The Denver Gazette reports what every normal Coloradan already knows from the grocery aisle, the insurance bill, the mortgage payment, and the quiet little panic attack at the gas pump: Colorado has become brutally expensive. According to the article, Colorado now ranks as the third-most expensive state in America and sits near the bottom nationally for affordability.
The piece walks through the ugly math. Housing is increasingly out of reach, homeowners’ insurance is climbing, child care costs are biting, food pantries are seeing more working families, and Colorado’s once-basic joys now come with a premium subscription. The mountains are still free to look at, assuming you can afford the rent near a window.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado now ranks 47th in affordability, meaning we are apparently trying to become California with worse beaches and better elk.
- Housing affordability has fallen to 48th in the country, which is what happens when state leaders treat builders like suspects, landlords like villains, and supply like a rumor.
- The article notes that Colorado’s cost-of-living ranking has slid every year since 2022. That is not a weather pattern. That is policy with fingerprints.
- Gov. Jared Polis and state officials insist they are “making Colorado affordable” through programs, funds, grants, zoning mandates, transit plans, and other bureaucratic jazz hands. Meanwhile, actual Coloradans are cutting back on dinner out, health care, and basic breathing room.
- Colorado Chamber CEO Loren Furman points directly at the regulatory environment, including environmental, energy, labor, and employment rules that pile costs onto businesses. Then those costs show up exactly where everyone with common sense knew they would: the checkout line, the rent bill, and the family budget.
My Bottom Line
No one should be surprised by this. Not one person. Colorado did not accidentally become the third-most expensive state in the country because a raccoon wandered into the Capitol and started passing bills. This is the result of years of overregulation, mandates, green theater, anti-business policy, and Gold Dome Democrats congratulating themselves for their compassion while making life harder for the people who actually live here.
Governor Polis can stand behind a podium and tell us he is “making Colorado affordable” until the cows come home, assuming the cows have not moved to Nebraska for lower property taxes. But the evidence is sitting right in front of us. Colorado families are paying more. Small businesses are drowning in compliance. Housing is out of reach. Insurance is spiking. Food banks are seeing working families. That is not affordability. That is a press release wrapped around a dumpster fire.
And let’s be honest. The suburban normie voter needs to wake up. You cannot keep voting for people who regulate, mandate, tax, restrict, subsidize, and virtue-signal their way through every problem, then act shocked when everything costs more. This is not mysterious. This is not bad luck. This is not just “the national economy.” Colorado made choices. Those choices had consequences.
The people running this state have spent years confusing compassion with control and affordability with another government program. Real affordability comes from supply, competition, energy sanity, lower regulatory burden, and letting people build, work, hire, drill, insure, and live without a thousand bureaucrats riding shotgun. Until Colorado gets serious about that, “making Colorado affordable” will remain exactly what it has become: a slogan from Governor Gaslight and the merry band of Gold Dome elitists who broke the thermostat, then charged us extra for the heat.
Source: The Denver Gazette
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