Thanks, and know that I definitely hear you though. Technically, there is tons of space. And housing costs are primarily a housing volume issue (and an investment issue). I work in water in other areas of the world, and we overlap into urban planning and such, and, oof - it does a doozy on planning and growth capacity

Yes, you are nailing a chunk of the social parts. You write it out really well. I think the economic part adds a really insidious element to what you have above. Mostly newcomer influx can be dealt with though 'locals' by sticking together culturally while either including the new people or not (not always healthy, but eh). The other half of this is the economic/livelihood shift that literally forces poorer people to move, live beyond their resources, or become homeless (I'm ignoring the idea that everyone just gets better jobs as that is largely not a community option in my experience). Now, it is a huge systemic thing to look at, and mostly can be blamed on companies/international greed at horrifying scales. In these posts, I'm pointing out the individual contribution of people with wealth moving there, but it isn't the root, and I get it - it's a nice place. It just sucks to be not wealthy and be on the receiving end.

The increase of rent and property taxes (I know much more about the rent elements) from the early 2000s and onward basically got untenable for lower classes and moves up in wealth brackets varying from community to community. Some places priced out even the middle/upper class - like Boulder with 1,000,000$ homes on the low end. Or mountain towns where the ma and pa places must close cause they can't afford to pay help a livable wage.

In theory, the new money in the area would help everyone, but economic and government spending impacts from it are not equal across the board. Our lower income communities which were already underserved basically get no change or token amounts of service. Even in areas that receive lots of new people, often not even the schools improve as they are often sent to different highschools. Or in our school district funding was focused on already well off schools - although they did finally address the asbestos, lol. Then with gentrification comes an erasure of history of poor/minority areas (especially in this case) by renaming the place- like Five Points is now RiNo in Denver. And all this economics stuff hits minorities harder - when gentrification came to my hometown, it was the hispanic families I grew up with that had a harder time landing better jobs/paying the bills, and it's not like it was a perfect system before, but it actually got harder for many. All this to say that for lower income communities, to stay, you needed income increases or upward mobility far in excess of general income increases.

Sort of agree to disagree a bit. Another big part of the growth is water availability. We have been overdrawing the groundwater like crazy. Farmers get pushed out for housing developments in large part to get their water rights. But the groundwater is way way overdrawn. If you stopped 100% of human consumption in CO, it'd be 200 years of precipitation and aquifer recharge to return the water levels to the previous "normal" - it aint infinite and consumption volumes are increasing. But at the root of that is greed, and a water law system that is messsssyyyyyyy at best. So, how to address it is without just collapsing the system is difficult at best

Though real talk, it’s a pretty sad thing to witness so many people moving there from the inside. The rent costs tripled/quadrupled even before Covid. Most people of color - particularly Hispanics have been forced from most the front range (a northern part of Colorado where mountains meet the plains). No one talks about it and people moving their wash their hands of it ‘cause it’s systemic’ ironically a system they choose to support because not supporting it would mean not moving and adding to the issue. In addition, people that move there often bring the social issues they are running from with them and want to change everything, often destroying the culture they found inviting and wanted to be a part of.

There is a trend of transplants havjng the insular self centered nature that wealth brings and little to no knowledge of things like cleaning up a camp site, general etiquette of just being decent, or sadly often, lack much respect for nature, at all etc. there has been a striking increase in the amount of trash I pack out from trails and camp sites this past decade. I can list (vent about, lol) a few pages of other stuff (like how increasingly overdrawn the water resources are year after year), but gentrification is so freaking lame whether it’s individuals or companies. Imagine you just want was to stay where you’re from and ride the changing world with your community, but just like a South Park banking meme, ‘-aaand it’s gone’. And what I hear most is ‘deal with it’aka, you’re not rich enough. Your community was forced out cause you’re the wrong class. Guess you should have invested more when you were a child with all that imaginary money, lol.

There are/were a lot of people there of a variety of ethnicities that have been forced out that spent generations making it a wonderful and inviting place and culture.

All that too say, defo visit. Maybe even move there, but please keep in mind the situation is complicated, the other people are human too, and supporting those systems is definitely ethically grey.

Seriously. Gentrification ain’t no thing for the outsiders till it comes through your town like a tornado. Rent tripled in a decade. Stanford is doing studies on Colorado because of how fast the people that made this place is getting pushed out. I feel pretty sad seeing Colorado in these forums. I get i - it’s pretty, but it is basically the tragedy of the commons and the system of people (corporate or individual) out pricing locals is sickening.