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.
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.
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.
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.
... which of course shows another, arguably deeper, aspect of the problem: the general share of GDP that goes to labor, particularly lower paid labor, and how that compares with increases in the cost of fundamental things like housing. Somehow, we've ended up with an economy and a culture where someone can work 40 hours a week but not be paid enough to afford a lot of what our culture also assumes to be basic. This isn't an accident, and has effects way beyond just mountain resort towns, though the effects are particularly acute and visible in such places.
What is tough is that most other things are generally not that expensive in many of these expensive places. It's still roughly $14 entrees $9 appetizers and $8 bud lights in many of these expensive cost of living areas just like downtown midwestern cities anywhere else these days from what I've been finding myself personally. Other than the bay area or nyc where you really might see a costly big mac on the menu, it feels like the pricepoints for food service, movie tickets, concerts, car washes, cocktails, in state college tuition, groceries, and most other things are pretty much fixed across the country in metro areas at least whether its LA or Pittsburg you are comparing. It's only rent and housing costs that seem to vary so dramatically in my experience.
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.