 Welcome to another edition of Rational Alchemy. I'm joined today by Lyle Smith-Grabill of the United Way from just up the road from here. Lyle, welcome to the table. Thanks, Nigel. It's good to see you here. And this is the second time we're doing an interview about United Way. Yep. And I'm really excited because it's good. Why don't you give us a brief overview of yourself? Yeah. So Lyle Smith-Grabill is my name and I live up in Windsor. Work for United Way of Well County. Actually, my education background experience is in community economic development. And I've been working with R United Way for just under 10 years. Started there in 2012. First time I'd worked at the United Way, never donated to United Way before. Working at R United Way. I'm a donor now. But yeah, first time to work with United Way but really appreciative of our space and our United Way because we are interested in community development and helping the whole community. A lot of us down here didn't understand exactly what United Way did and how many fingers in the pies you've got. It's absolutely amazing the work you do. Yeah. Just to give you an idea of the types of problems that Lyle and all of his coworkers run into on a daily basis. Currently in Well County there are 304,000 people live in Well County. 12% of those people live below the poverty line. I'll let you do the numbers but if we just say 10%, that makes it 30,000 people. 51% of the county's children qualify for free or reduced lunches and just 39% of fourth grade students are proficient readers. Only 40%. That should have you scared. A couple of other little facts I'm going to mention here which are quite interesting. But according to the Colorado State Demographer, between 2015 and 2020, Well County will be seeing a 30% growth in 75 to 84 year old individuals and a 21% growth in the 85 to 90% year old group. I'm one of those old fossils and the older we get, the more strain we put on the community. And when you look at these sorts of numbers, in the future it's going to become a real issue. Well County, how does that compare to say Boulder County? It's a little smaller in population, but many of the challenges are the same, be it Boulder County or Larimer County or Weld County or the Denver metro area. Many of the challenges that we face in Well County are the same kinds of challenges that we face throughout Colorado. Things like the cost of housing or the availability of childcare or youth mental health or as you just mentioned, how to help older adults live resource and meaningful lives is our expectancy of living increases amongst the population. So many of these challenges are the same, but the dynamics of those challenges are going to be different in that like the cost of housing in Well County is less than Boulder County or a little bit less than Larimer County. So there are some differences in the specifics, but many of the challenges are quite similar. I can understand that. What would you say would be the biggest challenge you have at the moment? I think the biggest challenge would be the cost of housing. Because the cost of housing is so key to so many other ways that people live their lives, because if I live in housing that's right priced and I can afford it, then I have more time for my children or for my parents. Right. I have more time for recreation for my own physical and mental health. But if housing is really expensive, then I might have to have that second job or that second and a half job. And the stress that that can put on me in the ability to pay for housing is going to impact every other area of my life. Oh, especially if you're single, trying to raise a couple of kids, for instance, that would put one heck of a strain on the family life. So those other challenges I mentioned before, I think they're all applicable, but it's that price of housing right here in Colorado and even in many other states in the United States that is a fundamental challenge for many families. You know, World County is really sort of like on the plains, and I thought housing would have been affordable out there, but it's obviously not. Yeah, it just depends on the area. I happen to live in Windsor, and right now I just saw a report that said that houses in Windsor are more expensive on average than in Fort Collins. Holy natural. And a little bit less over in Greeley. So not as expensive in Greeley, but still, you know, what is affordable? If a house is $380,000 or $420,000 on average, is that affordable? It's not affordable for a person who's making minimum wage, certainly. That's correct. In fact, there was something right here, which I found interesting, two things. In World County, 43% of renters and 24% of mortgage payers spend more than 35% of their income on housing, and that of course makes them incredibly vulnerable if they ever get into a financial crunch. Right, right. And typically, unfortunately, in America, financial crunch is typically triggered by a medical emergency. Right, yeah. Medical emergency, job loss, a mental health challenge. I mean, there's an accident. So many opportunities for people to go over that cliff if they're living in housing that is eating so much of their income. Right. Losing a job is nothing we can really do about that. In fact, there are a number of things. Mental health is not something that we as individuals can do a lot about. But getting financially bankrupt because of medical bills, this is just plain wrong. There was another interesting thing here, and I think this will really hammer home what we've been talking about. Quoting exactly. An individual has to work 80 hours a week at minimum wage to afford a one-bedroomed apartment in Colorado. And I mean, let's be honest, when they brought in minimum wage, it was to stop things like that from happening. Recent survey, I think, was bank rate that did it, and it was something like 40% of people of households in the United States do not have any amount, or they don't have enough emergency savings to be able to pay for an unanticipated $400 expense. Right. And another 20% have no emergency savings at all. So when you talk about that stretch of the cost of housing and their family is paying 35% or more of their income on housing, not only is that happening, but also when you don't have any savings for an emergency. So I need a new set of tires. My tires blow out. I need the tires to get to work. Well, tires cost more than $400. And of course, you mentioned don't have credit, but for those that do still have credit, as soon as they put that $400 onto their credit card, the chances are next month they're in trouble. In crew interest, yeah, for sure. How about education? Because I know you guys do an awful lot of work in education, which I don't think people are aware of. Would you like to give us a brief overview about what you do and how you do it? Yeah, so we actually, in many United Ways, this is their lead programming or the lead thing that they support is working with youth, children, youth, all the way from prenatal to, let's say, 18 or 21 or even 25. And oftentimes it'll be called a cradle to career continuum. So we want to support, we don't support school districts that often, that we do support some programming that happens in school districts that might happen in the classroom or out of the classroom, so it happens during school time, but not all the time do United Ways support that kind of programming. More so, we'll support childcare providers, we'll support parents for that birth to school age period, just to help children to be in high quality childcare, to help parents be better parents, to help early childhood health, mental health and physical health. So that early period from zero to five and then also we support a lot of programming. Once a child or youth is in school, it's after school programming or out of school programming. So like a boys and girls club or a boy scouts or up in our area, a mentoring program called partners that serves Lariman Well counties. So we'll do this out of school programming that helps students that are behind in their schooling to catch up because they need that additional support. Right. I believe one of the biggest problems is actually reading. Right. Which really surprised me. Yep. Any idea why? I don't know. I mean, I hesitate to conjecture on the causes, but I certainly the solutions I think is a lot of what United Way supports and again in a lot of different areas Larimer County, Denver Metro throughout the United States, throughout the world really, is how do we help that first five years of life to be the best five years possible? Because so much of what happens for a child in later life is going to be based upon did they get the needed supports, the health care, the childcare that they need, the high quality childcare that they need, have families and parents that know how best to support their early reading and language skills. So what happens in those first five years is so important and that's why United Ways oftentimes put a lot of their resources into the programming that impacts children for those first five years so that they can be really kindergarten ready and the likelihood that they're going to read that milestone of end of third grade and beginning of fourth grade is going to be increased if they have the right inputs in their first five years of life. I remember I grew up in a small town in Kansas. Our housing cost, our cost of living was sufficient or low enough that my mother could stay home from work. My father worked full time, my mother stayed home. She didn't go back to work until we were in high school because she wanted to go back to work, not because she needed to go back to work for money. She wanted to and I remember many days when I pre-kindergarten or even during the summer when she would read to us like at lunch, like she would read to us at lunch or maybe it was after lunch, do a little reading, take a nap, that kind of thing and she was available for that and this is back to that cost of housing or just cost of living generally the more so that people can't afford to live the less likely they're going to be able to spend that kind of quality time with their children and then back to that idea of the reading level at the beginning of fourth grade because of these other things, these other contributors it just makes that kind of a measure the likelihood of success for that decrease because of these other strains. It's all connected. It's all connected. It really is. Swapping channels just a little bit but the amount of formula, baby formula that you gave away in a year the number of diapers that you gave away in a year and the most wonderful thing the number of vets that you found housing for and of course we all applaud you for working with the vets. Sure, sure. What United Way does is lead a regional effort it's called the Northern Colorado Continuum of Care and it has 40 plus member organizations in both Weld and Larimer counties and it's those 40 organizations that has succeeded in housing so many veterans we've had a little over 600 veterans assessed as experiencing homelessness since the beginning of 2016 when we started this coordinated regional effort and as of right now about 560 of those are housed so we're moving towards ending veteran homelessness maybe in 2022 it all depends on the number of veterans coming into the system the number of veterans that are getting rehoused so we'll see but many of these things and this is a United Way role it's a unique United Way role that is kind of like government but not really it's kind of like nonprofit but not really somewhere in between where we lead these community-wide collaboratives that have lots of partner organizations to achieve goals that are bigger than any one of us can achieve. I applaud you for the work and to get that number of organizations all talking together and all heading in the same direction so now how do people find the United Way and how more importantly how do they discover everything that you guys do? Our main office is located in Greeley we're a United Way of Well County footprint is like this not this area but the part of Longmont there's a tiny little bit of Longmont in Well County and what's called the Carbon Valley so Southwest and Windsor Severans Johnstown Millik and Fort Lepton the Pawnee Prairie Grasslands and the Pawnee Buttes and then the Greeley area that we resource but our main office is in Greeley just downtown Greeley there's also our website unitedway-weld.org and everything that we're talking about here is described to some extent on the website so it can find out about it there but certainly any of our staff is available to talk about our areas of impact and that's early childhood, youth household stability, homelessness, older adults and then what we call Connecting Weld which connects people to resources so any of us would be available to talk with people more about that and so our United Way if you look at many United Ways they're all going to be different we're all separate nonprofit organizations so if you compare us to Larimer County or to Pikes Peak United Way down in Colorado Springs we're all going to look a little bit different our United Way is unique in that in addition to resourcing other organizations like AmeriCorps members like you interviewed an AmeriCorps member on this show we also do a lot of direct service programming and we do that direct service programming in early childhood we work with childcare providers to help them increase their quality and during COVID just to stay in business we also work with parents to help them become better parents to get the resources they need like through the diaper bank we also do a lot of direct service programming so like that veterans work of coordination and also we have what's called a housing navigation center that's located in Greely and Evans to work with those experiencing homelessness and then we do a lot of other direct service programming such as 2-1-1 we are part of the 2-1-1 collaborative for Colorado so we help resource the statewide network that is 2-1-1 so that people when they don't have an emergency like a house burning down and they can't pay my rent they can call 2-1-1 and find out what resources are for that so we just do a lot of direct service programming and of course that's all described on the website absolutely and I would urge people just to look at the website because you're going to get sucked in about what these guys are able to do out there it's absolutely incredible the amount of good that this organization brings to the entire country part of our united way and many united ways too I think the challenge for the future is to have a solutions mindset united ways they started out if you didn't know the first united way was in Denver founded in 1887 and then they kind of they did that was it a priest a rabbi a woman who had recently moved to Denver from Cincinnati two priests a rabbi and the dean of the Episcopal Church oh that's right the dean of the Episcopal Church that's right so those five and it was a fundraising but it was a fundraising very focused on community what is the community need what's the immediate need and then over time united way became a fundraiser like no one else was able to fundraise for non-profits like united way could so united way fundraises and then gives the proceeds of that fundraising to the individual non-profits then we went through a period where united way focused on more on programs like individual programs making sure they're efficient they're serving the right people they're reaching the outcomes they were intended to reach and so that's what funding was based on and now united ways are moving back kind of to that original beginning where we listen to the community and we think about how do we solve this challenge of homelessness or that children not reading at grade level by the beginning of fourth grade and could we imagine a day you know as a united way as a community where every child is reading at grade level by the beginning of fourth grade because it can happen there could be reasons it doesn't happen and what are those reasons and can we imagine a different kind of future and then how do we as a community come together to see that it happens for every child that's what I would say to you and to others that are interested in community improvement in united ways is can we become those kinds of communities and you know to a certain extent we are but if we don't imagine it we won't become it and that's what I hope that our united way can do for our community and that other united ways and other governmental agencies and people like yourself let's just imagine that and then resource you know how we can get there and that's what I hope that our community thank you, goodbye