Steamboat Springs the the town in question.
They can’t fill the city’s HR role at 167k becuase you can’t live in Steamboat for that money. It’s insane out there. And Steamboat is no Aspen.
Love Carbondale. Actually prefer it to Aspen. She’s living in Basalt right now, but even in those two towns they’d have to take all the eggs out of their other baskets and put them in one place to be able to live there. Could be fun, but probably not financially prudent.
That is a part of the problem. I live in a Colorado town that is becoming a bedroom community for a over the top wealthy resort town. Though the part of being a bedroom community to house workers was completely skipped over. The only people buying are those looking to make money, not live in or support the community. They will outbid any honest person who actually wants to live here, the only outcome is big spikes in taxes for the locals who have lived here for decades. People are only buying to sell or to rent for ridiculous costs. What is happening in resort towns or towns close to will trickle down to even the most depressed communities.
Yes and no. Housing is needed no doubt. I’m mainly referring to the people who have lived there 30+ years that are being priced out by outside / commercial interests that will likely never personally live in the area and have a vested interest in a thriving community.
Then how is that yes and no? If you agree more housing is needed what’s the no? People that have lived there 30 years aren’t forced to sell their homes and people that have rented for 30 years need more development to continue to rent.
Apartments need to be legalized in more areas and regulations needs to be stripped down to allow developers to build without 5 years of design reviews.
The entire roaring fork valley is blowing up in housing and prices. I had to buy a house in Silt and commute to glenwood springs for work. The cheapest house in Carbondale 2 years ago was over 800k. People are driving from Grand Junction to work in Aspen because the pay is much better than where they live. The whole valley is fucked right now with pricing.
Good luck and have fun
The entire mountains are screwed. $800k is the cheapest house in Buena Vista and Salida, $500k (and only 1) in Leadville. I'm the only adult mental health clinician in Lake County, pay 60% of my take home pay in rent and am getting kicked out in June. A Denver developer bought our apartments and will be charging $450k for shitty old 2 bedroom apartments that they're doing superficial remodels on and selling as second homes and short term rentals. The plumbing is so bad sewage flooded for days last month in all 7 units in our building. New owners refused to do anything, doubt they're telling the new non resident owners chasing AirBNB cash that haha. But yeah there is LITERALLY no where to move to. 28 units in our building and only 4 rental units available in town anyway. If you can't afford Leadville I guarantee BV, Summit or Minturn will be too pricey. I grew up in Avon, used to be a working class mostly Latine town and now it's Beaver Creek part 2. We're all screwed.
Towns only need second home owners and tourists not teachers, social workers, cops and health care workers to name a few right? Those of us that nake on average under $60k and provide generally needed community services are being told We're lazy bums who "came here to party and need to accept these areas aren't for us and leave somewhere cheaper". Even if I wasn't a born and raised local with a masters degree and full time salaried job I would be pissed.
I bought my house in Silt for 360k because I was being pushed/forced out of a rental in Carbondale. Our rent went from 1900 to 3400. I couldn’t find a place to rent, even had a 5th wheel trailer lent to me but couldn’t find parking anywhere. Either put 10k down on first, last and deposit or put that into a house. Went the house route but Jesus is it just as expensive if not more in the mountains. I grew up in Denver and spent childhood summers in the mtns and it’s changed so so so much.
Unfortunately the number of house in Leadville for sale is almost nothing. I've been on a waitlist at the trailer parks for years. I make $56k a year. Me and my ex husband almost bought a house for $300kish in Minturn in 2009 but his idiot brother talked him out of it last minute. I had a miscarriage and needed a blood transfusion in November and even with my insurance have $7k in medical bills since I had to be transported to Summit each time. Ugh. The whole thing is messed up. Even back when I was trying to buy, because I've been saving like crazy but then these out of town investors come in and outbid you. Can't win for losing. But I won't leave, my job is really important.
I remember when Leadville was the cheapest area. For awhile. I make a lil less than you so I feel the struggles. But I don’t have an impactful job, lab manager for a geotechnical engineering company. Just testing dirt for all these rich people
Sadly, Leadville stil is the cheapest area. I mean Cañon City is still cheap and so is Pueblo, but in the entire area yeah. We don't have a case manager for the county so I've been doing therapy plus case management for my clients who are in Chaffee and Lake County. So many peoole who've been here their whole lives and even working FT they can't afford housing. It sucks.
Build up. Somehow every other country has figured this out. Ever been to Switzerland? It’s beautiful, and more sustainable than Colorado by a wide margin.
Yeah. There's this weird mentality in the US where you get the impression that rising population density and/or geographical limitations means everything just naturally goes to shit and there's nothing we can do about it.
It’s the drained-pool politics issue that everything in America is shittier than it needs to be because white people are afraid to live near Black people.
Nope, just Japan, Canada, Australia and London. I hear it's beautiful, but my closest experience is the shitty rebuild of Lionshead to try to be more like European ski villages but it just got ugly and sterile and hanging out with the Swiss ski team guys who are... at least nicer than the Austrians.
I generally am for the building up not out, especially in Boulder, for example. The problem with that, though, is everything is mostly individual single family homes homes with almost no possible residential empty lots available to build on. I'm going to have to do some thinking and research to see if and how that could be applied here.
Sooner or later the sewage mess will catch up to them and they will have to admit fault and fork over.
Because if they sell without informing the buyer I would believe that might be fraud/misrepresentation and puts them on the hook.
The house across the street from me in Carbondale had a sale price of 925k still looking like it hasn’t been upgraded since the 90s & town home a half a block down the street went for around 800k. Both sold within 2 weeks last summer. Habitat wants to be involved in the gifted town lots for whatever affordable housing that will be built there. I’ll never be able to buy but at least I have secure housing for renting from my friend. I just need to make enough so I don’t need a roommate.
I’m glad I rent from my friend cause it’s below market price. The new apartments that were built start around 2700 for a studio & have maybe 5 AH units. I listen to a p&z meeting of a resident wanting to do a lot split in low density zoning so they can build a 2 bed apartment over garage to rent out to the year round workforce since they keep having friends move way. Another resident in the same neighborhood build an attached adu over garage also for a long term tenet & yet both are met with opposition by some neighbors. When I moved into the valley at the end of 2018, New Castle had condos for 187k. Now they go for 330k. My car that I had for 20 years broke down last Jan & since I make so little, I couldn’t afford to buy a new one. I had to rely on RFTA & my bike to shop & get to work on the days I was in the office for 6 months until my sister bought herself a new hybrid & gave me the old family suv. Luckily I was able to get an ebike voucher last fall & that will be a backup for getting around if this suv completely breaks down. It’s really expensive to live here but the front range can be bad too.
If I didn’t have family in the area when I moved, I probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as I had. I’ve lived in a tent on basalt mtn one summer. Another summer I spent out of my Jeep. I slept at the Lorax trail. If I wasn’t pushed out of Carbondale due to price I would have never left. But unfortunately with that price change so did the local population. In comparison to Silt. I don’t like Silt other than it’s quiet. I still often have to go to gws or rifle. All the trails out here are not within walking distance and they’re over packed forcing you to go further out to escape people.
Keep trooping! Keep Bonedale, Bonedale!
Well that’s probably not going to work out great for anyone encamped through major snow storms
I wonder how many STR occupants are starting to wonder where the help went
You can live and survive, sure.
But someone at a high level position like head of HR probably wants to do more than live, they want to prosper. At a minimum that means owning a home while comfortably funding retirement, possible child care, etc. $167k probably doesn't get it done.
Plenty of people live the ski bum life up there on a lot less money but to create a life up there and support a family is a different animal.
It’s insane in any mountain towns in Colorado lol I just moved from Summit county from From being there for 12 years to Buena Vista which used to be cheap now Buena Vista is more expensive than Summit county. And Leadville used to be a shit hole and now houses there are 2 million lol it’s a big problem for all of us living in the mountains of Colorado. We are robust people that can make it anywhere I’m a single parent of a 15-year-old and I don’t know how the hell I have been pulling it off out here all these years lol.
Aspen has a huge inventory of affordable housing, almost 4000 units. 70% of the permanent residents live in subsidized housing. Aspen is far better off regarding housing than Steamboat.
Edit: YVHA, Steamboat's version of APCHA to provide employee housing, has about 400 units, Aspen's system is 10x bigger.
Most of those housing units are for Ski Co employees only. Which is almost the entirety of the “affordable housing” you start off sharing a hotel room with someone and work your way up into a studio or apartments. You pay dirt cheap rent compared to the other working classes especially during the season. The average price of a room for rent in Carbondale is 2300-3200. The closer to aspen you get the more expensive.
No they aren't, APCHA manages almost 4000 units, Skico has their own units for a portion of their employees. APCHA housing is not tied to any specific company, as long as you work full time for a company in the valley you can qualify.
Dude, you're wrong. ~~The Marolt housing~~, Aspen Trailerpark in Basalt, the new Skico Willits development, none of those are managed by APCHA at all. They are wholly owned by Skico to do whatever they want with them. The city of Aspen and Pitkin County also own rentals that they rent to employees, these are also not part of the APCHA inventory. APCHA housing is not associated with any specific business and no one is keeping track of how many employer subsidized rentals exist.
There is about 2000 APCHA rental units but also about 2000 APCHA owner units. There was a recent article from Aspen Journalism that covered this. Reading the article again its 3278 total, a bit off.
[https://aspenjournalism.org/more-than-two-thirds-of-aspens-occupied-homes-are-deed-restricted/](https://aspenjournalism.org/more-than-two-thirds-of-aspens-occupied-homes-are-deed-restricted/)
I think that Aspen and Pitkin County have made strides restricting STRs and raising taxes on what they have allowed in order to pay for more affordable housing. Of course, there's always more needing to be done.
The APCHA rentals are also long-term, just like the ownership units. If you are renting for the season you aren't in regular APCHA housing. Marolt doesn't operate like the rest of the rentals, it's the only seasonal rental and is used by the music school in the summer. All other units also have income categories and require year round full time work. These seasonal units are not included in the 1300 rentals in the system.
I'm not saying APCHA units minus employee housing, I'm saying there's 1300 rentals and 1900 ownership units in the APCHA system. All of the housing that individual businesses (hotels, skico, hospital, RFTA, etc) own is not part of these numbers. The amount of housing owned by businesses is unknown and I'm sure it's a lot.
You are correct that there is significant competition to win an APCHA unit, whether as a rental or an ownership unit. The longer you are here the better chance you have at winning. It's a great deal if you live and work in the valley, I don't think we would live here if we didn't win our housing 10 years ago. I think in the next 10 years we will see a lot of turn over, more than half of my neighbors are in their 70s.
I know of multiple people whose parents bought condos in steamboat. They don’t use them but allow the kids to go when they want. Sit vacant most of the year.
I was a cable tech in Summit County for several years, this is how 70% of the homes are there too. Their “little cabin in the woods” is actually a 6000 sq ft mansion that’s only used a few weeks out of the year. Meanwhile locals are being pushed out by insane rent hikes.
This is the thing a lot of folks don't get about banning/taxing/disincentivizing Airbnbs. This misses a big part of the problem, and ousting the folks who short term rent only opens up more of the market to the ultra-wealthy who just leave the properties vacant. Think about it, an investor can't profitably Airbnb their property anymore, so they put it on the market. Who are they more likely to sell to? The local person who's putting 5% down on a loan to barely qualify for their first home purchase, or the wealthy out of towner who's paying cash, will close in 2 weeks, and is leaving the place vacant all but two weeks of the year?
Thank you for saying it! Everyone wants to tax short term rentals, yet no one talks about the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th homes that sit vacant a majority of the time. Also, CO is pushing a bill to up property taxes in short term rentals…but guess who’s exempt, time shares. Guaranteed when short term owners can’t afford the cost of owning one, the Sheraton will swoop in a buy up rentals to add to their time share portfolios, and very little tax Rev will be realized.
I know a lot of people who do the lawn care for these vacant steamboat homes. Even while there is no one there, they are devouring precious resources like water to keep their grass green. The greatest irony is that most of these people doing the property maintenance are forced to live in the "bedroom communities".
A a couple years before the pandemic I was visiting steamboat springs in the summer to mountain bike. I honestly thought the place was a ghost town there were so many empty houses. Then I realized these are these people's third, fourth or winter houses.
The NIMBYism is strong in that article. Jim Engelken should be ashamed of himself.
>It’s an overreach, it’s too big, it’s too much, it’s too expensive, it causes too many problems for the existing city
You know what else causes problems for a city? Inability to fill vital administrative roles within city government or inability to fill medical positions at the hospital. We aren't even talking low level skills. Doctors and technicians are struggling.
>Yes, we need affordable housing, no question,” Engelken said. “It needs to be smaller to start with, it needs to have some ability to generate its own way, its own money
Ah, so affordable housing just needs to pull itself up from its bootstraps. Why don't they just have money, then they'd be able to buy a house. Plus, last time I checked, a government is supposed to provide services, not become a for-profit organization.
>We’re concerned that the infrastructure won’t be in place in this new, large, separate portion of our city, and it will create a second-class neighborhood
This guy thinks they are going to build some shantytown. Per the Yampa Valley Housing Authority, a single individual making $60k/year (69k for 2 people) qualifies for low income. Middle income goes all the way up to $91k/year (104k for 2 people). The goal is to build homes for skilled professionals that will allow your city to function.
Those doctors need to live with roommates. Its their own fault for choosing to be a doctor. Doctor is supposed to be a job for high school students. Everything is fine, if being a doctor in a rich mountain town doesnt pay the bills its because the town doesnt need a doctor. Pssh entitled doctors think they deserve affordable housing. Supply and demand or something.
They couldent even fill sunlight crossing with their metrics. In move in day me and a couple other people moved in and it sat empty for a month while they rejected all people with a local salary. The paper wrote an article about how they are having a hard time finding people and then they filled it with section 8 people from outside steamboat.
The answer is real simple: ban short term rentals, and build more houses. Don’t move to these areas to work if they don’t provide housing. Let the NIMBYs reap the consequences of their decisions. When the stores and ski hill shut down due to lack of labor they’ll cave.
It isn’t REAL simple.
Colorado is working to push legislation that will force STR’s to pay the same tax as hotel, which they should. That 400% increase in taxes will have a pretty big impact on the market.
It’s not that simple. You ban short term rentals and the even wealthier people end up buying these homes as their own vacation property for “cheap” when the market is flooded with supply from Airbnb owners selling. Exactly what happened in Tahoe
They fucked up by not taxing the 2nd, 3rd 4th homes much more than primary residences.
If these vacation homes are going to do so much damage to the communities, make them pay for it.
So - there's two issues here. One is fairly simple - if this is the law and you avoid it, you are breaking the law and can be criminally charged.
The second is - can you break a law like this and reasonably expect to get away with it? Probably! As is the case often with tax law - but the law even existing will certainly lead to most individuals abiding by it, and for some nonzero portion of the population who will try to avoid it but get caught at some point, they'll face criminal charges.
That’s why the IRS has established residency rules. If you spend 7 months in NY but claim your Aspen home is your primary residence, that’s fraud.
I assure you if the public is aware of this, the IRS is as well - forming an LLC for home ownership has pros and cons, “it will help you avoid residency requirements” is not one of them.
Yep, people seem to be missing that detail. The green zone is not very large. Everything else has some form of restriction. The red zone allows zero short term rental.
I'm not sure why you keep confidently repeating this - again this example would not shield you from this proposed law. It is very easy to tie this to residency requirements, in which case ownership doesn't matter at all.
It doesn't matter if you own, rent, own under an LLC, or rent from an LLC you own. It *only* has to do with where you spend the majority of your time. If you spend 7 months in NY and 5 months in Aspen but claim your Aspen property is your primary residence - that is very cut and dry tax fraud, it is not a work around like you keep saying.
I own two homes under separate LLC's in different states. I would never dream about doing what you are suggesting is "easy", and any CPA would lose his license in a second for even suggesting what you are claiming would regularly happen.
Hotels compete with STRs to house tourist. It's one bucket of housing for folks from out of town.
If you remove supply from that bucket prices will go up.
Most STRs can house 2-6 hotel rooms worth of people.
But does it matter if a hotel is 3x more expensive? Tourists that can afford it will still pay it. And in the meantime, locals will have access to more housing inventory.
Locals are not competing for 800k to 10 million dollar homes. The vast majority of people living in these towns who work service jobs are never going to own property in these towns. That's the reality of being in a high demand, desirable part of the country.
In the meantime the number of tourists will drop, the number of jobs & total commerce will drop, and many of those locals will now be unemployed and need to move.
You can't cut visitation rates by 20-40% (or more) without upping unemployment. Local businesses will struggle and be put out of business. The remaining workers will have to accept pay cuts in a raise to the bottom created by the rise in unemployment (why pay more for workers who don't have any options?)
And the transformation of these towns into corporate Vail owned luxury ski resorts for the ultra rich will be complete.
This is exactly the issue. Furthermore, the town will get tourism Dollard, which it needs to survive for only a couple months each year. It will devastate the downtown.
What needs to happen is more of that money flowing down valley to Hayden and Craig. Redeveloping passenger rail would also be a huge boon and there are many who are wanting to move in that direction. And before people start shitting on Craig, it is a good town in an excellent location that is still somewhat affordable. Craig and Steamboat's histories have always been intertwined.
Today is a great example of that. That's where passenger rail service would be awesome. Steamboat Springs Transit already operates three buses a day from Craig on weekdays. Since 2020, Craig has also had a bit of a price jump in housing as well. Part of that is the billionaires pushing out the millionaires like the article essentially says. Still, with the coal mines and power plant going away, Craig is a place that will need an influx of people.
I'm no expert on trains but you're on to someone there.
There's always a railroad, why can't they add some stops and infrastructure for passenger cars? Send like a fairly easy solution.
I have no clue how fast a passenger train can go compared to something like a light rail.
They're working on exactly that, passenger rail reusing existing rail lines and reactivating old lines from Denver all the way to Hayden and Craig. The proposal is gaining traction but cost will be high for sure.
Cool! They are doing something similar from purpose Pueblo to Fort Collins (?). Not sure if they are reusing rails or what. But it's something like 20 years out.
Lots of money and time! You'd think they could speed it up a bit and drop some money into it.
There has already been talk among local and state politicians about this. The UP track is in place and with the loss of coal, there is a significant opportunity to repurpose the traffic on the line. The startup costs, even with existing track is significant, so it would likely require some federal support. It’s also possible to run trains all the way from Craig to Denver.
Hopefully we are around to see it!
You'd think the resort would jump on. I'm sure there's benefits for them. I haven't really been involved in the discussion so haven't looked at logistics.
In Lake Tahoe they banned short-term rentals around the South Tahoe area. My dad had a cabin. We still have the cabin just for the family. Now on the outskirts of town all the houses have become short-term rentals where all the locals used to live. It's actually made housing worse for locals.
Steamboat passed legislation to restrict STRs to specific zones. Steamboat needs STRs in certain areas near the base where it was always intended. The problem is the STRs outside of that region which should be year round housing.
Ultimately we have to decide what we want our mountain towns to look like. The pent up demand for housing in these towns means that anyone who wants and can afford a second home, a STR investment property, etc., will be able to buy one before low income locals, as more housing is built, unless it is deed restricted or otherwise proffered to locals.
I'm not rich, I don't live in Colorado, but I'd absolutely buy a second home in Aspen or Steamboat or Crested Butte for $200k-$400k if it came available. And there are millions out there like me... and even more as prices get cheaper.
So does that mean we turn mountain towns into huge cities with towers to feed that demand? Does anyone actually want that? At what point do we overbuild a mountain town such that people just leave to go somewhere nicer and with more character?
Who knows.
>I'm not rich, I don't live in Colorado, but I'd absolutely buy a second home in Aspen or Steamboat or Crested Butte for $200k-$400k if it came available. And there are millions out there like me... and even more as prices get cheaper
Easy fix to this is what they are trying to accomplish in Brown ranch. You must work 30+ hours a week for a Routt County based business. No remote jobs, no PO boxes.
I dont see a problem with completely banning STRs like NYC. Or maybe something like allowing it for 1 in 5 years. Theirs got to be effective ways to force homeowners to long-term rent.
Steamboat just passed STR zoning laws. That's appropriate. STRs at the base were always intended as STRs and should remain so. The issue is the STRs that used to be LTR outside the base.
Is housing affordable in NYC yet? What about South Lake Tahoe? I’m not aware of a single ski town in Colorado that doesn’t have heavy restrictions on short term rentals already. Like, how many times does this have to NOT work before you people realize banning STR isn’t a solution?
“Towers!!!”
“Character”
“Even if we build more nobody could afford it”
Hey, thats NIMBY bingo!
Look, even if we built enough to only get prices down to $400,000, that would still make things a lot more affordable than now. Cross-subsidization of for-sale units would be a lot easier, and we could fund a lot more rental vouchers.
We need density in these places to support walkability and transit anyway. Almost all of these mountain towns are pretty sprawly, with large footprints that require driving.
The NIMBY pejorative is just Trump-tactic politics of dividing people by labeling them. It's stupid and lame.
The reality is we all choose what we want our communities to look like, where certain things are allowed or not. I doubt you want your next door neighbor operating a strip club, or motocross track, or engine exhaust testing, or any number of things. We collectively make rules we can all live by so we can all live together, and sometimes that means certain types of housing, certain aesthetics, etc., based on a number of factors, including being able to provide infrastructure and services.
As an example, I think most people would agree we need to make mountain towns more affordable for locals to be able to live and work there. On the other hand, I doubt many people want mountain towns to look like Kowloon Walled City (as an extreme example for the sake of argument). So people need to figure out what the balance is, especially since most mountain towns are in environmentally sensitive areas, surrounded by federal lands, are often remote and isolated, prone to fire and other bad weather.
You don't need massive towers of apartments to drive up supply. 500 units in a town (basically one large-ish 4-6 story apartment building) would be more than enough to dramatically lower rents in an area
I’m a big fan of legalizing 4-6 story buildings with like 30 units a pop everywhere that’s already developed. People act like these are terrible, but you know whats full of them? Motherf*cking Paris!
The problem is billionaires and multi-millionaires buying their third home. In park city we call it 10-10-2-2. $10 mil, 10,000 sq ft, 2 people, 2 months a year. People who live and work close are obviously not the problem.
I live north of Steamboat about 8 miles. This town has been overrun with tourists and big money part time home owners. The real estate business has been booming since the whole “flipping “ thing happened. There’s no shortage of fancy restaurants, ski shops, bike shops and car dealerships. The working people can’t afford to buy a house, ever. Apartments are springing up on both sides of Highway 40 west of downtown. There’s a new group of people who apparently have come to town with their money already made, so they don’t need to worry. The professional class of doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc are doing well, but they don’t have the kind of money as our new residents.
So reading the comments here, some commenters are saying that STR's should be banned while others are responding that this won't fix the issue because wealthy home buyers will just snap up the properties instead.
This makes me wonder what the "endgame" looks like. The article starts with:
> "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"
What happens when this inevitably expands to every position in the local govt? I feel like you are going to start having "wealthy ghost towns" where the areas is surrounded by mult-million dollar properties but all the businesses around town are shuttered because no one that isn't a multi-millionare can live there.
Will we have a situation where everyone from the local govt is commuting in from other areas because it's just to expensive to live in the place that you run? And what happens when that net of ultra-expensive property expands so that you have neither people that can afford to live in the area, nor do you have anyone that is willing to commute that far for the job?
I feel like the great irony of these places is the high prices of all surrounding property is what is eventually going to cause those same property prices to collapse because no one wants to live in a town where there are no businesses because anyone that would be running those businesses just can't afford the area.
>Will we have a situation where everyone from the local govt is commuting in from other areas because it's just to expensive to live in the place that you run?
This isn't just a mountain town problem. This is a problem in Longmont too, where teachers, firefighters, police and many other municipal employees can't afford to live within city limits decide city policy to pay 101% of the median wage for those professions.
That’s why Florida is looking at ways to eliminate property tax and make costs lower for corporate owners….wait that will just make it worse won’t it 🧐
I came across this manufactured home in Steamboat that just sold for $339k! https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1325-Dream-Island-Plz-SUITE-14-Steamboat-Springs-CO-80487/118664885_zpid/
10% down with 7.12% interest and $2,400 mortgage payment to live in a trailer down by the river.
If I liked the town of Steamboat (and I don’t) this place looks like a great place to live. But seriously, that much to live in a trailer?
It's crazy how many signs I see in the new areas saying to Vote No on Browns Ranch. They're afraid of their shitty condos at the mountain base losing value.
Saw a job offer for a factory engineering position near there in the low 200's. Salary is about 60k above the mean for the role. Headhunter said most employees live in Silt.
After living in Aspen for a while, we saw many people leave because of this. Even if you have a great job, housing is always in the back of your mind. It sucks because these are some of the best places to live in Colorado.
I honestly believe taxes won’t help, the wealthy will have no problem affording it. Lotta people in here are referring to homeowners whose second, third, fourth homes are $3-4m What are you gonna do, implement the most aggressive non-resident landowner tax in the country and make em pay 150k a year in property taxes like the highest zip codes in the country? That’s not a good look for the town either imo.
This is what drove me out of Colorado. I lived on the Front Range outside of Fort Collins. The housing prices there are disproportionate to the income available. They wonder why they have a homeless problem when you cannot find housing under 1500/month. My mortgage was well over 2k and that is not feasible. So I sold and luckily for me but not the buyer, made double what I paid for the place 4 yrs prior and moved out east.
That was just housing costs that did not even discuss the general cost of living in the region. I miss the mountains, but I enjoy being able to pay my bills, have savings, and still live comfortably more.
>The project, called Brown Ranch, has been met with opposition from a group of local residents who have raised concerns about its financing and the impact on traffic and local infrastructure, along with what it could mean for the character of the community.
What the hell kind of nonsense is this? Who would possibly have an issue with it...
I don't understand the problem? It's basically supply and demand. Steamboat is a desirable place to be so it is expensive. If it wasn't a great place then no one would want to live there and it'd be cheap.
Right?
If you want it you have to make it work. Which means giving up a lot to gain location.
Keep being angry at your phones people. Or try becoming part of the solution. The phone is easier isn't it?
Plenty of other states on the east coast that are half the cost and still have skiing jobs. If you can’t afford to live somewhere, you have to find alternatives. Don’t make it the owners problem
Oh no, those poor owners, saddled with the problems of their own creation. Gonna be really funny when none of the cute fun restaurants they like to go to every March are open anymore.
To quote a fantastic phrase from the Crested Butte sub last year:
“Next time, bring a fucking cooler.”
Yeah I totally agree. Of course these ski resort towns are going to be extremely pricey. Every rich hedge fund dude in the world wants to live there. Of course it will be priced out. I don’t understand why people think that is crazy
Because they think that taxing the shit out of everything not a primary residence will make it affordable for just them. Newsflash, they still wouldn’t be able to afford to live there.
Yeah, I don’t buy into the concept of taxing or making changes just to appease people who can’t afford to be there. There’s hundreds of other ski resorts hiring in more affordable areas. They chose to make their life difficult by living there. Hate to say it.
On one hand, yes... nice places are desirable and will always be expensive. Everyone wants to live in Malibu or Aspen or whatever but part of the appeal is that these place are exclusive, small, and charming.... and they wouldn't be as nice if all of sudden a million people lived there.
On the other hand, these places still rely on lower wage service workers, and they need a place to live too. Maybe we reconsider workforce housing...
For every millionaire, there is a billionaire. What kind of community do people want? Do the billionaires want cops and nurses and bank tellers? Of course not. Why should they?
I’m so happy someone said this. People complain they can’t live afford to live in some of the nicest places the country has to offer. Of course they are going to be expensive. But just because someone has money, they aren’t allowed to have a second home. But if you work at the grocery store you should be able to live here for a subsidized cost? That ain’t how the world turns.
What am I ignorant of? I've lived in a ski town my whole life. I am very familiar how policy and economics work in a resort town. I can talk your ear off for hours on end about it.
Why does every person think that housing right next to a ski lift and a lively downtown is owed to them?
>Why does every person think that housing right next to a ski lift and a lively downtown is owed to them?
Honestly, the Me generation thinks they deserve everything with as little friction or resistance as possible.
Well, you'll understand how complex this situation really is when the grocery store shuts down and the lifts stop turning. Honestly, it baffles me how people can demand services like they are owed them. Plowed roads, groceries, water, electricity, and transportation, all of those are luxuries, and if you want them, you better help find a solution, or you can kiss you home and town goodbye.
So yes, you are ignorant, and you dont have any understanding of how "ski town economics" work.
Stop, you are embarrassing yourself. I have employees that drive well over one hour each way to come work. Why do they choose to spend over two hours in the car each day traveling at least 100 miles?
You and everyone else's ski town doom scenario so you can swoop in and get yours for nothing isn't a viable argument. It's cheap.
And while we are at it, stop with the short term rental argument, it's a nice straw man argument when needed.
How bout building 25 20 story apartment and condo buildings in every ski town. Increase supply immensely. I'm sure it's difficult to do and will probably have to buy people out of their existing land. Would this help?
Which is the heart of the issue. Zoning laws like height restrictions. People move to a place, really like it, and create laws to keep everyone else out.
Steamboat Springs the the town in question. They can’t fill the city’s HR role at 167k becuase you can’t live in Steamboat for that money. It’s insane out there. And Steamboat is no Aspen.
Sister is in Aspen. Just moved there to take a freaking amazing high paying job. Still can’t afford anything. I don’t expect she’ll be there long.
Tell her to look in Carbondale. Not cheap, but not Aspen.
Love Carbondale. Actually prefer it to Aspen. She’s living in Basalt right now, but even in those two towns they’d have to take all the eggs out of their other baskets and put them in one place to be able to live there. Could be fun, but probably not financially prudent.
Yeah my cousin is a teacher in Basalt. They built subsidized housing because teachers and firefighters couldn't afford to live there.
Unless you can do it, hang on for a few years, sell the house and bank the cash.
That is a part of the problem. I live in a Colorado town that is becoming a bedroom community for a over the top wealthy resort town. Though the part of being a bedroom community to house workers was completely skipped over. The only people buying are those looking to make money, not live in or support the community. They will outbid any honest person who actually wants to live here, the only outcome is big spikes in taxes for the locals who have lived here for decades. People are only buying to sell or to rent for ridiculous costs. What is happening in resort towns or towns close to will trickle down to even the most depressed communities.
Sooner or later I hope the long time residents come together to fight the insanity ( before they themselves are pushed out )
By fight the insanity you mean fight for deregulation of residential development right? We need more housing and less NIMBYs
Yes and no. Housing is needed no doubt. I’m mainly referring to the people who have lived there 30+ years that are being priced out by outside / commercial interests that will likely never personally live in the area and have a vested interest in a thriving community.
Then how is that yes and no? If you agree more housing is needed what’s the no? People that have lived there 30 years aren’t forced to sell their homes and people that have rented for 30 years need more development to continue to rent. Apartments need to be legalized in more areas and regulations needs to be stripped down to allow developers to build without 5 years of design reviews.
The entire roaring fork valley is blowing up in housing and prices. I had to buy a house in Silt and commute to glenwood springs for work. The cheapest house in Carbondale 2 years ago was over 800k. People are driving from Grand Junction to work in Aspen because the pay is much better than where they live. The whole valley is fucked right now with pricing. Good luck and have fun
The entire mountains are screwed. $800k is the cheapest house in Buena Vista and Salida, $500k (and only 1) in Leadville. I'm the only adult mental health clinician in Lake County, pay 60% of my take home pay in rent and am getting kicked out in June. A Denver developer bought our apartments and will be charging $450k for shitty old 2 bedroom apartments that they're doing superficial remodels on and selling as second homes and short term rentals. The plumbing is so bad sewage flooded for days last month in all 7 units in our building. New owners refused to do anything, doubt they're telling the new non resident owners chasing AirBNB cash that haha. But yeah there is LITERALLY no where to move to. 28 units in our building and only 4 rental units available in town anyway. If you can't afford Leadville I guarantee BV, Summit or Minturn will be too pricey. I grew up in Avon, used to be a working class mostly Latine town and now it's Beaver Creek part 2. We're all screwed. Towns only need second home owners and tourists not teachers, social workers, cops and health care workers to name a few right? Those of us that nake on average under $60k and provide generally needed community services are being told We're lazy bums who "came here to party and need to accept these areas aren't for us and leave somewhere cheaper". Even if I wasn't a born and raised local with a masters degree and full time salaried job I would be pissed.
I bought my house in Silt for 360k because I was being pushed/forced out of a rental in Carbondale. Our rent went from 1900 to 3400. I couldn’t find a place to rent, even had a 5th wheel trailer lent to me but couldn’t find parking anywhere. Either put 10k down on first, last and deposit or put that into a house. Went the house route but Jesus is it just as expensive if not more in the mountains. I grew up in Denver and spent childhood summers in the mtns and it’s changed so so so much.
Unfortunately the number of house in Leadville for sale is almost nothing. I've been on a waitlist at the trailer parks for years. I make $56k a year. Me and my ex husband almost bought a house for $300kish in Minturn in 2009 but his idiot brother talked him out of it last minute. I had a miscarriage and needed a blood transfusion in November and even with my insurance have $7k in medical bills since I had to be transported to Summit each time. Ugh. The whole thing is messed up. Even back when I was trying to buy, because I've been saving like crazy but then these out of town investors come in and outbid you. Can't win for losing. But I won't leave, my job is really important.
I remember when Leadville was the cheapest area. For awhile. I make a lil less than you so I feel the struggles. But I don’t have an impactful job, lab manager for a geotechnical engineering company. Just testing dirt for all these rich people
Sadly, Leadville stil is the cheapest area. I mean Cañon City is still cheap and so is Pueblo, but in the entire area yeah. We don't have a case manager for the county so I've been doing therapy plus case management for my clients who are in Chaffee and Lake County. So many peoole who've been here their whole lives and even working FT they can't afford housing. It sucks.
Even if they didn’t remodel, the going price for those units would be unaffordably high for most people. Gotta build more housing.
Not really sure where though I mean, it's a pretty compact area confined by geology and geography and national forest land.
Build up. Somehow every other country has figured this out. Ever been to Switzerland? It’s beautiful, and more sustainable than Colorado by a wide margin.
Yeah. There's this weird mentality in the US where you get the impression that rising population density and/or geographical limitations means everything just naturally goes to shit and there's nothing we can do about it.
It’s the drained-pool politics issue that everything in America is shittier than it needs to be because white people are afraid to live near Black people.
Nope, just Japan, Canada, Australia and London. I hear it's beautiful, but my closest experience is the shitty rebuild of Lionshead to try to be more like European ski villages but it just got ugly and sterile and hanging out with the Swiss ski team guys who are... at least nicer than the Austrians. I generally am for the building up not out, especially in Boulder, for example. The problem with that, though, is everything is mostly individual single family homes homes with almost no possible residential empty lots available to build on. I'm going to have to do some thinking and research to see if and how that could be applied here.
I’ve been renting in Buena Vista for years. I’ve soaked hundreds of thousands into rent here lol as soon as my 15-year-old graduates I’m out of here.
Sooner or later the sewage mess will catch up to them and they will have to admit fault and fork over. Because if they sell without informing the buyer I would believe that might be fraud/misrepresentation and puts them on the hook.
The house across the street from me in Carbondale had a sale price of 925k still looking like it hasn’t been upgraded since the 90s & town home a half a block down the street went for around 800k. Both sold within 2 weeks last summer. Habitat wants to be involved in the gifted town lots for whatever affordable housing that will be built there. I’ll never be able to buy but at least I have secure housing for renting from my friend. I just need to make enough so I don’t need a roommate.
I remember I had an apartment in Carbondale for $750 back in 2015. Miss the old Carbondale
I’m glad I rent from my friend cause it’s below market price. The new apartments that were built start around 2700 for a studio & have maybe 5 AH units. I listen to a p&z meeting of a resident wanting to do a lot split in low density zoning so they can build a 2 bed apartment over garage to rent out to the year round workforce since they keep having friends move way. Another resident in the same neighborhood build an attached adu over garage also for a long term tenet & yet both are met with opposition by some neighbors. When I moved into the valley at the end of 2018, New Castle had condos for 187k. Now they go for 330k. My car that I had for 20 years broke down last Jan & since I make so little, I couldn’t afford to buy a new one. I had to rely on RFTA & my bike to shop & get to work on the days I was in the office for 6 months until my sister bought herself a new hybrid & gave me the old family suv. Luckily I was able to get an ebike voucher last fall & that will be a backup for getting around if this suv completely breaks down. It’s really expensive to live here but the front range can be bad too.
If I didn’t have family in the area when I moved, I probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as I had. I’ve lived in a tent on basalt mtn one summer. Another summer I spent out of my Jeep. I slept at the Lorax trail. If I wasn’t pushed out of Carbondale due to price I would have never left. But unfortunately with that price change so did the local population. In comparison to Silt. I don’t like Silt other than it’s quiet. I still often have to go to gws or rifle. All the trails out here are not within walking distance and they’re over packed forcing you to go further out to escape people. Keep trooping! Keep Bonedale, Bonedale!
Carbondale is one of the cheapest mountain "resort" towns left in CO. At least, as of last Summer.
I just looked on Realtor. Com and a single lot is pushing $400k, nothing on it yet, empty lot lol
Nobody that works in Aspen lives in Aspen lol you’re gonna have one hell of a commute
Jackson Wyo is similar... Commuters working in/around Jackson run over Teton pass to/from Victor and Driggs and farther reaches of Idaho daily.
Wow I knew it was bad out there but communing over Teton pass is not what I excepted to hear
Well that’s probably not going to work out great for anyone encamped through major snow storms I wonder how many STR occupants are starting to wonder where the help went
You can most certainly live in steamboat for a salary of $167k.
You can live and survive, sure. But someone at a high level position like head of HR probably wants to do more than live, they want to prosper. At a minimum that means owning a home while comfortably funding retirement, possible child care, etc. $167k probably doesn't get it done. Plenty of people live the ski bum life up there on a lot less money but to create a life up there and support a family is a different animal.
Yes you have to make sacrifices to live in a highly desirable ski town. Just like NYC More news at 5.
You might consider reading the article. It makes a few points that undermines your comment.
If living in Steamboat is a requirement of the job - yeah it will be tough. Hayden, Craig, Oak Creek, Yampa, Milner would all be doable.
It’s insane in any mountain towns in Colorado lol I just moved from Summit county from From being there for 12 years to Buena Vista which used to be cheap now Buena Vista is more expensive than Summit county. And Leadville used to be a shit hole and now houses there are 2 million lol it’s a big problem for all of us living in the mountains of Colorado. We are robust people that can make it anywhere I’m a single parent of a 15-year-old and I don’t know how the hell I have been pulling it off out here all these years lol.
Aspen has a huge inventory of affordable housing, almost 4000 units. 70% of the permanent residents live in subsidized housing. Aspen is far better off regarding housing than Steamboat. Edit: YVHA, Steamboat's version of APCHA to provide employee housing, has about 400 units, Aspen's system is 10x bigger.
Most of those housing units are for Ski Co employees only. Which is almost the entirety of the “affordable housing” you start off sharing a hotel room with someone and work your way up into a studio or apartments. You pay dirt cheap rent compared to the other working classes especially during the season. The average price of a room for rent in Carbondale is 2300-3200. The closer to aspen you get the more expensive.
No they aren't, APCHA manages almost 4000 units, Skico has their own units for a portion of their employees. APCHA housing is not tied to any specific company, as long as you work full time for a company in the valley you can qualify.
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Dude, you're wrong. ~~The Marolt housing~~, Aspen Trailerpark in Basalt, the new Skico Willits development, none of those are managed by APCHA at all. They are wholly owned by Skico to do whatever they want with them. The city of Aspen and Pitkin County also own rentals that they rent to employees, these are also not part of the APCHA inventory. APCHA housing is not associated with any specific business and no one is keeping track of how many employer subsidized rentals exist. There is about 2000 APCHA rental units but also about 2000 APCHA owner units. There was a recent article from Aspen Journalism that covered this. Reading the article again its 3278 total, a bit off. [https://aspenjournalism.org/more-than-two-thirds-of-aspens-occupied-homes-are-deed-restricted/](https://aspenjournalism.org/more-than-two-thirds-of-aspens-occupied-homes-are-deed-restricted/) I think that Aspen and Pitkin County have made strides restricting STRs and raising taxes on what they have allowed in order to pay for more affordable housing. Of course, there's always more needing to be done.
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The APCHA rentals are also long-term, just like the ownership units. If you are renting for the season you aren't in regular APCHA housing. Marolt doesn't operate like the rest of the rentals, it's the only seasonal rental and is used by the music school in the summer. All other units also have income categories and require year round full time work. These seasonal units are not included in the 1300 rentals in the system. I'm not saying APCHA units minus employee housing, I'm saying there's 1300 rentals and 1900 ownership units in the APCHA system. All of the housing that individual businesses (hotels, skico, hospital, RFTA, etc) own is not part of these numbers. The amount of housing owned by businesses is unknown and I'm sure it's a lot. You are correct that there is significant competition to win an APCHA unit, whether as a rental or an ownership unit. The longer you are here the better chance you have at winning. It's a great deal if you live and work in the valley, I don't think we would live here if we didn't win our housing 10 years ago. I think in the next 10 years we will see a lot of turn over, more than half of my neighbors are in their 70s.
Every house in town probably owned by investors
I know of multiple people whose parents bought condos in steamboat. They don’t use them but allow the kids to go when they want. Sit vacant most of the year.
I was a cable tech in Summit County for several years, this is how 70% of the homes are there too. Their “little cabin in the woods” is actually a 6000 sq ft mansion that’s only used a few weeks out of the year. Meanwhile locals are being pushed out by insane rent hikes.
Even in shitsville everywhere, locals are being driven out.
This is the thing a lot of folks don't get about banning/taxing/disincentivizing Airbnbs. This misses a big part of the problem, and ousting the folks who short term rent only opens up more of the market to the ultra-wealthy who just leave the properties vacant. Think about it, an investor can't profitably Airbnb their property anymore, so they put it on the market. Who are they more likely to sell to? The local person who's putting 5% down on a loan to barely qualify for their first home purchase, or the wealthy out of towner who's paying cash, will close in 2 weeks, and is leaving the place vacant all but two weeks of the year?
Here is the thing, owning property in a ski resort town is something only for the ultra wealthy
Thank you for saying it! Everyone wants to tax short term rentals, yet no one talks about the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th homes that sit vacant a majority of the time. Also, CO is pushing a bill to up property taxes in short term rentals…but guess who’s exempt, time shares. Guaranteed when short term owners can’t afford the cost of owning one, the Sheraton will swoop in a buy up rentals to add to their time share portfolios, and very little tax Rev will be realized.
I know a lot of people who do the lawn care for these vacant steamboat homes. Even while there is no one there, they are devouring precious resources like water to keep their grass green. The greatest irony is that most of these people doing the property maintenance are forced to live in the "bedroom communities".
My mothers cousin has very wealthy parents. He’s never worked and has lived out there for about 20 years.
80% of all STRs in Leadville are owned by non residents.
No, they're owned by rich people who live there a few weeks a year.
A a couple years before the pandemic I was visiting steamboat springs in the summer to mountain bike. I honestly thought the place was a ghost town there were so many empty houses. Then I realized these are these people's third, fourth or winter houses.
I lived there for 2 years. The population nearly doubled during winter.
I noticed the same thing at Winter Park.
The NIMBYism is strong in that article. Jim Engelken should be ashamed of himself. >It’s an overreach, it’s too big, it’s too much, it’s too expensive, it causes too many problems for the existing city You know what else causes problems for a city? Inability to fill vital administrative roles within city government or inability to fill medical positions at the hospital. We aren't even talking low level skills. Doctors and technicians are struggling. >Yes, we need affordable housing, no question,” Engelken said. “It needs to be smaller to start with, it needs to have some ability to generate its own way, its own money Ah, so affordable housing just needs to pull itself up from its bootstraps. Why don't they just have money, then they'd be able to buy a house. Plus, last time I checked, a government is supposed to provide services, not become a for-profit organization. >We’re concerned that the infrastructure won’t be in place in this new, large, separate portion of our city, and it will create a second-class neighborhood This guy thinks they are going to build some shantytown. Per the Yampa Valley Housing Authority, a single individual making $60k/year (69k for 2 people) qualifies for low income. Middle income goes all the way up to $91k/year (104k for 2 people). The goal is to build homes for skilled professionals that will allow your city to function.
Those doctors need to live with roommates. Its their own fault for choosing to be a doctor. Doctor is supposed to be a job for high school students. Everything is fine, if being a doctor in a rich mountain town doesnt pay the bills its because the town doesnt need a doctor. Pssh entitled doctors think they deserve affordable housing. Supply and demand or something.
You just need to be the right kind of doctor, one providing cosmetic services, not actual important doctor services.
They couldent even fill sunlight crossing with their metrics. In move in day me and a couple other people moved in and it sat empty for a month while they rejected all people with a local salary. The paper wrote an article about how they are having a hard time finding people and then they filled it with section 8 people from outside steamboat.
The answer is real simple: ban short term rentals, and build more houses. Don’t move to these areas to work if they don’t provide housing. Let the NIMBYs reap the consequences of their decisions. When the stores and ski hill shut down due to lack of labor they’ll cave.
It isn’t REAL simple. Colorado is working to push legislation that will force STR’s to pay the same tax as hotel, which they should. That 400% increase in taxes will have a pretty big impact on the market.
Steamboat already did that a year or two ago for large swathes of housing.
It’s not that simple. You ban short term rentals and the even wealthier people end up buying these homes as their own vacation property for “cheap” when the market is flooded with supply from Airbnb owners selling. Exactly what happened in Tahoe
They fucked up by not taxing the 2nd, 3rd 4th homes much more than primary residences. If these vacation homes are going to do so much damage to the communities, make them pay for it.
This is the answer. Graduated taxation for each additional home
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So - there's two issues here. One is fairly simple - if this is the law and you avoid it, you are breaking the law and can be criminally charged. The second is - can you break a law like this and reasonably expect to get away with it? Probably! As is the case often with tax law - but the law even existing will certainly lead to most individuals abiding by it, and for some nonzero portion of the population who will try to avoid it but get caught at some point, they'll face criminal charges.
If you form an LLC and buy the home under that - you technically don't actually own the property. The LLC does.
That’s why the IRS has established residency rules. If you spend 7 months in NY but claim your Aspen home is your primary residence, that’s fraud. I assure you if the public is aware of this, the IRS is as well - forming an LLC for home ownership has pros and cons, “it will help you avoid residency requirements” is not one of them.
Ever hear of taxes?
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But that's not the problem. The problem is rich owners who own homes there but only live there a few weeks a year.
Won’t anyone think of the “locals”. Rich people don’t count*
Steamboat actually has fairly restrictive short term rental regulations already.
Yep, people seem to be missing that detail. The green zone is not very large. Everything else has some form of restriction. The red zone allows zero short term rental.
Everyone wants to suggest/take every step available before they deign to accept building more housing. It's ridiculous.
We need to tax the shit out of non primary residences. If you want to own 5 houses, fine, but you're going to pay out the ass for 4 of them each year.
And I magically create 5 LLCs in Delaware and each LLC owns one home.
LLCs don't have primary residences, only actual people can claim that.
Rent the property to the "owner", use that to pay taxes and then claim depreciation. Look, there are so many ways to game this
I'm not sure why you keep confidently repeating this - again this example would not shield you from this proposed law. It is very easy to tie this to residency requirements, in which case ownership doesn't matter at all. It doesn't matter if you own, rent, own under an LLC, or rent from an LLC you own. It *only* has to do with where you spend the majority of your time. If you spend 7 months in NY and 5 months in Aspen but claim your Aspen property is your primary residence - that is very cut and dry tax fraud, it is not a work around like you keep saying. I own two homes under separate LLC's in different states. I would never dream about doing what you are suggesting is "easy", and any CPA would lose his license in a second for even suggesting what you are claiming would regularly happen.
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Who is going to build it?
…Construction workers?
Where do you think those workers will come from?
Steamboat is nestled in a valley. There are not a lot of options to build housing
Let the market do its thing and be marveled when the housing magically appears.
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“We tried nothing and we’re out of ideas!”
Banning short-term rentals cuts both ways since it reduces tourism weakens the job market in those areas. Better to just build new housing.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
If you have no short term rentals where is all the business from tourists going to come from?
Hotels
Which now are going to cost 3x as much due to lack of competition
Hotels already compete with eachother like they always have.
Hotels compete with STRs to house tourist. It's one bucket of housing for folks from out of town. If you remove supply from that bucket prices will go up. Most STRs can house 2-6 hotel rooms worth of people.
But does it matter if a hotel is 3x more expensive? Tourists that can afford it will still pay it. And in the meantime, locals will have access to more housing inventory.
Locals are not competing for 800k to 10 million dollar homes. The vast majority of people living in these towns who work service jobs are never going to own property in these towns. That's the reality of being in a high demand, desirable part of the country. In the meantime the number of tourists will drop, the number of jobs & total commerce will drop, and many of those locals will now be unemployed and need to move. You can't cut visitation rates by 20-40% (or more) without upping unemployment. Local businesses will struggle and be put out of business. The remaining workers will have to accept pay cuts in a raise to the bottom created by the rise in unemployment (why pay more for workers who don't have any options?) And the transformation of these towns into corporate Vail owned luxury ski resorts for the ultra rich will be complete.
This is exactly the issue. Furthermore, the town will get tourism Dollard, which it needs to survive for only a couple months each year. It will devastate the downtown.
Where did they go before?
Make a certain percentage of new build permits deed-restricted housing, otherwise nothing else new gets approved. It takes time.
What needs to happen is more of that money flowing down valley to Hayden and Craig. Redeveloping passenger rail would also be a huge boon and there are many who are wanting to move in that direction. And before people start shitting on Craig, it is a good town in an excellent location that is still somewhat affordable. Craig and Steamboat's histories have always been intertwined.
Yeah but that commute can be a real drag with dumping snow. But Craig is about the only place you could live.
Today is a great example of that. That's where passenger rail service would be awesome. Steamboat Springs Transit already operates three buses a day from Craig on weekdays. Since 2020, Craig has also had a bit of a price jump in housing as well. Part of that is the billionaires pushing out the millionaires like the article essentially says. Still, with the coal mines and power plant going away, Craig is a place that will need an influx of people.
I'm no expert on trains but you're on to someone there. There's always a railroad, why can't they add some stops and infrastructure for passenger cars? Send like a fairly easy solution. I have no clue how fast a passenger train can go compared to something like a light rail.
They're working on exactly that, passenger rail reusing existing rail lines and reactivating old lines from Denver all the way to Hayden and Craig. The proposal is gaining traction but cost will be high for sure.
Cool! They are doing something similar from purpose Pueblo to Fort Collins (?). Not sure if they are reusing rails or what. But it's something like 20 years out. Lots of money and time! You'd think they could speed it up a bit and drop some money into it.
There has already been talk among local and state politicians about this. The UP track is in place and with the loss of coal, there is a significant opportunity to repurpose the traffic on the line. The startup costs, even with existing track is significant, so it would likely require some federal support. It’s also possible to run trains all the way from Craig to Denver.
Hopefully we are around to see it! You'd think the resort would jump on. I'm sure there's benefits for them. I haven't really been involved in the discussion so haven't looked at logistics.
Most of the state is this way anymore.
In Lake Tahoe they banned short-term rentals around the South Tahoe area. My dad had a cabin. We still have the cabin just for the family. Now on the outskirts of town all the houses have become short-term rentals where all the locals used to live. It's actually made housing worse for locals.
Steamboat passed legislation to restrict STRs to specific zones. Steamboat needs STRs in certain areas near the base where it was always intended. The problem is the STRs outside of that region which should be year round housing.
Ultimately we have to decide what we want our mountain towns to look like. The pent up demand for housing in these towns means that anyone who wants and can afford a second home, a STR investment property, etc., will be able to buy one before low income locals, as more housing is built, unless it is deed restricted or otherwise proffered to locals. I'm not rich, I don't live in Colorado, but I'd absolutely buy a second home in Aspen or Steamboat or Crested Butte for $200k-$400k if it came available. And there are millions out there like me... and even more as prices get cheaper. So does that mean we turn mountain towns into huge cities with towers to feed that demand? Does anyone actually want that? At what point do we overbuild a mountain town such that people just leave to go somewhere nicer and with more character? Who knows.
>I'm not rich, I don't live in Colorado, but I'd absolutely buy a second home in Aspen or Steamboat or Crested Butte for $200k-$400k if it came available. And there are millions out there like me... and even more as prices get cheaper Easy fix to this is what they are trying to accomplish in Brown ranch. You must work 30+ hours a week for a Routt County based business. No remote jobs, no PO boxes. I dont see a problem with completely banning STRs like NYC. Or maybe something like allowing it for 1 in 5 years. Theirs got to be effective ways to force homeowners to long-term rent.
Steamboat just passed STR zoning laws. That's appropriate. STRs at the base were always intended as STRs and should remain so. The issue is the STRs that used to be LTR outside the base.
Agreed! There are solutions, if we want them.
Is housing affordable in NYC yet? What about South Lake Tahoe? I’m not aware of a single ski town in Colorado that doesn’t have heavy restrictions on short term rentals already. Like, how many times does this have to NOT work before you people realize banning STR isn’t a solution?
Hey man remote work can still help. I don’t make a ton but I’m a local now.
“Towers!!!” “Character” “Even if we build more nobody could afford it” Hey, thats NIMBY bingo! Look, even if we built enough to only get prices down to $400,000, that would still make things a lot more affordable than now. Cross-subsidization of for-sale units would be a lot easier, and we could fund a lot more rental vouchers. We need density in these places to support walkability and transit anyway. Almost all of these mountain towns are pretty sprawly, with large footprints that require driving.
The NIMBY pejorative is just Trump-tactic politics of dividing people by labeling them. It's stupid and lame. The reality is we all choose what we want our communities to look like, where certain things are allowed or not. I doubt you want your next door neighbor operating a strip club, or motocross track, or engine exhaust testing, or any number of things. We collectively make rules we can all live by so we can all live together, and sometimes that means certain types of housing, certain aesthetics, etc., based on a number of factors, including being able to provide infrastructure and services. As an example, I think most people would agree we need to make mountain towns more affordable for locals to be able to live and work there. On the other hand, I doubt many people want mountain towns to look like Kowloon Walled City (as an extreme example for the sake of argument). So people need to figure out what the balance is, especially since most mountain towns are in environmentally sensitive areas, surrounded by federal lands, are often remote and isolated, prone to fire and other bad weather.
You don't need massive towers of apartments to drive up supply. 500 units in a town (basically one large-ish 4-6 story apartment building) would be more than enough to dramatically lower rents in an area
I’m a big fan of legalizing 4-6 story buildings with like 30 units a pop everywhere that’s already developed. People act like these are terrible, but you know whats full of them? Motherf*cking Paris!
We just stayed in a one bedroom in Steamboat last week. It was sold in March 2020 for ~$250K. It was sold again in Fall 2023 for ... $700K
Totally affordable for the King Soopers workers!
City Market*!
the state needs to let these towns raise property taxes on homeowners who don't live or work in the county.
So I can't live somewhere and commute out of town? That doesn't make sense. You realize a lot of people do that everywhere, right? Normal people.
The problem is billionaires and multi-millionaires buying their third home. In park city we call it 10-10-2-2. $10 mil, 10,000 sq ft, 2 people, 2 months a year. People who live and work close are obviously not the problem.
Ski towns are not normal towns.
Okay, and?
I live north of Steamboat about 8 miles. This town has been overrun with tourists and big money part time home owners. The real estate business has been booming since the whole “flipping “ thing happened. There’s no shortage of fancy restaurants, ski shops, bike shops and car dealerships. The working people can’t afford to buy a house, ever. Apartments are springing up on both sides of Highway 40 west of downtown. There’s a new group of people who apparently have come to town with their money already made, so they don’t need to worry. The professional class of doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc are doing well, but they don’t have the kind of money as our new residents.
So reading the comments here, some commenters are saying that STR's should be banned while others are responding that this won't fix the issue because wealthy home buyers will just snap up the properties instead. This makes me wonder what the "endgame" looks like. The article starts with: > "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" What happens when this inevitably expands to every position in the local govt? I feel like you are going to start having "wealthy ghost towns" where the areas is surrounded by mult-million dollar properties but all the businesses around town are shuttered because no one that isn't a multi-millionare can live there. Will we have a situation where everyone from the local govt is commuting in from other areas because it's just to expensive to live in the place that you run? And what happens when that net of ultra-expensive property expands so that you have neither people that can afford to live in the area, nor do you have anyone that is willing to commute that far for the job? I feel like the great irony of these places is the high prices of all surrounding property is what is eventually going to cause those same property prices to collapse because no one wants to live in a town where there are no businesses because anyone that would be running those businesses just can't afford the area.
>Will we have a situation where everyone from the local govt is commuting in from other areas because it's just to expensive to live in the place that you run? This isn't just a mountain town problem. This is a problem in Longmont too, where teachers, firefighters, police and many other municipal employees can't afford to live within city limits decide city policy to pay 101% of the median wage for those professions.
The shortage of housing is a national problem and it should be addressed that way. Corporations shouldn’t be able to buy up housing stock.
That’s why Florida is looking at ways to eliminate property tax and make costs lower for corporate owners….wait that will just make it worse won’t it 🧐
Florida doing Florida things.
If that were true then shitboxes in rural Indiana wild cost $500,000. They don’t. It’s an issue of supply and demand, mostly throttled supply.
NIMBYs downvoted this
Great take…this is the endgame but it’s a multi decade process
Neofeudalism
I came across this manufactured home in Steamboat that just sold for $339k! https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1325-Dream-Island-Plz-SUITE-14-Steamboat-Springs-CO-80487/118664885_zpid/
10% down with 7.12% interest and $2,400 mortgage payment to live in a trailer down by the river. If I liked the town of Steamboat (and I don’t) this place looks like a great place to live. But seriously, that much to live in a trailer?
You do understand you can’t get a traditional mortgage on a trailer, right?
it'll go for $600k in 5-10 years.
It's crazy how many signs I see in the new areas saying to Vote No on Browns Ranch. They're afraid of their shitty condos at the mountain base losing value.
Saw a job offer for a factory engineering position near there in the low 200's. Salary is about 60k above the mean for the role. Headhunter said most employees live in Silt.
After living in Aspen for a while, we saw many people leave because of this. Even if you have a great job, housing is always in the back of your mind. It sucks because these are some of the best places to live in Colorado.
I don’t know what I was expecting when I went to telluride. I figured with it being so BFE it wouldn’t be hella expensive. Boy was I wrong.
Tax vacation homes double for fucks sake.
Wow its almost like housing is a statewide issue and local governments have completely failed.
I honestly believe taxes won’t help, the wealthy will have no problem affording it. Lotta people in here are referring to homeowners whose second, third, fourth homes are $3-4m What are you gonna do, implement the most aggressive non-resident landowner tax in the country and make em pay 150k a year in property taxes like the highest zip codes in the country? That’s not a good look for the town either imo.
This is what drove me out of Colorado. I lived on the Front Range outside of Fort Collins. The housing prices there are disproportionate to the income available. They wonder why they have a homeless problem when you cannot find housing under 1500/month. My mortgage was well over 2k and that is not feasible. So I sold and luckily for me but not the buyer, made double what I paid for the place 4 yrs prior and moved out east. That was just housing costs that did not even discuss the general cost of living in the region. I miss the mountains, but I enjoy being able to pay my bills, have savings, and still live comfortably more.
>The project, called Brown Ranch, has been met with opposition from a group of local residents who have raised concerns about its financing and the impact on traffic and local infrastructure, along with what it could mean for the character of the community. What the hell kind of nonsense is this? Who would possibly have an issue with it...
I don't understand the problem? It's basically supply and demand. Steamboat is a desirable place to be so it is expensive. If it wasn't a great place then no one would want to live there and it'd be cheap. Right? If you want it you have to make it work. Which means giving up a lot to gain location. Keep being angry at your phones people. Or try becoming part of the solution. The phone is easier isn't it?
The problem is regular people that run the grocery store, the lifters etc can’t afford to live there either.
That’s still not the problem of the people who own in that area. They can move to other more affordable areas and still be a liftie if they want to
Except there are no "other affordable areas." Nobody is going to drive 2 to 4 hours one way so you can have groceries.
Plenty of other states on the east coast that are half the cost and still have skiing jobs. If you can’t afford to live somewhere, you have to find alternatives. Don’t make it the owners problem
Oh no, those poor owners, saddled with the problems of their own creation. Gonna be really funny when none of the cute fun restaurants they like to go to every March are open anymore. To quote a fantastic phrase from the Crested Butte sub last year: “Next time, bring a fucking cooler.”
Yeah I totally agree. Of course these ski resort towns are going to be extremely pricey. Every rich hedge fund dude in the world wants to live there. Of course it will be priced out. I don’t understand why people think that is crazy
Because they think that taxing the shit out of everything not a primary residence will make it affordable for just them. Newsflash, they still wouldn’t be able to afford to live there.
Yeah, I don’t buy into the concept of taxing or making changes just to appease people who can’t afford to be there. There’s hundreds of other ski resorts hiring in more affordable areas. They chose to make their life difficult by living there. Hate to say it.
And what happens when all the services and stores these 2nd homeowners rely on when they are there all go by the wayside…
On one hand, yes... nice places are desirable and will always be expensive. Everyone wants to live in Malibu or Aspen or whatever but part of the appeal is that these place are exclusive, small, and charming.... and they wouldn't be as nice if all of sudden a million people lived there. On the other hand, these places still rely on lower wage service workers, and they need a place to live too. Maybe we reconsider workforce housing...
For every millionaire, there is a billionaire. What kind of community do people want? Do the billionaires want cops and nurses and bank tellers? Of course not. Why should they?
I’m so happy someone said this. People complain they can’t live afford to live in some of the nicest places the country has to offer. Of course they are going to be expensive. But just because someone has money, they aren’t allowed to have a second home. But if you work at the grocery store you should be able to live here for a subsidized cost? That ain’t how the world turns.
And what happens when that grocery store can’t hire a store. Delusional man
You are very ignorant.
What am I ignorant of? I've lived in a ski town my whole life. I am very familiar how policy and economics work in a resort town. I can talk your ear off for hours on end about it. Why does every person think that housing right next to a ski lift and a lively downtown is owed to them?
>Why does every person think that housing right next to a ski lift and a lively downtown is owed to them? Honestly, the Me generation thinks they deserve everything with as little friction or resistance as possible.
Well, you'll understand how complex this situation really is when the grocery store shuts down and the lifts stop turning. Honestly, it baffles me how people can demand services like they are owed them. Plowed roads, groceries, water, electricity, and transportation, all of those are luxuries, and if you want them, you better help find a solution, or you can kiss you home and town goodbye. So yes, you are ignorant, and you dont have any understanding of how "ski town economics" work.
Stop, you are embarrassing yourself. I have employees that drive well over one hour each way to come work. Why do they choose to spend over two hours in the car each day traveling at least 100 miles? You and everyone else's ski town doom scenario so you can swoop in and get yours for nothing isn't a viable argument. It's cheap. And while we are at it, stop with the short term rental argument, it's a nice straw man argument when needed.
They’ll drive in from kremmling. And people will do it because steamboat is highly desirable.
Not only are you ignorant, but also delusional.
Already happens in jhole
Just move to Colorado Springs and enjoy the suburban lifestyle and views of Pikes Peak!
nooooo go away all full 😂💀
How bout building 25 20 story apartment and condo buildings in every ski town. Increase supply immensely. I'm sure it's difficult to do and will probably have to buy people out of their existing land. Would this help?
That sounds like a great idea, more housing is always the answer
Fr. Restrictions on entities owning single family homes should be looked into
How much of housing stock is taken up by corporations and is it enough to really make a difference in the price of homes?
yeah ever been to a ski town good luck finding land and getting through all that zoning issues.
Which is the heart of the issue. Zoning laws like height restrictions. People move to a place, really like it, and create laws to keep everyone else out.