Miles Harford’s guilty plea in Denver follows years of other gruesome funeral home cases in Colorado, including one where the owners were accused of storing nearly 200 bodies in a decrepit building and giving families fake cremated remains.

Harford, 34, faced a dozen counts including forgery, theft and four counts of abuse of a corpse, which prosecutors described as treating bodies or remains “in a way that would outrage normal family sensibilities.”

The plea agreement dismisses the rest of the counts, but the judge said the agreement requires that all victims be named within the two charges Harford pleaded guilty to, and that he would be liable for restitution including for the dismissed counts.

Harford was arrested a year ago after the body of a woman named Christina Rosales, who died of Alzheimer’s at age 63, was found in the back of a hearse, covered in blankets, along with cremated remains of other people stashed throughout Harford’s rental property, including in the crawlspace.

Harford is represented by lawyers from the state public defender’s office, which does not comment on its cases to the media.

There were no other details in the court hearing on the charges, including how much money was taken from victims or how corpses were abused.

The funeral home cases over the years prompted lawmakers to pass sweeping new regulations of the funeral home industry in Colorado last year, which previously had little oversight.

The sentencing is scheduled for June 9.

___

Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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Polis’ pre-Christmas news conference was designed to highlight how he was repealing unnecessary regulations, and it caught the eye of a prominent Republican — one the Democratic governor’s party has grown to despise.

“Nice work,” wrote Vivek Ramaswamy, the brash MAGA-disciple who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to help slash government spending, on the social media site X. “Send that shredder over to (the Department of Government Efficiency) next month!”

Polis reposted Ramaswamy’s message and continued to banter with him on the site about closing a federal cheese facility in Missouri. It was only the latest example of how Polis, who prides himself on his quirky independence, is walking a difficult line with the incoming administration.

As Democratic governors across the country adapt to Trump’s victory — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, for instance, reached out to Trump to find common ground while California Gov. Gavin Newsom has prepared for legal battles — Polis stands out.

In the days following the election, he joined Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to form an ostensibly nonpartisan group of governors to “protect democracy,” a seeming reprise of Democrats’ resistance during Trump’s first term and in line with Newsom’s battened-hatches approach.

But days later, Colorado’s governor zagged, going beyond Hochul’s conciliatory call.

Polis cheered Trump’s nomination of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, noting he had worked with Kennedy before. Polis later defended his comments by saying he personally supports vaccination and hoped Kennedy would take on “big pharma and corporate ag.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Polis explained his outreach with his go-to refrain that isn’t often heard in today’s hyperpolarized politics: “We can get good ideas from the left and the right.”

“There might be some people who are over-simplistically saying they are either for or against whatever is going on in Washington,” he said. “I think it’s a little bit more nuanced than that.”

Some Democratic activists and operatives began texting each other in disbelief after Polis’ praise of Kennedy. The Colorado governor has been on several shortlists as a possible 2028 presidential contender, but now a few Democrats are moving him down several spots.

“I think a lot of Democrats have learned the wrong lessons from this race, and he’s the prototype of that,” Bakari Sellers, a prominent Democratic strategist in South Carolina, a top early primary state in 2028, said of Polis. “After 18 months, when people look at the failures of this administration and you were the one to cuddle up to it, they’re going to remember.”

Polis supporters see the governor’s actions as what one called “vintage Jared.” The openly gay, wealthy entrepreneur-turned-politician has a distinctly libertarian bent. He resisted imposing mask or vaccine mandates during the coronavirus pandemic, pushed to eliminate all state income taxes, and has spoken fulsomely about the benefits of capitalism and free trade.

“Jared’s not picking a fight; that’s not his style,” said Ted Trimpa, a veteran Colorado Democratic strategist who’s known Polis for decades. “It’s not what he does. He’s not Gavin,” Trimpa added, a reference to the California governor, who has highlighted his own ideological opposition to Trump.

“I do think he is always going to look for ways to work with Trump, even if he vehemently disagrees with other things Trump is doing,” said Democrat Steve Fenberg, the departing state Senate president who has known and worked with Polis for over a decade. “The question is how do you balance that with Trump attacking actual institutions and norms?”

When asked about balancing his fears with his concerns that Trump could threaten the Republic, Polis said, “I’m never afraid to speak out where I disagree.” He has voiced concerns over some of Trump’s proposed policies but has rarely criticized Trump himself, as other Democrats often do.

One likely area of disagreement is immigration. Trump has zeroed in on Colorado as an example of what he contends are the costs of unchecked migration.

He held a rally in Aurora, a city of 400,000 east of Denver where video surfaced of heavily armed men going door to door in an apartment complex housing recent Venezuelan migrants. A man was shot to death the night the video was recorded.

Trump used the incident in a single apartment building to paint a picture of a city the size of Tampa overrun by immigrant gangs. He vowed to dub his national mass deportation program “Operation Aurora.”

The city government had a long-running battle with the owner of the apartment building and says it will close in the next few weeks. Last month, police said more than a dozen people seized and assaulted a couple in the same building as their apartment was ransacked.

Polis, who in 2004 founded a charter school for immigrant children, clashed with Trump during the campaign over migrants and safety, saying crime was down in Aurora and Colorado overall. He now says that he’s eager to work with the incoming administration to deport criminals, but draws the line at going further.

“With regards to folks that haven’t violated state laws, I don’t think there’s a lot of cooperation that they can expect from local employers or communities in Colorado,” Polis said.

To Fenberg, the state lawmaker, the Democrats’ resistance during Trump’s first term no longer seems like a winning strategy. Polis’ approach to the new administration could offer a roadmap, he said.

“We are going to need leaders like Jared to help show us what the new formula should be to be effective at being an opposition party,” he said.

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While immigration officials have used the tech for years, an October letter from the Department of Homeland Security obtained exclusively by The Associated Press details how those tools — some of them powered by AI — help make decisions over whether an immigrant should be detained or surveilled.

One algorithm, for example, ranks immigrants with a “Hurricane Score,” ranging from 1-5, to assess whether someone will “abscond” from the agency’s supervision.

The letter, sent by DHS Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Eric Hysen to the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law, revealed that the score calculates the potential risk that an immigrant — with a pending case — will fail to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The algorithm relies on several factors, he said, including an immigrant’s number of violations and length of time in the program, and whether the person has a travel document. Hysen wrote that ICE officers consider the score, among other information, when making decisions about an immigrant’s case.

“The Hurricane Score does not make decisions on detention, deportation, or surveillance; instead, it is used to inform human decision-making,” Hysen wrote.

Also included in the government’s tool kit is a mobile app called SmartLINK that uses facial matching and can track an immigrant’s specific location.

Nearly 200,000 people without legal status who are in removal proceedings are enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, under which certain immigrants can live in the U.S. while their immigration cases are pending.

In exchange, SmartLINK and GPS trackers used by ICE rigorously surveil them and their movements. The phone application draws on facial matching technology and geolocation data, which has been used before to find and arrest those using the app.

Just Futures Law wrote to Hysen earlier this year, questioning the fairness of using an algorithm to assess whether someone is a flight risk and raising concerns over how much data SmartLINK collects. Such AI systems, which score or screen people, are used widely but remain largely unregulated even though some have been found to discriminate on race, gender or other protected traits.

DHS said in an email that it is committed to ensuring that its use of AI is transparent and safeguards privacy and civil rights while avoiding biases. The agency said it is working to implement the Biden administration’s requirements on using AI, but Hysen said in his letter that security officials may waive those requirements for certain uses. Trump has publicly vowed to repeal Biden’s AI policy when he returns to the White House in January.

“DHS uses AI to assist our personnel in their work, but DHS does not use the outputs of AI systems as the sole basis for any law enforcement action or denial of benefits,” a spokesperson for DHS told the AP.

Trump has not revealed how he plans to carry out his promised deportation of an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. Although he has proposed invoking wartime powers, as well as military involvement, the plan would face major logistical challenges — such as where to keep those who have been detained and how to find people spread across the country — that AI-powered surveillance tools could potentially address.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, did not answer questions about how the incoming administration plans to use DHS’ tech, but said in a statement that “President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation” in American history.

Over 100 civil society groups sent a letter on Friday urging the Office of Management and Budget to require DHS to comply with the Biden administration’s guidelines. A spokesperson for OMB said that agencies must align their AI tools with the guidelines by December 1, and that any extensions or waivers of that deadline will be publicly disclosed next month.

Just Futures Law’s executive director, Paromita Shah, said if immigrants are scored as flight risks, they are more likely to remain in detention, “limiting their ability to prepare a defense in their case in immigration court, which is already difficult enough as it is.”

SmartLINK, part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, is run by BI Inc., a subsidiary of the private prison company The GEO Group. The GEO Group also contracts with ICE to run detention centers.

ICE is tight-lipped about how it uses SmartLINK’s location feature to find and arrest immigrants. Still, public records show that during Trump’s first term in 2018, Manassas, Virginia-based employees of BI Inc. relayed immigrants’ GPS locations to federal authorities, who then arrested over 40 people.

In a report last year to address privacy issues and concerns, DHS said that the mobile app includes security features that “prohibit access to information on the participant’s mobile device, with the exception of location data points when the app is open.”

But the report notes that there remains a risk that data collected from people “may be misused for unauthorized persistent monitoring.”

Such information could also be stored in other ICE and DHS databases and used for other DHS mission purposes, the report said.

On investor calls earlier this month, private prison companies were clear-eyed about the opportunities ahead.

The GEO Group’s executive chairman George Christopher Zoley said that he expects the incoming Trump administration to “take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals.”

“In GEO’s ISAP program, we can scale up from the present 182,500 participants to several hundreds of thousands, or even millions of participants,” Zoley said.

That same day, the head of another private prison company told investors he would be watching closely to see how the new administration may change immigrant monitoring programs.

“It’s an opportunity for multiple vendors to engage ICE about the program going forward and think about creative and innovative solutions to not only get better outcomes, but also scale up the program as necessary,” Damon Hininger, CEO of the private prison company CoreCivic Inc. said on an earnings call.

GEO did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, CoreCivic said that it has played “a valued but limited role in America’s immigration system” for both Democrats and Republicans for over 40 years.

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The owners of a Colorado funeral home who let nearly 190 bodies decay in a room-temperature building and gave grieving families fake ashes pleaded guilty on Friday to corpse abuse.

Jon and Carie Hallford, who own the Return to Nature Funeral Home, began storing bodies in a decrepit building near Colorado Springs as far back as 2019 and gave families dry concrete in place of cremated remains, according to the charges. The grim discovery last year upended families’ grieving processes.

Plea deals reached between the defendants and prosecutors call for Jon Hallford to receive a 20-year prison sentence and Carie Hallford to receive 15 to 20 years in prison.

Over the years, the Hallfords spent extravagantly, prosecutors say. They used customers’ money and nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds to buy laser body sculpting, fancy cars, trips to Las Vegas and Florida, $31,000 in cryptocurrency and other luxury items, according to court records.

Last month, the Hallfords pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in an agreement in which they acknowledged defrauding customers and the federal government. Under the agreement, prosecutors could request sentences of up to 15 years in prison for the couple.

Even as the couple lived large, prosecutors said the bodies at their funeral home were decomposing.

“The bodies were laying on the ground, stacked on shelves, left on gurneys, stacked on top of each other or just piled in rooms,” prosecutor Rachael Powell said. She said the family members of the bodies that were discovered “have been intensely and forever outraged.”

The Hallfords each pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse for the bodies found decaying and two instances where the wrong bodies were buried.

They also agreed to pay restitution, with the amount yet to be determined. Additional charges of theft, forgery and money laundering would be dismissed under the agreements.

Crystina Page’s son, David, died in 2019 and his body languished in the funeral home’s building until last year.

“He laid in the corner of an inoperable fridge, dumped out of his body bag with rats and maggots eating his face for four years,” Page said outside the courtroom after the hearing. “Now every moment that I think of my son, I’m having to think of Jon and Carie, and that’s not going away.”

Sentencing was set for April 18.

Six people with objections to the plea agreements had asked prior to Friday’s hearing to address the court. They considered the length of the sentences under the plea deal insufficient given the Hallfords’ conduct, prosecutors said.

Judge Eric Bentley said they would get a chance to speak prior to the sentencings. If the judge rejects the plea agreement, the Hallfords would be able to withdraw their guilty pleas and go to trial.

Carie Hallford told the judge that while she didn’t visit the building as much as Jon: “I knew how bad it was and chose to do nothing about it.”

At the close of Friday’s hearing, Bentley revoked a bond that had allowed Carie Hallford to remain free while the case was pending. She was handcuffed in the courtroom while family members of the deceased applauded.

Jon Hallford already was in custody, and was in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffed for the hearing.

Last month, the Hallfords pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in an agreement in which they acknowledged defrauding customers and the federal government.

Jon Hallford is represented by the public defenders office, which does not comment on cases. Carie Hallford’s attorney, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment.

Over four years, customers of Return to Nature spread what they thought were their loves ones’ ashes in meaningful locations, sometimes a plane’s flight away. Others carried their urns on cross-country road trips or held them tight at home.

The bodies, which prosecutors say were improperly stored, were discovered last year when neighbors reported a stench coming from a building in the small town of Penrose, southwest of Colorado Springs.

Authorities found bodies too decayed for visual identification. The building was so toxic that responders had to wear hazmat gear and could remain inside only for brief periods.

The discovery of the bodies at Return to Nature prompted state legislators to strengthen what had been among the laxest funeral home regulations in the country. Unlike most states, Colorado didn’t require routine inspections of funeral homes or credentials for the businesses’ operators.

This year, lawmakers brought Colorado’s regulations up to par with most other states, largely with support from the funeral home industry.

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Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

The plaintiffs in the two lawsuits, filed Sunday, include survivor Barrett Hudson, who still has three bullets in his body from that night, and other victims and relatives. They are scheduled to speak about the legal action at a news conference Tuesday — which is the two-year anniversary of the shooting at the nightclub, Club Q.

Families and victims also accuse the nightclub’s owners in the lawsuit of winnowing Club Q’s security detail from five or more people to just one in the years leading up to the shooting, prioritizing profits over the safety.

“Club Q advertised itself as a ‘safe place’ for LGBTQIA+ individuals. But that was a façade,” read both the complaints, which allege negligence among other allegations.

A central focus of both lawsuits was the El Paso County commissioners’ and the then sheriff’s refusal to enforce Colorado’s red flag law passed in 2019, which allows law enforcement to temporary take someone’s firearm if they are deemed a threat to themselves or others.

Natalie Sosa, a spokesperson for El Paso County, said it does not comment on pending litigation.

The county commissioners and sheriff saw the red flag law as an encroachment on gun rights, and passed a resolution to be a “Second Amendment preservation county” and, alongside the then sheriff, vowed to “actively resist” the bill, according to court documents.

The lawsuits argue that authorities should have used the red flag law after the arrest of the gunman, Anderson Aldrich, a year before he would walk into Club Q firing indiscriminately.

Those killed in the shooting were Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump and Ashley Paugh.

In 2021, Aldrich was arrested for allegedly kidnapping and threatening to kill his grandparents, reportedly saying he would become the “next mass killer” and collecting ammunition, bomb-making materials, firearms and body armor, according to court documents.

“You clearly have been planning for something else,” a judge told Aldrich in an 2021 hearing, according to documents previously obtained by The Associated Press. “It was saving all these firearms and trying to make this bomb and making statements about other people being involved in some sort of shootout and a huge thing.”

The judge later dismissed all charges for “failure to prosecute” during a four-minute hearing, partly because the prosecution hadn’t been able serve subpoenas to key victims, according to documents obtained by the AP.

Authorities did not attempt to remove Aldrich’s weapons, the lawsuits allege, and “This deliberate inaction allowed the shooter continued access to firearms, directly enabling the attack on Club Q.”

The suits separately allege negligence and wrongful death against the El Paso County commissioners and former sheriff.

Aldrich, now 24, pled guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to a life in prison in 2023 in state court. A year later, Aldrich pled guilty in a federal court to hate crimes and was sentenced to an additional 55 life terms in prison.

Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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DENVER (AP) — A snowstorm forced a Colorado court to postpone a hearing Friday where funeral home owners, accused of piling 190 bodies inside a room-temperature building while giving grieving families fake ashes, were expected to plead guilty.

The discovery last year shattered families’ grieving processes. The milestones of mourning — the “goodbye” as the ashes were picked up by the wind, the relief that they had fulfilled their loved ones’ wishes, the moments cradling the urn and musing on memories — now felt hollow.

The couple, Jon and Carie Hallford, who own Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs, began stashing bodies in a dilapidated building outside the city as far back as 2019, according to the charges, giving families dry concrete in place of cremains.

While going into debt, the Hallfords spent extravagantly, prosecutors say. They used customers’ money — and nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds intended for their business — to buy fancy cars, laser body sculpting, trips to Las Vegas and Florida, $31,000 in cryptocurrency and other luxury items, according to court records.

Last month, the Hallfords pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges as part of an agreement in which they acknowledged defrauding customers and the federal government. On Friday in state court, the two were expected to plead guilty in connection with more than 200 charges of corpse abuse, theft, forgery and money laundering. The hearing has been rescheduled to Nov. 22.

Jon Hallford is represented by the public defender’s office, which does not comment on cases. Carie Hallford’s attorney, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment.

Over four years, customers of Return to Nature received what they thought were their families’ remains. Some spread those ashes in meaningful locations, sometimes a plane flight away. Others brought urns on road trips across the country or held them tight at home.

Some were drawn to the funeral home’s offer of “green” burials, which the home’s website said skipped embalming chemicals and metal caskets and used biodegradable caskets, shrouds or “nothing at all.”

The morbid discovery of the allegedly improperly discarded bodies was made last year when neighbors reported a stench emanating from the building owned by Return to Nature in the small town of Penrose, southwest of Colorado Springs. In some instances, the bodies were found stacked atop each other, swarmed by insects. Some were too decayed to visually identify.

The site was so toxic that responders had to use specialized hazmat gear to enter the building and could only remain inside for brief periods before exiting and going through a rigorous decontamination.

The case was not unprecedented: Six years ago, owners of another Colorado funeral home were accused of selling body parts and similarly using dry concrete to mimic human cremains. The suspects in that case received lengthy federal prison sentences for mail fraud.

But it wasn’t until the bodies were found at Return to Nature that legislators finally strengthened what were previously some of the laxest funeral home regulations in the country. Unlike most states, Colorado didn’t require routine inspections of funeral homes or credentials for the businesses’ operators.

This year, lawmakers brought Colorado’s regulations up to par with most other states, largely with support from the funeral home industry.

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Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

But that grace had an expiration date. For Maalouf and her family it arrived in 2020.

The landlord, no longer legally obligated to keep the building affordable, hiked rent from $1,100 to $2,660 in 2021 — out of reach for Maalouf and her family. Maalouf’s nights are haunted by fears her yearslong eviction battle will end in sleeping bags on a friend’s floor or worse.

While Americans continue to struggle under unrelentingly high rents, as many as 223,000 affordable housing units like Maalouf’s across the U.S. could be yanked out from under them in the next five years alone.

It leaves low-income tenants caught facing protracted eviction battles, scrambling to pay a two-fold rent increase or more, or shunted back into a housing market where costs can easily eat half a paycheck.

Those affordable housing units were built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, a federal program established in 1986 that provides tax credits to developers in exchange for keeping rents low. It has pumped out 3.6 million units since then and boasts over half of all federally supported low-income housing nationwide.

“It’s the lifeblood of affordable housing development,” said Brian Rossbert, who runs Housing Colorado, an organization advocating for affordable homes.

That lifeblood isn’t strictly red or blue. By combining social benefits with tax breaks and private ownership, LIHTC has enjoyed bipartisan support. Its expansion is now central to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ housing plan to build 3 million new homes.

The catch? The buildings typically only need to be kept affordable for a minimum of 30 years. For the wave of LIHTC construction in the 1990s, those deadlines are arriving now, threatening to hemorrhage affordable housing supply when Americans need it most.

“If we are losing the homes that are currently affordable and available to households, then we’re losing ground on the crisis,” said Sarah Saadian, vice president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

“It’s sort of like having a boat with a hole at the bottom,” she said.

Not all units that expire out of LIHTC become market rate. Some are kept affordable by other government subsidies, by merciful landlords or by states, including California, Colorado and New York, that have worked to keep them low-cost by relying on several levers.

Local governments and nonprofits can purchase expiring apartments, new tax credits can be applied that extend the affordability, or, as in Maalouf’s case, tenants can organize to try to force action from landlords and city officials.

Those options face challenges. While new tax credits can reup a lapsing LIHTC property, they are limited, doled out to states by the Internal Revenue Service based on population. It’s also a tall order for local governments and nonprofits to shell out enough money to purchase and keep expiring developments affordable. And there is little aggregated data on exactly when LIHTC units will lose their affordability, making it difficult for policymakers and activists to fully prepare.

There also is less of a political incentive to preserve the units.

“Politically, you’re rewarded for an announcement, a groundbreaking, a ribbon-cutting,” said Vicki Been, a New York University professor who previously was New York City’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development.

“You’re not rewarded for being a good manager of your assets and keeping track of everything and making sure that you’re not losing a single affordable housing unit,” she said.

Maalouf stood in her apartment courtyard on a recent warm day, chit-chatting and waving to neighbors, a bracelet with a photo of Che Guevarra dangling from her arm.

“Friendly,” is how Maalouf described her previous self, but not assertive. That is until the rent hikes pushed her in front of the Los Angeles City Council for the first time, sweat beading as she fought for her home.

Now an organizer with the LA Tenants’ Union, Maalouf isn’t afraid to speak up, but the angst over her home still keeps her up at night. Mornings she repeats a mantra: “We still here. We still here.” But fighting day after day to make it true is exhausting.

Maalouf’s apartment was built before California made LIHTC contracts last 55 years instead of 30 in 1996. About 5,700 LIHTC units built around the time of Maalouf’s are expiring in the next decade. In Texas, it’s 21,000 units.

When California Treasurer Fiona Ma assumed office in 2019, she steered the program toward developers committed to affordable housing and not what she called “churn and burn,” buying up LIHTC properties and flipping them onto the market as soon as possible.

In California, landlords must notify state and local governments and tenants before their building expires. Housing organizations, nonprofits, and state or local governments then have first shot at buying the property to keep it affordable. Expiring developments also are prioritized for new tax credits, and the state essentially requires that all LIHTC applicants have experience owning and managing affordable housing.

“It kind of weeded out people who weren’t interested in affordable housing long term,” said Marina Wiant, executive director of California’s tax credit allocation committee.

But unlike California, some states haven’t extended LIHTC agreements beyond 30 years, let alone taken other measures to keep expiring housing affordable.

Colorado, which has some 80,000 LIHTC units, passed a law this year giving local governments the right of first refusal in hopes of preserving 4,400 units set to lose affordability protections in the next six years. The law also requires landlords to give local and state governments a two-year heads-up before expiration.

Still, local governments or nonprofits scraping together the funds to buy sizeable apartment buildings is far from a guarantee.

Stories like Maalouf’s will keep playing out as LIHTC units turn over, threatening to send families with meager means back into the housing market. The median income of Americans living in these units was just $18,600 in 2021, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This is like a math problem,” said Rossbert of Housing Colorado. “As soon as one of these units expires and converts to market rate and a household is displaced, they become a part of the need that’s driving the need for new construction.”

“It’s hard to get out of that cycle,” he said.

Colorado’s housing agency works with groups across the state on preservation and has a fund to help. Still, it’s unclear how many LIHTC units can be saved, in Colorado or across the country.

It’s even hard to know how many units nationwide are expiring. An accurate accounting would require sorting through the constellation of municipal, state and federal subsidies, each with their own affordability requirements and end dates.

That can throw a wrench into policymakers’ and advocates’ ability to fully understand where and when many units will lose affordability, and then funnel resources to the right places, said Kelly McElwain, who manages and oversees the National Housing Preservation Database. It’s the most comprehensive aggregation of LIHTC data nationally, but with all the gaps, it remains a rough estimate.

There also are fears that if states publicize their expiring LIHTC units, for-profit buyers without an interest in keeping them affordable would pounce.

“It’s sort of this Catch-22 of trying to both understand the problem and not put out a big for-sale sign in front of a property right before its expiration,” Rossbert said.

Meanwhile, Maalouf’s tenant activism has helped move the needle in Los Angeles. The city has offered the landlord $15 million to keep her building affordable through 2034, but that deal wouldn’t get rid of over 30 eviction cases still proceeding, including Maalouf’s, or the $25,000 in back rent she owes.

In her courtyard, Maalouf’s granddaughter, Rubie Caceres, shuffled up with a glass of water. She is 5 years old, but with special needs, her speech is more disconnected words than sentences.

“That’s why I’ve been hoping everything becomes normal again, and she can be safe,” said Maalouf, her voice shaking with emotion. She has urged her son to start saving money for the worst.

“We’ll keep fighting,” she said, “but day by day it’s hard.”

“I’m tired already.”

Bedayn reported from Denver.

Bedayn is a corps member of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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The judgement is unlikely to be paid out since the owners have been in financial trouble for years, making it largely symbolic. The owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home, Jon and Carie Hallford, did not acknowledge the civil case or show up to hearings, said the attorney representing families, Andrew Swan.

The Hallfords, who own Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs, about an hour south of Denver, face criminal charges in separate cases.

Jon Hallford is being represented by the public defenders office, which does not comment on cases. Carie Hallford’s attorney, Michael Stuzynski, was not immediately available for comment.

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President Joe Biden spoke last year to graduates, who will become second lieutenants, thanking them for choosing “service over self,” and noting the challenges ahead for the country and the world, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to America’s rivalry with China.

After greeting graduates with salutes and handshakes, the president took a spill on stage, later saying he’d tripped over a sandbag. He was uninjured.

Harris will speak in Falcon Stadium, which can host upwards of 46,000 people, during an election year, as details of a debate between Harris and Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-chosen running mate are being negotiated.

The commencement in Colorado Springs, about an hour’s drive south of Denver, will wrap with graduates pitching their caps into the air as the world-renowned U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, the Thunderbirds, zip past overhead.

Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the ceremony in 2020, when the event was scaled down to account for the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision left a patchwork of state bans, restrictions and protections across the country. In response, a national makeshift network of individuals and organizations help those seeking abortions in states where it’s restricted, including the Colorado-based Cobalt Abortion Fund.

Cobalt provides financial support for both practical expenses, such as travel and lodging, and abortion procedures, and they operate from the Democratic-led state that has staunchly protected access to abortion, including for nonresidents.

Cobalt’s aid has already jumped since Roe was overturned, from $212,00 in 2021 to $1.25 million by 2023. In Cobalt’s latest numbers, the group spent $500,000 in the first three months of 2024 and predict spending around $2.4 million by the end of the year to help people access abortions. That would nearly double last year’s support.

Over half of that 2024 spending went to some 350 people for practical support, not the procedure, and the vast majority of the clients were from Texas.

“There is this idea that the Dobbs decision and subsequent bans, due to trigger bans, created an increase in volume, and now maybe that volume has decreased or kind of stabilized. That is not the case,” said Melisa Hidalgo-Cuellar, Cobalt’s director.

“The volumes continue to increase every single month,” she said.

Hidalgo-Cuellar says the steady rise is partly due to more access to information on social media and new restrictions. Florida’s restriction went into effect last week and bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant.

Colorado has pulled in the opposite direction, becoming a haven for abortion in a region of largely conservative states. Last year, the state passed a law that shields those seeking abortions, and those providing them, from prosecution in other states where it’s restricted, such as Florida.

Now, antiabortion activists are testing the boundaries of those bans in court. That includes a Texas man who is petitioning a court to authorize an obscure legal action to find out who allegedly helped his former partner obtain an out-of-state abortion.

Those out-of-state abortions are in part why Cobalt’s funding for practical support — mainly travel expenses — exceeded it’s aid for the procedure itself.

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Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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