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A 'cowboy ski town' where high earners can't afford a home faces a housing battle
A ‘cowboy ski town’ where high earners can’t afford a home faces a housing battle
A pandemic-fueled real estate boom in mountain and resort locales is pricing out even high-income professionals and dividing communities over how to rein in housing costs.
Houses dot the landscape at Colorado's Steamboat Ski Resort on Aug. 3, 2022, in Steamboat Springs, Colo.Thomas Peipert / AP file
March 3, 2024, 8:00 AM EST
By Shannon Pettypiece
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — Despite offering a salary of $167,000, the city of Steamboat Springs can’t find a head of human resources who can afford a place to live in the remote Colorado community surrounded by ranches and famous for training Olympic athletes.
At the Steamboat hospital, doctors willing to pay more than $1 million for a home have been repeatedly outbid by all-cash, out-of-town buyers, and housing costs have caused some positions to go unfilled for more than two years. The local ski resort has been leasing a hotel for its employees to live in as the homes they once rented are increasingly turned into short-term rentals for visitors.
“Houses used to be for employees and hotels for guests. Now houses are for guests and hotels are for employee housing,” said Loryn Duke, director of communications for the Steamboat ski resort. “We have a lot of great staff who are early in their careers or have young families, but they just aren’t able to put down those roots.”
In Steamboat, along with other mountain towns and destination communities across the country, a pandemic-fueled real estate boom driven by remote workers, second-home buyers and short-term rental investors has caused home prices to nearly double. Those prices have shown few signs of easing, despite rising interest rates and a push for remote workers to return to the office, leaving even high-income professionals struggling to find housing in small, rural communities across the country. ... “I know that it’s so hard for folks outside of mountain or resort communities to even wrap their heads around, but housing is just so through the roof that unless you’re extremely wealthy, it’s unattainable,” said Margaret Bowes, executive director of the Colorado Association of Ski Towns.
{snip}
A pandemic-fueled real estate boom in mountain and resort locales is pricing out even high-income professionals and dividing communities over how to rein in housing costs.
Houses dot the landscape at Colorado's Steamboat Ski Resort on Aug. 3, 2022, in Steamboat Springs, Colo.Thomas Peipert / AP file
March 3, 2024, 8:00 AM EST
By Shannon Pettypiece
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — Despite offering a salary of $167,000, the city of Steamboat Springs can’t find a head of human resources who can afford a place to live in the remote Colorado community surrounded by ranches and famous for training Olympic athletes.
At the Steamboat hospital, doctors willing to pay more than $1 million for a home have been repeatedly outbid by all-cash, out-of-town buyers, and housing costs have caused some positions to go unfilled for more than two years. The local ski resort has been leasing a hotel for its employees to live in as the homes they once rented are increasingly turned into short-term rentals for visitors.
“Houses used to be for employees and hotels for guests. Now houses are for guests and hotels are for employee housing,” said Loryn Duke, director of communications for the Steamboat ski resort. “We have a lot of great staff who are early in their careers or have young families, but they just aren’t able to put down those roots.”
In Steamboat, along with other mountain towns and destination communities across the country, a pandemic-fueled real estate boom driven by remote workers, second-home buyers and short-term rental investors has caused home prices to nearly double. Those prices have shown few signs of easing, despite rising interest rates and a push for remote workers to return to the office, leaving even high-income professionals struggling to find housing in small, rural communities across the country. ... “I know that it’s so hard for folks outside of mountain or resort communities to even wrap their heads around, but housing is just so through the roof that unless you’re extremely wealthy, it’s unattainable,” said Margaret Bowes, executive director of the Colorado Association of Ski Towns.
{snip}
6 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
NEWS: HOUSING
Should Steamboat build 2,264 homes for 6,000 workers? Voters get a say on Tuesday.
The Brown Ranch project began with an anonymous donation of $24 million and plans to create housing affordable to working locals. Neighbors aren’t sure they want their town to grow that much.
Jason Blevins
3:50 AM MDT on Mar 25, 2024
Yampa Valley Housing Authority Executive Director Jason Peasley is interviewed by NBC News senior policy reporter Shannon Pettypiece on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, on land designated for affordable housing west of Steamboat Springs. Steamboat voters on Tuesday will decide whether to annex the Brown Ranch property and begin building 2,264 units of workforce housing for the resort community by 2040. (Matt Stensland, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Voters in Steamboat Springs on Tuesday will decide on the city’s plan to annex 420 acres to build a community of affordable housing for more than 6,000 workers. ... The Brown Ranch plan illustrates the challenges with building affordable housing in Colorado’s high country as communities grapple with the scope and cost of building homes for workers who cannot afford living in mountain towns. The vote in Steamboat Springs will decide if the city of 13,000 can move forward on a plan to spend hundreds of millions on a new community that could grow the city’s population by nearly half.
The size of the Brown Ranch plan “reflects the magnitude of the problem we are trying to solve,” said Jason Peasley, the head of the Yampa Valley Housing Authority. “Lots and lots of communities are dealing with a problem of this scope or larger. However almost none have opportunities and resources to address this housing problem in the way we can.”
The Yampa Valley Housing Authority acquired the 534-acre parcel west of the city in 2021 using $24 million from an anonymous donor. After a steering committee spent two years gathering public input from 4,000 Routt County residents, the authority sketched a plan for 2,264 new homes for local workers in the next 20 years. The parcel, a portion of which the city council voted to annex last year, is inside the city’s urban growth boundary and has been identified for expansion in the long-term plans of both the city and county.
Since its inception in 2003, and the passage of an affordable housing mill levy in 2017, the Yampa Valley Housing Authority has built 210 affordable units for locals with low and moderate incomes. The authority is building an additional 275 units. But that’s not enough.
{snip}
Should Steamboat build 2,264 homes for 6,000 workers? Voters get a say on Tuesday.
The Brown Ranch project began with an anonymous donation of $24 million and plans to create housing affordable to working locals. Neighbors aren’t sure they want their town to grow that much.
Jason Blevins
3:50 AM MDT on Mar 25, 2024
Yampa Valley Housing Authority Executive Director Jason Peasley is interviewed by NBC News senior policy reporter Shannon Pettypiece on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, on land designated for affordable housing west of Steamboat Springs. Steamboat voters on Tuesday will decide whether to annex the Brown Ranch property and begin building 2,264 units of workforce housing for the resort community by 2040. (Matt Stensland, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Voters in Steamboat Springs on Tuesday will decide on the city’s plan to annex 420 acres to build a community of affordable housing for more than 6,000 workers. ... The Brown Ranch plan illustrates the challenges with building affordable housing in Colorado’s high country as communities grapple with the scope and cost of building homes for workers who cannot afford living in mountain towns. The vote in Steamboat Springs will decide if the city of 13,000 can move forward on a plan to spend hundreds of millions on a new community that could grow the city’s population by nearly half.
The size of the Brown Ranch plan “reflects the magnitude of the problem we are trying to solve,” said Jason Peasley, the head of the Yampa Valley Housing Authority. “Lots and lots of communities are dealing with a problem of this scope or larger. However almost none have opportunities and resources to address this housing problem in the way we can.”
The Yampa Valley Housing Authority acquired the 534-acre parcel west of the city in 2021 using $24 million from an anonymous donor. After a steering committee spent two years gathering public input from 4,000 Routt County residents, the authority sketched a plan for 2,264 new homes for local workers in the next 20 years. The parcel, a portion of which the city council voted to annex last year, is inside the city’s urban growth boundary and has been identified for expansion in the long-term plans of both the city and county.
Since its inception in 2003, and the passage of an affordable housing mill levy in 2017, the Yampa Valley Housing Authority has built 210 affordable units for locals with low and moderate incomes. The authority is building an additional 275 units. But that’s not enough.
{snip}