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DENVER (KDVR) — Recent market numbers prove recent studies that list the Denver metro as being among the nation’s least affordable.

The Colorado state legislature is in the process of rolling out $400 million of programs to address a statewide housing crisis.

The state created an Affordable Housing Transformational Task Force to study the problem. The task force’s resulting recommendation was blunt: Coloradans are on thin ice unless they’re relatively wealthy.

“Middle-income families can no longer afford to buy or rent a home,” the report reads. “A convergence of factors have come together, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, to create more affordability challenges for middle-income households (60-120% of an area’s median income, or AMI).”

Only one in seven homes in the Denver metro fall into these income ranges.

Depending on the income range and household size, middle-income earners can afford payments anywhere between $826 and $1,888 without spending more than the recommended 30% of take-home pay on housing.

For home rentals, this put most middle-income earners in a bind, as the most recent average rental price for a Denver one-bedroom is $1,879.

For home purchases, it puts most homes out of range.

About 15% of the single-family homes and condos in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metro have prices at or below $399,999, according to the most recent market trends report from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.

There is a higher concentration of affordable homes for middle earners in the condo/townhome market, but it is still a minority of those homes that fall into the affordable range. Roughly one in three condos have prices beneath $400,000.