Where Do the Monarchs Go?

The Man on the Hill

He was almost 80, with a butterfly farm in Topanga, California. His family had lived in Los Angeles for decades. He knew the hills the way people only know a place when they've watched it change.

On a hike together, he stopped at the top of a ridge, looked out across the hills, and said something quiet and devastating.

He wasn't angry. He was literate. He could name what had disappeared and when and why. That's a rare and valuable thing.

California, he said, was built on entertainment. A transient industry for a transient population. It scaled fast — faster than anyone stopped to ask what was already there. Nobody pulled out the native plants out of malice. They just built something at speed, and the monarchs found nothing to stop for.

And now the people are leaving. Not all of them — but enough. Chasing lower costs, more space, a different kind of life. And some of them are landing in Colorado Springs.

This story is about what happens when a place doesn't pay attention to its own corridor. And what you can do before the monarchs stop coming.

It's Not About Where People Are From. It's About What They Expect.

Let's be honest about something: people moving to Colorado Springs come from everywhere. Texas. The Midwest. The Southeast. Other military rotations from bases across the country — from San Diego, from the DC corridor, from bases in high-cost states where rent ate half their paycheck.

The California story is real as a metaphor. As a demographic claim, it's incomplete. There's no clean data that says Californians specifically are the dominant driver of price pressure here. What is true — and this is the part that matters — is the pattern that the man on the hill was describing.

The specific driver of that demand pressure that nobody talks about enough? The military.

What Is BAH, and Why Does It Matter?

BAH stands for Basic Allowance for Housing. It is a monthly cash payment the military gives service members to cover off-base rent. The amount varies by rank and whether you have dependents — and here is the critical detail: it is set based on what the local rental market actually charges.

The military doesn't assign service members to specific apartments. It hands them money and says go find something. So 45,000 people — rotating in and out every 2 to 4 years, none of them planning to stay, all of them needing housing immediately — are independently competing in the same rental market as everyone else who actually lives here.

That is a structural feature of this city. It was not designed. It was not planned. It just is. And it shapes everything downstream.

The Data That Doesn't Exist

Here is what you can actually find out, right now, with public information:

That right column is not a technical limitation. Some cities collect and publish this. Apartment industry trade groups collect it privately — and sell it to developers. The data exists somewhere. It is just not in public hands in Colorado Springs.

So when someone at a BOCC meeting says there's a housing shortage — they might be right. When someone says we're overbuilding — they might be right. When someone says public money is being well-spent on affordable units — they might be right. None of them can prove it. Because the one number that would answer all of those questions — what percentage of housing is actually occupied right now — is not tracked publicly.

Everyone is moving pieces. Nobody can see the board. And the question worth asking — the uncomfortable one — is who benefits from the board staying invisible. Because the absence of this data is not an accident. It is a choice. And choices have choosers.

The Room Where Decisions Get Made — and Who's In It

While the data stays invisible, some things are very visible. The names on the agenda. The consultants in the room. The commissioners who left and came back wearing different hats.

The District 2 lineage alone is instructive. Amy Lathen left her commissioner seat six months early to run a PAC. Mark Waller came in from the state legislature and is now a consultant. Carrie Geitner is the current Chair. Three consecutive commissioners, all from overlapping civic networks, all of whom moved fluidly between public authority and private influence.

Cami Bremer, District 5, collected roughly $300,000 across her commissioner salary and her incoming CEO role at Pikes Peak United Way during her transition period — before resigning in January 2025. Lauren Nelson, a former school board member and food scientist, was appointed to fill the vacancy and is now Vice Chair.

None of this is illegal. None of it is unusual in local government anywhere. But it is the structure of the room where housing decisions get made. Knowing who walks in, and what they were before they got there, is how you understand why certain questions never get asked.

You Are Not Helpless. You're Just Getting Started.

The man on the hill in Topanga wasn't helpless. He had a butterfly farm. He was doing what he could, in the space he had, with what he understood. He couldn't bring the monarchs back. But he could name what was lost — and he could tell the right person on a hike.

Literacy is the first action. You don't have to save the whole corridor. You just have to know which plant to keep.

Pick your level of involvement:

Questions You Can Ask Tonight

These are the distillation of three hours of research into the questions that, when asked in a recorded public meeting, force the right kind of accountability. Pick one. You don't need to know the answer. You need the answer — or the absence of one — on record.

Tap any question to copy it to your clipboard.

The Rooms Where It Actually Gets Decided

These are the public bodies in El Paso County and Colorado Springs where housing, zoning, and development decisions are made. All of them have public comment periods. All of them are recorded. All of them are open to you — and most of the time, nearly empty.

Send Us What You Find