The cost of housing has soared in our state in recent years, outpacing income growth and making it especially challenging for lower-wage earners and younger, entry-level workers to afford rent. Buying a place of their own is an even taller task for many.

It all has led to much public debate and, inevitably, hyperventilation by politicians pledging to solve what they have dubbed an affordable-housing “crisis.” The panic also has led to a lot of misfires by policymakers.

Among those are proposals that would put the squeeze on providers of rental housing, presuming them to have bottomless pockets. Rent control is an example. There also have been various policy prescriptions making it harder to evict tenants. Some of these, notably rent control, haven’t made it into law so far. That’s a good thing because they would backfire on the very renters they purport to help. They would chill investment in the construction of new rental units and the upkeep of existing ones.

Another offensive launched in the name of affordable housing is a crusade by Gov. Jared Polis and his fellow ruling Democrats in the legislature to force density zoning — more people crammed into less space — on Colorado’s cities. State-imposed changes to local zoning codes, pushed through the legislature by Polis, micromanage matters ranging from the number of housing units per parcel to parking spaces per residence.

The governor’s density agenda not only seems far-fetched as a means of lowering housing costs but also blatantly tramples Colorado’s constitutional and statutory guarantees of local control over zoning. No wonder six Colorado cities have gone to court to stop it.

All that overreach cries out for some perspective.

For starters, our state’s housing crunch appears to be easing somewhat. As our news affiliate Colorado Politics reported last week, Colorado’s housing supply is on the upswing after having reached its worst point in 2019.

The State Demography Office estimates that about 106,000 housing units were needed as of 2023 — the most recent year in which data was available — to overcome the state’s housing shortfall. That’s down from 2019’s shortfall of about 140,000 units. The office attributes the increase in available housing to slowed population growth and a jump in home construction.

It’s encouraging news, of course, though it’s tempered by the fact that the rising housing costs continue to outstrip income growth. And higher mortgage interest rates still put housing out of reach for too many.

Colorado is one of the nation’s costlier states for housing, and its metropolitan areas are among the nation’s pricier if you exclude coastal metro areas. But more nuanced comparisons with other states and cities lend further perspective to Colorado’s housing market.

Our state’s cost-to-income ratio for 2025, according to constructioncoverage.com, is eighth highest among the states. Colorado’s median home price is 5.9 times higher than the state’s median income. That’s considerably lower than No. 1 Hawaii’s 8.8 or No. 2 California’s 8.2. It’s also lower than No. 3 Montana’s 6.4 and even No. 7 Idaho’s 6.1. And states that are more affordable than Colorado are arguably only marginally better. No. 10 Nevada is 5.8, and No. 11 Utah is 5.6. Meanwhile among large cities, Denver ranks 12th, and Colorado Springs doesn’t even break into the nation’s 15 most expensive midsized cities for cost-to-income ratio.

Housing economists will point out housing costing five times median income or higher is too steep for a lot of Americans. But Colorado is hardly alone.

Does that constitute a crisis? We’ll leave the semantics to politicians — but we’d urge them not to employ policies that only stand to make a crisis worse.