Colorado Policy - Rocky Mountain Voice

Priced out, packed in: Colorado renters squeezed by costs, policy gridlock and population growth

Colorado’s affordable housing crunch – especially in the rental sector – has been building for years. Reports from the Common Sense Institute and Bell Policy Center trace the tipping point to around 2015, when demand consistently began outpacing supply.

The last decade has seen rising home prices, stagnant wages and insufficient new construction which has made the situation worse due to recent immigration pressures and allegations of resource allocation issues.

Hancock: The future of Colorado hangs between boom and blackout

Substack, Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories / May 14, 2025 / 75th Colorado Legislature, Colorado Policy, Democrat Lawmakers, Economic development, Energy Crisis, Free Market Solutions, Governor Jared Polis, Housing affordability, Nuclear Innovation, Progressive politics, Regulatory Overreach, State Governance

There’s a difference between dreaming big and hallucinating. Colorado’s progressive legislators have yet to figure that out.

Once a beacon of frontier grit and entrepreneurial promise, Colorado is drifting into a twilight of self-imposed stagnation. This isn’t the result of some unforeseeable external shock. No. The decline is being engineered — brick by legislative brick — by a political class more interested in social signaling than in fostering economic vitality.

The question isn’t whether Colorado faces a reckoning. The question is whether we will admit the cause before we hit the wall.

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