The Housing Authority is a federally funded nonprofit that offers low-rent public housing to people with low incomes in Montezuma, Dolores and La Plata counties.
At the Housing Authority’s monthly board meeting on Thursday, Executive Director Terri Wheeler said the number of move-outs this summer was much lower than usual. She also said the number of formerly homeless people moving into the apartments is steadily increasing.
Wheeler presented the monthly vacancy and occupancy report for the Housing Authority’s properties, which include Menefee Apartments, Hillside Apartments, Dolores Elderly housing, Overlook Village, Prairie Mesa Estates, Brubaker Place Apartments and Sleeping Ute Apartments, as well as individual low-rent properties around the county.
As of Aug. 17, 33 new leases had been signed for the apartments in 2017, and 36 renters had moved out. But Wheeler said that’s a big improvement over past years. She said it’s normal for 50 percent of the occupied apartments at the beginning of the year to be vacant or have different renters by the end of the year.
“This year, we’re not even close to that,” she said.
There are 239 housing units in the Housing Authority’s Montezuma County properties, and as of August, only three were vacant. The organization puts about 45 to 48 applications on a waiting list every month.
Wheeler said the decreased turnover allowed Housing Authority staff to perform maintenance on several properties that needed it. The Prairie Mesa Estates also got a new playground this summer, to replace one that had been in need of repair for several years.
Wheeler’s fellow board members said they were pleased by the latest report.
According to the report, 21 people who applied for a lease in the past month listed themselves as homeless on the application. Wheeler said that number has been rising steadily all year. The report lists 124 applicants in 2017 as homeless.
