YIMBY Denver

It’s gonna be a barn-burner this week, as some horses host some other horses! (Editor’s note: We will never apologize for our bad puns.) Week 5 is here, and the Broncos host the Colts.

These cities obviously have a lot of shared history, as Indiana’s most famous resident, your blog author himself, eventually moved to Denver. We’ll also note that Peyton Manning moved from Indy to Denver around the same time as your blog author. Let’s look at this matchup! #INDvsDEN

https://twitter.com/Broncos/status/1578039878805168128?s=20

The Fundamentals

How do these cities stack up against each other? How’s their housing production? Do they play a successful defense against NIMBYs? Are they meeting the affordability needs of everyone?

Inventory

We use the Federal Reserve Economic Database to easily compare cities. It’s a great source for one-stop data shopping, but it doesn’t have the same type of data for every area. Instead of looking at housing production, we’ll look at what’s for sale and how many residents there are.

The Denver metro is 50% larger than the Indy metro. There certainly aren’t 50% more homes available at any one time. Denver’s a tight market, and that drives up prices.

Ownership

Home prices? Indianapolis consistently is ranked as a great place to raise a family. The less people are spending on housing, the more they can afford the other costs of life.

How We Got Here

It’s said that there are two housing crises in the US. Denver suffers from a crisis of abundance right now – we can’t build enough homes. Other cities suffer from a crisis of abandonment. Indianapolis has cycled through different booms and busts. That makes housing more affordable, but also presents challenges along the way.

We quote from the Chicago urbanist Pete Saunders at Corner Side Yard: