Enterprise Community Partners hosted U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) Housing Ecosystem Development Grantees at an in-person public event and roundtable discussion highlighting resources, shared learnings, and challenges faced by affordable housing developers on the islands.

In 2021, as the nation was still grappling with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of American renters were facing another challenge – increasingly unaffordable housing. According to our latest analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), the number and share of renters that year reporting rental housing cost burdens rose across all subsets of renters by race/ethnicity and incomes, with the largest increases observed among renters of color and those with extremely low incomes.

While Colorado was once considered “relatively affordable,” that has changed over the past decades, said Jennie Rodgers, Enterprise’s vice president and market leader for Rocky Mountain and Tribal Nations and Rural Communities. In fact, affordable housing was rated the top concern people are grappling with across the state, according to a recent survey by the Colorado Health Foundation. “Right now, many people here are cost burdened, and many are even on the verge of eviction,” Rodgers said.