COVID Stalls Denver's Population Growth

Denver, despite being landlocked, has added 158,173 people in the last fifteen years. Residential rents and home prices have gone up dramatically, as new housing supply has lagged behind demand, although a disproportionate share of metropolitan Denver's new housing starts in the past fifteen years have been in Denver proper, year after year.

The combined efforts of a pandemic and these rising housing prices finally hit a breaking point, however between July 2020 and early 2021, when many people nationwide left high cost of living cities to live with family and work and study remotely during the pandemic. 

But even this only rolled back growth by one year in Denver (thankfully, after the 2020 census data that was used for redistricting was complete by then), and the metro area as a whole was merely flat, growing by 0.02%. Housing construction has continued full tilt, heavily favoring luxury rentals, so while the "for sale" inventory in the Denver real estate market remains extremely tight, we may be due for a brief plateau in housing prices.

Denver had quite the run, experiencing a full 15 years of uninterrupted population growth. The pandemic has reversed the trend — or at least paused it.

The latest census estimates show that the city was among many nationally that saw more people move out than move in between mid-2020 and mid-2021. That happened — especially in higher-cost cities — while the pandemic was scrambling many aspects of work and life, raising the possibility that the new dynamics will be temporary, experts say. 

. . .

Denver’s population ended up at an estimated 711,463 as of July 1, according to new county population estimates released late last month by the U.S. Census Bureau. That was down 6,167, or 0.9%, from mid-2020. The decline reversed most of Denver’s entire prior-year population gain.

. . .

In just a couple of years, Denver, which is both a city and county, went from adding more people by number than any other Colorado county to losing the most of any county in the state last year. It wasn’t alone, with some metro suburban counties also showing declines during the year ending July 1.

All of it added up to a stagnating of metro Denver’s longstanding rapid population growth. The seven-county metro area’s population stood at an estimated 3.2 million, an increase of just 683 people, according to a Denver Post analysis.

But . . . demographers say there are many reasons to think the declines experienced by Denver and some of the nation’s largest urban areas — including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco — will be short lived. . . . 

Denver’s last population decline occurred in mid-2005. Then, from 2005 through 2020, the city’s population grew from 559,459 to 717,632 — an increase of 28.3%[.] . . .

Colorado as a whole saw an increase in residents in the new estimates, adding an estimated 27,761 to eclipse 5.8 million.

El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, grew by 0.8% to an estimated 737,867 as of July 1. It remains the state’s most populous county, ahead of Denver.

In the Denver area, other metro counties were a mixed bag. Jefferson, Boulder and Arapahoe counties lost population slightly — all by less than Denver, percentage-wise — during the year ending July 1. Adams and Broomfield counties grew slightly, while Douglas County grew by 2.5%, or nearly 9,000 people — the largest numerical increase in the state last year. . . . Denver proper’s loss mostly was due to residents moving to other places in Colorado or out of state, with nearly 9,000 more people leaving than arriving. Some of that was offset by a net natural increase, with births outpacing deaths by about 2,700.

Nationally, most counties had the opposite of Denver’s experience. Most saw net increases from migration, but when it came to natural population changes, more than 73% recorded more deaths than births due to COVID-19 and other factors.

From the Denver Post.