5 ms·

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 mou

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.
- kernoble 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure > the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts was meant as a strawman.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Maybe. Certainly there are enough people on these pages promoting all sorts of unrealistic BUILD BUILD BUILD programs in all sorts of contexts that it's hard to tell the difference between satire and something else.
  - mthoms 5y ago
    Like the person you're responding to, I didn't get that impression.
- kortilla 5y ago
  I grew up in the Rockies in the Wyoming/Montana area. There is absolutely enough open mountain space to open more resorts. There are ski resorts open now that are not doing that well financially. The problem is not the mountain side ski hills, it’s access to the flow of rich people. Ski resorts 2 hours from the Bozeman airport struggle because that’s too inconvenient. The ski towns that suffer from these problems are a small minority of ski resorts that meet the criteria of: - town actually right next to a ski resort (many ski resorts don’t have a convenient town attached) - airport with commercial flights to major hubs within 45 min to an hour drive at most
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I don't disagree with any of that. Though I'd point out that just because there's lots of open mountain space doesn't mean it would be anything like straightforward to get the permits to develop and operate a destination ski resort there. But, as you say, a lot of destination ski resorts don't even really have an associated town at all or they have a somewhat distributed sprawl of related properties and they're inconvenient to get to. Even most of the Colorado resorts aren't especially quick to get to from commercial flights. And if you don't have a destination resort (or other) you just have a small rural town that may not have much in the way of jobs in the first place. While there have actually been more small ski areas created since than I would have expected, it looks as if Deer Valley is the newest major resort from the early 80s--and that's in a town that already existed and already had an associated major ski area.
cjohnson318 5y ago
In New Mexico, if you want to hunt from out of state, you have to go through a lottery system. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. I think global warming is going to make it harder for "mountain resort town" supply.
- erikpukinskis 5y ago
  Is your hypothesis that it won’t snow anymore?
  - cjohnson318 5y ago
    That there's going to be shorter seasons, and the snow line is going to move up. This is already starting to happen.
    - masklinn 5y ago
      It’s been happening for a while really. In europe, low-altitude ski resorts have been dying for a while and had to diversify into non-skiing activities (which also alters the busy season as that’s more of a summer thing), and middle-altitude resorts are starting to get hit. Only the wealthiest stations have the means to cover the entire thing in artificial snow (some resorts are already 80% artificial snow at times) or helo down snow from higher altitude as happened last year during the very mild February.
      - cjohnson318 5y ago
        Thank you for that context. I didn't know that about European resorts.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  The local effects of atmospheric warming are pretty hard to predict and sometimes completely non-intuitive. Increased evaporation, changes in the dynamics of cloud formation, winds, could mean more rain in some places as well as more snow in others.
teeray 5y ago
> the local lodging industry absolutely hated competition since those 15+ person family reunion style groups were paying half as much on a VRBO... It's not just the cost--the market has changed. Hotels are like cable companies or pre-iTunes record labels. People prefer renting a private, detached, house rather than a bunch of hotel rooms because it's a nicer experience having a shared space with your whole group away from strangers. Families can dry their ski clothes by the fire while hanging out in a living room while grandma makes her famous gnocchi for dinner. Then they can go to bed at a reasonable hour. Meanwhile, a group of friends can get drunk in another rental until the sun rises. These two incompatible personas don't have to interfere with one another[0] Okay, yes, there are hotels with cabins. These are still too close together and not big enough to accommodate what the market wants out of a vacation experience. It's the difference between five friends paying $4k for business class seats versus spending $20k to charter a private jet and splitting it. [0] We're assuming the friends stay indoors and aren't a neighborhood nuisance--certainly not always the case, but sometimes people get drunk responsibly.
- noduerme 5y ago
  There also are wealthy people who just buy or rent an entire floor of a hotel or a cruise ship suite as a second (or fifth) residence. So according to the logic of Airbnb, the entire town is essentially now a hotel of this nature.
orasis 5y ago
When dealing with mountains, ground water scarcity is a serious issue, so “just build” is fairly tough to do.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
The problem described in this article is not a shortage of housing for those who want 2nd homes in places like Crested Butte (although that may well be a problem of its own). The problem being described is the infeasability of the people who work in these towns to be able to live there. You can double or triple the number of mountain resort towns, and perhaps that would ease the "challenge" of being able to afford a 2nd home there. But by itself it will have almost no impact in the challenge faced by the people who work in these towns. As the article noted, and as others have highlighted in comments, most mountain resort towns are intensely space-constrained, "just build more" is generally not an option for a given town. I doubt that "just build more mountain resort towns" is a solution either.
- fragmede 5y ago
  By bringing down the price of a 2nd home in a mountain resort town, the locals can also more easily afford to live in one. That is, if it were easy to magically create more mountain towns, without other effects on supply and demand.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    The gap between what locals can afford and what the houses generally purchased as 2nd homes cost is vast. You saying "bring down the price" as if that's a fairly trivial thing, but to bring them down enough to make them affordable for locals is not a trivial thing at all. I suspect that in general, it just isn't possible.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - asdff 5y ago
    Even if you owned the land already, price of construction being what it is in the western US, the home will be several hundred thousand dollars. That's out of reach to a lift operator making $12/hr.
asdff 5y ago
>IMO I think the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts Not a great solution. The mountains are sensitive ecology, with poor access for the most part, and even the big mountain towns that do exist are under constant threat of going up in smoke in the summer.
- mellavora 5y ago
  Ok, then let's just create more mountains. :)

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.

kernoble 5y ago
I'm pretty sure > the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts was meant as a strawman.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Maybe. Certainly there are enough people on these pages promoting all sorts of unrealistic BUILD BUILD BUILD programs in all sorts of contexts that it's hard to tell the difference between satire and something else.
- mthoms 5y ago
  Like the person you're responding to, I didn't get that impression.
kortilla 5y ago
I grew up in the Rockies in the Wyoming/Montana area. There is absolutely enough open mountain space to open more resorts. There are ski resorts open now that are not doing that well financially. The problem is not the mountain side ski hills, it’s access to the flow of rich people. Ski resorts 2 hours from the Bozeman airport struggle because that’s too inconvenient. The ski towns that suffer from these problems are a small minority of ski resorts that meet the criteria of: - town actually right next to a ski resort (many ski resorts don’t have a convenient town attached) - airport with commercial flights to major hubs within 45 min to an hour drive at most
- ghaff 5y ago
  I don't disagree with any of that. Though I'd point out that just because there's lots of open mountain space doesn't mean it would be anything like straightforward to get the permits to develop and operate a destination ski resort there. But, as you say, a lot of destination ski resorts don't even really have an associated town at all or they have a somewhat distributed sprawl of related properties and they're inconvenient to get to. Even most of the Colorado resorts aren't especially quick to get to from commercial flights. And if you don't have a destination resort (or other) you just have a small rural town that may not have much in the way of jobs in the first place. While there have actually been more small ski areas created since than I would have expected, it looks as if Deer Valley is the newest major resort from the early 80s--and that's in a town that already existed and already had an associated major ski area.

cjohnson318 5y ago

In New Mexico, if you want to hunt from out of state, you have to go through a lottery system. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. I think global warming is going to make it harder for "mountain resort town" supply.

erikpukinskis 5y ago
Is your hypothesis that it won’t snow anymore?
- cjohnson318 5y ago
  That there's going to be shorter seasons, and the snow line is going to move up. This is already starting to happen.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    It’s been happening for a while really. In europe, low-altitude ski resorts have been dying for a while and had to diversify into non-skiing activities (which also alters the busy season as that’s more of a summer thing), and middle-altitude resorts are starting to get hit. Only the wealthiest stations have the means to cover the entire thing in artificial snow (some resorts are already 80% artificial snow at times) or helo down snow from higher altitude as happened last year during the very mild February.
    - cjohnson318 5y ago
      Thank you for that context. I didn't know that about European resorts.
elzbardico 5y ago
The local effects of atmospheric warming are pretty hard to predict and sometimes completely non-intuitive. Increased evaporation, changes in the dynamics of cloud formation, winds, could mean more rain in some places as well as more snow in others.

teeray 5y ago

> the local lodging industry absolutely hated competition since those 15+ person family reunion style groups were paying half as much on a VRBO... It's not just the cost--the market has changed. Hotels are like cable companies or pre-iTunes record labels. People prefer renting a private, detached, house rather than a bunch of hotel rooms because it's a nicer experience having a shared space with your whole group away from strangers. Families can dry their ski clothes by the fire while hanging out in a living room while grandma makes her famous gnocchi for dinner. Then they can go to bed at a reasonable hour. Meanwhile, a group of friends can get drunk in another rental until the sun rises. These two incompatible personas don't have to interfere with one another[0] Okay, yes, there are hotels with cabins. These are still too close together and not big enough to accommodate what the market wants out of a vacation experience. It's the difference between five friends paying $4k for business class seats versus spending $20k to charter a private jet and splitting it. [0] We're assuming the friends stay indoors and aren't a neighborhood nuisance--certainly not always the case, but sometimes people get drunk responsibly.

noduerme 5y ago
There also are wealthy people who just buy or rent an entire floor of a hotel or a cruise ship suite as a second (or fifth) residence. So according to the logic of Airbnb, the entire town is essentially now a hotel of this nature.

orasis 5y ago

When dealing with mountains, ground water scarcity is a serious issue, so “just build” is fairly tough to do.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

The problem described in this article is not a shortage of housing for those who want 2nd homes in places like Crested Butte (although that may well be a problem of its own). The problem being described is the infeasability of the people who work in these towns to be able to live there. You can double or triple the number of mountain resort towns, and perhaps that would ease the "challenge" of being able to afford a 2nd home there. But by itself it will have almost no impact in the challenge faced by the people who work in these towns. As the article noted, and as others have highlighted in comments, most mountain resort towns are intensely space-constrained, "just build more" is generally not an option for a given town. I doubt that "just build more mountain resort towns" is a solution either.

fragmede 5y ago
By bringing down the price of a 2nd home in a mountain resort town, the locals can also more easily afford to live in one. That is, if it were easy to magically create more mountain towns, without other effects on supply and demand.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  The gap between what locals can afford and what the houses generally purchased as 2nd homes cost is vast. You saying "bring down the price" as if that's a fairly trivial thing, but to bring them down enough to make them affordable for locals is not a trivial thing at all. I suspect that in general, it just isn't possible.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- asdff 5y ago
  Even if you owned the land already, price of construction being what it is in the western US, the home will be several hundred thousand dollars. That's out of reach to a lift operator making $12/hr.

asdff 5y ago

>IMO I think the only solution is to create more mountain towns and ski resorts Not a great solution. The mountains are sensitive ecology, with poor access for the most part, and even the big mountain towns that do exist are under constant threat of going up in smoke in the summer.

mellavora 5y ago
Ok, then let's just create more mountains. :)