Many people have asked me about the plethora of new apartments in our region and if we’ve overbuilt. Most people have heard about the national and regional housing shortage, but they still wonder if we’ve overbuilt apartments and whether vacancy rates are going up.
The answer is nuanced. It is true that our region has a shortage of roughly 8,500 housing units, which includes both multifamily apartments and single-family homes. It is also true that we had an absolute boom in multifamily construction during the pandemic. A high number of permits were pulled, initiating an unprecedented number of new apartment projects.
Most projects take a minimum of two to three years to complete, so we are now facing an absorption problem with many of those apartment buildings finished, creating a glut of new product.
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The other major problem, which is the bigger challenge, is that much of the new product is for high-end renters. What we have is a shortage of affordable apartments. Local rents average about $1,500 a month, and the vacancy rate is at 7.2%.
Builders and investors in multifamily projects face higher material and labor costs compared to pre-pandemic levels, higher financing costs due to higher interest rates and increasingly expensive lots. If it’s expensive to build a unit, it will be expensive to rent a unit.
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The multifamily market is now adjusting with actual declines now in permits pulled and projects started. Multifamily starts in the U.S. are running nearly 50% below their year-ago pace. This is also true regionally for both single and multifamily permits.
But the conundrum is that less supply isn’t necessarily good, because we do have a structural shortage of housing. Lower supply also means more upward pressure on prices.
The U.S. median price of a new condo has increased from $450,000 in 2018 to $550,000 in 2023. But building mostly high-end housing isn’t the solution. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates the U.S. is short 7.3 million housing units for low-income renters. Many cities have mandates for builders to construct a certain percentage of affordable units, but that’s not enough, and waiting lists are long for prospective tenants.
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Montana is experiencing an influx of homebuyers from more expensive regions. To get ahead of the affordability issue, they’ve legalized several meaningful measures like allowing accessory dwelling units on any lot with a detached home. They’ve legalized dense housing and mixed-use buildings within all commercial zones.
Montana’s new laws also allow duplexes on any residential lot. New residential construction only allows one parking space per home. They’ve accelerated the permit review process.
These may seem like radical ideas, but I’d rather get ahead of the problem before middle-class workers and their families decide not to live here.
Other Gazette articles, TV segments and DDES monthly economic dashboards can be found at ddestrategies.org.
Changing conditions at the site of a coal mine fire in Colorado have prompted state officials to begin an emergency project to mitigate wildfire risk in the area.
The Black Diamond Mine in Rio Blanco County has been burning since the 1930s. The coal seam fire, located approximately one mile northwest of Meeker, has been managed over the years to address hot spots and concerns.
Smoke rises through a vent at the site of the Black Diamond Mine. 2024 Mine Fire Inventory report.
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Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety
The Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety says that recent assessments have shown conditions that heighten the risk of wildfires at the site.
According to the 2024 Mine Fire Inventory, a new area of activity has developed, with multiple high-flow-rate vents along the top edge of a 40-foot-tall cliff. Some of those vents reportedly extend away from the cliff face into vegetated areas where dead and dying trees were spotted.
2023 aerial and thermal UAV imagery of vents at the Black Diamond Mine. 2024 Mine Fire Inventory report.
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Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety
According to the CDRMS, there is evidence of increased surface temperatures. With the formation of ground fractures and the dry vegetation due to persistent drought, the division saw a need to take proactive measures.
“Ongoing drought conditions have reduced soil cohesion, allowing more oxygen to circulate through fractured ground, which can contribute to underground combustion processes. These combined factors increase the potential for ignition if vegetation remains in place,” said the CDRMS.
On Monday, crews began a project to remove 1.5 acres of trees and grasses in the area. This will reduce the amount of fuel available to burn and will create a space that is easier to defend against potential wildfires.
They also plan to construct a 1.3-mile access route, giving first responders faster, easier access to the site in case of an emergency.
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“DRMS underscores that this work represents an important first step in a longer-term strategy,” the division said. “By taking preventative action now, the agency aims to reduce future risk, maintain safe access, and support ongoing monitoring and future mitigation of the underground coal mine fire.”
Federal immigration agents arrested three times more people in Colorado per day on average last year compared with 2024, marking an aggressive shift in enforcement under President Donald Trump, according to new data.
About 12 people each day were taken to federal detention facilities in 2025, up from four in 2024. Even without high-profile enforcement surges like those seen in Illinois, Minnesota, New York and California, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested about 4,160 people in Colorado in 2025, an increase of 281% compared with 1,091total people arrested in 2024. Arrests in Colorado reached their highest level in April 2025 and have since fallen slightly.
From Jan. 1 to March 10, ICE arrested about 12 people per day in Colorado, demonstrating that last year’s pace continues.
The surge in arrests as well as reports from groups that aid immigrants and track detentions show a heightened focus by ICE to not just arrest more people, but more immigrants living in Colorado. While Trump vowed to target people with criminal records, data obtained by the Sun shows that most people arrested in Colorado last year have never been convicted of a crime.
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About 65% of the people arrested by ICE officers so far under Trump had no prior criminal convictions. And among those with criminal convictions, only 5% of those convictions were for what the Federal Bureau of Investigation designates as violent crimes (murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault).
Of those arrested with criminal convictions, the most common convictions are for driving under the influence, assault, and traffic offenses.
That’s despite Trump’s campaign promise to target immigrants who are violent criminals.
The data, obtained from ICE and published by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law’s Deportation Data Project, illustrates the dragnet approach to arrests in Colorado during the first year of Trump’s presidency and the new landscape that immigrants in Colorado have been navigating. The Colorado Sun has been reporting on the data as it becomes available.
George Valdez, acting director of ICE’s Denver field office, declined to comment through a spokesperson. In a statement, the agency told the Sun “the Deportation Data Project is not accurate,” but did not cite any specific issues. The Sun provided ICE more than a week to review our findings, which relied on data obtained directly from ICE by the Deportation Data Project through the Freedom of Information Act.
ICE agents have arrested people driving to work and at their jobs, at their homes, driving to school and leaving state and immigration courts.
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Many have lived in Colorado for years and have deep ties to the community through family, friends and their jobs, according to advocates.
Andrea Loya, executive director of Casa de Paz, helps families of people who are detained at the ICE detention facility in Aurora.
Far fewer people are being released from the facility, Loya said, and more of those who are releasednow are Colorado residents, a shift that highlights ICE’s heightened focus on locals. In 2024, Casa de Paz helped 2,087 people released from the facility, most of whom were arrested in other states and brought to Aurora to be processed, Loya said. In 2025, Casa de Paz helped 610people released from the facility, about 40% of whom lived in Colorado.
In March 2025, Loya saw young children waiting to visit family members detained at the ICE detention center in Aurora for the first time.
“Before it was only volunteers,” she said. “We were seeing so many kids, babies through teenagers, moms, dads, grandmas. That immediately told us it’s local folks who are being detained. We have shifted everything.”
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ICE has made it more difficult for people released from detention to fly to other states, Loya said, complicating Casa de Paz’s efforts to assist people.
ICE will often take away a person’s driver’s license while they are in detention, Loya said, and it can take them a while to get their license back. ICE gives people released from detention paperwork showing they have recently been released that used to be sufficient to pass airport security, Loya said, but recently security officers have been confused about who can fly and who can’t. While Casa de Paz used to help people with plane tickets, they are now often resorting to long distance bus tickets, Loya said.
“There is this idea that there’s not a lot of ICE activity here because it doesn’t look visually like the other states,” Loya said. “It for sure is happening here.”
Hans Meyer, a Denver-based immigration attorney, said his typical client profile has shifted from someone who has a criminal history and has not lived in the U.S. for very long to “people who have lived in the country for long periods of time and virtually no criminal history with deep community and family connections.”
Meyer is suing ICE in federal court to limit how the agency can use warrantless arrests. In November, the court sided with Meyer and granted a preliminary injunction in the case, but Meyer and lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and another Denver law firm allege ICE officers are violating the injunction by continuing to arrest people without first verifying they are undocumented and a flight risk.
ICE arrested one of Meyer’s clients, Dionisio Castillo, 53, at his construction job site in January without asking him questions about his background. Had they asked, they would have known he has lived undocumented in the U.S. for 30 years, has three U.S. citizen children and no criminal history. He spent 48 days at the ICE detention facility in Aurora. His family had to pay a $2,500 bond for his release.
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“I was standing next to my truck and I turned to the right and I saw that the officers were walking toward me,” Castillo told the judge through an interpreter at a hearing last month. “They handcuffed me with my hands behind my back.”
Training hours for ICE officers at the Denver field office have been cut over the last year, according to Gregory Davies, the assistant field office director, and the office has hired dozens of new officers recently.
Meyer is hopeful the federal judge in the warrantless arrest case will continue to hold ICE accountable.
“The entire country, including the federal courts, are painfully aware that ICE is a pariah law enforcement agency and has lost all veneer of legitimacy,” he said.
Jordan Garcia, the program director for the American Friends Service Committee’s Colorado Immigrant Rights Program, said people are doing a lot more planning for themselves and their families, including putting another person on the title of the car, on the list to pick up the kids from school or day care, just in case they get arrested. More people are participating in workshops to learn about their rights and how best to protect themselves, Garcia said.
“We’ll continue to do the best we can,” he said. “People are trying to be cautious but they’re also trying to protect each other and be good stewards of the community.”
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Methods:
The data comes from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law through a public records lawsuit. It covers every arrest, detention stay and deportation conducted by ICE from Oct. 1, 2022 through Mar. 10, 2026.
Here’s how we performed the analysis:
Filtered data to apprehensions categorized as under the Denver area of responsibility AND either:
labeled as being in the state of Colorado; or tagged with a landmark located in Colorado (e.g., Centennial, CO or Fremont County, CO).
narrowed the arrest data to the time frame of Jan. 1, 2024 to Mar. 10, 2026.
Removed 70 likely duplicates identified by the Deportation Data Project from the arrests dataset, defined as multiple arrests of the same individual occurring within 24 hours.
Excluded 1,384 records with missing state value that were marked as being under the jurisdiction of a Colorado-based docket office due to trends within this subset that contradicted trends in the wider dataset.
Added the most serious conviction to the remaining 6,089 records, using unique case identifiers to match with detention data for individuals who had been convicted with a crime.
Some arrested people who were designated as having pending or no criminal charges at the time of their arrest had a conviction associated with them in the detention dataset. The Colorado Sun included those people, 75 in total, as having pending charges, so it is possible that our total number of arrestees with prior criminal convictions is an undercount.
It is worth noting that there is no way to gauge the accuracy of this data. For instance, 2023 data appears to show a spike in the number of arrests with a landmark or docket office in Colorado, but these arrest records also had an unusually high rate of missing state information, in contrast with all other areas of responsibility in the United States at that time.
Wanted Pikes Peak Area Crime Stoppers is asking for the public’s help in finding the following people for whom felony arrest warrants have been issued. Featured Fugitives Jessica Billingsley — age 22, 5-foot-9, 120 pounds, with black hair and gray eyes. She is sought on suspicion of assault 2, felony menacing, harassment and failure to […]
