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.
There's also a kind of preservation of the culture of the town. Which I kind of agree with.
Then there is also the fact that a lot of these places aren't used for housing, they're used as play houses or AirBnB's. So just adding more houses will likely mean more empty stuff in the town, probably making the problem worse.
So make empty houses (and AirBnB's) illegal (aka super taxed out the wazzoo). The people that live in a place should be able to say what they do and do not want in their town.
I'm not convinced this is quite it. The housing demand (by real, live physical people, not remote investors) is likely seasonal. Town like Tahoe might have 10x the number of people in them 12 weeks of the year. Unless we're setting up tents, we'll need permanent structures available for short term rental.
>So make empty houses (and AirBnB's) illegal (aka super taxed out the wazzoo).
Tourism industry runs on cash and being unscrupulous is pretty much a required bar for entry so taxing shit won't solve anything unless there's some magical enforcement mechanism that can be used without the industry that pays the bills voting the people who enact the taxes out of office.
It’s not hard to come up with solutions that seem likely to work (build a ton of new housing, tax unoccupied housing, etc). It’s hard to come up with solutions that seem likely to work and will be selected democratically by the voting populace.
This is true in general; it’s completely obvious how to end the COVID pandemic and stop global warming (universal vaccination and massive reduction in burning fossil fuels, respectively). But people will just not choose these obvious options.
If you can figure out why, and how to change that, you’ll have an incredible life ahead of you in politics.
The irony is that most of these towns depend entirely on tourists for theirs existence. Those tourist dollars depend on Airbnbs (no one is permitting new hotels in these towns).
the tourist dollars do not in any way depend on AirBnB's because most of these resorts were built before AirBnB and were planned, approved, and built with a plan based on hotel capacity. the number of hotel beds and the lift capacity the resorts are tied to each other. similarly, the number of bars and other tourist amenities also gets decided bases on hotel capacity, and while that may have changed since AirBnB started ruining everything, for the most part it's the same as the resorts - they built enough restaurants and bars to service the number of guests the resort was built for.
the AirBnB's are causing the resorts to run at over their designed capacity, making long lift lines for everybody, making the bars too crowded, and making the town's tourist experience worse in addition to making it worse for residents.
There’s a reason airbnb is the recognized brand being discussed. Yes, competitors have existed before. But Airbnb made it popular, easy, and safe enough for any random person. Pre-airbnb scale of VRBO was barely a blip on the hotel market.
It's worth remembering that the lack of density is what people like so much about the towns. I can say personally an apartment building makes it hard to enjoy the mountain view when you're on a stroll through the town :) The unfortunate reality is that I think the only way to truly prevent this is to only allow someone who is working in town to own a home with a percentage allowance for remote workers. The biggest step being to prevent vacation homes from being a thing. Even still I don't think this fully solves the problem as most of the positions in mountain towns are low skilled so generally aren't super well paid.
There's a few compounding factors that the article touches on but doesn't really put much emphasis. I'm up in the Canadian Rockies but I have friends spread out among a few of the towns so I'll try and give some perspective across the areas.
Lake Louise:
Not really worth commenting on this as almost all homes are owned by local businesses due to national park rules.
Banff:
Limited due to how land ownership works within the national park as well as limits the Federal government puts on expanding the town. Thankfully due to the land ownership constraints it avoids the vacation property issue some what although not entirely.
This town also pickups spill over from Lake Louise.
Canmore:
Catches the remaining spill over from Lake Louise and Banff further constraining holding it's own workers. This is the closest town to the national park so lots of people own vacation homes here. This town is surrounded by a national park, provincial park, and by Aboriginal land so it has no room to grow. The town has put limits on where air bnb's can be run but they're so profitable people eat the current fines.
An interesting side note with this town is that at the start of the pandemic a lot of the people with vacation homes went here overloading the local grocery stores ability to supply things. The shelves were extra bare for weeks which was quite frustrating.
Fernie:
Was doing alright before the pandemic but was feeling the squeeze a bit. As soon as working from home was the norm for people houses disappeared in a flash and what was left almost doubled in price over the two years. In those two years my friends got priced out of the market.
A lot of developers here got burned in the oil crash in 2008 which will probably slow any quick growth to expand the town.
Golden:
Don't have any friends here but from what I've seen there's been lots of aggressive development but more on the nicer vacation home side. Nothing that would fit as a good starter house for a family.
Is lack of housing really the problem? The resorts themselves are already far too crowded, and it's not like there's a unlimited amount of skiiable area to expend to. Not to mention how awful dense housing would be in a supposedly remote area. It would turn it into "only some can access this area" to "everyone can access but no one can enjoy it."
Yes, lack of housing is a huge part of the problem. The entire article is about how housing has gotten so expensive in these areas that few of the locals can afford to live there anymore, which leads to crippling worker shortages and many other problems.
That's interesting; where I'm from, people only get votes at one municipality (I they qualify for multiple, they choose one as the primary residence), so any people with secondary homes for vacations or rentals are automatically outvoted by the actual residents in local elections.
It's not about voting, it's about showing up to Planning and Zoning meetings and opposing anything that might obstruct scenic views or negatively impact property values. Most significant developments require rezoning and therefore a public input period.
Then there are outsized impact fees and red tape from the city and county once it gets past P&Z.
Actual residents may be concerned about pissing off the 2nd and 3rd home owners, who can be quite vocal even if they don’t have a vote. Locals depend on them for revenue, and might know them personally and like them. This is covered somewhat in the Outside article.
Nobody should get a vote. Residents are the worst about opposing more housing.
The ONLY constitutional basis for getting a say over how much housing your neighbor builds is excluding Black people (see the appellate ruling, Ambler Realty v City of Euclid). All zoning in the United States is based on the power of that ruling to keep Black people out.
Wierd. While I don't disagree with you that one of the primary uses of zoning has been racial discrimination and segregation, Ambler v. Euclid was about industrial land use in the context of otherwise residential property. The decision may indeed have to led to an expansion in the use of zoning for racist purposes, but it was not in and of itself about such a purpose.
SCOTUS did explicitly address the apartment buildings and gave what to many contemporary eyes would be an absurd judgement:
"With particular reference to apartment houses, it is pointed out that the development of detached house sections is greatly retarded by the coming of apartment houses, which has sometimes resulted in destroying the entire section for private house purposes; that in such sections very often the apartment house is a mere parasite, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings created by the residential character of the district. Moreover, the coming of one apartment house is followed by others, interfering by their height and bulk with the free circulation of air and monopolizing the rays of the sun which otherwise would fall upon the smaller homes, and bringing, as their necessary accompaniments, the disturbing noises incident to increased traffic and business, and the occupation, by means of moving and parked automobiles, of larger portions of the streets, thus detracting from their safety and depriving children of the privilege of quiet and open spaces for play, enjoyed by those in more favored localities-until, finally, the residential character of the neighborhood and its desirability as a place of detached residences are utterly destroyed. Under these circumstances, apartment houses, which in a different environment would be not only entirely unobjectionable but highly desirable, come very near to being nuisances."
Yes - they made up a way to avoid the explicitly racist appellate case entirely, by claiming housing was a nuisance without saying the real reason the city considered it a nuisance out loud.
Which major Canadian resorts are in parks besides Lake Louise/Sunshine? I know Mt. Tremblant is in a park, but only the mountain itself and not the town for example.
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.
"None of the ones I've visited seem at all dense. (Been to Vail, Beaver Creek, Park City, and all over Tahoe.)"
Would you want that ?
When you visited these places, did you wish they had more, and larger, buildings ?
Visiting or living in a "ski town" is, ipso facto, an aesthetic choice that one makes. It is not imposed on anyone nor is it a right to be conferred.
I am open minded to the idea that some people prefer a never-ending monoculture of marginally dense just-barely-sub-urban living areas. I hate this idea, however, and I hope you will look elsewhere to pursue it.
Logistics. Crested Butte is 3 hours from the nearest larger town, Grand Junction. Assuming good weather.
You need workers and materials to build new housing. There is already a shortage of workers.
Builders in Grand Junction can make far more profit by building in Grand Junction, vs driving 6 hours each day to Crested Butte and back. Same with hauling materials.
Crested Butte is not just a ski town. Most ski towns in CO are not just ski towns. But CB is especially popular with mountain bikers and is busy almost year round.
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.
New people want more housing but can’t vote because they aren’t residents. Old people want high real estate prices and can vote because they’re residents or own property.
Guess who wins when it’s time for local political leadership to decide on important issues.
Now if housing wasn’t considered an investment and prices were kept flat somehow, that would solve the nimby problem immediately. But it would also bankrupt several generations of existing homeowners so we can’t do that.
If they are being asked about why they voted against expansion wouldn't it be in their best interest to provide a subjective reason that is difficult to argue against instead of saying "money"
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.