When you think of East Colfax in Denver, you probably think of drug dealers, homeless people and prostitutes.

But the neighborhood is increasingly inhabited by young families and professionals and they are working to shake off the area’s reputation as a “tough” part of town.

“There are a lot of first-time buyers here. The market has become very expensive,” says Noeli Rodriguez, one of those first-time buyers. She moved here from another state to work as a nurse and discovered that her neighbors were sex workers and drug dealers.

She says the carport converted into a crack house behind her served more than 900 clients in 21 days. While most people have probably moved, Rodriguez says she’s not going anywhere: “I’ve worked so hard to own a home. I don’t want to give up anytime soon.”

She witnessed assaults, the rape of a woman and was the victim of three burglaries in three years. “I went to the police all the time. I tried to communicate with them. There’s a problem, there’s a problem. And they said, ‘Noeli, nobody else complains.’ I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll round up some people.’ So I basically went door to door and introduced myself to the neighbors.”

Within three months, she had set up a neighborhood watch and attracted the attention of the Denver Police Department, who increased patrols, closed the crack house, and raised money for additional lighting in the neighborhood.

Meredith Quinlivan has lived in the East Colfax area for ten years. Seeing neighbors come together gives her hope: “Hearing the community come together against a problem we all know was really a goal, I think.”

Although they are making progress, neighbors want equality. They say the city should address the homeless problem in East Colfax like it has in downtown Denver.

“They sit on the wall and poop on the floor. It’s garbage, we clean up the garbage every morning,” says Chanelle Simmons, a business owner in the neighborhood. “They break our windows and we have to pay for it, they break into our storage rooms, it’s bad. They camp everywhere.”

This includes an empty house that caught fire twice within three weeks. The first fire spread to Deacon Rodda’s house: “The property was full of squatters. People take drugs every day. People set another fire in the same place.”

Rodriguez sees some of the blame with the city, which opened two transitional housing projects in the neighborhood just blocks from each other: “All you’ve accomplished is to push the homeless into an area where they think no one will complain.”

However, she says that the people of East Colfax have found their voice and are using it: “We are demanding basic safety in this neighborhood.”