Happy Anniversary! Celebrating 50 years of helping Fort Collins and Loveland residents stay in their homes, regain stability and achieve home ownership!

To help celebrate this amazing feat of 50 years N2N will have community help sponsor 50 rent parties. If you are not familiar these parties they were a 1920’s phenomenon that started in Harlem when rental rates were increased for African Americans moving north to cities such as New York to help with WW1 efforts -sometimes rents as much as quadrupled.  During this time as many as 200, 000 African Americans migrated but the jobs and pay were not sufficient to afford the rents. So rent parties were born! They would be an invitation only party (because of prohibition and simply being an African American throwing a party) to make sure the police did not show up.

A fee would be collected at the door and sometimes a hat would be passed around in which monies would be collected to help pay the rent. Some of the money would also be for food and entertainment. These parties eventually became an affordable form of entertainment. Music was a big part of these celebrations. Fats Waller was one of the more popular musicians that came out of this movement.

This is not exactly how this will go down in Northern Colorado. One of the services that N2N provides is funds to help renters stay in their homes and not be evicted. The average amount of money that people need to stay is $350 and the average Fort Collins party raises enough to help 3 families escape homelessness. So community members will have parties at their homes and collect money to go toward this effort to keep people in their places, off the streets and out of a spiral that can easily end in homelessness. Here’s the process:

  • Contact Brooke Cunningham at bcunningham@n2n.org or 970-488-2373
  • Invite your friends, family and neighbors
  • Have a fun party! Feel free to incorporate a musician or a theme, if you’d like
  • Pass the hat to raise funds to provide stable housing for local families
  • On average, one rent party will raise enough funds to help 3 families in Larimer County
  • Donations of any size are welcome. 100% of proceeds directly prevent homelessness for local families.

N2N affects change all year long. The following list is there last year’s community impact.

1238 homes secured

90% clients achieve long term housing stability

500 homes purchased

1287 homeowners educated

3219 families received counseling

Homelessness prevented for 606 families

132 affordable apartment homes provided