Colorado poll sees concern about cost of living

BY PARKER YAMASAKI THE COLORADO SUN

Cost of living and housing affordability are the top concerns of Coloradans this year, according to a poll released by the Colorado Health Foundation.

In an open-ended question asking participants what they thought the most important issue facing Colorado is right now, 16% answered cost of living and 15% answered housing a ordability. Other issues in the top ve were government and politics, public safety and crime, and homelessness.

About 10% of respondents said that homelessness was their top concern for Colorado, with 79% calling the problem “extremely serious” or “very serious.” e results from the 4th annual survey arrived as Denver’s new mayor, Mike Johnston, declared a state of emergency around homelessness, during his rst full day in o ce.

Polling is conducted over one month through phone, email and text invitations, in English and Spanish. is year’s data includes 2,639 respondents across all ages, races and income brackets, with oversamples of Black/African American, Native American/Indigenous, Asian American and Pueblo County residents.

One of the cornerstones of CHF is to serve folks with historically less power or privilege, according to Austin Montoya, senior o cer for policy advocacy communications, which is why the foundation takes larger samples of speci c populations. Montoya said that by sampling larger numbers of smaller populations, they are able to more accurately re ect the experiences of those populations. e data is later weighted to re ect Colorado’s population. e second- and third-largest decreases in concern were political division, down 6 percentage points, and jobs and the economy, down

Since the poll’s inception in 2020, the biggest drop in respondents’ top concern was, unsurprisingly, COVID-19, which was top of mind for 26% of Coloradans in 2020, compared with 0% in 2023.

5. In the past year, Colorado’s job openings and unemployment reached something near equilibrium, so it tracks that anxiety over jobs has fallen since the 2020 polling, when uncertainty was rampant.

Homelessness had the largest increase as a top concern since last year, up 3 percentage points, while crime had the largest increase as a top concern over the past four years, up 8 percentage points. Both issues were a major focus for Denver’s mayoral election this year.

While most concerns associated with costs — such as rising costs of living, cost of housing and jobs — tended to decline in importance as income levels rose, the percentage of respondents most concerned by homelessness was consistent across income levels. e di erence between the lowest and highest income earners concerned with homelessness was only 3 percentage points.

Having a home is one major concern; staying in it is another. At the time of polling, renters were signi cantly more worried about not being able to make rent payments than homeowners were worried about their mortgages — at a rate of 49% compared with 19% of respondents. However, that number may ip as property owners come to terms with their new, exponentially high valuations, which were issued after the Pulse poll was conducted.

Respondents who identi ed as Native American/Indigenous showed the most concern over losing their homes, with 49% answering that they were worried in this year’s poll, while the Black/African American respondents had the largest increase in those worried, up 16 percentage points, to 47% from 31% last year.

Almost every household with an income below $150,000 was worried about their children being able to a ord a home in Colorado.

Montoya wants the information gleaned from these polls to help inform policymakers’ priorities. He said the foundation’s primary audience is local lawmakers and legislators. e biggest divisions around e ective policy solutions were between Republicans and Democrats in the state, with Independents falling squarely between the parties for every proposed solution. e largest di erences between what the parties viewed as e ective solutions were requiring developers to build low-income housing — 86% of Democrats thought this would be an e ective solution, while only 49% of Republicans agreed — and increasing government investments in programs that prevent people from becoming homeless — 87% of Democrats believed in its e ectiveness, while 46% of Republicans agreed. e takeaway from this year’s data, Montoya said, was that it hasn’t changed much since last year. Montoya believes that Coloradans’ major concerns “skyrocketed” around COVID, and have continued to stay high ever since.

When presented with a number of policy solutions, respondents thought that the most e ective ways to mitigate housing cost challenges are to reduce property taxes for homeowners with low or xed incomes, and to ensure that landlords cannot raise rents on tenants too quickly.

“ e majority of these worries have increased since 2020, but there hasn’t been much of a decline in any of them. ere is really just a plateau,” he said. “And a majority of folks are feeling concerned.” is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun. com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.