YIMBY Denver

It’s game day here in the Mile High City, with Denver trying to bounce back after a tough loss to Seattle last week. Let’s see how the cities stack up against each other. #HOUvsDEN

https://twitter.com/Broncos/status/1571504566285246465

The Fundamentals

How do these cities stack up against each other?

Production

As always, let’s look at the record for building housing. Houston comes in with one of the best records in the country over the past couple of decades. Every city should look to the dynasty they’ve created here, just world-class performance.

Rent

How about those rents? All that homebuilding means people can afford to live in Houston.

Ownership

Home prices aren’t much better. Denver’s in a desperate situation this week.

The fundamentals favor Houston, so let’s see how they got here!

How We Got Here

Houston very famously has some of the fewest prohibitions for building new housing in the US. Houston is interesting, diverse, affordable, and delightful, and that all starts from legalized housing: https://marketurbanism.com/2022/03/14/houston-impressions/

That also means they have drastically reduced homelessness. In fact, Denver’s politicians just took a trip to learn what Houston’s doing right: https://www.denverpost.com/2022/09/13/aurora-houston-housing-first-homelessness/

The Wildcards

First, YIMBY Denver is bringing in Houston the cat, a key special teams player. Houston was scouted by our member Erik B and dreams of a Denver that has less burdensome zoning rules and more affordable housing. Plus, he's adorable.

Denver also has superior beer, no humidity, snow, mountains, and Casa Bonita (whenever it reopens). We haven’t sprawled as much as Houston, giving us more opportunity for infill: https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/10/05/rapid-urbanization-houston-how-it-happened-flooding-climate-change

Finally, YIMBYs Denver has been racking up political win after political win. With an election early next year, don’t count this city out.