DENVER DRAWING 20-SOMETHINGS
Young 20-somethings from Boulder and Larimer counties have come to Denver in recent years, but mostly 30somethings are leaving the city for Adams County and more affordable housing, according to the latest migration numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau.
D enver County attracted a steady flow of young 20-somethings from Boulder and Larimer counties in recent years, but it pushed out a comparable number of mostly 30-somethings to Adams County, according to the latest migration numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau.
And the heaviest flows of out-of-state millennials ages 20-34 landing in Denver between 2011 and 2015 came from the home counties of Chicago, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Madison, Wis., Washington, D.C., San Diego, Indianapolis, Arlington, Va., and Tucson.
Denver is losing more young adults than it is gaining on a net basis to Seattle, Las Vegas, Colorado Springs, Portland, Ore., Steamboat Springs and Austin.
The outflow to Adams County has to do mainly with housing prices.
“Adams County still has available land. It has a housing stock that might be attractive to someone looking to make a firsttime purchase. It is one of the younger counties in demographics,” said Daniel Jerrett, chief economist with the Denver Regional Council of Governments.
Denver County drew in 1,041 net newcomers aged 20 to 34 on average per year from Larimer and Boulder counties, home to Colorado State University and the University of Colorado, respectively.
But it sent out a net 1,054 people a year in that age range to Adams County. While the young people coming into Denver skewed toward the 20- to 29-year-old range, the age of those leaving for Adams County was weighted toward those 30 and older.
“The number of jobs in Denver has increased faster than the population, so commuting into Denver has also increased,” said Cindy DeGroen, projections demographer with the State Demography Office. “A large number of those commuters are coming from Adams and southern Weld — two of the more affordable areas in the state.”
It is worth noting that many of those moving to Denver from Fort Collins and Boulder also are recent transplants. About 43 percent of the students attending CSU and 40 percent of students at CU are nonresidents, DeGroen said.
Douglas County sent more 20- to 24year-olds to Denver than it took in. But the flows reverse in a big way among 25- to 29year-olds. Jerrett attributes some of that to young adults moving closer to job opportunities in the Denver Tech Center area.
While metro Denver has seen housing costs escalate, it also has had stronger wage gains than many other big cities, Jerrett said. DRCOG looked into the rent-to-
income ratio of metro areas with 1 million jobs or more and Denver ranked 13th out of 27.
“We are kind of in the middle. The purchasing power is not significantly lower than other parts of the country,” he said.
While San Jose, Calif., and San Diego unsurprisingly had more burdensome housing costs than Denver, so, too, did Phoenix, Atlanta and even Austin, Texas.
LawnStarter, an online portal for landscaping services, did a separate analysis across all age ranges looking at where people moving into the entire metro Denver area are coming from and found a slightly different mix.
About one in five of those moving to metro Denver are coming from other parts of Colorado, with Boulder the top sender, followed by Colorado Springs, Greeley, Fort Collins and Los Angeles. Chicago ranked sixth, followed by Dallas, D.C., Phoenix and New York.