Denver's rents are high because the city has very, very strict zoning which severely limited supply because the leftists wanted their home values to be very high.
Denver like many leftist cities is in this inflationary cycle. Where inflation and rents skyrocketing, causes minimum wages to increase by a high percentage year after year but because it's so expensive, the minimum wage increases are absorbed by rising rents and higher health insurance costs.
They can raise the minimum wage all they want in Denver but when the average 1 bedroom rent is $1820 and average 3 bedroom is $2,925 it means very little if someone has rent to pay.
Also, these very high minimum wage cause the "Affordable Care Subsidy" to decrease, which means much higher health insurance costs with each minimium wage increase.
I was Denver in few months ago and noticed that a vast majority of the retail is very well-capitalized businesses that are on the stock exchange and very few locally owned retail establishments for a city of it's size.
The minimum wage when mandatory sick pay is included will be $18.90 in Denver which is around $39,000 before tax but after tax it's around $29,000
https://www.denver7.com/news/local-n...economist-says