If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the infographic you just saw is worth about ten thousand angry Reddit threads, Nextdoor rants, and “I’m moving back to Texas” bumper stickers.

We used to call Colorado the “Centennial State.”
Today, a growing number of residents are calling it “California 2.0” – and not as a compliment.

Over the last 30 years, more than half a million people have moved here from high-cost, high-regulation states – with California leading the pack by a country mile. They came for the mountains, the craft beer, and the promise of a better life. What they brought with them – intentionally or not – was the exact playbook that made their old states unaffordable in the first place.

The numbers don’t lie, and they sure don’t care about your feelings.

• Median home price: from ~$120k in 1995 to $627k today – a 414% increase while wages rose nowhere near that fast.
• Net migration: down 52% in the last decade because even the Californians can’t afford Colorado anymore.
• Homelessness: up 90% since 2020, now the 4th-fastest rise in the nation.
• Violent crime: spiked 17% in just two years after decades of relative calm.
• Democratic supermajorities: locked in since 2019, the first sustained one-party control in modern Colorado history.
• Cost of living: 13% above the national average, driven almost entirely by housing.

And the worst part? The same people who fled Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego traffic are now sitting on the HOA boards and city councils making sure nobody else can ever afford to move in behind them.

Look at the infographic again. Really look at it.

That purple-to-blue political timeline isn’t random. It lines up almost perfectly with the arrival of six-figure tech salaries that priced teachers, firefighters, and ski bums out of the market. The same decade we flipped from purple battleground to deep-blue trifecta is the same decade your starter home turned into a millionaire’s third property.

We didn’t “grow up.” We got gentrified by people who swore they were escaping gentrification.

Colorado still has the prettiest license plates in America. The views are still world-class. But for a lot of natives and long-timers, the Colorado they grew up in is now just a postcard you can’t afford to mail because stamps cost money and the post office is inside a neighborhood you can’t afford to drive through anymore.

Share the infographic. Send it to your group chat. Post it on the fridge next to the $4,200 rent notice.

Because until we admit what actually happened – and who voted for it – the decline isn’t slowing down. It’s accelerating.

Welcome to the People’s Republic of Colorado.
Hope you brought a trust fund.