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That's interesting. Thanks for bringing this up. I'm generally of the opinion that "maintaining a community feel" is a fool's errand, especially when it comes t

That's interesting. Thanks for bringing this up. I'm generally of the opinion that "maintaining a community feel" is a fool's errand, especially when it comes to highly desirable locations like Jackson Hole; but it also looks like that most (all?) of your county is some kind of national park, so perhaps the usual approach of allowing the market to build more does not apply. I share your wariness of government picking the winners, and posit that this Workforce Homes program appears to be maybe a slightly cleverer version of state-imposed price control, which does not escape the core fact that the in-group (those who qualify for the program) gets below-market price housing at the expense of the out-group (those who don't qualify for whatever reason) who either must bid higher than they would have without this program or are priced out entirely. And if belonging to a "disadvantaged group" is one of the qualification criteria, then I'm afraid that the underlying economic facts may exacerbate tensions along racial lines. That said, this is only one person's opinion from thousands of miles away; and I can only say that I'm jealous of what must be the view from your window. :-)

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> generally of the opinion that "maintaining a community feel" is a fool's errand It's code for maintaining low density. (Historically, and still in some places, it codes for race, too.) Combined with supply restrictions, low density requirements mean (a) skyrocketing prices, (b) rationing or (c) more density. A lot of the conversation has been focussed on (c), which I approve of in e.g. Cupertino, where I grew up. (Turning suburbia into a city solely impacts human concerns in a way paving over nature does not.) But (b) might have more angles to it than the traditional public housing model. (I've also been a favor of public housing built to own, where the government e.g. builds housing and sells it to first-time home buyers at a subsidized price. This not only builds wealth and avoids the patronage problem, it also creates mixed-income housing of the type that's less noxious to NIMBY's than solely low-income housing.)

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> generally of the opinion that "maintaining a community feel" is a fool's errand It's code for maintaining low density. (Historically, and still in some places, it codes for race, too.) Combined with supply restrictions, low density requirements mean (a) skyrocketing prices, (b) rationing or (c) more density. A lot of the conversation has been focussed on (c), which I approve of in e.g. Cupertino, where I grew up. (Turning suburbia into a city solely impacts human concerns in a way paving over nature does not.) But (b) might have more angles to it than the traditional public housing model. (I've also been a favor of public housing built to own, where the government e.g. builds housing and sells it to first-time home buyers at a subsidized price. This not only builds wealth and avoids the patronage problem, it also creates mixed-income housing of the type that's less noxious to NIMBY's than solely low-income housing.)