“Americans should not have to pay more in rent simply because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law,” Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters.

In Colorado, advocates had called on Weiser to investigate RealPage earlier this summer; its algorithm is used by companies that operate thousands of apartment units here.

“Renters should benefit from healthy competition between landlords to find an apartment that fits their budget and needs,” Weiser said in a statement Friday. “But RealPage’s software and market dominance have enabled collusion between landlords to fix rents, set the number of apartments available in the market, and harm renters by forcing them to pay rents above competitive levels. This anticompetitive conduct is driving rent increases.”

In a statement, RealPage said the Justice Department’s claims were “devoid of merit and will do nothing to make housing more affordable.”

“We are disappointed that, after multiple years of education and cooperation on the antitrust matters concerning RealPage, the DOJ has chosen this moment to pursue a lawsuit that seeks to scapegoat pro-competitive technology that has been used responsibly for years,” the company said.

Attorneys general in several states have separately sued RealPage alleging an illegal price-fixing scheme over its algorithmic pricing software.

Earlier this year, Colorado lawmakers advanced a bill to ban algorithms like RealPages from being used in setting rents. The legislation cleared the House but stalled in the Senate, where a group of Democrats joined with Senate Republicans to insert an amendment from RealPage’s lobbyist that scuttled the bill.

Lawmakers have said they plan to bring the bill back in 2025.

The Biden administration’s point-person on antitrust enforcement, Federal Trade Commission chair Lina M. Khan, was in Denver last month. She met with Weiser at the offices of the Community Economic Defense Project, a tenant advocacy and legal aid group that had called on Weiser to investigate RealPage. The group heard from tenants, attorneys and advocates about predatory landlord practices and other issues facing renters.

The use of data to help property managers set their rents isn’t new or, on its face, illegal. But state prosecutors argue that RealPage is different. According to lawsuits filed in the past year by the attorneys general for Arizona and Washington, D.C., RealPage doesn’t just use publicly available data — it uses confidential data that RealPage’s clients have agreed to privately share to help RealPage’s software to determine the highest price.

That amounts to cartel-like illegal price collusion, prosecutors say. Only this time, instead of cartel members meeting inside a proverbial “smoke-filled room,” the price-fixing is done by AI, they say.

RealPage came under scrutiny after a 2022 ProPublica investigation into the company’s practice suggested that it could be to blame for some of the rapid increases in housing costs. Since then, RealPage has drawn the ire of Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who in February introduced a bill to bar companies from using algorithms to collude and fix prices.

And last week, in a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris pledged to crack down on “corporate landlords (who) collude with each other to set artificially high rental prices (by) using algorithms and price-fixing software.”

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