About

Colorado has been losing ground.

Affordability. Colorado has the sixth-highest median home price in the country,¹ and over half of renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing.²

Wages. Prices have risen faster in Colorado than in the nation in 11 of the last 15 years,³ and wages have not kept pace.⁴

Migration. In 2025, for the first time since 2004, more people left Colorado for other states than moved in — a net loss of about 12,100.⁵

Crime. Colorado ranks in the national top ten for both violent and property crime, and fourth for auto theft per capita.⁶

Namaqua researches the underlying causes of these issues and provides recommendations.

Who's behind it

Namaqua was founded by Jesse Dean. He grew up in Loveland, served in the Army as a human intelligence collector, studied Korean at the Defense Language Institute, and deployed to Iraq and Syria. He works in commercial real estate and is a member of the Colorado Workforce Development Council.

Notes

1. Common Sense Institute, "Colorado Housing Affordability Report: June 2025 Update," June 2025. ↩
2. Bell Policy Center, "Colorado Housing Primer 2025," March 2025. ↩
3. Common Sense Institute, "Inflation in Colorado: November 2025 Update," November 2025. ↩
4. Bell Policy Center, "New Data Shows Colorado Wages Struggle to Keep Pace with Inflation," 2025. ↩
5. Colorado State Demography Office, "State Demography Office Summarizes the U.S. Census Data," Colorado Department of Local Affairs, January 2026; U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 Population Estimates. ↩
6. Common Sense Institute, "Colorado Crime Update," 2026. ↩