| For the last three years, the Westside Outreach Center (WOC), the University of Colorado at Denver's (CU-D's) Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC), has worked to help empower and revitalize three poor neighborhoods in inner-city Denver-La Alma/Lincoln Park, East Village, and Sun Valley. Each is among the most severely impacted in terms of official neglect and capital abandonment, gentrification and displacement pressures, and failing education systems. They also are among the most active Denver communities, having built a tradition of community mobilization to address urban problems. The objective of CU-D's COPC is to help build the long-term power and effectiveness of resident-driven movements and organizations within these communities.
As residents of the neighborhoods have come to trust the WOC and its staff as agents for change, they have claimed ownership over the WOC, using it as part hammer, part lever, and part catalyst in their efforts to claim their place in the political and social life of Denver. The WOC has moved from a distant provider of technical services and reports to being a trusted friend and partner in residents' efforts to organize, mobilize, and be counted as actors, claimants, and a political force in the city. The WOC is focusing on five categories of needs: affordable housing, community organizing, culturally-relevant education, community planning, and environmental improvement. Salaried student employees and student interns are the backbone of the WOC. Many of the students are themselves low-income residents of the neighborhoods.
It is especially relevant that CU-D is collaborating with these neighborhoods. The CU-D campus was built in the 1970s by gutting dozens of blocks in the heart of the La Alma/Lincoln Park neighborhood. To build the campus, the old La Alma/Lincoln Park community was shattered, directly contributing to the subsequent decline of the more impoverished segments of the neighborhood that remained. Today the University is seeking to restore good will and deliver the University's resources into the community. It is fitting that the COPC is located at the site of NEWSED, a community development corporation that evolved directly from the forces that mobilized in the community to stop the university redevelopment project in the '70s.
As low-income, primarily Latino communities of color (averaging 17% white populations), these three neighborhoods faced a withering drought of capital investment and a massive institutional, social and political abandonment during the 1970s and 1980s. As Denver's economy shifted towards a service-sector economy dominated by downtown professionals, these neighborhoods deteriorated, unemployment and poverty grew, neighborhood businesses fell into disrepair, and investors abandoned the area in favor of the booming high-rise downtown and the growing suburbs. Their decline made it possible to justify massive concentrations of public housing complexes and 20-year project-based Section 8 housing contracts in these communities. Sun Valley is made up of 98% public or subsidized housing, La Alma/Lincoln Park has two major public housing complexes and several Section 8 projects, and East Village is made up entirely of detached public housing complexes and Section 8 properties. More than 95% of local youth are eligible for the Free School Lunch program, and these children are 40% more likely to score in the lowest quartile on reading scores than Denver children in general. Children commonly testify to scenes of violence, bloodshed, and drug use, and youth crime rates and teenage birth rates are both about three times the city average. The percentage of residents without a high school diploma is over 50%, averaged across the three neighborhoods.
Sun Valley is a tiny neighborhood, home to only 1,366 residents. Surrounded on all sides by industrial plants, warehouses, and railway lines, it is segregated from the rest of Denver. Few neighborhood-based businesses are located there. Median income was only $13,749 in the mid-1990s, compared with Denver's median income of $42,426. Even though 61% of Sun Valley's population is children, school playground equipment is over 50 years old. Abandoned buildings litter several lots of land bordering the local elementary school. La Alma/Lincoln Park and East Village, both located on the border of downtown Denver, have been caught up in the center of the economic boom and gentrification flood that has swept over Denver. Eighteen upscale new developments are planned just across one border of La Alma/Lincoln Park and a massive, multi-block luxury apartment redevelopment project has recently redesigned a major section of Denver bordering East Village. Property values in La Alma/Lincoln Park are increasing second fastest in the City. The East Village area was in the top ten of Denver's 78 neighborhoods for housing price increases.
Both La Alma/Lincoln Park and East Village also have several Section 8 projects that are facing or will soon face an expiring contract. The properties' owners are free to opt-out of contract renewal, which puts thousands of disabled, elderly, or otherwise impoverished residents at severe risk. Long-time residents are being pushed out by rising rents, escalating property taxes, and a changing culture. East Village residents received their Section 8 non-renewal notice last year, followed by an eviction notice. They were within a month of losing their homes when determined political mobilization by residents led to the City purchasing the property for long-term low-income ownership.
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