Living in Colorado, for many, means spending a lot of time worrying about how to make the rent or the mortgage, or whether they’ll ever be able to buy a home.

Housing costs have been on a long and sometimes sharp climb throughout the state. In Colorado Springs, home prices have risen 119% since 2015, according to the Common Sense Institute. In the Denver area, the average sale price for homes this year is $617,000, up from $304,000 a decade ago.

That shift has been driven by a long-running mismatch in supply and demand. Between 2013 and 2020, more than 40,000 new people a year were moving to the state. And while Colorado has built a lot of new housing, it hasn’t been enough to keep prices from climbing ever higher.

“I’ve lived in Colorado my entire life,” Maciej Wal wrote in his response to the Voter Voices survey. “When I was graduating high school in 2013, a $50,000 a year salary would get you a house, a car, and money to be able to THRIVE. Now if you make 50,000 a year, you are barely surviving.”