Why Denver Is Struggling To Keep Up With Its Economic Boom 

I have applied to countless construction and carpentry apprenticeships without avail. Everyone says we need bodies to build homes but when you ask around Denver nobody gets an opportunity because nobody wants to pay a living wage

Let's start with not allowing corporations to buy single family homes. They just turn around and put them up for rent via short term or even long term rentals.

I dont understand why this country is allergic to affordable, multi family housing

The current market/economy is unnecessarily tougher for boomers/senior citizens, I’m used to just buying and holding assets which doesn’t seem applicable to the current rollercoaster market plus inflation is catching up with my portfolio. I’m really worried about survival after retirement.

"We need to build more affordable homes for people." -cuts to giant, single family houses under construction America is trying to do everything except build smaller, denser, more affordable housing. It's crazy. Not everyone needs a 4 bedroom mansion with a yard. We need to build a lot more town homes, duplexes, or (THE HORROR!) midrise apartments.

Our economy struggling with uncertainties, housing issues, foreclosures, global fluctuations, and pandemic aftermath, causing instability. Rising inflation, sluggish growth, and trade disruptions need urgent attention from all sectors to restore stability and stimulate growth.

My wife and I are teachers and we used to live in the Denver area. On both of our incomes it was almost impossible to live in a safe apartment. We moved to Ohio, bought a 3000 sq ft 3 bedroom home and can now afford to have kids on the same salary

Even if you have a full-time job and you make $27 per hour, Denver is still too expensive to live in!!!

It's pretty obvious to any native of Colorado that there was a sense of unpreparedness from our Government as Denver grew too quickly. My God, it was like a feeding frenzy for a few years.

"cost of a home went up 65% in 10 years, and wages went up 20%" should be a red flag and should have legislation to prevent or else people wont be able to buy homes any longer as it snowballs and compounds

I live in Western Kansas. We have been getting a lot of transplants from the Denver area, especially after COVID. It's not just my town, it's all towns in the region. Since we have been suffering from depopulation for so long, we see it as a blessing.

As a Chicagoan, I love Denver. I love Colorado. The people are chill and nice, the weather is great, and the nature is unbelievably beautiful. if Denver could figure out their public transport system and housing, it'd be awesome

Love how they said the population that grew up here isn't educated enough for a lot of the jobs and then mention how CEOs call every day asking to hit the immigrants.

As a Colorado native I can tell you our state is ran by real estate moguls who want to keep property values high. They could easily rezone for smaller affordable homes but they only want luxury or oversized homes.

Ironic, because I was in Denver last year and swear there were apartments going up everywhere I looked. Sounds to me like there's not a lack of housing, but a lack of affordable options.

The tax dollars pay for free housing for migrant workers. But to do that they have to cut local programs and services for Americans in Denver that pay those taxes. 🤦🏾‍♂️

So many lies by the governor and mayor in this video. If you live here you know. Teachers cant afford to live here. Air quality is crap that is why starting this year the EPA is requiring specially formulated gas due to surface level ozone levels. There are jobs but they typically dont pay enough for you to live alone. And over the past year more people have moved out of Colorado than in. We are losing native residents to other states due to cost of living increases of 100% over the last 5 years. Inflation is far outpacing the national average here as well.

I left Colorado last month. Do not regret it at all so far

As someone who has lived in the Denver Metro area for the past 25 years I’ll give you some perspective from my point of view. *The homeless population really started to climb when they legalized weed in 2012. And with the state no longer being a “swing” state the policies especially in Denver city limits exasperate the homeless issues especially with the recent influx of migrants * Traffic is awful here no matter the day. When I first moved here in 2000 you could zip around a lot easier, especially on the weekends. *If you want a job here they are readily available. It was much harder to find work here 25 years ago. Now will that job support the cost of living here well that’s another question. * The worst part though is the housing. In my area which is on the west side of the Denver Metro area you could easily buy a nice house for about 400-450k prior to Covid. Since Covid those same houses are now 800-900k and when they list they are sold in a few days. I have no idea how people can afford them with 7~8% interest rates, my only thought is most of them are moving in from other higher priced states like CA.

"Job opportunity" meaning many low-paying jobs. Unsustainable here hahaha

Look at downtown Denvers renter market.... we dont have a housing shortage, we have a affordability shortage. Most apartment buildings in downtown denver are half empty and charging +$2000 for rent.

Grew up there for 30 years and then had to move to the midwest because I couldn't afford it anymore. It was alright though, Denver is a terrible place for families and Minnesota has been a lot better

This is why I’m having no luck landing a job after 3 months. Guess it’s time to move.

We have rich white kids in their 20s moving here, willfully paying obscene rent to corporate-owned housing, and none of those kids want to do the jobs that the state needs. I've lost count of the number of marketing majors in this town. Skilled labor and service industry workers can't afford to live here, and the answer is not better commuter options, it's reducing the rent. Corporate landlords have no reason to educe rent as long as people are willing to pay it, and they can afford to have large amounts of vacancy because unlike traditional landlords, they don't have a month-to-month budget for overhead. The federal govt needs to place a cap on the amount of housing that corporates can own, and the only way that cap can be circumvented is if building occurs outside of Denver city limits.

Denver also leads in gentrification. As a young millennial born in Colorado this boom hurt locals. I was unable to buy a home and barely could afford rent when I lived in CO. My home state is no longer recognizable its home to the rich and is pushing out the middle class and poor. I had to move where cost of living was reasonable and can proudly say I am a homeowner now. I miss Colorado all the time though, wish there had been jobs that paid a liveable wage there and housing was affordable.

Lived in the Denver metro area from 2000-2021. The housing prices, traffic and just overall overcrowding just got too ridiculous. I loved the place when we first moved there, but around 2015 it just felt like it was going downhill faster and faster.

and by thousands of iob openings they mean jobs where they want to pay you 15 dollars an hour in a city where even tiny1 bedrooms are 2k plus a month

don't forget the predatory landlord companies situated in florida that own most the rental buildings like Boutique/Wheelhouse. there's only like 5 companies that own all the buildings available for rent and that a 350sqft studio apartment is ~$1300-1500/mo and most of the new buildings are half empty and pad their 'residency' by using VRBO and airbnb and other "short term rentals". Denver needs to punish the real estate and venture capital corps that jack up rent and keep half empty buildings.

You gotta love that there are so many jobs and yet I know so many people that aren't getting return calls or emails for ANY of them. That labor shortage seems real.....unreal.

I’m not hearing anything about what those 2:1 jobs pay? Perhaps no one wants to take them because they don’t pay enough…

Maybe I missed it but aside from the inflated housing prices, the cost of living, groceries utilities etc has also skyrocket with this growth while the city has taken more tax revenue than ever before. Not to mention these “skilled” jobs they need filled are being offered for 50-60k a year which certainly is not enough to afford a home let alone the triple tax and cost of goods

If you moved to Colorado and bought a home before Covid, then your mortgage is reasonable and everything is fine. But if you come after Covid increased prices by 50-75%, then housing costs will be a problem on the average salary. Summit County Colorado, where there are four ski areas, would have regular boom and bust real estate cycles. But once most of the land was built out the bust cycles went away. The same thing is now happening to the Front Range.

The worst thing that happened to CO was being the first state to legalize weed. People moved here in droves. It was terrible. The over abundance of people completely ruined the front range. All that is over now though. The cost of living, especially housing, is so high now, people are moving out.

Not enough South Park.

Born and raised in Denver. 1993-now. This city and state are trashhhhed. It is NOTHING like it was even 20 years ago. What a beautiful place and amazing life that used to be had here. I’m moving out as soon as I can save enough to get out… which is almost impossible because I work 2 jobs, 60 hour weeks and can nearly afford rent. If you are thinking of moving here. I wouldn’t. You will regret it everyday and be stuck financially if you want to leave. It’s a black hole of sh:t.

Born and raised in the Denver Metro area. I had a hard time growing up and barely graduated high school due to a lot of turmoil in my life. I am playing life on hard mode by trying to simply live where I grew up. Nevertheless, in my twenties I worked hard and gained a certification as a welding inspector which is supposed to be an excellent and high paying job. Nope, still doesn't cut it. Still can't afford to live here. So now I'm running my own business. It's been a year and a half since I started it but I have to live at home with my parents. It's looking like I might actually make it but damn its not easy. All these Californians moved here and oh look, it looks more and more like California every day. Oh the joy. Thanks, California. Scott Wasserman, you're not welcome here! Go back home.

Denver was super boring for us when we went. People are nice but downtown closed at 10. The whole time I was there, they advertised for on the spot construction hires. A gentleman asked me if I wanted to make 30$ an hour and I laughed at him and said I make way more than that. 30$ is minimum wage to the cost of living in Denver

If they want to solve the housing crisis, they need to stop allowing investors and corporations buying up housing.

Been here all my life. All my family and friends are here. All the people who flood into the state ruin the chances of me being able to buy a decent home in my native state. Everytime you go to the mountains now its clogged with traffic and littered with people. Doesnt even feel like nature it feels like a museum of what it used to be. I can only imagine how native hawaiiens feel.

It has been a tough this year, filled with hardships and struggles globally. From economic challenges, job losses, market volatility, conflicts in various regions, and financial difficulties, it feels like everything has been going wrong. How can I make ends meet during these tough times?

I dreamed of moving to Denver about 15 years ago, when the population was much less and could easily find a nice home under $400k. But too many people stresses me out as does being too poor to live there.

300 days of sunshine. Not including the floods, fire, cyclone snow bombs, tornadoes, snow, hail, breaking bones slipping on ice or nosebleeds from extreme dryness.

Colorado is the seventh state we have lived and worked in. Now that we are retired, we are even more active in our community. We loved the first five cities we lived in in the 1980s and 1990s, although now they deal with diminished employment, financial, and educational well-being. Our two most recent locations have real growth issues, among other common social problems. Perspective is important. Even when typical city and rural social issues are included, issues related to growth are better problems to deal with than the opposite.

Colorado native and Colorado School of Mines alumni. Electrical Engineer in the power industry. Denver sucks, politicians and business leaders/practices ruined it. Lots of violence, full of drugs, no solution path for homelessness or immigration, traffic congestion, outdated infrastructure, inflated housing, unreasonable cost of living while being situated in the middle of the country... The list goes on. A lot of talking in Denver and Colorado, and not a lot of doing. Nothing to show for the years & years of suggested policy adjustments.

Too bad you have to drive in 90% of Denver. Would’ve been great to have build public transit w density back when you knew a bunch of people were moving there.

lol, it's always the same message from CO's city/state officials: "Don't worry, things are looking great for the future, things are gonna be awesome!" Rinse, repeat

It is really easy to find a job here. The problem I've run into is the really low pay.

Applied for nursing jobs with HCA in their med/surg departments in Denver. Applied to three hospitals, didn't get anything. They were paying $28 to start in 2018 as a new grad nurse. Definitely not enough to even pay rent in Capitol Hill to live near the hospitals at that point in time. Colorado is not it.

Live in Denver now, year 13 and the pricing is outragious and jobs can't keep up with the inflation rates. Probably will have to move sooner than later. A lot of people are getting priced out.

Struggling to keep up? Really? It’s experiencing sudden and explosive growth, and housing is being built more quickly than it has ever has been. Every single person moving to CO and Denver is a direct cause of urbanization of Colorado. And the state government keeps pumping promotion to continue growing. Housing prices have tripled in 10 years … it’s not healthy, sustainable, and all of the people moving are doing so on a marketed set of beliefs and don’t realize that they’re creating an unstoppable abomination in the area. The West is fleeting, and these people are the end of Colorado. Kiss it goodbye …

Same thing happed to Austin. Was a great place 10 years ago, but now a middle class home that was $150,000 is now surpassing $1,000,000. What a freaking joke. The "new" middle class is $50+ an hour. Because of that crap, I moved to iowa, life hasn't been better.

@3:00 Nothing but truth!!! As a graduate of one of the university's here in the Colorado Rockies, I got way more job offers outside of the state than inside the state! BK

Denver officials have in the past boasted about their city being a "sanctuary city." That isn't such a smart position now.

Best way to fix the housing shortage is to continue to build luxury homes and luxury apartments. They say just to work hard and skip buying coffee, and it's attainable. Our generation must be so lazy.

There simply isn’t enough population in Denver for in-person jobs. In 2002, we were planning a new state of the art data center in Greenwood Village for Great-West Life. This nearly $200 million project was cancelled because it was forecasted that we would not be able to source the nearly 500 resources needed to staff it over a ten year period. While I was the IT Chief of Staff at Optiv, I regularly had 140+ open reqs for high paying technical positions and even opening up the search, both nationally and across near shore and offshore locations, we still couldn’t fill them.

300 days of sunshine sure - what they don't tell you is that 150 days of that sunshine is below freezing :(

Homelessness and auto crime are the real problems across the entire front range. Everything else is expected of big cities.

It has a type of omelette. So, I guess that accounts for something.

The issue that scott wasserman was talking about regarding the lack of people educated on colorado is FULLY a result of policy. colorado continually cuts funding for higher education to its universities making it too expensive for many to afford to keep going, even in state.

I don't think as a CU Boulder graduate I would be able to afford a SFH in Denver. It is crazy to think that simple apartments are termed as Luxury ones as long as their appliances are replaced upto five years ago. And rent on those shoeboxes are 2200/2500 for studio/ 1 b1b.

Colorado also has the highest inflation rate of any state

Try to apply to a tech job here. You'll hear the same thing you hear everywhere else. You don't have 3 to 5 years experience for our entry level role, sorry!

The weather can be pretty crazy here. 300 days of sunshine? Not exactly. It can be in the 70’s one day and snowing the next. Or sunny in the morning and raining in the afternoon. The intermittent “warm then cold” can stretch for eight months. I don’t put away my winter jackets until June!! But summers here are overall really nice.

I live in Colorado Springs and recently retired. My property taxes and insurance are increasing so rapidly that I may have to come out of retirement just to pay these exorbitant increases. My monthly escrow amount is what my mortgage was 10 years ago

Tell NIMBYs that R1 zoning, million required parking lots, and minimum lot sizing needs to go. You gotta be dense like European cities to enjoy less homelessness and cheaper housing. Smaller, yes, but *cheaper.*

I left Denver in 2014. The writing was on the wall back then...

Really well done overview of pros and cons of Denvers' economic growth.

One contributor to the major aerospace industry is CU Boulder. Nationally the university might have the stigma of being known as a big "party state school", but it has the most NASA funding of any Public University. Most big state schools like CSU Ft Collins where I went I think just has a Mechanical Engineering Department and Aerospace is a subfield in that. CU Boulder has Aerospace and even a dedicated facility just for it on the East campus. Then you consider that CU Boulder co-owns an engineering research complex with CSU and UC Berkeley and NSF under the Horsetooth Reservoir Dam, it's easy to see how the Aerospace Industry was attracted. A lot of the research done at these schools and Mines, University of Wyoming too, is wind tunnel tested in Colorado Springs at the Air Force Academy. So the Air Force Academy having massive test facilities that support CU's aerospace research factors in. You create a petri-dish with a metro area of 3 million between Boulder and Colorado Springs, it becomes the Aerospace epicenter

Really dumb to show strict Denver city-limits population rather than the 3.5 million metro population. Especially when most of this video is referring to the metro Denver vs. only Denver city. Super stupid and misleading.

It’s not the same place I grew up in. But the breakfast burritos is still the best lol

I believe the population in the Denver Metro Area is shrinking now. More people are leaving then moving in. The cost of living, especially housing, is just too much now.

0:41 Do NOT let these freaks lie to you. There are over 5000 vacant homes in Denver RIGHT NOW. There are enough resources for all of us. Who are the ones saying there isn't? The rich.

I have never been to Denver before, so I don’t understand what attracts so many people to live there.

Jobs are strongly decreasing, living expenses are rising high compared to wages

So in summary: Companies are underpaying workers, they are not willing to pay more, and are suffering a "labor shortage" as a result. Naturally their solution is importing... basically foreign slaves... I mean "migrants" and using them low cost labor. Did I miss anything?

I like how the Coloradans that move away are immediately replaced by five Texans and Californians. Lol

Prices are not easing up😂😂

Grew up in the state, and was priced out a few years ago thanks to the transplants

I think Denver is doing a good job now of doing everything they can to address the housing issues. The ADU zoning changes are a great example of that, allowing leniency for nonconforming garages that previously were not eligible to be converted into ADU's. But obviously we're just late to the game and now playing catchup. We really need to make expedient progress on these trains that have been promised to Coloradan's since the 1980's....

I have run my own business after moving to Denver in 2017. Trying to “figure it out” as a millennial in business here has proven incredibly tough. If I don’t 3-5x my income in the next year it’s not worth it! But I’m not giving up cuz Denver is my place 😂 so back to work we go 💪🏻

I lived in Denver for a few years in the early 1980s. The thing to know about Denver is that it's the only big city for 1000 miles in any direction, so it's kind of an odd place. People think of it as a major city but that's mostly because it's all by itself in a geographic area that is either plains or (to the west) a mountain range all around it. It's nice, but it's no NYC or LA. I haven't been back there in decades though so I don't know how much it's changed since then.

Let's goooo #YIMBY

I’ve been looking for a new job in Denver for the past 7 months and have had zero success. 2 jobs per person my ass!

Why this channel CNBC doesn't have location icon in its description?

No mention of 2024 budget shortfalls and subsequent cuts to the Denver Police force and Fire Department. The Denver city budget isn't doing so great. Also, Denver Health is also having budget issues.

Thank you for sharing such an awesome message.Glory to God my family are happy once again and can now afford anything for my family even with my Retirement.$57k weekly returns has been life changing, after so much struggles.

I lived here over 58 years. Third worst air pollution in the world? Denver, Colorado. 170 bad things in the tap water, Denver, Colorado. First place, Stolen cars. Denver, Colorado.

The inability to create affordable housing and better paying jobs that aren’t just for HS kids anymore. Allow John, Bob and Mary make a livable wage working at Burger King or Dunkin Donuts (people have to work). This is another story coming from a city hoping that low income families can be happy being poor and struggling to keep up with their bills to ensure their city grows from the rich who want to take advantage from the city business friendship that is so openly promoted and accepted. Big profitable companies move into these cities take over local markets, government and even schools to ensure they find a way to keep generating just enough for the poors to stick around to boost the flimsy local economy while they keep building on their investments from housing and retail ownership. Trust me, it happened in my hometown Austin Texas. Doesn’t matter how long you lived through the good old days if you’re poor and a local your just a stranger to the rich who get to occupy a spot you use to frequent because it’s now unaffordable to live around that area. I lived Down Town on Brazos and east 6th street when loft apartments existed in the early 2000’s. The rent was only $1,100 a month for a large spacious loft apartment right on the most popular street in Austin Texas. Then all the new money moved in and I found myself stagnant on my wage growth as low income earners aren’t important enough to ensure their wages keep up with cost of living. So since this happened in the early 2000s and nothing has change what so ever only has aggressively gotten extremely worse, tells me that if you are a low income worker be ready to never retire from your job and you will be working until your at least 65 even maybe 70 years old. You mathematically will never keep up with inflation as it’s built specifically for only a very small margin to gain prosperity. If you think your not in this category because you make six figures, you better open your eyes because that day will come when you no longer can afford your mortgage payments, it’s built by the banks to ensure they always make more money off you then for you to ever own your home. If you don’t own your home by now then you’ve already lost. If you do own your home, be prepared to pay a tax you can never afford in your retirement. Your money will never keep up with inflation and so those taxes will be generated to ensure you have no foot hold to ever say you are a real home owner. If your are not a large corporation that has an extensive asset portfolio you are not important as you do not have the capital to be so, that is the horrible truth and just walk out your door and you will see it. By see it I mean the homelessness that runs rampant in your city that local officials try to hide from you (every city has this problem you just haven’t popped your bubble to see it, manly because you fear that you one day can be “these” people). Don’t say I didn’t warn you. ✨✌🏽🙃✨

Living in Los Angeles, I just don't see the appeal for living in Denver. What does Denver have that LA doesn't already have? 1.7 jobs for every 1 job seeker? If all the low-pay dish washing jobs, cook jobs, janitor jobs, and the higher pay plumbing jobs, caregiver jobs and nursing jobs are excluded from the pool, how many jobs that are available are also desirable for the average job seeker?? How many of those so-called jobs available pay a decent wage to afford the cost of living in Denver? Numbers alone don't mean anything. Yes, the 70,000 homes shortfall also doesn't mean anything when the city has how many thousands of asylum seekers from all over the world?

I’m from Denver and they gentrified my neighborhood.

This state continues to give me opportunity that I am greatful for it's kept me out of harms way with inflation thank you

What really bothers me is that none of these storimentaries talk about all of the native born coloradans who were priced out of their homes with the price of rent more than tripling. Denver's literally replacing its citizens with coastal elitist. With very little care! And the growing homeless population also not Colorado natives...

Stop sprawling and the housing crisis will fix itself.

Unless it is a Nurse, Doctor, Lawyer.........Most jobs should not require a college education. The paper ceiling in harming the economy.

Quite informative

During the late 2010s and up until 2020 my wife and I were strongly considering making the move to Colorado. Unfortunately housing prices kept going higher and higher at such a pace that we decided to give up on Colorado. Housing is way too expensive there. Last time I checked the average house was $600k and the state was losing population.

I'm leaving Denver in June, it's gotten horrible to live here. Drug addicts everywhere, grossly overpriced houses, and now, they're trying to ban guns.

Now my grandfather was a carpenter and millwright. What people are talking about here is that Construction at the entry level isn’t a long term job. These jobs don’t always have health benefits or other benefits. Which they aren’t talking about here. Now my grandfather retired at 65, because his employer was an idiot- which is another story. But he was an aberration. Construction is for the 18 to 40 year olds for most humans.

Wild to watch something like and see your friend in a clip haha (the instructor @ 6:12)

This was very educational 10:50