Colorado Springs is facing a widening gap between the supply of rental housing and the needs of its growing workforce, according to a Pikes Peak Housing Network leader writing in the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Although there has been significant rental housing development over the past few years in El Paso County, the apartment vacancy rate declined from 8.23% at the end of 2025 to 6.57% at the end of the second quarter of 2026. Over the same period, average rents increased by $30, bringing the typical one-bedroom apartment to $1,440 per month.

Those trends reflect a significant and growing need for rental housing that provides safe homes for the city's expanding younger workforce and for seniors who want to downsize. Younger residents — described as teachers, frontline workers, military personnel, and others just starting out — are struggling to find housing they can afford, as housing prices continue to rise far faster than incomes and the city is not building enough of the housing types these individuals and families can afford.

The Pikes Peak Housing Network argues that city leaders should focus land use priorities and decisions toward the development of rental housing and lower-priced homes such as townhouses and starter homes, as these types are more affordable for residents who are just building their lives. City Council, acting as the city's representative government, holds the responsibility of determining how Colorado Springs grows to meet the needs of all residents while remaining fiscally sustainable, vibrant, and safe.

An increasing number of residents, however, oppose the development of these housing types near their homes and schools, viewing them as undesirable, unsafe, a drain on resources such as schools and parks, and a burden on roadways. The network contends that this opposition to rental housing development is harming the younger workforce and the city's own children.

Advocates say prospective future residents have no voice in housing development decisions, but if they did, they would describe themselves as simply trying to build their lives — learning a trade, working toward higher salaries, paying off student loans, and assembling the necessary pieces before purchasing a home.

The network argues that for Colorado Springs to truly thrive, residents and officials must support housing needed for all citizens — not only those who can afford a single-family home — and must move past what it calls harmful and inaccurate rhetoric suggesting that rental housing will damage neighborhoods.

Whether the City Council will act on those recommendations, and how the region's vacancy rate and rent levels move in the quarters ahead, remains to be seen.