Economic Hardship on the Rise in SW Colorado

You've heard of the Durango Tango, a playful poke at the need to work multiple jobs to afford the region's lifestyle. For many locals, economic hardship is no laughing matter. A new study by United Way of Colorado finds 37% of Coloradoans are income-constrained despite working. In Southwest Colorado, the numbers are worse. You're watching the Local News Network brought to you by The Payroll Department and Serious Texas Bar-B-Q. I'm Connor Shreve. More people in Southwest Colorado are struggling to make ends meet.

We work in five counties here in Southwest Colorado. And what you could see is that all of our counties had more households that fit that ALICE description or living in poverty than the state average. We do see that across the whole state. Rural communities have more families struggling to pay those basic expenses than people in urban communities.

All 10 United Ways of Colorado paid for access to the ALICE Study, which gives a more accurate representation of hardship by surveying more data.

A lot of organizations look at things like the federal poverty estimates, and those have some extreme limitations. So they decided they needed something that fit their own community, so they developed this ALICE methodology, and then other states started saying, well, we want that.

Of the five counties served by United Way of Southwest Colorado, Archuleta has the highest number of ALICE households. ALICE stands for asset limited, income constrained, employed. La Plata County has the lowest number of ALICE households.

But even in La Plata County, the percentage is high. 37% of households in La Plata County are struggling to pay for those basic expenses. If you just looked at the federal poverty estimates for La Plata County, it would say 9%.

President and CEO of United Way of Southwest Colorado, Lynn Urban says, because ALICE households often don't qualify for financial support like food stamps or rental assistance, they remain invisible to local, state, or federal agencies. In Southwest Colorado, the number of people over the federal poverty line who struggle to afford basic necessities has almost doubled since 2007. Urban says, "That's a threat to our region's critical workforce."

We need people to keep our grocery stores running. We need people to be our firefighters. We need all these people to make the community run. And so that's why you know, our local governments are really working on affordable housing, our nonprofits are making as many services available as possible, and this data helps those nonprofits plan their programs, understand who they're serving.

She says organizations like United Way of Southwest Colorado can now translate the data to tailor programs to better-serve the area. You can see the localized interactive report at unitedforalice.org. Find more information about this and other stories at durangolocal.news. Thank you for watching this edition of The Local News Network. I'm Connor Shreve.