Places to live in Colorado? Looking for (fairly) cheap rent and CNA work.

Eric Carlos wrote: Slightly outdated but here is just one source. Spend 5 minutes using google and you will find dozens. washingtonpost.com/news/won…

You said many sources suggest colorados population growth is due to weed. Nothing in that article suggests that Colorado's population growth is due to weed.

jason.cre wrote: You said many sources suggest colorados population growth is due to weed. Nothing in that article suggests that Colorado's population growth is due to weed.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/legal-marijuana-drawing-homeless-to-colorado/

Don't you all get tired of arguing on the internet about 1) facts that can be looked up readily using the internet and 2) subjective matters of taste and background?

PS - Denver sucks

Bill Kirby wrote: cbsnews.com/news/legal-mari…

Thanks Bill. I see the articles about monthly on either the local news stations, or in local publications, but am too lazy to look it up to argue with someone on the internet. Plus having lived in CO since 2007 (except when I am away in my van) I see firsthand what is going on.

http://www.ibtimes.com/marijuana-legalization-colorado-how-recreational-weed-attracting-people-spiking-2374204

http://www.imfromdenver.com/according-to-a-new-survey-4-out-of-every-5-people-move-to-colorado-for-marijuana/

Survey says 80% of new residents move to CO for weed.

https://www.coloradopotguide.com/colorado-marijuana-blog/2015/november/29/the-impact-of-marijuana-legalization-on-the-colorado-real-estate-market/

You dont need a survey. Just move to the front range and you can live it

Front range climbing - line up bud

SLC - whole cliffs to yourself

vwall wrote:Denver is historically a boom and bust town, so maybe it will bust again

Rick Blair wrote:It will definitely bust again, unless the last 150 years are wrong and the sunny happy real estate agents are correct..... Like they weren't around 2006-2007 when they were telling everyone their investment could not lose.

Not saying that home prices can't fall but in the 2006-2009 downturn Denver home prices were a lot more stable than the national average. From peak to trough the Denver market was down 10-15% versus about 30% for the Case-Shiller composite (and 60% for Las Vegas). And in percentage terms the run-up since 2012 has been about the same in Denver as in other markets.

Source data here: us.spindices.com/indices/re…

Dan Cooksey wrote:Colorado Springs. Cheap rent, smaller city, plenty of climbing in town and near by, 2 hospital systems. The only problem is between the military community, evangelists, and rednecks the culture is a little weird. Doesn't bother me, but others hate it.

It's not bad here, actually. We have awesome microbreweries, a Goth club (Sunday nights) that is good, and a few cool freak bars. If you stay away from the Tejon Street scene and Academy, you'll avoid 99.9% of the crap.

If you live on the West Side like I do, you can literally run up to trailheads and hike for dozens of miles in the foothills of Pikes Peak. It's nowhere near as crowded and expensive as Denver, although I would live in Denver again in a heartbeat. You are also closer to Shelf Road and some other stuff in the area I'll tell you about when you move here (Wizards only, fools! Keep it tight).

grog m wrote: Front range climbing - line up bud

I've lived in Boulder for 4 years now and I'm still to wait in this line everyone is talking about. I don't do sport much, so I might be wrong.

Fehim Hasecic wrote: I've lived in Boulder for 4 years now and I'm still to wait in this line everyone is talking about. I don't do sport much, so I might be wrong.

Pretty much. When I climbed in the area a lot, we just moved around and tried new routes. The so-called classics eventually freed up and we then ticked those routes as well.

Hey stich-- have you been to Cerberus yet ? Great new brew pub

If you cant find open climbs around boulder, either your timing is really bad or you are unwilling to walk more than 10 minutes.

Rick Blair wrote:If you cant find open climbs around boulder, either your timing is really bad or you are unwilling to walk more than 10 minutes.

Agreed. I lived in Golden from 2012-2014, and out of hundreds of climbing days I can only think of maybe two instances where crowds negatively affected my climbing day. There were many, many more days of having a great wall to ourselves on a sunny Saturday in October. Like anywhere, 80% of the climbers are on 20% of the routes.

JCM wrote: Agreed. I lived in Golden from 2012-2014, and out of hundreds of climbing days I can only think of maybe two instances where crowds negatively affected my climbing day. There were many, many more days of having a great wall to ourselves on a sunny Saturday in October. Like anywhere, 80% of the climbers are on 20% of the routes.

There's definitely climbs that you can almost always expect a lineup on the weekend. Rewritten and BC in particular. But yes, on Mountain Project there is 4500 routes listed for Boulder another 1500 in Golden. That's just what is available after work if you live on the front range. So unless you need to tick that 5.7 classic at 10am on a saturday (or are going to a beginner area like N Table, E Colfax) there are plenty of opportunities out there. Driving another hour will open up thousands of more routes.

Eric Carlos wrote:http://www.imfromdenver.com/according-to-a-new-survey-4-out-of-every-5-people-move-to-colorado-for-marijuana/ Survey says 80% of new residents move to CO for weed. coloradopotguide.com/colora…

Using a pot guide as your source?

I'm not saying people aren't moving there just for weed, but the majority of those articles posted are really talking about a spike in the homeless population because of it, which I kind of find ironic. I wouldn't cite any of those surveys posted (including Bill's) to support your theory if I were writing a paper in a high school economics class.
But hey, back to the OP. Healthcare workers don't make nearly the money you can in other states. If you want to live in CO, great, but there are just as many pro's and cons to live there as anywhere else. Take a road trip and drive around, find somewhere you enjoy being and go for it.
My advice is to find some place you want to be for the first couple of years out of nursing school, where you'll want to work as an RN. You'll make a lot of contacts in school and through working as a CNA. You'll find that as an RN, it's not necessarily the experience you have, but who you know when it comes to getting a job.

The southwest part of Colorado is legit. Good Climbing, easy access to mountains and desert, and probably the most visually stimulating part of the state. Durango is cool but super pricey, as are all the resort/college towns. I'd check out nearing towns; Dolores, Cortez, Norwood, all offer affordable housing. Problem being you got to commute to work.

Forget salt lake. Mormons are knocking your door down like every day. The good weed is like $10-15/ gram. You have to make lots of tedious decisions if you live in SLC:
whether to climb on quartzite, or granite, or conglomerate, or limestone, or random weird choss (my personal favorite). Do I want to deal with dogs at the climbing area or not. Multi pitch or single pitch? Trad or sport?

Decisions decisions. You have to decide whether to cross country ski or downhill ski (this opened a whole 'nother Can of worms. Tall and steep at snowbird, fancy hamburgers and epic groomers at deer valley, kid trails and side country booters at Brighton, uncrowded pow at Solitude, get your snobby snowboard hate on and traverse around Alta and repeatedly listen to grey hairs explain how the sound of snowboards scare them after they bitch how they scrape the snow off the mountain, huge park and pipe at park city, top to bottoms all day via the "ganjolas" at snowbasin, or to make short hikes to long fresh runs at powder mountain. In spring, should I mountain bike or ski or climb. . . Or ski in the morning and golf or mountain bike or climb in the afternoon.

Should I go flyfishing in June or go make some turns at snowbird? Should I camp after work and be not have to miss work tomorrow or should I just take tomorrow off? You have to choose to have a hybrid or a gas guzzler because you'll rarely need more than a gallon of gas to get anywhere. The choice of hundreds of good ethnic food restaurants is so overwhelming, you almost want to bag it and just drown your sorrows at one of the dozen craft brewers in town. Definitely don't look at SLC, you may end up sitting at home just trying to decide what to do. But, there's only three hospital systems to choose from. Denver is where it's at.

If you pick SLC, live above the inversion layer. SLC, Provo, Orem, and Logan are in the top 10 worst cities for short term particulate pollution.

Better to be a resperitory therapist in SLC