The Denver Gazette’s Breeanna Jent reports that Colorado is now the third-most expensive state in the country to live in, based on the Colorado Chamber of Commerce’s 2025 Colorado Scorecard. That puts Colorado at 47th in affordability, down from 46th in 2024 and 34th in 2022. That is not a slide. That is a ski jump pointed straight into a gravel pit.
The article walks through what Colorado families already know from the grocery aisle, the mortgage payment, the insurance bill, the child care bill and the gas pump. Housing affordability has dropped to 48th in the nation. Median home prices across Front Range counties are still brutal. Food pantries are seeing more working families. And while state leaders point to programs, grants and policy fixes, the Chamber points right back at Colorado’s regulatory environment as a major driver of the pain.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado is now the third-most expensive state in America, which is quite the achievement if the goal was to make regular families wonder whether breathing mountain air will soon require a permit.
- Housing affordability is now ranked 48th in the country. That means the “Colorado dream” is still available, assuming your dream includes a $600,000 starter home and a spreadsheet that cries.
- The state has launched programs, funds, grants and strategies to “make Colorado affordable.” Terrific. Nothing says affordability like another government program printed on glossy paper and funded by people who are already tapped out.
- Real Coloradans in the story are cutting back on dining out, entertainment and even considering out-of-state moves or health care across the border. That is not a policy debate. That is a flashing red light on the family dashboard.
- The Colorado Chamber says state environmental, energy, labor and employment regulations are piling “unfunded mandates” onto businesses. Translation: the Gold Dome orders the meal, small businesses get the check, and families pay for it at the register.
My Bottom Line
Nobody should be surprised by this. Not one person. For years, Governor Polis and the ruling Democratic majority at the Capitol have told us they were “making Colorado affordable” while regulating, mandating and virtue signaling their way into the very crisis families are now living through.
Here’s what matters for Colorado and Weld families. You cannot overregulate housing, energy, labor, insurance, transportation and small business, then act shocked when everything costs more. That is like throwing hay bales into a pickup until the axle snaps, then blaming gravity.
To be fair, mortgage rates and national inflation matter. The article says so. But that does not give state leaders a hall pass. Colorado did not drift into third-most expensive by accident. Policy has consequences. Mandates have price tags. Regulations do not vanish into the mountain breeze. They land on builders, businesses, landlords, workers and families.
And the worst part is who gets hit first. Not the well-connected folks who can absorb another fee, another filing, another compliance cost. It is the working family in Greeley, the young couple trying to buy a first home, the small business owner trying to keep people employed, and the senior staring at a grocery receipt like it just insulted their mother.
Colorado does not need another press conference about affordability. We need less government friction, more housing supply, energy sanity, local control that respects taxpayers, and a Legislature that remembers prosperity is not created by slogans. We’ll measure this in months and dollars, not slogans.
Source: The Denver Gazette
