Too many hard-working people struggle to find a warm safe place to call home.

Without more entry-level homes, Colorado Springs cannot attract and retain residents to work in a variety of vital fields, including tourism, construction, public safety, retail, education and manufacturing.

Additionally, the dearth of “affordable housing” contributes to the growing dilemma of homelessness.

For these reasons, the community should applaud anticipated construction of The Ridge. The three apartment buildings, near South Academy and Colorado 115, would provide housing designed for low-income residents who meet wage criteria.

City planners approved the development in mid-December, but not everyone celebrates.

The Broadmoor Bluffs Neighborhood Association takes its yearlong fight against the Ridge to the Colorado Springs Planning Commission on Thursday. If commissioners balk at their objections, which they should, the group vows an appeal to the Colorado Springs City Council. If that doesn’t work, opponents plan additional appeals.

This is not a drug dispensary, a dirty factory, a truck stop, or anything remotely incompatible with a residential neighborhood. These are homes next to a Safeway and other retailers residents can walk to.

The prospective tenants are not wealthy. Aside from that, they won’t be much different from anyone else in Broadmoor Bluffs.

The buildings will house men, women and children who can be assets to the community. Many work for the area’s restaurants, retailers, and resorts.

Opponents nitpick the plans, arguing the dwellings won’t be safe. They cite “unsafe traffic and a blind intersection, landslide soils, parking, ingress/egress” problems and concerns about fire safety.

They seem frantic to save strangers from a list of horribles the city’s professional planners apparently don’t understand. The association shows no interest in improving the apartments – only in blocking them.

Few outside the neighborhood are fooled.

“We believe the core issue continues to be the nature of the people who are going to live there,” said Lee Patke, executive director of the nonprofit Greccio Housing, a partner in the development. “The neighborhood opposition doesn’t want those people in their neighborhood. And that’s how they were characterized – ‘those people.’ “

Despite its recent save-the-children concerns, the association’s initial brochure screams “Say no to low income housing in the wrong place.”

The association’s early Facebook posts assert The Ridge will burden Broadmoor Bluffs with low-income residents.

A Feb. 16 association post calls The Ridge a “social engineering policy” by Mayor John Suthers and city employees. It will place “extremely low-income housing in the city’s most affluent locations.”

“Putting low-income housing in high-income neighborhoods hurts everyone,” says another association post.

And, city officials want to “push the homeless our way and we’ll have to deal with it.”

From a material perspective, opponents of The Ridge rank among the world’s more fortunate humans. Most probably earned their status through hard work and persistence. They have an opportunity to reap the additional and substantial rewards associated with welcoming and befriending people of considerably lesser means.

As Winston Churchill advised, “we make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

The Planning Commission and City Council should protect these apartments. Respectfully ask the association to offer a hand up, not a smack down. To those who need shelter and warmth, an ounce of care outweighs a pound of gold.