DENVER — After spending a decade pricing normal people out of their own state, Colorado officials confirmed Tuesday that population growth will now continue under a more sustainable model in which only five counties, several developers, and whoever can still make a mortgage payment are allowed to exist.
The Denver Post reports that more than half of Colorado’s counties lost population last year, including Denver, Arapahoe, Boulder, and Pueblo, while most of the state’s actual growth was hoovered up by Weld, Douglas, Adams, El Paso, and Larimer. In other words, the grand bipartisan Colorado growth strategy of “make housing insanely expensive and then act confused” is now producing exactly the map you’d expect.
Officials in Jackson County, which has lost 12.2% of its population since 2020 and is now down to 1,211 people, said they are watching storefronts empty out, young people leave for jobs elsewhere, and older residents age in place until the county can finally be preserved as a museum exhibit about what happens when an economy gets replaced by vibes and short-term rentals. There is, by the county’s own admission, no action plan, which experts said remains the most affordable plan currently available.
“We’re encouraged by the data,” said a state growth consultant standing in front of a rendering of six townhomes nobody making under $180,000 can buy. “Colorado is still attracting residents. We’re just being more selective now, like a nightclub with wildfire risk.”
The numbers are brutally simple. Colorado added 24,059 people last year, but more than half the counties shrank. Since 2020, immigration has done most of the heavy lifting, contributing 130,218 people, while domestic migration — the thing that used to make Colorado boom — has slowed to a pathetic crawl because families apparently enjoy deranged luxuries like shelter, square footage, and not paying half their income to live next to an artisanal dog bakery. And with immigration expected to weaken in 2026, the state may soon have to confront its boldest policy failure yet: running out of other people to blame.
Nowhere is the racket clearer than in metro Denver, where Arapahoe led the state in immigrant gains last year and still lost residents overall because even the gateway counties have become too expensive to function. Denver spent more than $35 million in 2023 dealing with an unexpected migrant surge, including buying 14,800 tickets to send people to other cities, which remains the purest expression of Colorado affordability policy ever devised: welcome, process, relocate.
Meanwhile Jefferson County is aging so aggressively that local planners have started speaking about births and deaths the way ski towns talk about snowpack. Over five years, Jeffco recorded 28,791 births and 26,745 deaths, while school closures rolled through older neighborhoods because there are not enough kids left to justify keeping buildings open. The state spent years congratulating itself for helping people age in place, then discovered that when nobody can afford to move in, “aging in place” is just a friendlier way of saying “slow demographic suffocation.”
“We absolutely support working families,” said one local housing expert, carefully watching Lakewood voters repeal rezoning measures meant to allow more housing. “That’s why we’ve built a system where teachers, young parents, and first-time buyers can all compete for the thrilling opportunity to move to Idaho.”
The counties that are growing all appear to have stumbled onto a radical secret: building homes. Weld alone added 46,992 people over five years, including 7,146 last year, and officials there are openly bragging that new housing opens the door to babies, which is apparently still how civilization works. Douglas, Adams, and Larimer are also growing, largely because they kept enough room on the map for actual human settlement instead of treating every new unit like a war crime.
Colorado is still projected to reach 7 million people by 2045, meaning the state’s long-term plan remains intact: keep calling this paradise, keep making it unaffordable, and let the survivors sort themselves by county line.
Source: The Denver Post
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