23 ms·

How to Save a Ski Town

127 points by auxym 5y ago

Tempest1981 5y ago
I usually think of disruptive technology as disrupting an industry. This time it was a whole town. Seems like towns cannot respond to disruption as well as tech companies.
pomian 5y ago
We have seen this issue locally and traveling, North America and Europe. A very good solution, but requiring cooperation and strong town Council (and perhaps some retro-action) is that every single business in town, provides staff housing - alternatively builds staff housing above their business. Imagine if their was an apartment for every employee.
- toast0 5y ago
  That works numerically, but having housing directly connected to your job is very prone to abuse.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Isn't that de facto what already happens? If these workers were fired with the status quo, they'd be unable to afford an apartment locally, and the end result is the same as if their employer fronted them an apartment. Plenty of people working in ski towns already do live in resort owned housing. Tons of jobs tie employment with living circumstances not just in this industry, it's not an unusual arrangement at all.
mastax 5y ago
I imagine the Swiss have dealt with similar situations, I wonder what they would suggest? Pay employees way more is probably step one. I'm the "build more housing" guy, but it looks like the Swiss have chosen a different path?
- vkou 5y ago
  If the market could build its way out of this, it already would have. There's not enough money in building and leasing units to rent to burger-flippers and dog-walkers, when there are millionaires lining up to make all-cash purchases. You either have to pay people enough to afford a mortgage in the area, or you watch all your manual laborers move to the big cities.
  - armenarmen 5y ago
    > If the market could build its way out of this, it already would have I believe the author mentions that there was a proposed large apartment building (250 ish units) that could, presumably, have alleviated some of the demand but that it was voted down by nimby types to avoid CB “becoming aurora” I’d think then that it’s less so the market preventing building than it is voters and activist home owners
    - vkou 5y ago
      The free market is precisely what gave this particular makeup of voters and activist home owners the keys to the kingdom. If you can't afford to pay to play in that municipality, you don't get to vote.
      - lbarrow 5y ago
        The "free market" didn't give those activists the right to veto development, the political processes and rules of their communities did. It's silly to treat that veto as a natural result, it's just as contingent as any other political rule.
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        How did they get to be able to vote? As TFA describes, they could afford property within the incorporated propery of CB, unlike those forced to find places to live outside it. Their wealth gave them access to the vote, and they are using their votes to further their own interests. Being able to buy whatever you want for whatever price works for you and the seller sounds quite a bit like a "free market" to me.
ragnot 5y ago
With seasons seemingly getting shorter and/or worse (due to what I assume to be global warming) and the lines just getting absolutely ridiculous [1], I think I've accepted the fact that skiing/snowboarding is going to be a different experience for my kids. That experience probably won't be at a traditional mountain like Killington, Vail, etc. The lines will be too long, too expensive, just overall it will suck. Honestly, I'm considering doing a hike up to the mountain/ski down thing because the alternative is to go to even more exotic locations (Niseko, maybe Lebanon?) which would cost even more money. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/ae560476-4d83-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5 https://www.ft.com/content/ae560476-4d83-11ea-95a0-43d18ec71...
- farnsworth 5y ago
  Wait till you find out how overcrowded backcountry skiing has gotten too.
  - i_love_music 5y ago
    Agreed. It has been trending up for years with better equipment, but COVID opened up the floodgates. Now the NPs have to employee "ski rangers" to help assist the chaos that is bc skiing in popular spots. I don't like where this is headed. Serenity and solitude get removed from the outdoors more and more every season. Summer and winter. I am really torn. Part of me wants everyone to enjoy nature and outdoors, but the other part of me wants to keep it pristine. These desires seem at odds with each other.
    - tayo42 5y ago
      It wouldn't be so bad if these new outdoor people actually respected the outdoors. Yet they show up with blue tooth radios and leave trash around
      - mitigating 5y ago
        Everyone is a new person to someone
- 5y ago
jseliger 5y ago
No mention of "demand" and only one of "supply:" "The limited supply of affordable housing for workers has been a challenge for decades." Prices occur where demand and supply intersect. There are two ways to lower them: lower demand or raise supply. Supply restrictions raise prices. There are a lot of words here that fail to deal with price fundamentals.
- dsizzle 5y ago
  Ehh, that might be a shallow search. The issue of limited supply runs throughout the piece: towns being surrounded by protected lands where building isn’t possible and NIMBYism.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  What are you even saying? Prices go up because the locals are being priced out by people buying second homes and AirBNB takes up all the available rentals. The mayor of the town nearly got evicted because his landlord was going to convert it.
- 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
  This obviously isn't true. You can absolutely use legislation and fiscal policy to impact market prices. You're being incredibly reductionist and I'm not quite sure why, but if you read the article, you would have come across the case of Whistler, where they've effectively used policy to improve the availability of affordable housing. Also, we're not talking about a commodity like smart fridges or something, we're talking about one of the fundamental human needs — shelter. Your frivolity is unnecessarily callous.
  - liketochill 5y ago
    Living in a ski town isn’t a fundamental human need. There are lots of cheap places to live in the USA they just are not in what are currently the desirable locations.
zz865 5y ago
I quite like the rules in the Tirol - you can only own property if you live there. No second homes, no big hotels, no renting out houses. Just small owner operated hotels and locals.
- neilparikh 5y ago
  Wouldn't this mean people who earn enough to rent, but not buy (ex. service workers) wouldn't be able to live there (since there wouldn't be a stock of rental housing they can rent), and thus would have to commute?
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    Why wouldn't there be a stock of rental housing? Nothing stops a full-time resident from owning rental property. If you want to own one (or more) houses there you have to live there. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. I wish this could be tried in the USA, but voters (rich property owners) would never allow it. There are a lot of places (not just ski towns) that are ruined by rich people bidding up property and then leaving it vacant 358 days of the year.
  - mkipper 5y ago
    I don't know about Tirol, but in Banff, the restrictions don't prevent construction of multi-unit buildings specifically for renters. I don't know exactly how ownership of these buildings work, but I think they're owned by the town through some non-profit org. I don't live in Banff and I'm sure there are issues with this system, but it seems pretty reasonable. Service workers would definitely be priced out if every condo/apartment was owned privately and available as a short-term rental.
- imgabe 5y ago
  I think a lot of places should have rules like that. At least they should heavily tax any home that isn't used as a primary residence (either by the owner or a renter).
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  That'd explain partially why I loved the vibe of that area so much. I'd live in Northern Italy in a heartbeat if I had the chance.
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
Honest question, have any of these ski towns tried allowing the construction of a significant amount of housing? I.e. housing growth that actually scales with the growth in demand? None of the ones I've visited seem at all dense. (Been to Vail, Beaver Creek, Park City, and all over Tahoe.) All the consternation over the housing crisis is maddening to me because it seems like universally (in the US), we're willing to try everything and anything except the one thing that basic economics suggests would actually work. We're like a person who needs to drive a screw but will only use wrenches, hammers, and saws.
- zz865 5y ago
  I think one issue is places like Vail, PC, Tahoe are already spread out. Going there on vacation doesn't feel special at all, just feels like you're in some generic suburb. Places like Tremblant are nicer as there is a compact walkable town where all the buildings are 5 stories tall.
- lumost 5y ago
  A few of the towns in the article have vacancy rates greater than 50%. If the free market can support a 50% occupancy rate, there isn't a great reason to think that it can't support a 90 or 95% occupancy rate. Increasing the housing stock by 50% to house 5% of the towns population seems inefficient for both investment owners and workers.
- armenarmen 5y ago
  I’m not aware of any, no. But I’d love to see one of these cities take a pro building stance
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ghiculescu 5y ago
  I ask genuinely: is the basic economic argument in a mountain town like CB the same as it is in a place like Denver? It feels like it might be different given how much surrounding land is (federally) protected, or just looks super expensive / impractical to build on.
cletus 5y ago
The principle I've long held is that cities and towns should primarily be for those who reside in those towns. In this case, only residents should be voting on things like ballot measures. This article talks about a few towns, some where I'm sure there are a lot of residents with multiple homes, some of which I'm sure that isn't the case. But nonresident owners shouldn't be dictating public policy, period. So the first thing you do is you is put in a city income tax and make all homeowners residents for tax purposes. And that's tax on all your income. To those who say they'll just hide behind LLCs and trusts, you do two things: 1. You tax the beneficial owner of the property; 2. Properties with no clear beneficial owner are simply taxed punitively with property tax. This article is just further evidence that AirBnB is a cancer on housing, as if we needed further confirmation (which we didn't). At a higher level, we need to do something about the ultra-rich borrowing to avoid tax. A good starting point is that any borrowed funds, or at least any borrowed funds for certain purposes such as buying real estate, are treated as repatriated or realized income and taxed accordingly. And while we're at it, let's starting non-primary residences on unrealized capital gains unless it's a long term rental.
- xrd 5y ago
  I don't own a second home, for the record. I do think it would be difficult and have second order effects to ban AirBnB. But, what about a tax on vacancies, rather than on revenue you get when renting it out? Incentivize people to keep their places filled? I agree with the general sentiment that AirBnB has altered housing options for low income people for the worse. And, it seems inevitable. Maybe we need to alter our perceptions of what housing is for people as well? Meaning, people need to start thinking of housing as temporary and governments can force people to open their vacancies to people in need of housing. Perhaps a new law that makes it so empty vacant houses are available to house-less people? That would be interesting.
  - cletus 5y ago
    This is what Vancouver has tried [1]. It doesn't seem to have worked. The problem here is that it's too easy to game. You can put in a token resident. The same can apply to having income limits on houses. You have a low income resident who just happens to have rich friends who visit. I think we need to attack the idea that rich people use real estate to park money and avoid taxes. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-16/taxing-the-rich-do-housing-prices-fall-when-empty-second-homes-are-taxed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-16/taxing-th...
geephroh 5y ago
Ironic coming from one of the media outlets responsible for destroying so many mountain towns by putting them on "must-visit" destination lists for the IG crowd. But those $200 camp chairs and $800 puffy jackets aren't going to sell themselves, I suppose...
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  Man, those people are awful aren't they? Telling people about nice places and nice things. It's supposed to be for the special people, like us. Idiots, blabbing about our stuff, ruining it.
  - souplesse 5y ago
    I think you missed the point. There’s nothing wrong with Outside sharing nice places with world, but it’s ironic that they would also publish an article decrying the very popularization that they themselves often cause.
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      > The newspapers reported on the problem: it was so hard to find affordable housing in town that there weren’t enough people left to work in town. That's the problem. Lack of housing. Not popularisation. The article writer don't decry the popularisation in the article though geephroh does.
      - geephroh 5y ago
        Lack of housing is, of course, a major part of the problem. And why might you suppose that previously affordable housing in what might have once been a relatively obscure locale is now in tremendous demand? Knowing a number of folks personally who have been priced out of these places -- often the hometown where they hoped to spend their lives -- might give me a different sense of perspective than you seem to have.
        5y ago
silisili 5y ago
This issue is nationwide(as noted), and only going to get worse. The only way out of this is to find a way to eliminate or make very, very difficult investment housing, full stop.
- seehafer 5y ago
  We could also stop printing trillions of dollars that inevitably end up seeking yield anywhere they can.
bamboozled 5y ago
Same thing is happening in Asia. I know a few local towns, one in particular where some foreign guy now has his Japanese real estate license and access to a bunch of foreign investors looking for places. It's becoming an unmitigated disaster. The population of the town is somewhat severely aged; However, rather than that being an opportunity for young people to get a start, this property snake steps in an steals everything at a higher price than the locals could afford and makes up a bunch of stories of why he should have it. He pays people for information so we can get the jump on places. It's really quite stressful, it seems there is nothing that can stop the guy. A second similar property snake has arrived too, with a similar back story, access to huge pool of money from China/Hong Kong/Maylasia. We moved here recently because we wanted to live in a community, but it's getting pretty hammered now, we wil hang on for the time being and try find a place, not ready to give up yet.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  I don't think your view is representative of "Asia", or even Japan. Housing in Japan is by world standards extremely affordable and generally depreciates in value instead of appreciating, making it a terrible investment. If your town is "somewhat severely aged", that means the youth have already made the call to head for the cities and it's lack of jobs, not lack of affordable property, that's driving that. There are a couple of foreign-investor hotspot blips like newly trendy ski town Niseko, but for the vast majority of the country, prices are down, down, down. Many rural towns are now handing out essentially free houses because they've been abandoned (akiya), although the costs of renovating them into something livable are often considerable.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    In "most" of Japan, that might be the case, but the article is about Ski towns. There is plenty of young people who have tried to move to ski towns from large cities and have already been priced out. I'm not talking about some random country side spots, I'm talking about mountain towns, inline with the article. "There are a couple of foreign-investor hotspot blips like newly trendy ski town Niseko" Do you have any idea how much money has gone into Niseko? It's not new and trendy, that's been going on for quite some time now and continues to do so. The people who have made their money screwing that place over are now looking for their next victims.
SwagGrocery 5y ago
There are a lot of comments about eliminating investment properties and providing subsidized housing. Why don't we let the market work itself out? Let's see how magical Crested Butte is in a few years with no intervention. I suspect you'll be able to get a nice ski-in/ski-out condo at a significant discount when there are no longer any businesses open in the town.
- danielheath 5y ago
  Did 'the market' build the roads, sewerage and power grids that made it viable to have a township there, or did the government decide they should exist and fund them directly?
  - rcpt 5y ago
    No Denver pays for those. Remote mountain towns never pencil out. It's incredibly expensive to maintain even typical suburban sprawl let alone frontier outposts in the wilderness.
- xrd 5y ago
  Won't Amazon and Uber Eats step in to fill that gap? I sadly worry that technology will fill in the holes. When reading the article I was thinking to myself: "what if people who lived there could pool their collective cooking skills and offer up meals to their neighbors (letting their neighbors skip cooking, a need previously filled by local restaurants)."
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    The people who live there are the ones who can afford to own a second home that sits vacant much of the year. You really think people that well off are going to cook food to sell? -And- drive it (since who else is going to drive the Amazon or Uber Eats vehicles) until self-driving, on mountain roads, becomes a reality?
  - moistly 5y ago
    My neighbour is nicknamed “Scratch’n’sniff.” I do not wish to eat any of his cooking.
boringg 5y ago
One of the biggest problems that is hitting ski towns is the hyper cheap season passes that everyone buys. The model has created a huge surge of demand for people to go skiing in winter which has put pressure on the local ski towns (more short term rental demands, second home buyers) and the resources at ski mountains (aka the insane lines on a good ski day now). It's interesting because it has allowed a lot more people to get into skiing but the trade off has been that with more volume on the ski hills - more demand on the local real estate and more crowded infrastructure. Businesses have done well since they sold more but locals who are on a tighter budget have inflating home costs. Pandemic also made things get extra strange.
- reducesuffering 5y ago
  Lift tickets are like 2x what they were 7 years ago. Prices are matching demand, I doubt it's vice versa. Personally, I think social media is the culprit for the increased demand. Previously people in most places barely knew skiing was an accessible thing to do. Now you have mimetic desire from their friends posting glamor shots at the resort for all to see.
  - SkyPuncher 5y ago
    Day lift tickets are up, but season passes aren't changing much. The model is just pushing people to pre-commit to purchasing.
    - mthoms 5y ago
      Anecdotally, in Whistler (now owned by Vail), day tickets are nearly double what they were a decade and a half ago. While season passes are nearly half the price.
  - SwagGrocery 5y ago
    The consolidation of ski resorts by just a few companies (e.g. Vail), and the creation of the Epic Pass has dramatically increased affordability and access. Just a few years ago a trip to Vail was a big deal; now it's an easy weekend trip for anyone with Southwest Rapid Rewards and an Epic Pass.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
Simple question: Why can't the restaurants and such raise prices? And thus pay?? The non-locals drove up the price of housing and were still ready, willing, and able to pay. Why should that cycle stop there?
- SwagGrocery 5y ago
  Raising prices, and thus pay, would work if the people who drove up housing costs occupied those houses. But the houses are vacant. So they'll eventually drive out the locals, which will cause local businesses to close because they can't get workers, which will then decrease the value of the vacant houses. The investors will then sell, and the cycle will restart.
- drewpc 5y ago
  My partner has lived in Crested Butte for 18 years and I just came back from a weekend there. Restaurant prices are already high and each one has "help wanted" signs out front because nobody can work for minimum wage and not even afford to live there. Raising prices of a $20 cocktail to $25 does not allow the restaurant to pay hourly, local workers enough money to afford a house that's over $800k or rent that's over $2k/mo. The numbers just plain don't add up.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Resort towns should be considered more like cruise ships. I wouldn't expect a deckhand to afford a condo on a oceanliner, but if their labor is needed it seems its not an issue for the employer to provide housing. Plenty of industries provide housing for their workers. If housing is such an issue for labor to cover itself, capital should just pay for what its labor requires to exist. Somehow along the line we went from developing commercial properties with a second or third floor apartment along our mainstreets into properties devoid of any housing but perhaps plenty of space devoted to someone parking for twenty minutes. It's time we go back and enforce this stipulation on housing. Let's see the inevitable new starbucks in town manifest as a mixed use building instead of yet another drive through that bogs down another intersection.
KingMachiavelli 5y ago
The problem is pretty simple; the stock of mountain resort towns has not kept up to satisfy demand. Imagine 15 or 20 years ago, a trip to a somewhat remote mountain town had a lot of inconveniences like bad internet, unpredictable weather/travel conditions, etc. In the current year, it's very easy to book an entire trip to Vail/Tahoe in 30 minutes. The amenities and infrastructure are decent making it a viable place for remote work as well. Building enough short term housing is difficult and many people can only afford it if they book as a very large group (15 to 20 people is not uncommon) which means that the local 'lodging' supply is insufficient which creates a market for vacation rentals. The polices these places put in place to combat the housing crises aren't actually designed to provide affordable housing. The post common policy is limiting the occupancy of vacation rentals such that large >6 adult parties are no longer allowed. IMO it's pretty obvious that the local lodging industry absolutely hated competition since those 15+ person family reunion style groups were paying half as much on a VRBO a few miles from town vs an in-town hotel/townhouse setup. The second big lobby/group is the wealthy people who want to own a vacation home/2nd home outright for there own personal use rather than personal+rent use. Does anyone really thing that these small mountain towns have the kind of jobs to support owning a 4000 sqft house as a primary residence without some supplemental income/wealth? So what happens is the wealthy retires/2nd home buyers support and advocate for housing policies designed to make their homes cheaper while actually constricting the short-term lodging supply further which in turn means more affordable homes are converted to short-term rentals. It's very easy to assume that limiting the use of homes as vacation rentals would increase the housing supply but in reality it only increases the supply for the wealthy - not the workers in these towns. IMO I think the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts. Otherwise the only solution is trying to limit* the number of tourists and visitors.
- ghaff 5y ago
  >IMO I think the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts. Almost impossible given environmental constraints. (Whether one agrees or disagrees.) Even expanding existing resorts is tough. And it's not clear the economics are there given demographics even leaving aside any climate change factors. ADDED: More rural towns with very limited facilities may be possible given Starlink, etc. But they're not going to be world-class ski resorts or what most people think of as the associated mountain towns.
buttercraft 5y ago
I was born and raised in a small ski town that was a "hidden gem" for a long time. This article covers the issues well. In one year, it all changed. Housing prices and rent increased drastically -- sometimes by 2x or 3x. Half of my friends and acquaintances have had to move out of town and commute for work. What does it say when a city's essential workers cannot vote on city issues anymore? The city is not legally allowed to regulate short term rentals, so AirBnB is taking up a significant portion of housing. The city tries to make developers restrict short term rentals on the units they develop instead but with limited success. Any attempt at new housing is met with fierce resistance by a loud minority with expensive lawyers. Nobody wants the town to change. Everyone who moves here wants to prevent anyone else from following. Some of the people advocating for affordable housing are the same ones trying to jack up property values. So affordable housing is not actually affordable for anyone who needs it. Businesses are struggling to find employees, and many have closed or limited their hours. At the same time, commercial rents are increasing. It's a sad mess.
- gnarcoregrizz 5y ago
  Sounds like a problem that'll fix itself if no businesses can hire. Unfortunately it will probably be on a long time frame.
  - space_fountain 5y ago
    I think part of the problem is that while maybe wages will be pushed up a bit, eventually the equilibrium is still a situation we won't like. Like long commutes and bad living situations.
    - refurb 5y ago
      But is it a bad equilibrium? If someone is willing to trade the time and cost of a long commute, can’t we trust that they decided it’s worth it? I keep hearing how we need to make the Bay Area affordable, but I’m also thinking “price is a signal” and people deciding to live elsewhere is exactly what we want. I spent time in a developing country and the government is struggling to creating new economic centers but failing miserably (mostly due to poor people willing to sacrifice for higher wages). If they had their way they’d love to not have a metro area of 15M but two metro areas of 7.5M. Not sure we should be accommodating everyone in the Bay Area (or wherever), people deciding to move to Austin is a good thing.
TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
Outlaw shaped skis. Everybody has to ski on long, straight skis that can’t be wider than 65 under foot. Watch property values plummet in a week. Edit: accurate prediction of the future: https://youtu.be/qhuHuQ1Bu3o https://youtu.be/qhuHuQ1Bu3o
- zwirbl 5y ago
  People would have their knees repaired, then sell ar a loss
  - swader999 5y ago
    Wider under foot is harder on the knees actually, especially on groomed runs.
    - zwirbl 5y ago
      Sure, but long, straight skis are harder to control, causing more accidents for less skilled riders. Many people skiing reasonably well today would have a really hard time using classic material from the 80s-90s
      - swader999 5y ago
        Yeah that is true. I still take my skinny ones out a couple times a season. They turn quick and you get to feel the depth on the powder turns.
- luch 5y ago
  Or better : outlaw ski lifts. You can still do some skiing or snowboarding, but you have to get to the summit yourself like alpine hunters.
  - ourlordcaffeine 5y ago
    This is life for downhill longboarding (outside of official events with uplift buses)
chrissnell 5y ago
I lived in Park City, UT throughout much of the 1990s and early 2000s. My family had a home in Telluride, so I’m familiar with the situation there, as well. I have an idea for a solution that I’m surprised was not mentioned. It’s simple: impose a heavy tax on unoccupied vacation homes but offer an exemption for owners who house one local worker on the property year-round. The concept is that the owner of a big vacation home would build a small apartment, perhaps in a basement or in the rear of the home, or even detached, that could house 1-2 locals, and would rent it out for an affordable price. In exchange, the owner gets a break from the hefty tax and they have an on-site theft deterrent. Back in my ski town days, I had several friends who lived in peoples’ vacation homes as on-site keepers for the absentee owners. They’d keep the property secure, shovel snow if needed, stock the fridge before the owner visited, etc. In exchange, they lived there for free, or at a much-reduced rent.
- alexjray 5y ago
  100%, the amount of houses that are just sitting up at Park City, Sun Valley, [insert popular ski town] is shocking.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > It’s simple: impose a heavy tax on unoccupied vacation homes but offer an exemption for owners who house one local worker on the property year-round. TFA mentioned explicitly that CB's proposal (not approved by the electorate) was a tax on unoccupied vacation homes with an exemption for owns who house one local worker on the property for at least 6 months of the year.
- asdff 5y ago
  They really should just have this on the business owners. Make them have to provide housing for the labor they require to make their money vs having homeowners who might not even be patronizing the business front this overhead of theirs. In places like Catalina Island where there isn't much housing, you will see job ads for the coffee shop offering employee housing along with the job. You want to open a starbucks in a mountain town? Better make it a mixed use building with some apartments upstairs for the staff. The whole reason why housing costs are so high is because there is an imbalance in the number of jobs and units of houses available, so if you mandate that all these employers provide housing for the jobs they bring into the area, you alleviate this imbalance immediately.
adrianN 5y ago
Climate change will probably kill a lot of ski towns in the next few decades.
- elevenoh 5y ago
  source?
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Have you tried googling yourself? For example https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-and/climate-skiing https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-and/climate-sk... "Wobus, Small, and their coauthors simulated natural snow accumulation at 247 winter recreation destinations across the CONUS. They incorporated five climate models and two emission scenarios: RCP4.5 (moderate emissions) and RCP8.5 (high emissions). In this as in other studies, high-emission scenarios present more worrisome forecasts than moderate-emission scenarios, especially toward the end of the century. Under both scenarios, winter season length could be cut short by more than half in some locations as soon as 2050. Shorter ski seasons “could result in millions to tens of millions of foregone recreational visits annually by 2050, with an annual monetized impact of hundreds of millions of dollars.”"
    - asdff 5y ago
      A lot of resorts already rely on man made snow to get through a ski season, although you do need to be under freezing.
scythe 5y ago
>Unchained from their desks, the hordes of newly remote white-collar workers descended upon all the magical mountain towns, and in just one year, the median list price for a home in Crested Butte jumped 40 percent, to $895,000. Rents soared, too—20 to 40 percent in Colorado ski towns like Crested Butte, according to one June 2021 report. The market adjusts if it is correct to adjust, at least probably, according to the probably efficient market hypothesis. The question is whether it's correct for the market to adjust. Is it a durable trend for computer-based work to be performed from the comfort of far-flung locales? Because this would probably change the demand for, and therefore the construction and presence of, housing all over the place. Crested Butte happens to be first on the list; just wait until they discover Ocracoke. But housing can't just appear and disappear willy-nilly. It's heavy, for one thing. So yes, the solution to a durable increase in housing demand is to build more housing. What about a transient increase in demand? Suppose a bunch of people want housing but won't in five years. Suppose we know this, just for the sake of a simpler analysis (cf. for the sake of argument). What then? The most common suggestion I've heard, in the second scenario, says you probably want some way to ensure that the people who are likely to stick around don't all get driven out. This is where you start to look at policies like rent control and property tax abatements for long-term owners. This also includes affordable housing incentives of various kinds. But these policies conflict with construction and therefore long-term planning in municipal policymaking. Over the long-term, concealing a durable increase in demand with stringent tenant protections creates a double standard and a new kind of inequality. This is one case where a political debate turns into a prognostication contest. Unfortunately, fortune-tellers have a poor track record regardless of political leanings. Optimistically, we can plan for both eventualities at once, as long as we're clear about what we're doing. A major barrier to the compromise option is the tendency for political polarization to poison the well. Advocates of tenant protection raise spurious "positive-feedback" objections to upzoning, citing effects that disappear in well-controlled studies. Advocates of housing deregulation overestimate the impact of modernized affordability incentives, and underestimate or ignore the possibilities for innovation and general social benefits thereof. I'm arguing for uncertainty. I generally support housing construction wherever it's fiscally sound. But we can't expect that construction to materialize where the market isn't convinced it's necessary, simply because it would meet our social objectives. And we can't ignore the future to meet social objectives right now.
matsemann 5y ago
As someone growing up in a smaller ski town in Norway: Yes, it's an issue. But it's often far too easy to blame the new people or the tourists. Hating them while happily taking their money or needing them to fill work. I mean, without being a tourist hotspot, the town I'm from would have died. Towns close by without the same skiing opportunities struggle with all young people moving to study and never returning. So the population is ending up being very old and declining. With that said, there are of course issues. But I feel our zoning laws have worked great. An area is either for cabins or primary residents. Those for primary resident, must have someone living there. The cabins don't. Thus there are two markets, one for those wanting the convenience of their own place to stay when visiting, and one for those wanting to live their full time. A house for full time is also in a different areas than the cabins, so you won't have lots of empty hosues as your neighbors. This is reflected in the prices. A cabin is probably 2x-3x as expensive as a similar house. But that helps on not pricing the locals out. Of course, someone externally could buy a house as an investment and rent it out longterm, thus pushing the price higher. But at least that doesn't take away some housing for people living there.
- midasuni 5y ago
  How is primary residence enforced?
  - myshoesareblue 5y ago
    they are taxed differently. you would not get the upper hand trying to live primarily in something classified in a secondary/fun/vacation home. there's also the matter of your person registry information being wrong all the time (since it has to be tied to something zoned as a primary residence). would be death by a thousand cuts since so many services and programs refer to this registry to automate things.
    - matsemann 5y ago
      Many counties are actually fine with people living full time in their cabins. It's the opposite that's problematic, using normal housing as cabins. But as you say, it can be an expensive and troublesome way to live, compared to buying something zoned properly.
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
> For the right to change the covenants of a deed, Vail pays the homeowner 15 to 20 percent of the home’s market value—on average, about $69,000. The owner can collect that payout today, without selling their house. When they do eventually sell, their deed restricts eligible buyers to residents who are employed by an Eagle County business. This is the key part of the article. Interesting short term solution; but I'm wondering what happens in the long term.
overton 5y ago
Same story pretty much everywhere -- wealthy property owners can't be bothered to allow the minimum amount of development that would let the workers they depend on find decent housing.
thrawn0r 5y ago
Landlords being allowed to increase rent on existing tenants at will makes these shifts so fast. In Germany, you cant do that and therefor people with existing leases are not being displaced that easily.
teewuane 5y ago
Sheesh, this is a really interesting read.

127 points by auxym 5y ago

Tempest1981 5y ago

I usually think of disruptive technology as disrupting an industry. This time it was a whole town. Seems like towns cannot respond to disruption as well as tech companies.

pomian 5y ago

We have seen this issue locally and traveling, North America and Europe. A very good solution, but requiring cooperation and strong town Council (and perhaps some retro-action) is that every single business in town, provides staff housing - alternatively builds staff housing above their business. Imagine if their was an apartment for every employee.

toast0 5y ago
That works numerically, but having housing directly connected to your job is very prone to abuse.
- asdff 5y ago
  Isn't that de facto what already happens? If these workers were fired with the status quo, they'd be unable to afford an apartment locally, and the end result is the same as if their employer fronted them an apartment. Plenty of people working in ski towns already do live in resort owned housing. Tons of jobs tie employment with living circumstances not just in this industry, it's not an unusual arrangement at all.

mastax 5y ago

I imagine the Swiss have dealt with similar situations, I wonder what they would suggest? Pay employees way more is probably step one. I'm the "build more housing" guy, but it looks like the Swiss have chosen a different path?

vkou 5y ago
If the market could build its way out of this, it already would have. There's not enough money in building and leasing units to rent to burger-flippers and dog-walkers, when there are millionaires lining up to make all-cash purchases. You either have to pay people enough to afford a mortgage in the area, or you watch all your manual laborers move to the big cities.
- armenarmen 5y ago
  > If the market could build its way out of this, it already would have I believe the author mentions that there was a proposed large apartment building (250 ish units) that could, presumably, have alleviated some of the demand but that it was voted down by nimby types to avoid CB “becoming aurora” I’d think then that it’s less so the market preventing building than it is voters and activist home owners
  - vkou 5y ago
    The free market is precisely what gave this particular makeup of voters and activist home owners the keys to the kingdom. If you can't afford to pay to play in that municipality, you don't get to vote.
    - lbarrow 5y ago
      The "free market" didn't give those activists the right to veto development, the political processes and rules of their communities did. It's silly to treat that veto as a natural result, it's just as contingent as any other political rule.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        How did they get to be able to vote? As TFA describes, they could afford property within the incorporated propery of CB, unlike those forced to find places to live outside it. Their wealth gave them access to the vote, and they are using their votes to further their own interests. Being able to buy whatever you want for whatever price works for you and the seller sounds quite a bit like a "free market" to me.

ragnot 5y ago

With seasons seemingly getting shorter and/or worse (due to what I assume to be global warming) and the lines just getting absolutely ridiculous [1], I think I've accepted the fact that skiing/snowboarding is going to be a different experience for my kids. That experience probably won't be at a traditional mountain like Killington, Vail, etc. The lines will be too long, too expensive, just overall it will suck. Honestly, I'm considering doing a hike up to the mountain/ski down thing because the alternative is to go to even more exotic locations (Niseko, maybe Lebanon?) which would cost even more money. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/ae560476-4d83-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5 https://www.ft.com/content/ae560476-4d83-11ea-95a0-43d18ec71...

farnsworth 5y ago
Wait till you find out how overcrowded backcountry skiing has gotten too.
- i_love_music 5y ago
  Agreed. It has been trending up for years with better equipment, but COVID opened up the floodgates. Now the NPs have to employee "ski rangers" to help assist the chaos that is bc skiing in popular spots. I don't like where this is headed. Serenity and solitude get removed from the outdoors more and more every season. Summer and winter. I am really torn. Part of me wants everyone to enjoy nature and outdoors, but the other part of me wants to keep it pristine. These desires seem at odds with each other.
  - tayo42 5y ago
    It wouldn't be so bad if these new outdoor people actually respected the outdoors. Yet they show up with blue tooth radios and leave trash around
    - mitigating 5y ago
      Everyone is a new person to someone
5y ago

jseliger 5y ago

No mention of "demand" and only one of "supply:" "The limited supply of affordable housing for workers has been a challenge for decades." Prices occur where demand and supply intersect. There are two ways to lower them: lower demand or raise supply. Supply restrictions raise prices. There are a lot of words here that fail to deal with price fundamentals.

dsizzle 5y ago
Ehh, that might be a shallow search. The issue of limited supply runs throughout the piece: towns being surrounded by protected lands where building isn’t possible and NIMBYism.
deleted 5y ago
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bobsmooth 5y ago
What are you even saying? Prices go up because the locals are being priced out by people buying second homes and AirBNB takes up all the available rentals. The mayor of the town nearly got evicted because his landlord was going to convert it.
9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
This obviously isn't true. You can absolutely use legislation and fiscal policy to impact market prices. You're being incredibly reductionist and I'm not quite sure why, but if you read the article, you would have come across the case of Whistler, where they've effectively used policy to improve the availability of affordable housing. Also, we're not talking about a commodity like smart fridges or something, we're talking about one of the fundamental human needs — shelter. Your frivolity is unnecessarily callous.
- liketochill 5y ago
  Living in a ski town isn’t a fundamental human need. There are lots of cheap places to live in the USA they just are not in what are currently the desirable locations.

zz865 5y ago

I quite like the rules in the Tirol - you can only own property if you live there. No second homes, no big hotels, no renting out houses. Just small owner operated hotels and locals.

neilparikh 5y ago
Wouldn't this mean people who earn enough to rent, but not buy (ex. service workers) wouldn't be able to live there (since there wouldn't be a stock of rental housing they can rent), and thus would have to commute?
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Why wouldn't there be a stock of rental housing? Nothing stops a full-time resident from owning rental property. If you want to own one (or more) houses there you have to live there. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. I wish this could be tried in the USA, but voters (rich property owners) would never allow it. There are a lot of places (not just ski towns) that are ruined by rich people bidding up property and then leaving it vacant 358 days of the year.
- mkipper 5y ago
  I don't know about Tirol, but in Banff, the restrictions don't prevent construction of multi-unit buildings specifically for renters. I don't know exactly how ownership of these buildings work, but I think they're owned by the town through some non-profit org. I don't live in Banff and I'm sure there are issues with this system, but it seems pretty reasonable. Service workers would definitely be priced out if every condo/apartment was owned privately and available as a short-term rental.
imgabe 5y ago
I think a lot of places should have rules like that. At least they should heavily tax any home that isn't used as a primary residence (either by the owner or a renter).
seattle_spring 5y ago
That'd explain partially why I loved the vibe of that area so much. I'd live in Northern Italy in a heartbeat if I had the chance.

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago

Honest question, have any of these ski towns tried allowing the construction of a significant amount of housing? I.e. housing growth that actually scales with the growth in demand? None of the ones I've visited seem at all dense. (Been to Vail, Beaver Creek, Park City, and all over Tahoe.) All the consternation over the housing crisis is maddening to me because it seems like universally (in the US), we're willing to try everything and anything except the one thing that basic economics suggests would actually work. We're like a person who needs to drive a screw but will only use wrenches, hammers, and saws.

zz865 5y ago
I think one issue is places like Vail, PC, Tahoe are already spread out. Going there on vacation doesn't feel special at all, just feels like you're in some generic suburb. Places like Tremblant are nicer as there is a compact walkable town where all the buildings are 5 stories tall.
lumost 5y ago
A few of the towns in the article have vacancy rates greater than 50%. If the free market can support a 50% occupancy rate, there isn't a great reason to think that it can't support a 90 or 95% occupancy rate. Increasing the housing stock by 50% to house 5% of the towns population seems inefficient for both investment owners and workers.
armenarmen 5y ago
I’m not aware of any, no. But I’d love to see one of these cities take a pro building stance
deleted 5y ago
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ghiculescu 5y ago
I ask genuinely: is the basic economic argument in a mountain town like CB the same as it is in a place like Denver? It feels like it might be different given how much surrounding land is (federally) protected, or just looks super expensive / impractical to build on.

cletus 5y ago

The principle I've long held is that cities and towns should primarily be for those who reside in those towns. In this case, only residents should be voting on things like ballot measures. This article talks about a few towns, some where I'm sure there are a lot of residents with multiple homes, some of which I'm sure that isn't the case. But nonresident owners shouldn't be dictating public policy, period. So the first thing you do is you is put in a city income tax and make all homeowners residents for tax purposes. And that's tax on all your income. To those who say they'll just hide behind LLCs and trusts, you do two things: 1. You tax the beneficial owner of the property; 2. Properties with no clear beneficial owner are simply taxed punitively with property tax. This article is just further evidence that AirBnB is a cancer on housing, as if we needed further confirmation (which we didn't). At a higher level, we need to do something about the ultra-rich borrowing to avoid tax. A good starting point is that any borrowed funds, or at least any borrowed funds for certain purposes such as buying real estate, are treated as repatriated or realized income and taxed accordingly. And while we're at it, let's starting non-primary residences on unrealized capital gains unless it's a long term rental.

xrd 5y ago
I don't own a second home, for the record. I do think it would be difficult and have second order effects to ban AirBnB. But, what about a tax on vacancies, rather than on revenue you get when renting it out? Incentivize people to keep their places filled? I agree with the general sentiment that AirBnB has altered housing options for low income people for the worse. And, it seems inevitable. Maybe we need to alter our perceptions of what housing is for people as well? Meaning, people need to start thinking of housing as temporary and governments can force people to open their vacancies to people in need of housing. Perhaps a new law that makes it so empty vacant houses are available to house-less people? That would be interesting.
- cletus 5y ago
  This is what Vancouver has tried [1]. It doesn't seem to have worked. The problem here is that it's too easy to game. You can put in a token resident. The same can apply to having income limits on houses. You have a low income resident who just happens to have rich friends who visit. I think we need to attack the idea that rich people use real estate to park money and avoid taxes. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-16/taxing-the-rich-do-housing-prices-fall-when-empty-second-homes-are-taxed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-16/taxing-th...

geephroh 5y ago

Ironic coming from one of the media outlets responsible for destroying so many mountain towns by putting them on "must-visit" destination lists for the IG crowd. But those $200 camp chairs and $800 puffy jackets aren't going to sell themselves, I suppose...

barry-cotter 5y ago
Man, those people are awful aren't they? Telling people about nice places and nice things. It's supposed to be for the special people, like us. Idiots, blabbing about our stuff, ruining it.
- souplesse 5y ago
  I think you missed the point. There’s nothing wrong with Outside sharing nice places with world, but it’s ironic that they would also publish an article decrying the very popularization that they themselves often cause.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    > The newspapers reported on the problem: it was so hard to find affordable housing in town that there weren’t enough people left to work in town. That's the problem. Lack of housing. Not popularisation. The article writer don't decry the popularisation in the article though geephroh does.
    - geephroh 5y ago
      Lack of housing is, of course, a major part of the problem. And why might you suppose that previously affordable housing in what might have once been a relatively obscure locale is now in tremendous demand? Knowing a number of folks personally who have been priced out of these places -- often the hometown where they hoped to spend their lives -- might give me a different sense of perspective than you seem to have.
      - 5y ago

silisili 5y ago

This issue is nationwide(as noted), and only going to get worse. The only way out of this is to find a way to eliminate or make very, very difficult investment housing, full stop.

seehafer 5y ago
We could also stop printing trillions of dollars that inevitably end up seeking yield anywhere they can.

bamboozled 5y ago

Same thing is happening in Asia. I know a few local towns, one in particular where some foreign guy now has his Japanese real estate license and access to a bunch of foreign investors looking for places. It's becoming an unmitigated disaster. The population of the town is somewhat severely aged; However, rather than that being an opportunity for young people to get a start, this property snake steps in an steals everything at a higher price than the locals could afford and makes up a bunch of stories of why he should have it. He pays people for information so we can get the jump on places. It's really quite stressful, it seems there is nothing that can stop the guy. A second similar property snake has arrived too, with a similar back story, access to huge pool of money from China/Hong Kong/Maylasia. We moved here recently because we wanted to live in a community, but it's getting pretty hammered now, we wil hang on for the time being and try find a place, not ready to give up yet.

dustintrex 5y ago
I don't think your view is representative of "Asia", or even Japan. Housing in Japan is by world standards extremely affordable and generally depreciates in value instead of appreciating, making it a terrible investment. If your town is "somewhat severely aged", that means the youth have already made the call to head for the cities and it's lack of jobs, not lack of affordable property, that's driving that. There are a couple of foreign-investor hotspot blips like newly trendy ski town Niseko, but for the vast majority of the country, prices are down, down, down. Many rural towns are now handing out essentially free houses because they've been abandoned (akiya), although the costs of renovating them into something livable are often considerable.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  In "most" of Japan, that might be the case, but the article is about Ski towns. There is plenty of young people who have tried to move to ski towns from large cities and have already been priced out. I'm not talking about some random country side spots, I'm talking about mountain towns, inline with the article. "There are a couple of foreign-investor hotspot blips like newly trendy ski town Niseko" Do you have any idea how much money has gone into Niseko? It's not new and trendy, that's been going on for quite some time now and continues to do so. The people who have made their money screwing that place over are now looking for their next victims.

SwagGrocery 5y ago

There are a lot of comments about eliminating investment properties and providing subsidized housing. Why don't we let the market work itself out? Let's see how magical Crested Butte is in a few years with no intervention. I suspect you'll be able to get a nice ski-in/ski-out condo at a significant discount when there are no longer any businesses open in the town.

danielheath 5y ago
Did 'the market' build the roads, sewerage and power grids that made it viable to have a township there, or did the government decide they should exist and fund them directly?
- rcpt 5y ago
  No Denver pays for those. Remote mountain towns never pencil out. It's incredibly expensive to maintain even typical suburban sprawl let alone frontier outposts in the wilderness.
xrd 5y ago
Won't Amazon and Uber Eats step in to fill that gap? I sadly worry that technology will fill in the holes. When reading the article I was thinking to myself: "what if people who lived there could pool their collective cooking skills and offer up meals to their neighbors (letting their neighbors skip cooking, a need previously filled by local restaurants)."
- lostcolony 5y ago
  The people who live there are the ones who can afford to own a second home that sits vacant much of the year. You really think people that well off are going to cook food to sell? -And- drive it (since who else is going to drive the Amazon or Uber Eats vehicles) until self-driving, on mountain roads, becomes a reality?
- moistly 5y ago
  My neighbour is nicknamed “Scratch’n’sniff.” I do not wish to eat any of his cooking.

boringg 5y ago

One of the biggest problems that is hitting ski towns is the hyper cheap season passes that everyone buys. The model has created a huge surge of demand for people to go skiing in winter which has put pressure on the local ski towns (more short term rental demands, second home buyers) and the resources at ski mountains (aka the insane lines on a good ski day now). It's interesting because it has allowed a lot more people to get into skiing but the trade off has been that with more volume on the ski hills - more demand on the local real estate and more crowded infrastructure. Businesses have done well since they sold more but locals who are on a tighter budget have inflating home costs. Pandemic also made things get extra strange.

reducesuffering 5y ago
Lift tickets are like 2x what they were 7 years ago. Prices are matching demand, I doubt it's vice versa. Personally, I think social media is the culprit for the increased demand. Previously people in most places barely knew skiing was an accessible thing to do. Now you have mimetic desire from their friends posting glamor shots at the resort for all to see.
- SkyPuncher 5y ago
  Day lift tickets are up, but season passes aren't changing much. The model is just pushing people to pre-commit to purchasing.
  - mthoms 5y ago
    Anecdotally, in Whistler (now owned by Vail), day tickets are nearly double what they were a decade and a half ago. While season passes are nearly half the price.
- SwagGrocery 5y ago
  The consolidation of ski resorts by just a few companies (e.g. Vail), and the creation of the Epic Pass has dramatically increased affordability and access. Just a few years ago a trip to Vail was a big deal; now it's an easy weekend trip for anyone with Southwest Rapid Rewards and an Epic Pass.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

Simple question: Why can't the restaurants and such raise prices? And thus pay?? The non-locals drove up the price of housing and were still ready, willing, and able to pay. Why should that cycle stop there?

SwagGrocery 5y ago
Raising prices, and thus pay, would work if the people who drove up housing costs occupied those houses. But the houses are vacant. So they'll eventually drive out the locals, which will cause local businesses to close because they can't get workers, which will then decrease the value of the vacant houses. The investors will then sell, and the cycle will restart.
drewpc 5y ago
My partner has lived in Crested Butte for 18 years and I just came back from a weekend there. Restaurant prices are already high and each one has "help wanted" signs out front because nobody can work for minimum wage and not even afford to live there. Raising prices of a $20 cocktail to $25 does not allow the restaurant to pay hourly, local workers enough money to afford a house that's over $800k or rent that's over $2k/mo. The numbers just plain don't add up.
- asdff 5y ago
  Resort towns should be considered more like cruise ships. I wouldn't expect a deckhand to afford a condo on a oceanliner, but if their labor is needed it seems its not an issue for the employer to provide housing. Plenty of industries provide housing for their workers. If housing is such an issue for labor to cover itself, capital should just pay for what its labor requires to exist. Somehow along the line we went from developing commercial properties with a second or third floor apartment along our mainstreets into properties devoid of any housing but perhaps plenty of space devoted to someone parking for twenty minutes. It's time we go back and enforce this stipulation on housing. Let's see the inevitable new starbucks in town manifest as a mixed use building instead of yet another drive through that bogs down another intersection.

KingMachiavelli 5y ago

The problem is pretty simple; the stock of mountain resort towns has not kept up to satisfy demand. Imagine 15 or 20 years ago, a trip to a somewhat remote mountain town had a lot of inconveniences like bad internet, unpredictable weather/travel conditions, etc. In the current year, it's very easy to book an entire trip to Vail/Tahoe in 30 minutes. The amenities and infrastructure are decent making it a viable place for remote work as well. Building enough short term housing is difficult and many people can only afford it if they book as a very large group (15 to 20 people is not uncommon) which means that the local 'lodging' supply is insufficient which creates a market for vacation rentals. The polices these places put in place to combat the housing crises aren't actually designed to provide affordable housing. The post common policy is limiting the occupancy of vacation rentals such that large >6 adult parties are no longer allowed. IMO it's pretty obvious that the local lodging industry absolutely hated competition since those 15+ person family reunion style groups were paying half as much on a VRBO a few miles from town vs an in-town hotel/townhouse setup. The second big lobby/group is the wealthy people who want to own a vacation home/2nd home outright for there own personal use rather than personal+rent use. Does anyone really thing that these small mountain towns have the kind of jobs to support owning a 4000 sqft house as a primary residence without some supplemental income/wealth? So what happens is the wealthy retires/2nd home buyers support and advocate for housing policies designed to make their homes cheaper while actually constricting the short-term lodging supply further which in turn means more affordable homes are converted to short-term rentals. It's very easy to assume that limiting the use of homes as vacation rentals would increase the housing supply but in reality it only increases the supply for the wealthy - not the workers in these towns. IMO I think the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts. Otherwise the only solution is trying to limit* the number of tourists and visitors.

ghaff 5y ago
>IMO I think the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts. Almost impossible given environmental constraints. (Whether one agrees or disagrees.) Even expanding existing resorts is tough. And it's not clear the economics are there given demographics even leaving aside any climate change factors. ADDED: More rural towns with very limited facilities may be possible given Starlink, etc. But they're not going to be world-class ski resorts or what most people think of as the associated mountain towns.

buttercraft 5y ago

I was born and raised in a small ski town that was a "hidden gem" for a long time. This article covers the issues well. In one year, it all changed. Housing prices and rent increased drastically -- sometimes by 2x or 3x. Half of my friends and acquaintances have had to move out of town and commute for work. What does it say when a city's essential workers cannot vote on city issues anymore? The city is not legally allowed to regulate short term rentals, so AirBnB is taking up a significant portion of housing. The city tries to make developers restrict short term rentals on the units they develop instead but with limited success. Any attempt at new housing is met with fierce resistance by a loud minority with expensive lawyers. Nobody wants the town to change. Everyone who moves here wants to prevent anyone else from following. Some of the people advocating for affordable housing are the same ones trying to jack up property values. So affordable housing is not actually affordable for anyone who needs it. Businesses are struggling to find employees, and many have closed or limited their hours. At the same time, commercial rents are increasing. It's a sad mess.

gnarcoregrizz 5y ago
Sounds like a problem that'll fix itself if no businesses can hire. Unfortunately it will probably be on a long time frame.
- space_fountain 5y ago
  I think part of the problem is that while maybe wages will be pushed up a bit, eventually the equilibrium is still a situation we won't like. Like long commutes and bad living situations.
  - refurb 5y ago
    But is it a bad equilibrium? If someone is willing to trade the time and cost of a long commute, can’t we trust that they decided it’s worth it? I keep hearing how we need to make the Bay Area affordable, but I’m also thinking “price is a signal” and people deciding to live elsewhere is exactly what we want. I spent time in a developing country and the government is struggling to creating new economic centers but failing miserably (mostly due to poor people willing to sacrifice for higher wages). If they had their way they’d love to not have a metro area of 15M but two metro areas of 7.5M. Not sure we should be accommodating everyone in the Bay Area (or wherever), people deciding to move to Austin is a good thing.

TYPE_FASTER 5y ago

Outlaw shaped skis. Everybody has to ski on long, straight skis that can’t be wider than 65 under foot. Watch property values plummet in a week. Edit: accurate prediction of the future: https://youtu.be/qhuHuQ1Bu3o https://youtu.be/qhuHuQ1Bu3o

zwirbl 5y ago
People would have their knees repaired, then sell ar a loss
- swader999 5y ago
  Wider under foot is harder on the knees actually, especially on groomed runs.
  - zwirbl 5y ago
    Sure, but long, straight skis are harder to control, causing more accidents for less skilled riders. Many people skiing reasonably well today would have a really hard time using classic material from the 80s-90s
    - swader999 5y ago
      Yeah that is true. I still take my skinny ones out a couple times a season. They turn quick and you get to feel the depth on the powder turns.
luch 5y ago
Or better : outlaw ski lifts. You can still do some skiing or snowboarding, but you have to get to the summit yourself like alpine hunters.
- ourlordcaffeine 5y ago
  This is life for downhill longboarding (outside of official events with uplift buses)

chrissnell 5y ago

I lived in Park City, UT throughout much of the 1990s and early 2000s. My family had a home in Telluride, so I’m familiar with the situation there, as well. I have an idea for a solution that I’m surprised was not mentioned. It’s simple: impose a heavy tax on unoccupied vacation homes but offer an exemption for owners who house one local worker on the property year-round. The concept is that the owner of a big vacation home would build a small apartment, perhaps in a basement or in the rear of the home, or even detached, that could house 1-2 locals, and would rent it out for an affordable price. In exchange, the owner gets a break from the hefty tax and they have an on-site theft deterrent. Back in my ski town days, I had several friends who lived in peoples’ vacation homes as on-site keepers for the absentee owners. They’d keep the property secure, shovel snow if needed, stock the fridge before the owner visited, etc. In exchange, they lived there for free, or at a much-reduced rent.

alexjray 5y ago
100%, the amount of houses that are just sitting up at Park City, Sun Valley, [insert popular ski town] is shocking.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> It’s simple: impose a heavy tax on unoccupied vacation homes but offer an exemption for owners who house one local worker on the property year-round. TFA mentioned explicitly that CB's proposal (not approved by the electorate) was a tax on unoccupied vacation homes with an exemption for owns who house one local worker on the property for at least 6 months of the year.
asdff 5y ago
They really should just have this on the business owners. Make them have to provide housing for the labor they require to make their money vs having homeowners who might not even be patronizing the business front this overhead of theirs. In places like Catalina Island where there isn't much housing, you will see job ads for the coffee shop offering employee housing along with the job. You want to open a starbucks in a mountain town? Better make it a mixed use building with some apartments upstairs for the staff. The whole reason why housing costs are so high is because there is an imbalance in the number of jobs and units of houses available, so if you mandate that all these employers provide housing for the jobs they bring into the area, you alleviate this imbalance immediately.

adrianN 5y ago

Climate change will probably kill a lot of ski towns in the next few decades.

elevenoh 5y ago
source?
- adrianN 5y ago
  Have you tried googling yourself? For example https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-and/climate-skiing https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-and/climate-sk... "Wobus, Small, and their coauthors simulated natural snow accumulation at 247 winter recreation destinations across the CONUS. They incorporated five climate models and two emission scenarios: RCP4.5 (moderate emissions) and RCP8.5 (high emissions). In this as in other studies, high-emission scenarios present more worrisome forecasts than moderate-emission scenarios, especially toward the end of the century. Under both scenarios, winter season length could be cut short by more than half in some locations as soon as 2050. Shorter ski seasons “could result in millions to tens of millions of foregone recreational visits annually by 2050, with an annual monetized impact of hundreds of millions of dollars.”"
  - asdff 5y ago
    A lot of resorts already rely on man made snow to get through a ski season, although you do need to be under freezing.

scythe 5y ago

>Unchained from their desks, the hordes of newly remote white-collar workers descended upon all the magical mountain towns, and in just one year, the median list price for a home in Crested Butte jumped 40 percent, to $895,000. Rents soared, too—20 to 40 percent in Colorado ski towns like Crested Butte, according to one June 2021 report. The market adjusts if it is correct to adjust, at least probably, according to the probably efficient market hypothesis. The question is whether it's correct for the market to adjust. Is it a durable trend for computer-based work to be performed from the comfort of far-flung locales? Because this would probably change the demand for, and therefore the construction and presence of, housing all over the place. Crested Butte happens to be first on the list; just wait until they discover Ocracoke. But housing can't just appear and disappear willy-nilly. It's heavy, for one thing. So yes, the solution to a durable increase in housing demand is to build more housing. What about a transient increase in demand? Suppose a bunch of people want housing but won't in five years. Suppose we know this, just for the sake of a simpler analysis (cf. for the sake of argument). What then? The most common suggestion I've heard, in the second scenario, says you probably want some way to ensure that the people who are likely to stick around don't all get driven out. This is where you start to look at policies like rent control and property tax abatements for long-term owners. This also includes affordable housing incentives of various kinds. But these policies conflict with construction and therefore long-term planning in municipal policymaking. Over the long-term, concealing a durable increase in demand with stringent tenant protections creates a double standard and a new kind of inequality. This is one case where a political debate turns into a prognostication contest. Unfortunately, fortune-tellers have a poor track record regardless of political leanings. Optimistically, we can plan for both eventualities at once, as long as we're clear about what we're doing. A major barrier to the compromise option is the tendency for political polarization to poison the well. Advocates of tenant protection raise spurious "positive-feedback" objections to upzoning, citing effects that disappear in well-controlled studies. Advocates of housing deregulation overestimate the impact of modernized affordability incentives, and underestimate or ignore the possibilities for innovation and general social benefits thereof. I'm arguing for uncertainty. I generally support housing construction wherever it's fiscally sound. But we can't expect that construction to materialize where the market isn't convinced it's necessary, simply because it would meet our social objectives. And we can't ignore the future to meet social objectives right now.

matsemann 5y ago

As someone growing up in a smaller ski town in Norway: Yes, it's an issue. But it's often far too easy to blame the new people or the tourists. Hating them while happily taking their money or needing them to fill work. I mean, without being a tourist hotspot, the town I'm from would have died. Towns close by without the same skiing opportunities struggle with all young people moving to study and never returning. So the population is ending up being very old and declining. With that said, there are of course issues. But I feel our zoning laws have worked great. An area is either for cabins or primary residents. Those for primary resident, must have someone living there. The cabins don't. Thus there are two markets, one for those wanting the convenience of their own place to stay when visiting, and one for those wanting to live their full time. A house for full time is also in a different areas than the cabins, so you won't have lots of empty hosues as your neighbors. This is reflected in the prices. A cabin is probably 2x-3x as expensive as a similar house. But that helps on not pricing the locals out. Of course, someone externally could buy a house as an investment and rent it out longterm, thus pushing the price higher. But at least that doesn't take away some housing for people living there.

midasuni 5y ago
How is primary residence enforced?
- myshoesareblue 5y ago
  they are taxed differently. you would not get the upper hand trying to live primarily in something classified in a secondary/fun/vacation home. there's also the matter of your person registry information being wrong all the time (since it has to be tied to something zoned as a primary residence). would be death by a thousand cuts since so many services and programs refer to this registry to automate things.
  - matsemann 5y ago
    Many counties are actually fine with people living full time in their cabins. It's the opposite that's problematic, using normal housing as cabins. But as you say, it can be an expensive and troublesome way to live, compared to buying something zoned properly.

simonebrunozzi 5y ago

> For the right to change the covenants of a deed, Vail pays the homeowner 15 to 20 percent of the home’s market value—on average, about $69,000. The owner can collect that payout today, without selling their house. When they do eventually sell, their deed restricts eligible buyers to residents who are employed by an Eagle County business. This is the key part of the article. Interesting short term solution; but I'm wondering what happens in the long term.

overton 5y ago

Same story pretty much everywhere -- wealthy property owners can't be bothered to allow the minimum amount of development that would let the workers they depend on find decent housing.

thrawn0r 5y ago

Landlords being allowed to increase rent on existing tenants at will makes these shifts so fast. In Germany, you cant do that and therefor people with existing leases are not being displaced that easily.

teewuane 5y ago

Sheesh, this is a really interesting read.