for rent denver

A home for rent southeast of downtown Denver.

(The Associated Press)

is shutting down a service that hooked up people with an extra room and those willing to rent it -- typically at a cost greatly reduced from the metro norm -- after Portland city budget cuts.

Barbara Stone, who managed the

, said the program was open to anyone, but that its clients typically had an obstacle to traditional renting: fixed or low income, a disability, poor credit or an arrest record (though it provided criminal background checks for potential matches).

Move-in costs were typically low, making it an option for people looking to rent with little savings. In recent years, it saw an influx of homeowners in danger of losing their home in foreclosure who were able to keep it with income from a housemate.

"Closing us down leaves us with no home-sharing program between San Francisco and Tacoma," said Stone, who is losing her job as the program shuts down. "It was the only one, I think it's a huge loss to the city. I really think this was a means to preventing homelessness."

The program once received funding from a number of local governments, but funding sources had dwindled in recent years to just the

. That funding was eliminated as city bureaus were asked to shave 10 percent off their budget.

"In this rigorous budgeting session, where we had to make tough budgeting choices, we were instructed to focus on funding services core to our mission," bureau spokeswoman Jaymee Cuti said in a statement. "The Shared Housing program fell just outside of that directive."

The program provided background checks to both parties in potential matches, then helped them draft an arrangement that wouldn't violate state co-housing laws. After a match was made, the program staffers would check in every so often to see if the arrangement was still working.

As of June, the program was tracking 141 households in current matches with an average rent of $418 a month. The median cost for a one-bedroom or studio apartment, by contrast, is well above $700 in the Portland metro.

"This is a program that served a very important, hard-to-reach community of people that are in between housing," said David Leslie, executive director of Ecumenical Ministries. But "when these things close, something new tends to open."

The program had operated with a staff of two for $112,000 a year.

-- Elliot Njus