The Denver Gazette reports that Colorado failed to crack the top 75 in U.S. News & World Report’s 2026-2027 “best places to live” ranking. Parker was the top Colorado city, coming in at 87th. Centennial ranked 107th, Castle Rock 133rd, and Arvada 247th. That was it for Colorado in the top 250. So much for “Colo-RAD-oh,” where apparently the mountains are majestic, the rent is outrageous, and the policy class keeps congratulating itself for both.
The article notes that Colorado Springs ranked third and Boulder fourth in the same report just two years ago, in 2024. This time around, neither cracked the top 250. The piece points to Colorado’s cost of living as a major factor, citing the Colorado Chamber of Commerce’s report that Colorado was the fourth-most expensive state in 2025 and the third-most expensive for housing affordability. Turns out, “but the mountains” is not a financial plan.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado got snubbed hard. No city made the top 75. Parker led the state at 87th, which is less “national darling” and more “thanks for participating.”
- Colorado Springs and Boulder were top-five cities in 2024. Two years later, both missed the top 250. That is not a dip. That is falling down the stairs while holding a kombucha.
- The article says Colorado was ranked the fourth-most expensive state in 2025, up from 17th in 2022. That is the kind of progress only a legislature could brag about by accident.
- Housing affordability is even worse, with Colorado ranked third-most expensive. The mountains may be calling, but the mortgage lender is screaming.
- The ranking heavily weights “value,” and Colorado apparently scored like a ski-town sandwich: pretty, popular, and somehow $27 before chips.
My Bottom Line
Wait a minute. Colo-RAD-oh did not land high on the “best places to live” index? But, but, but, but… the mountains! The lifestyle! The breweries! The sunset over the Flatirons! The bumper stickers that say “native” on Subarus registered last Tuesday!
Look, the mountains are spectacular. Nobody is arguing with God’s architecture. But at some point, the view cannot drown out the sound of working families getting priced out, small businesses getting buried under regulation, and normal people wondering why every basic thing in Colorado now feels like it requires a permit, a committee, a consultant, and a blood sacrifice to the climate gods.
Colorado has become an unaffordable mess of regulatory hell, virtue-signaling legislation, and progressive policy experiments that make it harder to build, harder to work, harder to own, harder to raise a family, and harder to just live without being scolded by someone with a yard sign and three taxpayer-funded acronyms in their email signature.
Sure, the mountains are pretty. But they are not so pretty when you cannot afford to live near them, drive to them, park at them, or take a day off to enjoy them. At some point, suburban normie Colorado has to wake up and realize this did not just happen. It was voted in. It was legislated in. It was regulated in. And it can be unelected, if people finally decide they are tired of paying Aspen prices for Sacramento politics.
Source: The Denver Gazette
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