Colorado Springs Pro-Housing Partnership

Organizing neighbors in the Mill Street neighborhood of Colorado Springs to push for measures that will help prevent people from being displaced from the neighborhood and help create new affordable housing. We convened neighbors for monthly meetings to work on the effort to win a Community Benefit Agreement covering the future redevelopment of a nearby closed-down power plant site. Through this Community Benefit Agreement, neighbors are hoping to win funding for anti-displacement measures, new affordable housing development, funding for homeless services, and a new neighborhood community center. Our expenses for this effort included neighborhood t-shirts and yard signs to demonstrate unity and solidarity, food for community meetings, event costs for the neighborhood block party, and printing costs for flyers to promote neighborhood events and meetings. Expenses related to Mill Street neighborhood organizing fall into Advertising and Promotion, Office Expenses, Conferences, Conventions, and Meetings, Events, and Filing Fees (for the neighborhood association with the Colorado Secretary of State).

Organizing unhoused residents of Colorado Springs into the Colorado Springs Homeless Union. We hosted weekly meetings with people who are currently or formerly homeless in the Pikes Peak Region to discuss issues they face and advocate for the changes they want to see to our local government. We helped leaders of this group make presentations to city council on the need to expand shelter options in town following a bitter cold spell and then advocate for additional trash cans and bathrooms in public parks and along trails to help keep the city clean. Leaders of the Homeless Union learned about how city government works, how the budget is created, and how they can participate, information they will continue to use to be engaged citizens. Our expenses for this effort included Homeless Union t-shirts to demonstrate unity and solidarity, food for community meetings, printing costs for flyers for meetings, and items to hand out during street outreach to promote meetings. Expenses related to Homeless Union organizing fall into Advertising and Promotion, Office Expenses, Conferences, Conventions, and Meetings, and Events.

In 2024, we spent 964 on other program expenses outside of our three largest program expenses. This money went into two program areas-capacity building ($597) and office expenses related to programatic needs ($367). Capacity building funds were spent to increase the ability of staff and volunteers to effectively carry out our work. These dollars went to help fund community organizing training, registration fees for conferences on housing policy, and food for meetings to discuss hiring staff for the organization. Expenses related to Capacity Building fall into the Conferences, Conventions, and Meetings category. Office expenses related to programatic needs included equipment for simultaneous translation at meetings with needs for language interpretation and materials for helping to chart and map power in the community. These expenses fall into the Office Expenses category.