Should you move from SF to Colorado?
Purple might just be your color
SF has lost around 70,000 souls over the past five years, many to the crisp mountain air and good governance of Colorado.1 Should you join them?
To find out, I spent a week in Colorado’s main population centers - Denver, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, as well as Boulder and Golden. Here’s what you should know:
California and Colorado have much in common
California was created by the gold rush of 1849, Colorado the gold rush of 1859 (they were even called ‘59ers). Both states are wealthy, ranking 9th and 11th in terms of median household income in 2020. And both have incredible natural beauty and great weather, making them vast playgrounds for outdoor lovers. Both offer healthy living, with Colorado and the SF, for example, having some of the nation’s lowest obesity rates. Both have great food scenes - Denver surprisingly so. SF is part of the larger Bay Area, while Denver (population 700k) is part of a larger, 3 million person urban center.
But the Bay Area’s population has only grown 15% since 1990, while the Denver area has doubled in size. Why?
Colorado is blissed out, easy living
I was unfamiliar with the many interchanges, concentric traffic circles, and no see ‘em highway exits of Denver, so ended up holding up traffic a number of times.
But no one honked. People refused to honk. They just waited patiently until the rental car with Florida plates figured out what it was going to do. It got to the point where I wondered what I’d have to do to actually get someone, anyone, to mash their horn with even a little frustration.
Spend a few days here, and you’ll understand why everyone’s so happy. Colorado is infinitely more livable than SF. Housing prices are lower, as are gas prices, heat, electricity, and anything else distorted by SF/CA’s woke policies and endemic corruption. It’s Mayberry with mountains.
You’ll rarely (relative to SF) see a homeless person, or graffiti, and you can walk every street in Denver without slipping on a shard of glass from a broken car window. On the last day of my trip I left my luggage completely visible in my car for a few hours in downtown Denver, without worrying if it would be there when I returned.
There are no cable cars to the stars here, or manicured urban spaces that can match Golden Gate Park. No Chinatowns, no Japan Towns, no beaches and no redwood groves. Can you name a movie that takes place in Denver? Me neither. There will not be a dozen dim sum spots to choose from within a mile of your house. But neither will you have to endure SF’s grinding, unavoidable street crime. Or its wasteful, misguided local government.
Does Colorado have better governance?
SF residents are subject to a 1-2 punch of bananas city and state governance. At the city level, billions are funneled to corrupt non-profits, while cash payments to the homeless ensure the world’s junkies concentrate here. The results are predictable. In a recent “best cities to live” survey, SF came in at 151st place…out of 151 cities.
At the state level, ridiculous laws like Prop 47, which make retail theft consequence-free, result in security guards and plexiglass covered merchandise in many retail stores. The latest insult from Sacramento? An equity tax on electricity, even for those who conserve.
Both SF and CA are moving forward with “reparations” schemes for real or imagined injuries caused to black citizens. SF’s is projected to cost $100B, while’s CA’s current proposal is $800B. Your share may be a year’s salary.
Ready for sunny Colorado yet?
The nice thing about moderate politics at the state level, as Colorado has, is that you can live anywhere on the political spectrum. If you’re looking for high tax progressivism, choose Boulder. If you’re more moderate, head a few miles south to Golden.
All that said, there are reasons for concern in Colorado. Denver, for example, pursued progressive criminal justice policies over the past few years, moving the bad guys from jails to the streets by ending cash bail and limiting arrests. The results were just as you’d expect - Colorado now has the 2nd highest property crime rates of any state.
Then why did I leave my bags in my car in Denver all day? I know better than to trust crime statistics. Denver’s stats are high because they report the kind of things - graffiti, shoplifting, stolen bikes - that most SF residents don’t bother to contact our vastly undermanned police force about. It won’t take an SF resident more than an hour in Denver to realize the level of addiction and street misery is nowhere near as pervasive as in SF.
Finally, I can’t tell you if Colorado uses its tax revenues in corrupt ways, but they sure have a lot less raw material to work with.
For example, SF’s budget is $14B, with a $5B general fund. Denver has a $3.76B budget, and that’s after a recent 10% increase. Colorado Springs’ (population 500k) general fund in 2023 will be $420M. Denver has a generous $54M budget for its excellent library system. SF’s is $165M.
In 2022, Colorado lowered its income tax rate from 4.55% to 4.40%, deciding they had more than enough money to fund their state. CA’s last tax change was to raise its top rate to 12.3%, with more increases probably on the way.
Conclusion
If your career is tied to Silicon Valley tech, you may well want to stick to SF. There’s a mix of money, brains, and risk taking innovation here that exists nowhere else. The wealth it generates can, to some extent, overcome our poor governance and street conditions.
Or, if you’re a junkie who’s chosen drugs over work, SF is your city. The mix of services, easy drugs, and cash payments showered on you there has no parallel anywhere, much less Colorado, where able bodied people are generally expected to work.
Everyone else, however, should consider spending a few days in the Centennial State. Rent a car and see the sights like I did. Breathe the mountain air, and feel the urban paranoia melt away. If you like what you see, or rather, how you feel, it may be time for a change.
IRS migration data shows about 3x as many people (measured by tax return address) moved from SF to Denver as from Denver to SF in 2021.
Well written. I enjoyed the comparisons......