In the '80s, when construction loans were easy to obtain, builders erected entire tracts of homes in anticipation of a population boom. When the economy slumped, buyers never came and builders were stuck with scores of empty houses. The evidence is in census numbers released today, which show El Paso County had 8,000 fewer empty homes in 2000 than it had in 1990. That was after building 37,000 housing units during the decade. Colorado Springs built more new housing units than any city in the state in that time.
Inventory remains tight.
Hinton constructs only 14 to 18 homes a year. More than 8,000 Vietnamese came to Colorado during the decade, most of them settling in the Denver area, census data show. Nearly as many Asian Indians came to the state, and one of every five came to Colorado Springs, increasing the city's Asian Indian population more than sixfold to about 1,700. Colorado Springs had the state's fastest-growing Filipino population, which grew by 80 percent to more than 1,600 people. More than a quarter of the state's Filipinos live in El Paso County.