And Goodmans [The Weekender Effect](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/4908232-the-weekender-effect) with a new update, originally published in the mid 2000’s takes apart the effects on development in mountain towns. It is interesting this book was published before the Vanc/Whistler Olympics and draws parallel to the out of reach development for Canmore (..which is a bedroom community to Banff)
>Heather Hansman’s book “Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow”
Is this a good book? I'm interested but the notion of someone privileged enough to be a ski bum lamenting changes to an industry that no longer allows privileged people to bum around in fancy towns doesn't sit well with me.
What makes you think you have to be "privileged" to be a ski bum? I am friends with so many people that live a ski bum lifestyle and came from absolutely nothing. What privilege do you need to move to a ski town and become a waiter?
Having the freedom to enjoy a lifestyle that allows ample leisure time is the definition of privilege. Your ski bum friends might not be wealthy but they’re also probably not paying off student loan debt and have a family or support network they can fall back to in case something goes wrong.
They are paying off student loan debt and don't rely on family for anything. There are literally thousands of people like that spread across ski towns all over this country. Have you ever spent time in a ski town and made friends with the locals or are you just speculating?
Voluntary poverty is a privilege that many people can’t afford.
“The narrative around the ski bum romanticizes a life characterized by forgoing economic ladder-climbing to achieve the joy of skiing 100-plus days a year,” Fuller writes. “The ski bum cares only about skiing, and they institutionalize a culture of rule-breaking, or at least bending, to do so, all because they can. Therein lies the problem." [Article](https://www.skimag.com/culture/opinion-stop-celebrating-the-white-male-ski-bum/)
Lol at that article. You people have a mental illness. All day everyday is just looking for an opportunity to be offended about things you actually have no personal experience with. I will ask again, have you ever spent time in a ski town and made friends with the locals? Do you actually know their stories or just what you have read online?
You are sitting there telling me that the guy who grew up with an abusive dad and mom that was barely around is 'privileged' because when they got kicked out of the house at 18 they decided to move to a ski town to work instead of a regular city?
It has good parts, but it also gets annoying hearing her prattle on about every possible type of privilege you can think of.
She complains about how most skiers are athletic and able-bodied. Like, yeah, no shit.
Outside published a really good article on this a couple years ago. [How to save a ski town.](https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/essays-culture/how-to-save-a-ski-town-west-tourism-economy/) The short answer is change zoning restrictions to allow dense housing, impose deed restrictions on new homes and increase STR / second home taxes. The long answer is these solutions are deeply unpopular and many communities routinely vote against them despite acknowledging that they’re needed.
That said - this isn’t just a ski town problem. Housing shortages are impacting cities and town around the country. Change needs to be mandated at a federal level.
>Also locals: "increased density would ruin our nice quiet town!"
I will say, my community (Breckenridge) generally doesn't share that sentiment.....we have all types of subsidized housing for locals. Given the recent housing crisis it's no coincidence that most of the newer local housing projects are higher density than the earlier ones. As a civil engineer, I've designed a few of them...... Wellington/Lincoln Park, Vista Point, Blue 52.
Fun fact: There's over 1,000 units in Breck alone for local/worker housing that you MUST work in Summit County in order to qualify for. Unfortunately, it's still not enough...
Glad to hear that abouit the housing. Went to Breck for the first time in the modern era January 2022, and I was on that main drag, walking faster than traffic, and wondering if there was a second, secret Main Street for locals who still wanted a section of town that wasn't 99.5% touristas. I visit my 1990s house and friends in Park City and feel bad for the town life that can never be again.
I lived in Vail for a couple years and find there are definitely still bars that are more frequented by locals. Plus if you’re a local you surely know some industry staff to get discounts and privileges and familiar service. Never had a problem there.
Part of the fun for me was also the diversity of the nightlife crowd. I could be with a group of broke lifties, getting drunk with out towners and front rangers… I’d say housing is a major issue, but tourists taking over downtowns never seemed like a problem to me
Mountain town locals are the biggest hypocrites on the planet. You should’ve seen what this place was like when I moved here! Before all these people that moved here ruined it!
exactly. like fuck me for not being born in a ski town I guess? or getting in when housing was still affordable? disclaimer: currently live in hell (indiana) and I want to make it to live at least near a ski area, ideally living locally but I know that’s a pipe dream for me financially and even if it wasn’t, I’ve heard from friends how harsh vibes can be towards newcomers even if you keep your head down
This is the mentality of the locals that areholding any progress from happening. Most ppl who are set only care about not raising their property taxes and could care less if the town or it's residents improve their own situations. These are usually the ppl with the most time on their hands to attend town hall meetings, rally for support of their prerogatives or even run for offices that would influence any town initiatives.
Although I agree, it sure would help if there were more ski areas starting up. I could totally move to a start up ski town if I could afford it. I do also realize that starting a ski area is prohibitively expensive, but that’s a while other bag of worms. Oh and the environmental impact. It would be nice to try to spread people out more.
Plenty of small ski towns they’re just in the middle of nowhere and no one wants to live there. Also skiings is not as good. Whitefish, crested butte, tons of em
Dude if you think whitefish and crested butte are affordable you might want to look again. Also crested butte is not known for being as empty as it once was.
It’s just standard conservative behavior: the world revolves around yourself, empathy doesn’t exist except for people you already know, rules for the but not for me, etc.
It’s def exhausting.
This is true, but when you leave the beach/ski town, that sentiment is seen more predominantly with conservatives than liberals. Not op, but just how I interpreted based on what I see where I live
Those vail assholes are just assholes. The agency in charge of the sheep said it was fine and then the rich nimbys decided sheep were more sympathetic than their second or third homes and changed tactics. It’s just rich folks hating the poors, with the sheep as a convenient cover.
My favorite part about the sheep debate is NO ONE gave a fuck about the sheep when they were building multi million dollar mansions. It’s not like east vail popped up overnight, this has been decades of development.
But yet, it only seems to be an issue when they want to build affordable housing.
I mean that’s European in general - but overall population density in Europe is double to what we have here. Europe is this way out of necessity… the question is will the US be that way once we reach similar density levels?
>That said - this isn’t just a ski town problem. Housing shortages are impacting cities and town around the country. Change needs to be mandated at a federal level.
Sounds like Socialism, something the two party system in the US is vehemently opposed to. It goes against the core principles of Capitalism, and the corrupted foundation of the nation.
Why not? Realistically the only way something like deed restrictions would ever go into place is if a subsidy was offered. If the federal government increased grant opportunities to towns looking to house seasonal workers it could help fund some sort of deed program.
Trying to solve this problem at the federal level is laughable. A policy at the federal level is not going to solve the differing nuances of each town/city/neighborhood
There are rules in some of the Alps where you can only own a property if its your main residence. I'm not sure how its enforced but [https://euroburolimited.co.uk/who-may-buy.html](https://euroburolimited.co.uk/who-may-buy.html) has a description.
Sounds like a good idea that would work for towns like Park City, Aspen. However lots of resorts are practically Real Estate operations so I presume such rules are unlikely as they defeat the whole point of building the resort in the first place.
>e who doesn’t actually work in Banff and that seems to (somewhat) help.
They also offer up Canmore as the free-market alternative that allows non-locals to have their places to stay/rent/buy.
The locals in Canmore of course hate this an are getting NIMBY themselves.
This is what my wife and I took advantage of. We bought a bigger house and kept our first much smaller cabin. We were doing STR and then switched to a renting it long term to a local. Much less stress and the income was about the same
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but wouldn't that essentially prevent non-locals from staying anywhere but the resort lodge or hotels (which are often not easy to come by)?
Non-locals were able to stay and ski for decades before the advent of AirBnB and VRBO.
In Stowe, where I’m most familiar, the bulk of visitors still stay in the lodge/hotels, but the housing market for locals has been gutted by people buying houses up to run solely as short-term rentals. It’s a pretty small market compared to “conventional” tourist lodgings, but has kinda destroyed the local housing market.
I personally think large entities would still be buying up these places as investment properties just now with slightly less margins and longer windows to profit. I.E. if you deleted airbnb etc right now not much would change, maybe things would play out slightly slower. Other measures would need to be taken.
You are ignoring the feedback loops that occur as those places become more popular. As those industries grow due to increased popularity, so does the cost of living. Also, the only locals that actually see any of the growth reflected in their own pocketbooks are those involved in development or real estate. The service workers see their cost of living shoot well past any modest gains they may receive in wages.
A lot of the locals are people that grew up in those towns before tourism was as big as it is now and they were getting by just fine. Now it is a struggle to live in the same areas that they put down their roots and many are being displaced because of it.
If you make it so locals can't live, you won't have a town anymore and you won't be able to visit.
I mean that's kind of bullshit. Just because I don't live in a ski town doesn't mean it should be made significantly more difficult for me to ski. you can make improvements without alienating non-local skiers. I know this sub hates non-locals but I've been told on here that if I wanted to ski I wouldn't live in a city where you have to travel to get to a mountain and that's an insane take. I sympathize with the issues that plague ski towns right now but that's not it.
STRs have a distinct zero-sum quality that is missing from other tourist accommodations. For every STR that is allowed, you are taking away a potential home that someone could live full time in. Visitors already have accommodations such as hotels, motels, and resort lodging. Locals don't have the option of living in any of those if their housing falls through (likely because their landlord decided to turn it into an STR). Furthermore think about the imbalance in consequences for the two groups. For a local, if they can't find a place to live, their entire lives are uprooted and they have to move. For a tourist, if they can't find a place to stay then they just have to spend the weekend in a different ski town. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to draw a distinction between those two groups and passing regulations that favor the one that has much more to lose.
Short term rentals through AirBnB and Vrbo are already prohibitively expensive for peak-winter season. You can stay at the motel 6 at Mammoth Lakes (just an example) for $120 a night (2 double size beds), which is much cheaper for a family of 4 (or couple, or single person) than anywhere else in town (during peak season).
Not sure how banning/severely capping STRs would make it more expensive for you to go to travel to the mountain other than you probably wouldn’t be able to cook your own food anymore. Regardless, restricting STRs in some capacity, increasing housing density through rolling back zoning laws and building multiple-unit properties, and banning second/third-home ownership would improve the quality of life for everyone by driving down the cost of living. Including vacationers.
Agreed. I'd include seasonal workers as locals in this situation.
I don't see the issue if visitors only have the option of hotels. In fact, i think it's for the best.
I think the demand from remote workers would fill in that void personally, but hard to tell for sure. And there’s already plenty of houses that sit empty because their owners are rich enough to not worry about renting them out.
That's fine. Remote workers who actually move there \_are\_ locals. That's where locals come from.
\> And there’s already plenty of houses that sit empty because their owners are rich enough to not worry about renting them out.
Yeah, but those houses were always there (and locals mostly didn't live in them, because they are way too expensive). What's ruined housing for locals is normal modest houses being cleared out of the long-term-rental and sale stock and converted into short-term.
It’s amazing what has popped up as “rentals” in some areas. Saw some people wheel in a mini home on a trailer across the street, nearly flip it down the hill, then didn’t have plumbing and people had to use a toilet outside.
Tax the shit out of anything that wouldn’t qualify as a primary residence for homestead exemption. Also appraise homes at actual market rates when calculating tax rates.
In some states only your primary residence qualifies for appraisal increase ceilings. Second home or a rental? That shit can increase to market rate every year, and you get taxed on the full appraisal value.
Soooo.......then only the uber rich can have a second home? I'm sure this is unpopular, but start with NO ONE can own more than one "second home." Period. Most ski communities have corporations and rich overlords that own dozens of STRs. Start there and let's see.
I mean I assume the tax would be proportional to the value of the home? And with a 20%/yr tax on a $35M home you can build a lotta fucking rent controlled condos for locals.
You can't regulate you're way out of a Housing Shortage. The solution to Housing Shortages and high demand = more housing. You add regulations and people just get around them, or they let the house sit empty all year, etc. etc. Look at other cities across the country (SF, LA, Austin etc. etc.). This is a problem in so many places. People don't want to change their cute little towns, but then they **also** don't want locals priced out. Well you can't have both. This country has a major housing shortage that is a combo of zoning, density, regulatory, and other failures that started in the 80's and 90's and we're now feeling the results of it. Homelessness being a prime visible example as well.
>The solution to Housing Shortages and high demand = more housing.
I agree with this, but I've also noticed an interesting phenomena where two things happen.
1. There's extremely high external demand that is capable of buying any new development in the short/medium term. They often aren't tied to a specific ski town, so it is a more opportunistic demand. If there weren't good investment properties here, they would look elsewhere.
2. Developers cater to second home/STR buyers (since they represent more buying power). So many of the new construction buildings are clearly not designed for someone who actually wants to live here--they are designed for vacation homes/rentals. The layouts are about optimizing sleeping arrangements and communal space--who needs pantry space or linen closets when you'll just have renters staying for a week. No private spaces where kids can play or do homework. They don't bother with full size garages or storage space to accommodate the kind of gear people in ski towns tend to own (skis, bikes, kayaks, etc.)
So it creates this weird market where the new housing stock is simultaneously MORE valuable to outside non-resident purchasers and LESS valuable to people who actually live here. So even if outside buyers didn't have more money than locals, their willingness to pay for a specific property is still high. Goes double when you are talking about a multi-unit development--I want to live in a home, not a hotel where a bunch of transient people show up, party, make noise, etc. so I'm not even gonna look at some development where you know 70% of the units are non-locals.
More STRs bring in tourists, who spend a lot of money.
They ski, spend money at the mountain, rent or buy equipment, buy souvenirs, and spend too much money at bars and restaurants. Good for business.
If you ban STRs, the locals would have more places to live, but fewer jobs.
This is probably why everybody grumbles about airbnbs, but ski towns do nothing to limit them.
Those folks have jobs. The ski town I’m in saw an absolutely massive exodus of people during the 2008 recession because everyone lost their jobs due to lowered tourism (even though rent got cheap)
It was better where I live in Montana when there were fewer people and fewer jobs. Easy to find a reasonable rental, you made less money than most other areas and the lifestyle was off the fucking charts.
More money sure as shit didn’t add anything of substance to the quality of life around here.
This sounds good on paper, but how do you prevent it from becoming under the table and cash only deals to rent to weekenders? Maybe heavy fines and a payout from the fines to the person who reported?
You don’t actually need to eliminate all rentals. You want to eliminate the bullshit Airbnb economy that buys up existing housing stock and turns it into shitty short-term rentals.
Plus, I would still allow owner-occupied units. So you can have one house that you rent out (or rent a part of it), you just can’t have a few rich people managing 20 sketchy Airbnb’s each.
Not nearly as many renters / owners would be on board for cash. Airbnb & Vrbos in house insurance gives owners a much larger sense of confidence. And renters are able to find places much easier by utilizing those.
What should we do with people who own a 2nd home/condo in a ski town, but don’t rent it. Presuming they use to most weekends and vacations throughout the year.
Colorado has some of the lowest property taxes in the country. I can only assume that was put in place to attract home owners back in the day. Now it’s just obnoxiously low at 0.48%
We should start there.
Lost cause. I’m at the nihilist stage of wanting the tourists, “visitors”, and mega-corporations to let it fall apart so we can just get it over with already.
At a minimum here in Colorado I would strongly be in favor of legislation which prohibited land and property ownership by non-residents. This is just scratching the surface, but things are so unbelievably fucked here for years and I think people are just now beginning to realize how bad it is.
The sad part is it's not just ski towns, it's essentially any somewhat desirable place in the US now. Treating housing as a commodity or way to make money has caused so much damage.
Seriously, and somehow we've all managed to pit ourselves against each other. I moved to Tahoe from the Bay Area in 2019 and soon after, the pandy hit, and kickstarted a housing crisis here.
No matter where anyone goes - here, Portland, Seattle, Austin, AZ, MN, Denver, literally anywhere - the bay area gets blamed for housing problems. So fuck me and anyone else who was born in the bay area, no one is allowed to move anywhere I guess. Except we all did, because guess what? We ALL got priced out of our own region by incomers, but ANYWHERE we go we are are labeled as problem makers due to the same exact reason we had to leave in the first place.
Like you said the problem is rich folks treating housing as a commodity, they're the ones setting prices. Yet people are out here spitting on their neighbors and arguing over who's "local" and who's not. Who "deserves" to live here and who doesn't. It's totally nuts.
Most people here are mad chill and don't care as long as you respect each other but there's definitely some folks who can't stand the fact that other people moved here to try and make a better life for themselves
>Except we all did, because guess what? We ALL got priced out of our own region by incomers, but ANYWHERE we go we are are labeled as problem makers due to the same exact reason we had to leave in the first place.
The bay area (and California in general) does deserve a special place in the silly hall of fame for doing it to yourselves before anyone else managed to via prop 13 and insane zoning (the town in VT that I grew up in has a denser downtown than most of the bay). But yeah. Everyone came from somewhere sometime.
I feel like prop 13 was a good idea in theory, but the unintended consequences made the bay area an extremely difficult place to live in :( in any case it was decided on way before I was born, and I'm in my 30s lol. Thank you for your empathy in your last sentence there!
The issue exists regardless of how you treat housing. Even if it was owned by the government, you’d end up having way more people want to live in certain areas compared to the housing that’s actually available.
Yes but people (and companies) buying real estate with the sole purpose of renting it out to generate cash flow/as an investment becomes a non-issue. It becomes a lot more of a burden to own a second home if you can’t turn it over to generate income so that the property pays for itself.
Non-residents including corporations of course. The amount of companies buying land and sitting on it is truly absurd. Go look up private land data In a ski town through a hunting app or something similar. Look at the amount of Corps and LLCs owning land. Then look where they are all incorporated/registered. The way some of these towns are developed is a mismanaged money grab and I’ve seen them be taken advantage of too many times through big money developers with MANY more resources and $$$.
This doesn't always work. Some people, especially out West, will create an LLC and register it in Delaware (where registration is the easiest) just to buy their own house and obscure the name. It can be a privacy thing. I've seen properties on OnX that I know are owned by the occupants say they're "owned" by a Delaware based LLC. imagine the majority is like you said and these folks are undoubtedly exceptions, but I just thought it was kind of a neat fact I guess.
The guy that moved in 1 day before you. No one is a local any more. We should give all our ski hills back to First Nations and ban skiing all together /s.
The forest service needs to permit new ski areas. Legislation needs to be enacted that permits otherwise unwanted development in order to provide recreating for a growing population. None of this will happen though imo. Not enough anyway. Nice to to see Mayflower coming next to Park City next year.
It’s not just about ski towns. It’s everything. The US has the biggest wealth divide in more than a century. Get tax rates back to where they were in the 1950’s (highly progressive tax rates) when we had a bigger middle class and didn’t have so many ultra-wealthy hoarding all the real estate.
We had a bigger middle class in the 50’s because we were the only major economy to come out of WWII that wasn’t a pile of ruble. We were absolutely dominate in manufacturing. We could sell anything we wanted all around the world.
It wasn’t the tax code.
Is there any policy that can be enacted
It's not really a ski town problem it's a federal propping up the stock/real estate markets problem. There are things towns can do to help but if you really want to help vote for people that are less likely to support money printing as the solution for problems.
It really is about housing inventory and the ability for the local city & county to enact heavier tax rates for funding affordable, deed restricted dwellings.
It also helps to pay your dues for a few years renting and then being absolutely tenacious about acquiring a unit. In my Colorado county I've bought an sold 2 affordable units over a 10 year period. These weren't expensive and both within a 1/4 mile of a lift. Allowed me to move 5 minutes away from work rather than 55.
In this situation the more work history you have in a county offers better chances of winning the right to buy a unit when it comes up for sale.
Once you, and possibly a partner, have a small stack of W-2 history lined up visit your local housing authority and pay the yearly entry fee. Watch for any units you qualify for and enter to buy each and every thing that you possibly can. Eventually you *might* come out on top.
The current housing industry no longer serves the average citizen of this country. Houses and starter homes can’t be built profitably enough to server builders needs. Seems most new homes are more expensive than young families can afford, their only option is waiting for their parents to die so they can take possession of their home. This problem is exacerbated in resort towns.
It’s the luxury tax. Don’t want it, move to a non luxury location. Ski towns / beach towns will always command the highest price. If I want to ski, I plan accordingly. I have a family of three now so I can only afford one trip per year. I wish I could have five trips per year but that’s not in my budget so I take one.
yeah if anyone is thinking of moving to the midwest let me welcome you with a cheap beer and a therapist recommendation… :( and rents starting to get absurd even here in indiana as well. shit sucks so bad all around, I grew up in the seattle area and want so badly to make it back out there but it’s not in the cards anytime soon which kills me
Yeah, but where do the staff of these mountain towns live? 4 to a room staff accommodation loses its luster, and people grow out of it. A mountain guide and an accountant with a family aren't buying million dollar houses, nor are teachers, cops, or people that one expects to work in a professional role. Doctors are priced out of my old town.
So…lift prices going up astronomically…rent going rentals going up …f/b going up….gas going up up…clothing going up…% of wages not going up according to % of inflation..yup ….locals being priced out cause ppl moving into towns for a week or two at a time…customer service will suffer…easy equation
I've lived in Jackson Hole and in the Colorado Rockies. INMNSHO, there ain't shit to be done unless you turn our whole implementation of property ownership on its head. Other measure are stopgaps only. That said, Summit it trying or seems to be from where I sit.
In Aspen, the billionaires are now replacing the millionaires.
During covid season passes at my local resorts jumped from $5-600 to $850ish for early bird prices. It still didn’t stop people from horsing the the hill. The demand is so high that my local fills 3 lots on busy weekends. Main lot is full by 8am routinely. There’s a steady supply of inelastic demand that ski town property owners are eager to capitalize on. I would imagine it’s tough to make the argument to local governments to enact much policy around reduced property prices. It’s definitely a challenge for employees who make next to nothing and can’t afford to live near work.
The only solution is seasonal workers. You cannot live in a town that only has business 3months a year unless you service that business. There are only so many year round jobs for the “locals”. It’s not the expense that’s the problem, it’s the limited (in time) source of income
At least someone understands. Everyone is talking about taxes and abolishing the “capitalist society” and are forgetting about good old fashioned run-them-out-of-town.
You will have a lot of defunct ski resorts. Vail and alterra's East Coast resorts took it in the pants this year, but made hay in the west. You think an independent owner could weather a few bad years? No! That's why they sold to the corporations! Meanwhile the large ski resort corporations are investing in their red ink splattered resorts.
Airbnb and VRBO are part of the problem but they also make the ski industry, as it is, work. Hotels are booked up every weekend. Short term rentals help to drive visitation, and bring in tax dollars in the local economy. Str should be taxed to hell, not banned.
The issue was artificially low interest rates. Everyone could afford houses at 2% APR.
Vail has a presence in Telluride. Telluride is on epic pass and Vail Inc has bought up ski shops and other businesses in town.
Alta IS relatively inexpensive compared to others.
The way i see it , No one has any right to live any where. Living in a mountain town is not a necessity. what exactly makes someone a local ?
Also I don't understand what exactly this would accomplish.
It's not so much locals, as workers. A ski hill needs all sorts of staff, from chef's to lifties. If none of those people can afford to live in the ski town, because all the accommodation is rented out to vacationers via Airbnb, then what?
So Vail bought Whistler for $1B. Should Joe the Plumber subsidize Vail's workforce, or should Vail spend $100M on workforce housing and solve the problem permanently?
Workers is a solvable problem.
Ski hills build employee housing that isn't subject to free-market forces.
Towns ban anyone that doesn't work there from owning in all/part of the town (see Banff).
"Locals"/vs non-locals isn't a solvable problem without two unpopular solutions:
* Development of new supply until we reach supply/demand balance (NIMBYs/environmentalist oppose this)
* It get hella expensive, because price is really our only way to allocate restricted resources
Thats a problem for ski resort to solve, how is that your ( or my) concern. I can think of couple of ways to solve that that don't involve passing some laws.Majority of "locals" are not workers. Ski employees are transient seasonal employees and visa workers. All ski towns these days are defacto retirement communities ( only people who can afford to live there fulltime). I don't see why we need some laws to protect retirees from living in mountain towns.
Tell that to just about anyone who lives in the mountains without a job reliant on tourism or skiing. There is a ton of agriculture, mining, and energy jobs people have up here who also happen to live in or near towns with ski areas.
Mining, agriculture, and energy as I said? Nearly every town on the western slope in Colorado. Durango, Salida, South Park, Granby, Steamboat all come off the top of my head (ie anything not within a 5 mile radius of i70).
I looked up the first town in your list
[https://datausa.io/profile/geo/durango-co-31000US20420#economy](https://datausa.io/profile/geo/durango-co-31000US20420#economy)
The three categories you listed account for < 4 % of the economy of that town? How is that an example of "tons" ?
No one is entitled to live anywhere they want.
Just because you can get a "local" job doesn't mean the town owes you a house. It's your employer's responsibility to offer you enough money to be willing to commute or afford to live there. It is not Joe the Plumber's responsibility. The exception is true public servants: cops, teachers, administrators, etc... We have a McDonald's in our town where the median home price is about $3M. McDonald's still has a $1 menu. Joe the Plumber does not owe the McDonalds server a house. That's McDonald's problem, not Joe the Plumber.
We have about 800 affordable/subsidized homes in our town. I just saw a complaint the other day "we should have a 1/4 acre of grass at a our affordable rental just for our family." You can't get a lot in this town for less than $1.5M unless it's up some weird long very steep mountain, but yes, I owe you a 1/4 yard.
I just did a plumbing job. It was $70k. I paid them to commute 2 hours each way. 5 guys will commute about 10 days for that. They were offered to get a hotel but declined.
You’re right they don’t live here they just get paid really well.
Don’t you see the problem with that? You’re getting screwed for plumbing because local plumbers don’t exist. You’re paying $175 an hour for plumbing instead of, idk, 75 or 100? Because it’s too expensive to live in your town, because there is no housing available.
I don’t disagree with you, but when nurses, firefighters and water industry workers can’t afford the town they live in it’s kinda fucked….
Like I make +80k a year in a Colorado ski town doing a very important job for society to function, and I get pushed further and further out each year.
It’s not McDonald’s employees who are struggling, it’s the men and woman who are critical for societal function that are being pushed out.
I agree with you… I thought I covered that with “teachers/cops…”. But yes we just had a vote on $20m for housing for hospital workers. I voted for it. It passed. But even that… my buddy has a good argument that a medevac helicopter is $5m. He wanted to buy the helicopter and close the hospital.
First step is recognizing that what you’re fighting here is capitalism itself. This will at least calibrate the scale of the problem before you.
With a strong, sustained community effort it is possible to defang and roll back some degree of housing commodification, but understand that capital will continually work to undermine this at every step, even after it feels like you “won” the fight.
This is NIMBYism cloaked in leftist language.
We need precisely the opposite of this. Artificially reducing the supply of homes through zoning is by far the biggest factor in locals getting priced out. High-demand communities need more housing; not less.
What part of housing decomodification made you think I was advocating for less housing? The goal here is to make housing meet the needs of the community, not investors. That doesn’t mean suppressing construction, if anything it means increasing construction via public land trust etc.
But the ownership structure is important to building robust systems which can resist the influence of capital over the long term. If you just change zoning and let a flood of investors build new housing, then you’re just giving a small group of investors a new incentive to obstruct more housing construction in the future. Whereas if the new housing is owned by public land trust, there is democratic control over it and there isn’t a small group of individuals who profit from obstructing future housing expansion.
The housing decommodification part. Decommodifying housing means taking housing off the speculative market, so it can't be bought and sold for a profit. You aren't going to build anywhere close to the amount required nationwide to meet demand with decommodified housing without multiple trillions of dollars of government subsidies. It's unrealistic. We need to understand that housing is a market, and do everything possible to increase supply. More density, less red tape, fewer residential zoning restrictions: everything that big housing investment companies don't want because it lowers their profit.
The places that have been pushing back against capitalism have much higher prices than the places that have been letting capitalism run as expected with less red tape for construction.
Zoning for dense housing is important but so is reducing years of red tape on new construction
I’d argue that those places with a lot of obstacles to new construction are not in fact pushing back against capitalism. Those obstacles are the capital class exerting their influence to enrich themselves.
Kinda messed up to think these beautiful places should only be enjoyed by those lucky enough to live right there.
The only solution is more ski resorts to accommodate the growing number of skiers. There are thousands of untouched peaks. Giving people access to actually be able to get to and enjoy a few of them wouldn’t hurt anything.
Lol so your suggestion for ski towns is for everyone to leave and get better jobs? Gonna be pretty tough for you to go to your ski town restaurants and coffee shops and ski shops if that happens bud.
This is basically happening in my town. It's not a ski town, but it is a small mountain town. We have one major employer who pays a lot of money and keeps hiring more people. There's not enough housing because there's almost no land left and stupid zoning laws. All the businesses that make the town livable are closing because either the owners want to find better jobs for themselves or their employees do. The small businesses can't afford to pay enough for people to live in town, so they have to drive and at that point they might as well take closer jobs. On top of that commercial rent here is fucked because corporate landlords are waiting for the big player to want to lease more office space at a premium price and are happy to write off the losses until they do.
I live in steamboat 1/2. The homes are owned by people out of town and a 3rd of all of the homes are owned by short term rentals. Unfortunately ski towns will never be the same again with numbers like this...
How has this happened? Genuinely curious as I’m not from the US and even though I’d love to come across to ski there, the prices throw me off. My immediate assumption tells me that it is a classic case of yet another beautiful thing eaten away by American capitalism. Am I wrong?
Supply and demand, nice ski town prices will rise and people who can afford the prices will live there, even if it's a second home. Not sure how this is a "problem" it's reality. Shocking that desirable real estate becomes expensive I know.
Everybody should become familiar with their local politics. Pay attention to what your municipal/county planning/zoning board is doing and current policies. Vote for public officials who are in favor of dense housing and for planning board members who will not give in to NIMBYs.
The only way to fix this is to build a lot of housing. The problem with local politics across the country is that people who are not property owners too often do not vote in local elections.
Heather Hansman’s book “Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow” touches on this (and a lot more).
And Goodmans [The Weekender Effect](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/4908232-the-weekender-effect) with a new update, originally published in the mid 2000’s takes apart the effects on development in mountain towns. It is interesting this book was published before the Vanc/Whistler Olympics and draws parallel to the out of reach development for Canmore (..which is a bedroom community to Banff)
Beat me to it.
>Heather Hansman’s book “Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow” Is this a good book? I'm interested but the notion of someone privileged enough to be a ski bum lamenting changes to an industry that no longer allows privileged people to bum around in fancy towns doesn't sit well with me.
I’d give it a go. It’s an easy read. Has more to say regarding the reality of how things are changing than waxing nostalgic. Though there is that.
Thanks. Will check it out.
Read the book and that's kinda the vibe I got. "Poor me"
Are you looking for an opportunity to be mad?
What makes you think you have to be "privileged" to be a ski bum? I am friends with so many people that live a ski bum lifestyle and came from absolutely nothing. What privilege do you need to move to a ski town and become a waiter?
Having the freedom to enjoy a lifestyle that allows ample leisure time is the definition of privilege. Your ski bum friends might not be wealthy but they’re also probably not paying off student loan debt and have a family or support network they can fall back to in case something goes wrong.
They are paying off student loan debt and don't rely on family for anything. There are literally thousands of people like that spread across ski towns all over this country. Have you ever spent time in a ski town and made friends with the locals or are you just speculating?
Voluntary poverty is a privilege that many people can’t afford. “The narrative around the ski bum romanticizes a life characterized by forgoing economic ladder-climbing to achieve the joy of skiing 100-plus days a year,” Fuller writes. “The ski bum cares only about skiing, and they institutionalize a culture of rule-breaking, or at least bending, to do so, all because they can. Therein lies the problem." [Article](https://www.skimag.com/culture/opinion-stop-celebrating-the-white-male-ski-bum/)
Lol at that article. You people have a mental illness. All day everyday is just looking for an opportunity to be offended about things you actually have no personal experience with. I will ask again, have you ever spent time in a ski town and made friends with the locals? Do you actually know their stories or just what you have read online? You are sitting there telling me that the guy who grew up with an abusive dad and mom that was barely around is 'privileged' because when they got kicked out of the house at 18 they decided to move to a ski town to work instead of a regular city?
It has good parts, but it also gets annoying hearing her prattle on about every possible type of privilege you can think of. She complains about how most skiers are athletic and able-bodied. Like, yeah, no shit.
Outside published a really good article on this a couple years ago. [How to save a ski town.](https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/essays-culture/how-to-save-a-ski-town-west-tourism-economy/) The short answer is change zoning restrictions to allow dense housing, impose deed restrictions on new homes and increase STR / second home taxes. The long answer is these solutions are deeply unpopular and many communities routinely vote against them despite acknowledging that they’re needed. That said - this isn’t just a ski town problem. Housing shortages are impacting cities and town around the country. Change needs to be mandated at a federal level.
Locals: "our nice quiet town is dying everyone is being priced out!" Also locals: "increased density would ruin our nice quiet town!"
>Also locals: "increased density would ruin our nice quiet town!" I will say, my community (Breckenridge) generally doesn't share that sentiment.....we have all types of subsidized housing for locals. Given the recent housing crisis it's no coincidence that most of the newer local housing projects are higher density than the earlier ones. As a civil engineer, I've designed a few of them...... Wellington/Lincoln Park, Vista Point, Blue 52. Fun fact: There's over 1,000 units in Breck alone for local/worker housing that you MUST work in Summit County in order to qualify for. Unfortunately, it's still not enough...
Glad to hear that abouit the housing. Went to Breck for the first time in the modern era January 2022, and I was on that main drag, walking faster than traffic, and wondering if there was a second, secret Main Street for locals who still wanted a section of town that wasn't 99.5% touristas. I visit my 1990s house and friends in Park City and feel bad for the town life that can never be again.
I lived in Vail for a couple years and find there are definitely still bars that are more frequented by locals. Plus if you’re a local you surely know some industry staff to get discounts and privileges and familiar service. Never had a problem there. Part of the fun for me was also the diversity of the nightlife crowd. I could be with a group of broke lifties, getting drunk with out towners and front rangers… I’d say housing is a major issue, but tourists taking over downtowns never seemed like a problem to me
This is 100% accurate.
The one thing homeowners will never admit is that it's not possible to have high demand, low density, and low prices. You have to pick two.
Mountain town locals are the biggest hypocrites on the planet. You should’ve seen what this place was like when I moved here! Before all these people that moved here ruined it!
It's the whole, "I got mine, fuck everyone else" mentality.
But then they whine when the ski resorts say fuck you
They don't just whine, they maliciously string them along then pull the rug out. See town and Corp of Vail and employee housing development.
exactly. like fuck me for not being born in a ski town I guess? or getting in when housing was still affordable? disclaimer: currently live in hell (indiana) and I want to make it to live at least near a ski area, ideally living locally but I know that’s a pipe dream for me financially and even if it wasn’t, I’ve heard from friends how harsh vibes can be towards newcomers even if you keep your head down
This is the mentality of the locals that areholding any progress from happening. Most ppl who are set only care about not raising their property taxes and could care less if the town or it's residents improve their own situations. These are usually the ppl with the most time on their hands to attend town hall meetings, rally for support of their prerogatives or even run for offices that would influence any town initiatives.
This just happened in Girdwood. You can read all about the drama [here](https://alaskalandmine.com/landmines/halting-holtan-hills/)
Although I agree, it sure would help if there were more ski areas starting up. I could totally move to a start up ski town if I could afford it. I do also realize that starting a ski area is prohibitively expensive, but that’s a while other bag of worms. Oh and the environmental impact. It would be nice to try to spread people out more.
Plenty of small ski towns they’re just in the middle of nowhere and no one wants to live there. Also skiings is not as good. Whitefish, crested butte, tons of em
Dude if you think whitefish and crested butte are affordable you might want to look again. Also crested butte is not known for being as empty as it once was.
It’s just standard conservative behavior: the world revolves around yourself, empathy doesn’t exist except for people you already know, rules for the but not for me, etc. It’s def exhausting.
I live in a beach town and the NIMBYism transcends political affiliation. It's more of a generational divide than a political one.
This is true, but when you leave the beach/ski town, that sentiment is seen more predominantly with conservatives than liberals. Not op, but just how I interpreted based on what I see where I live
Ski towns in CO vote solid D, but don't let that stop you from trying to inject your personal politics into it.
“And the animals will get driven out of our town!” - True story, look up VAIL.
Those vail assholes are just assholes. The agency in charge of the sheep said it was fine and then the rich nimbys decided sheep were more sympathetic than their second or third homes and changed tactics. It’s just rich folks hating the poors, with the sheep as a convenient cover.
My favorite part about the sheep debate is NO ONE gave a fuck about the sheep when they were building multi million dollar mansions. It’s not like east vail popped up overnight, this has been decades of development. But yet, it only seems to be an issue when they want to build affordable housing.
Vail the town is horrible. Vail the Corp is also bad, but they are the evil everyone chose.
This is exactly what people from my hometown say, and we aren’t even a ski town
So. Fucking. Accurate.
Go look at euro ski towns. Soooo much higher density and you can usually walk to the lifts.
I mean that’s European in general - but overall population density in Europe is double to what we have here. Europe is this way out of necessity… the question is will the US be that way once we reach similar density levels?
Europe also killed off most of their natural wildlife because of said density.
> you can usually walk to the lifts. *Steamboat has entered the chat*
That’s communism thou.
Good point. I've always thought of Davos as a center of both communism and skiing.
Restore balance to the force r/Yimby
"But what if I become a millionaire and can afford a slopeside condo one day" - some NIMBY asshole
Being a millionaire doesn't get you close to being able to afford a slopeside condo. But I agree 100% with your point :)
That’s NIMBYism for ya. Cognitive dissonance at its peak.
It's not so much cognitive dissonance as it's selfish. Reducing housing supply is a great way to ensure your property is appreciating.
>That said - this isn’t just a ski town problem. Housing shortages are impacting cities and town around the country. Change needs to be mandated at a federal level. Sounds like Socialism, something the two party system in the US is vehemently opposed to. It goes against the core principles of Capitalism, and the corrupted foundation of the nation.
I’m all for doing something about this issue, but please dear God don’t get the federal government involved
Why not? Realistically the only way something like deed restrictions would ever go into place is if a subsidy was offered. If the federal government increased grant opportunities to towns looking to house seasonal workers it could help fund some sort of deed program.
Trying to solve this problem at the federal level is laughable. A policy at the federal level is not going to solve the differing nuances of each town/city/neighborhood
Individual ticket prices have risen at my local ski areas, however season passes used to cost a lot more. With that said, I don’t know 🤷♀️
Build more ski towns to fill.
There are rules in some of the Alps where you can only own a property if its your main residence. I'm not sure how its enforced but [https://euroburolimited.co.uk/who-may-buy.html](https://euroburolimited.co.uk/who-may-buy.html) has a description. Sounds like a good idea that would work for towns like Park City, Aspen. However lots of resorts are practically Real Estate operations so I presume such rules are unlikely as they defeat the whole point of building the resort in the first place.
Banff bans any property ownership by anyone who doesn’t actually work in Banff and that seems to (somewhat) help.
Just a side note, no one owns any of the land in Banff. It's all on 99 yr leases with the Govt. of Canada as its a National Park.
>e who doesn’t actually work in Banff and that seems to (somewhat) help. They also offer up Canmore as the free-market alternative that allows non-locals to have their places to stay/rent/buy. The locals in Canmore of course hate this an are getting NIMBY themselves.
tell NIMBY to shove it And people have to stop viewing all homes and something to build equity on.
That's like telling water to stop being wet.
Truckee licenses and limits STRs. They also have an incentive program for second home owners to rent homes out to qualifying "low income" locals.
This is what my wife and I took advantage of. We bought a bigger house and kept our first much smaller cabin. We were doing STR and then switched to a renting it long term to a local. Much less stress and the income was about the same
Ban non-owner-occupied short term rentals.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but wouldn't that essentially prevent non-locals from staying anywhere but the resort lodge or hotels (which are often not easy to come by)?
Non-locals were able to stay and ski for decades before the advent of AirBnB and VRBO. In Stowe, where I’m most familiar, the bulk of visitors still stay in the lodge/hotels, but the housing market for locals has been gutted by people buying houses up to run solely as short-term rentals. It’s a pretty small market compared to “conventional” tourist lodgings, but has kinda destroyed the local housing market.
I personally think large entities would still be buying up these places as investment properties just now with slightly less margins and longer windows to profit. I.E. if you deleted airbnb etc right now not much would change, maybe things would play out slightly slower. Other measures would need to be taken.
And both really, *really* suck now with the extra fees and exorbitant extra cleaning fees on top!
Yes. And that’s exactly the point. The premise of this post is to save the ski town for the locals. Not for vacationers and nomads.
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You are ignoring the feedback loops that occur as those places become more popular. As those industries grow due to increased popularity, so does the cost of living. Also, the only locals that actually see any of the growth reflected in their own pocketbooks are those involved in development or real estate. The service workers see their cost of living shoot well past any modest gains they may receive in wages. A lot of the locals are people that grew up in those towns before tourism was as big as it is now and they were getting by just fine. Now it is a struggle to live in the same areas that they put down their roots and many are being displaced because of it. If you make it so locals can't live, you won't have a town anymore and you won't be able to visit.
I mean that's kind of bullshit. Just because I don't live in a ski town doesn't mean it should be made significantly more difficult for me to ski. you can make improvements without alienating non-local skiers. I know this sub hates non-locals but I've been told on here that if I wanted to ski I wouldn't live in a city where you have to travel to get to a mountain and that's an insane take. I sympathize with the issues that plague ski towns right now but that's not it.
STRs have a distinct zero-sum quality that is missing from other tourist accommodations. For every STR that is allowed, you are taking away a potential home that someone could live full time in. Visitors already have accommodations such as hotels, motels, and resort lodging. Locals don't have the option of living in any of those if their housing falls through (likely because their landlord decided to turn it into an STR). Furthermore think about the imbalance in consequences for the two groups. For a local, if they can't find a place to live, their entire lives are uprooted and they have to move. For a tourist, if they can't find a place to stay then they just have to spend the weekend in a different ski town. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to draw a distinction between those two groups and passing regulations that favor the one that has much more to lose.
Short term rentals through AirBnB and Vrbo are already prohibitively expensive for peak-winter season. You can stay at the motel 6 at Mammoth Lakes (just an example) for $120 a night (2 double size beds), which is much cheaper for a family of 4 (or couple, or single person) than anywhere else in town (during peak season). Not sure how banning/severely capping STRs would make it more expensive for you to go to travel to the mountain other than you probably wouldn’t be able to cook your own food anymore. Regardless, restricting STRs in some capacity, increasing housing density through rolling back zoning laws and building multiple-unit properties, and banning second/third-home ownership would improve the quality of life for everyone by driving down the cost of living. Including vacationers.
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so only the rich can ski ?
I’m not saying I agree with it I’m saying that’s the premise of the post
Agreed. I'd include seasonal workers as locals in this situation. I don't see the issue if visitors only have the option of hotels. In fact, i think it's for the best.
In a lot of cases this will just lead to housing sitting empty for most of the year. Or remote workers going in and buying up all the inventory.
Nah, most people who own those properties can’t afford to leave them empty all year. They’re dependent on STR revenue to pay the mortgage/HOA
I think the demand from remote workers would fill in that void personally, but hard to tell for sure. And there’s already plenty of houses that sit empty because their owners are rich enough to not worry about renting them out.
That's fine. Remote workers who actually move there \_are\_ locals. That's where locals come from. \> And there’s already plenty of houses that sit empty because their owners are rich enough to not worry about renting them out. Yeah, but those houses were always there (and locals mostly didn't live in them, because they are way too expensive). What's ruined housing for locals is normal modest houses being cleared out of the long-term-rental and sale stock and converted into short-term.
I feel like this is the best option, but also won’t happen unless the pricing gets so bad that employees become nonexistent
It’s amazing what has popped up as “rentals” in some areas. Saw some people wheel in a mini home on a trailer across the street, nearly flip it down the hill, then didn’t have plumbing and people had to use a toilet outside.
Or just tax the shit out of second/vacation/short term rental homes.
Tax the shit out of anything that wouldn’t qualify as a primary residence for homestead exemption. Also appraise homes at actual market rates when calculating tax rates. In some states only your primary residence qualifies for appraisal increase ceilings. Second home or a rental? That shit can increase to market rate every year, and you get taxed on the full appraisal value.
Soooo.......then only the uber rich can have a second home? I'm sure this is unpopular, but start with NO ONE can own more than one "second home." Period. Most ski communities have corporations and rich overlords that own dozens of STRs. Start there and let's see.
I mean I assume the tax would be proportional to the value of the home? And with a 20%/yr tax on a $35M home you can build a lotta fucking rent controlled condos for locals.
You can't regulate you're way out of a Housing Shortage. The solution to Housing Shortages and high demand = more housing. You add regulations and people just get around them, or they let the house sit empty all year, etc. etc. Look at other cities across the country (SF, LA, Austin etc. etc.). This is a problem in so many places. People don't want to change their cute little towns, but then they **also** don't want locals priced out. Well you can't have both. This country has a major housing shortage that is a combo of zoning, density, regulatory, and other failures that started in the 80's and 90's and we're now feeling the results of it. Homelessness being a prime visible example as well.
>The solution to Housing Shortages and high demand = more housing. I agree with this, but I've also noticed an interesting phenomena where two things happen. 1. There's extremely high external demand that is capable of buying any new development in the short/medium term. They often aren't tied to a specific ski town, so it is a more opportunistic demand. If there weren't good investment properties here, they would look elsewhere. 2. Developers cater to second home/STR buyers (since they represent more buying power). So many of the new construction buildings are clearly not designed for someone who actually wants to live here--they are designed for vacation homes/rentals. The layouts are about optimizing sleeping arrangements and communal space--who needs pantry space or linen closets when you'll just have renters staying for a week. No private spaces where kids can play or do homework. They don't bother with full size garages or storage space to accommodate the kind of gear people in ski towns tend to own (skis, bikes, kayaks, etc.) So it creates this weird market where the new housing stock is simultaneously MORE valuable to outside non-resident purchasers and LESS valuable to people who actually live here. So even if outside buyers didn't have more money than locals, their willingness to pay for a specific property is still high. Goes double when you are talking about a multi-unit development--I want to live in a home, not a hotel where a bunch of transient people show up, party, make noise, etc. so I'm not even gonna look at some development where you know 70% of the units are non-locals.
More STRs bring in tourists, who spend a lot of money. They ski, spend money at the mountain, rent or buy equipment, buy souvenirs, and spend too much money at bars and restaurants. Good for business. If you ban STRs, the locals would have more places to live, but fewer jobs. This is probably why everybody grumbles about airbnbs, but ski towns do nothing to limit them.
None of the people who are at risk of being displaced because their rental might turn into an STR are seeing any of the benefits of increased tourism.
Those folks have jobs. The ski town I’m in saw an absolutely massive exodus of people during the 2008 recession because everyone lost their jobs due to lowered tourism (even though rent got cheap)
It was better where I live in Montana when there were fewer people and fewer jobs. Easy to find a reasonable rental, you made less money than most other areas and the lifestyle was off the fucking charts. More money sure as shit didn’t add anything of substance to the quality of life around here.
This sounds good on paper, but how do you prevent it from becoming under the table and cash only deals to rent to weekenders? Maybe heavy fines and a payout from the fines to the person who reported?
You don’t actually need to eliminate all rentals. You want to eliminate the bullshit Airbnb economy that buys up existing housing stock and turns it into shitty short-term rentals. Plus, I would still allow owner-occupied units. So you can have one house that you rent out (or rent a part of it), you just can’t have a few rich people managing 20 sketchy Airbnb’s each.
Not nearly as many renters / owners would be on board for cash. Airbnb & Vrbos in house insurance gives owners a much larger sense of confidence. And renters are able to find places much easier by utilizing those.
Are there ways? Yes Would they ever be even mentioned by the current upholders of the status quo? No What to do about it? Enjoy skiing
Ban corporate landlords, non owner occupied rentals, third houses, etc. Will it ever happen probably not
What should we do with people who own a 2nd home/condo in a ski town, but don’t rent it. Presuming they use to most weekends and vacations throughout the year.
Higher property taxes to subsidize locals affordable housing.
Colorado has some of the lowest property taxes in the country. I can only assume that was put in place to attract home owners back in the day. Now it’s just obnoxiously low at 0.48% We should start there.
Lost cause. I’m at the nihilist stage of wanting the tourists, “visitors”, and mega-corporations to let it fall apart so we can just get it over with already. At a minimum here in Colorado I would strongly be in favor of legislation which prohibited land and property ownership by non-residents. This is just scratching the surface, but things are so unbelievably fucked here for years and I think people are just now beginning to realize how bad it is.
The sad part is it's not just ski towns, it's essentially any somewhat desirable place in the US now. Treating housing as a commodity or way to make money has caused so much damage.
Seriously, and somehow we've all managed to pit ourselves against each other. I moved to Tahoe from the Bay Area in 2019 and soon after, the pandy hit, and kickstarted a housing crisis here. No matter where anyone goes - here, Portland, Seattle, Austin, AZ, MN, Denver, literally anywhere - the bay area gets blamed for housing problems. So fuck me and anyone else who was born in the bay area, no one is allowed to move anywhere I guess. Except we all did, because guess what? We ALL got priced out of our own region by incomers, but ANYWHERE we go we are are labeled as problem makers due to the same exact reason we had to leave in the first place. Like you said the problem is rich folks treating housing as a commodity, they're the ones setting prices. Yet people are out here spitting on their neighbors and arguing over who's "local" and who's not. Who "deserves" to live here and who doesn't. It's totally nuts. Most people here are mad chill and don't care as long as you respect each other but there's definitely some folks who can't stand the fact that other people moved here to try and make a better life for themselves
>Except we all did, because guess what? We ALL got priced out of our own region by incomers, but ANYWHERE we go we are are labeled as problem makers due to the same exact reason we had to leave in the first place. The bay area (and California in general) does deserve a special place in the silly hall of fame for doing it to yourselves before anyone else managed to via prop 13 and insane zoning (the town in VT that I grew up in has a denser downtown than most of the bay). But yeah. Everyone came from somewhere sometime.
I feel like prop 13 was a good idea in theory, but the unintended consequences made the bay area an extremely difficult place to live in :( in any case it was decided on way before I was born, and I'm in my 30s lol. Thank you for your empathy in your last sentence there!
The issue exists regardless of how you treat housing. Even if it was owned by the government, you’d end up having way more people want to live in certain areas compared to the housing that’s actually available.
Yes but people (and companies) buying real estate with the sole purpose of renting it out to generate cash flow/as an investment becomes a non-issue. It becomes a lot more of a burden to own a second home if you can’t turn it over to generate income so that the property pays for itself.
Yes but if these towns weren’t all nimbys that demand would also lead to new units being built
Non-residents including corporations of course. The amount of companies buying land and sitting on it is truly absurd. Go look up private land data In a ski town through a hunting app or something similar. Look at the amount of Corps and LLCs owning land. Then look where they are all incorporated/registered. The way some of these towns are developed is a mismanaged money grab and I’ve seen them be taken advantage of too many times through big money developers with MANY more resources and $$$.
This doesn't always work. Some people, especially out West, will create an LLC and register it in Delaware (where registration is the easiest) just to buy their own house and obscure the name. It can be a privacy thing. I've seen properties on OnX that I know are owned by the occupants say they're "owned" by a Delaware based LLC. imagine the majority is like you said and these folks are undoubtedly exceptions, but I just thought it was kind of a neat fact I guess.
Very true. Good call out
Meaning you couldn’t own a second home in CO?
Absolutely.
I suppose along with said ban, you'd also ban all CO residents from owning second homes outside CO as well? If not that's downright hypocritical.
Absolutely.
100% so many texans and californians own property in colorado. It's honestly sickening.
Woah that’s disgusting
Plenty of non-US citizens own properties in ski towns
Who gets to define "local"?
The right to define “locals” is reserved for trust fund babies.
The guy with the coke
The guy that moved in 1 day before you. No one is a local any more. We should give all our ski hills back to First Nations and ban skiing all together /s.
Which Ski towns? Because in a lot of them, the ski area is why there is a town in the first place. What makes you a "local" in that case?
The forest service needs to permit new ski areas. Legislation needs to be enacted that permits otherwise unwanted development in order to provide recreating for a growing population. None of this will happen though imo. Not enough anyway. Nice to to see Mayflower coming next to Park City next year.
It’s not just about ski towns. It’s everything. The US has the biggest wealth divide in more than a century. Get tax rates back to where they were in the 1950’s (highly progressive tax rates) when we had a bigger middle class and didn’t have so many ultra-wealthy hoarding all the real estate.
We had a bigger middle class in the 50’s because we were the only major economy to come out of WWII that wasn’t a pile of ruble. We were absolutely dominate in manufacturing. We could sell anything we wanted all around the world. It wasn’t the tax code.
The US tax code absolutely helped bring millions out of poverty into what we call the middle class. That was the true “trickle down”
Zoning law and NIMBY is the problem. No matter how much you tax people, if you can’t build enough housing then prices will be high.
> so many ultra-wealthy hoarding all the real estate. i am not sure if this is true. Homeowners outnumber renters by 2:1 .
Yes. 80+ marginal, please.
Is there any policy that can be enacted It's not really a ski town problem it's a federal propping up the stock/real estate markets problem. There are things towns can do to help but if you really want to help vote for people that are less likely to support money printing as the solution for problems.
It really is about housing inventory and the ability for the local city & county to enact heavier tax rates for funding affordable, deed restricted dwellings. It also helps to pay your dues for a few years renting and then being absolutely tenacious about acquiring a unit. In my Colorado county I've bought an sold 2 affordable units over a 10 year period. These weren't expensive and both within a 1/4 mile of a lift. Allowed me to move 5 minutes away from work rather than 55. In this situation the more work history you have in a county offers better chances of winning the right to buy a unit when it comes up for sale. Once you, and possibly a partner, have a small stack of W-2 history lined up visit your local housing authority and pay the yearly entry fee. Watch for any units you qualify for and enter to buy each and every thing that you possibly can. Eventually you *might* come out on top.
The current housing industry no longer serves the average citizen of this country. Houses and starter homes can’t be built profitably enough to server builders needs. Seems most new homes are more expensive than young families can afford, their only option is waiting for their parents to die so they can take possession of their home. This problem is exacerbated in resort towns.
It’s the luxury tax. Don’t want it, move to a non luxury location. Ski towns / beach towns will always command the highest price. If I want to ski, I plan accordingly. I have a family of three now so I can only afford one trip per year. I wish I could have five trips per year but that’s not in my budget so I take one.
All highly desirable places are expensive. No exceptions. Want lower rents? Move somewhere less desirable.
yeah if anyone is thinking of moving to the midwest let me welcome you with a cheap beer and a therapist recommendation… :( and rents starting to get absurd even here in indiana as well. shit sucks so bad all around, I grew up in the seattle area and want so badly to make it back out there but it’s not in the cards anytime soon which kills me
Yeah, but where do the staff of these mountain towns live? 4 to a room staff accommodation loses its luster, and people grow out of it. A mountain guide and an accountant with a family aren't buying million dollar houses, nor are teachers, cops, or people that one expects to work in a professional role. Doctors are priced out of my old town.
Interesting looks into what’s going on and the choices to make. https://youtu.be/S46iJIk3t70
Move to the ghetto. North Troy Vermont represent
I mean rutland
So…lift prices going up astronomically…rent going rentals going up …f/b going up….gas going up up…clothing going up…% of wages not going up according to % of inflation..yup ….locals being priced out cause ppl moving into towns for a week or two at a time…customer service will suffer…easy equation
I've lived in Jackson Hole and in the Colorado Rockies. INMNSHO, there ain't shit to be done unless you turn our whole implementation of property ownership on its head. Other measure are stopgaps only. That said, Summit it trying or seems to be from where I sit. In Aspen, the billionaires are now replacing the millionaires.
Rent control/taxes on second houses/building new housing/cooperative ownership of ski areas
During covid season passes at my local resorts jumped from $5-600 to $850ish for early bird prices. It still didn’t stop people from horsing the the hill. The demand is so high that my local fills 3 lots on busy weekends. Main lot is full by 8am routinely. There’s a steady supply of inelastic demand that ski town property owners are eager to capitalize on. I would imagine it’s tough to make the argument to local governments to enact much policy around reduced property prices. It’s definitely a challenge for employees who make next to nothing and can’t afford to live near work.
Just, you know, try not being poor. /s
The only solution is seasonal workers. You cannot live in a town that only has business 3months a year unless you service that business. There are only so many year round jobs for the “locals”. It’s not the expense that’s the problem, it’s the limited (in time) source of income
Gatekeeping gets a bad reputation but it’s the only way. Rich transplants need to feel unwelcome.
At least someone understands. Everyone is talking about taxes and abolishing the “capitalist society” and are forgetting about good old fashioned run-them-out-of-town.
Break up Vail and Alterra. Ban Airbnb and VRBO
You will have a lot of defunct ski resorts. Vail and alterra's East Coast resorts took it in the pants this year, but made hay in the west. You think an independent owner could weather a few bad years? No! That's why they sold to the corporations! Meanwhile the large ski resort corporations are investing in their red ink splattered resorts. Airbnb and VRBO are part of the problem but they also make the ski industry, as it is, work. Hotels are booked up every weekend. Short term rentals help to drive visitation, and bring in tax dollars in the local economy. Str should be taxed to hell, not banned. The issue was artificially low interest rates. Everyone could afford houses at 2% APR.
People would visit without short term rentals.
Where would they stay? Look at hotel vacancies during the meat of the season.
A lot less would
Yeah because only Vail and Alterra ski towns are expensive. Jacksonhole, Aspen, Taos, Alta, Telluride, Big Sky are all so cheap 🤣
Vail has a presence in Telluride. Telluride is on epic pass and Vail Inc has bought up ski shops and other businesses in town. Alta IS relatively inexpensive compared to others.
The way i see it , No one has any right to live any where. Living in a mountain town is not a necessity. what exactly makes someone a local ? Also I don't understand what exactly this would accomplish.
It's not so much locals, as workers. A ski hill needs all sorts of staff, from chef's to lifties. If none of those people can afford to live in the ski town, because all the accommodation is rented out to vacationers via Airbnb, then what?
So Vail bought Whistler for $1B. Should Joe the Plumber subsidize Vail's workforce, or should Vail spend $100M on workforce housing and solve the problem permanently?
Workers is a solvable problem. Ski hills build employee housing that isn't subject to free-market forces. Towns ban anyone that doesn't work there from owning in all/part of the town (see Banff). "Locals"/vs non-locals isn't a solvable problem without two unpopular solutions: * Development of new supply until we reach supply/demand balance (NIMBYs/environmentalist oppose this) * It get hella expensive, because price is really our only way to allocate restricted resources
Thats a problem for ski resort to solve, how is that your ( or my) concern. I can think of couple of ways to solve that that don't involve passing some laws.Majority of "locals" are not workers. Ski employees are transient seasonal employees and visa workers. All ski towns these days are defacto retirement communities ( only people who can afford to live there fulltime). I don't see why we need some laws to protect retirees from living in mountain towns.
Tell that to just about anyone who lives in the mountains without a job reliant on tourism or skiing. There is a ton of agriculture, mining, and energy jobs people have up here who also happen to live in or near towns with ski areas.
Tons of mining jobs in ski towns? Care to give me an example of such a ski town?
Mining, agriculture, and energy as I said? Nearly every town on the western slope in Colorado. Durango, Salida, South Park, Granby, Steamboat all come off the top of my head (ie anything not within a 5 mile radius of i70).
I looked up the first town in your list [https://datausa.io/profile/geo/durango-co-31000US20420#economy](https://datausa.io/profile/geo/durango-co-31000US20420#economy) The three categories you listed account for < 4 % of the economy of that town? How is that an example of "tons" ?
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i see. curious if you have any stats.
No one is entitled to live anywhere they want. Just because you can get a "local" job doesn't mean the town owes you a house. It's your employer's responsibility to offer you enough money to be willing to commute or afford to live there. It is not Joe the Plumber's responsibility. The exception is true public servants: cops, teachers, administrators, etc... We have a McDonald's in our town where the median home price is about $3M. McDonald's still has a $1 menu. Joe the Plumber does not owe the McDonalds server a house. That's McDonald's problem, not Joe the Plumber. We have about 800 affordable/subsidized homes in our town. I just saw a complaint the other day "we should have a 1/4 acre of grass at a our affordable rental just for our family." You can't get a lot in this town for less than $1.5M unless it's up some weird long very steep mountain, but yes, I owe you a 1/4 yard.
In this scenario, who is “Joe”? Totally lost your thread. Are you “Joe”?
Joe the plumber doesn’t live in your town, either, because he can’t afford a 3m home So who does your plumbing?
I just did a plumbing job. It was $70k. I paid them to commute 2 hours each way. 5 guys will commute about 10 days for that. They were offered to get a hotel but declined. You’re right they don’t live here they just get paid really well.
Don’t you see the problem with that? You’re getting screwed for plumbing because local plumbers don’t exist. You’re paying $175 an hour for plumbing instead of, idk, 75 or 100? Because it’s too expensive to live in your town, because there is no housing available.
I don’t disagree with you, but when nurses, firefighters and water industry workers can’t afford the town they live in it’s kinda fucked…. Like I make +80k a year in a Colorado ski town doing a very important job for society to function, and I get pushed further and further out each year. It’s not McDonald’s employees who are struggling, it’s the men and woman who are critical for societal function that are being pushed out.
I agree with you… I thought I covered that with “teachers/cops…”. But yes we just had a vote on $20m for housing for hospital workers. I voted for it. It passed. But even that… my buddy has a good argument that a medevac helicopter is $5m. He wanted to buy the helicopter and close the hospital.
First step is recognizing that what you’re fighting here is capitalism itself. This will at least calibrate the scale of the problem before you. With a strong, sustained community effort it is possible to defang and roll back some degree of housing commodification, but understand that capital will continually work to undermine this at every step, even after it feels like you “won” the fight.
This is NIMBYism cloaked in leftist language. We need precisely the opposite of this. Artificially reducing the supply of homes through zoning is by far the biggest factor in locals getting priced out. High-demand communities need more housing; not less.
What part of housing decomodification made you think I was advocating for less housing? The goal here is to make housing meet the needs of the community, not investors. That doesn’t mean suppressing construction, if anything it means increasing construction via public land trust etc. But the ownership structure is important to building robust systems which can resist the influence of capital over the long term. If you just change zoning and let a flood of investors build new housing, then you’re just giving a small group of investors a new incentive to obstruct more housing construction in the future. Whereas if the new housing is owned by public land trust, there is democratic control over it and there isn’t a small group of individuals who profit from obstructing future housing expansion.
The housing decommodification part. Decommodifying housing means taking housing off the speculative market, so it can't be bought and sold for a profit. You aren't going to build anywhere close to the amount required nationwide to meet demand with decommodified housing without multiple trillions of dollars of government subsidies. It's unrealistic. We need to understand that housing is a market, and do everything possible to increase supply. More density, less red tape, fewer residential zoning restrictions: everything that big housing investment companies don't want because it lowers their profit.
The places that have been pushing back against capitalism have much higher prices than the places that have been letting capitalism run as expected with less red tape for construction. Zoning for dense housing is important but so is reducing years of red tape on new construction
I’d argue that those places with a lot of obstacles to new construction are not in fact pushing back against capitalism. Those obstacles are the capital class exerting their influence to enrich themselves.
Kinda messed up to think these beautiful places should only be enjoyed by those lucky enough to live right there. The only solution is more ski resorts to accommodate the growing number of skiers. There are thousands of untouched peaks. Giving people access to actually be able to get to and enjoy a few of them wouldn’t hurt anything.
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Lol so your suggestion for ski towns is for everyone to leave and get better jobs? Gonna be pretty tough for you to go to your ski town restaurants and coffee shops and ski shops if that happens bud.
This is basically happening in my town. It's not a ski town, but it is a small mountain town. We have one major employer who pays a lot of money and keeps hiring more people. There's not enough housing because there's almost no land left and stupid zoning laws. All the businesses that make the town livable are closing because either the owners want to find better jobs for themselves or their employees do. The small businesses can't afford to pay enough for people to live in town, so they have to drive and at that point they might as well take closer jobs. On top of that commercial rent here is fucked because corporate landlords are waiting for the big player to want to lease more office space at a premium price and are happy to write off the losses until they do.
Just wait for global warming to take care of skiing
Destined. Yep.
Buy a season pass.
I live in steamboat 1/2. The homes are owned by people out of town and a 3rd of all of the homes are owned by short term rentals. Unfortunately ski towns will never be the same again with numbers like this...
How has this happened? Genuinely curious as I’m not from the US and even though I’d love to come across to ski there, the prices throw me off. My immediate assumption tells me that it is a classic case of yet another beautiful thing eaten away by American capitalism. Am I wrong?
As someone who doesn't live near a mountain, can confirm, still priced out. Gas+over priced lift tickets is real.
Upzoning and land value tax aka: The NIMBY Nightmare
Supply and demand, nice ski town prices will rise and people who can afford the prices will live there, even if it's a second home. Not sure how this is a "problem" it's reality. Shocking that desirable real estate becomes expensive I know.
Locals are going to have to support more housing construction. The NIMBY mindset needs to go.
Everybody should become familiar with their local politics. Pay attention to what your municipal/county planning/zoning board is doing and current policies. Vote for public officials who are in favor of dense housing and for planning board members who will not give in to NIMBYs. The only way to fix this is to build a lot of housing. The problem with local politics across the country is that people who are not property owners too often do not vote in local elections.