Housing collective celebrates purchase of Denver apartment building

It was a joyful day in the 1300 block of Xenia St. on the east side of Denver. As unusual as it may seem, people gathered to cheer and chant and celebrate an apartment building's new owner.

"They know we're out here and we ain't crying out no more," said Nakomi Parker, a resident of the building.

The new owners will be the East Colfax Community Collective, many know as "EC3." The collective is a nonprofit that formed four years ago to look at protecting people in the area as COVID ravaged lives and violence in the area hit hard. Down the block is the apartment building where community pillar Ma Kaing was killed by a stray bullet as she unloaded her car of groceries in 2022.

The Collective was able to help keep people from being evicted from apartments in the area as they struggled to pay rent during the pandemic. More recently, it has focused much of its efforts on the mission of keeping housing safe and affordable.

"One of the biggest problems in the apartments in the East Colfax community is slumlords, absentee landlords that just don't maintain the properties and that just don't care. And this is really going to replace that," said Nebiyu Asfaw, acting President and co-founder of EC3.

The Collective has been able to stitch together funding from public and non-profit entities to buy the 23 unit apartment building. Key in the effort was the creation of what's called a mixed income neighborhood trust (MINT). The trust will own and operate the building with the interest of the current residents as a priority. They will attempt to hold rent increases in check for those residents and rent some units at market rates. There are five such MINTs in the country. This is the first in Colorado.

"It allows us to stabilize the rent for the majority of rents for the units in the properties where we own. And then it allows us to take over community control in perpetuity with a community governance board that is made up of renters in our neighborhood who have the power to hire and fire our operating board and they're really the ultimate overseers of this model and making sure that it's living up to the values for which we created," said EC3's executive director Brendan Greene.

The owner was cooperative in selling the building to the trust created by the collective. The collective sought out help and expertise to fulfill a mission that it came to understand was crucial in an area where many of the tenants are low-income members of Colorado's immigrant community.

"As an organization we strongly believe that we have to do more than just state the problem. We have to drive the solutions," said Greene.

The group hopes to improve the apartments. The lack of a need for a profit margin leads them to believe the rents can remain stable for the people living there.

"You take that profit motive out of it we don't have the incentive to keep gouging the price and we can compete with the market and keep it lower," said Asfaw.

Among the tenants, Burmese native Saw Kay told his niece who translated he was excited. "He's looking forward to increased safety measures and increased property management," she said.

The collective is not paternalistic said Greene. They hope to draw in tenants to take part in overseeing their work.

"We want to make sure that this is a two-way street. We want to change that relationship between landlord and tenant and show  that we can work together to build a beautiful community together."