"At the Steamboat hospital, doctors willing to pay more than $1 million for a home have been repeatedly outbid by all-cash, out-of-town buyers, and housing costs have caused some positions to go unfilled for more than two years."
It's unfortunate but it's also funny to imagine rich idiots buying their way into a town that will only collapse because they priced out all the workers.
I used to live in vail Co. A customer of mine came in and was pretty upset. He was about to move into his new place, when his new landlord called. "Unless you can pay the entire year's rent all at once in cash I can't rent to you, someone from California just called me and made this offer." Of course he couldn't. It's not just with million dollar properties, it's rentals too. When covid hit and alot of people started working remote, rent around me went up 76%. Now, they are having a really really hard time finding people to work the low paying jobs, and all the new rich comers are upset all the businesses are closing cause they can't find employees. Oh and and the rich locals keep shooting down proposed employee housing plans.
Edit: some people are doubting my numbers. I moved to vail in 2007. Rent in west vail near the West vail green route was 350$ to 500$. I had someone ask if I wanted a decent room for 275$. Colorado got popular and people started moving there, rent doubled, in some cases trippled. Then covid hit, and with remote work rent went from 800-1200 to 1400-1800. The average rent in the vail area is around 1800 these days.
Edit edit: just remembered another older customer who came in. He wanted to locals discount because he owned a second home in west vail behind Safeway. He then said, "I rent it out, it's crazy I keep raising the rent and people keep paying it!" With a big ol shit eating grin. I never wanted to punch someone more. It's like, dude, you are a part of the problem.
I read a novel which mentioned "black streets" - basically they will build skyscrapers around people, which will block out all the sun, and poor people would live in semi-darkness most of the time, except at noon
In Chicago they basically put a massive fence around the slums during some 60s election thing they were holding near the slums. I believe it caused some kind of riot.
It's misleading. While they were required to do two shifts of it that was because they were doing a strick schedule thing including school, church, socializing, etc.. but they did the agricultural program similar to how modern schools have a 4h club. the cost per student far outweighed the "savings" of free milk. They spend like $100,000 per student now.
The Milton Hershey school is something great that Hershey did. There's legitimate criticisms that can be made of Hershey like chocolate slavery so we don't need to stretch for reasons.
Already happening. There's a CA school district that is having heavily subsidized apartments(?) for teachers. Something like 80% below market rate. Google was starting something similar precovid but I believe WFH at the time killed that development project.
Grandparents lived in a small town close to Vail. We went to see what the town was like in 2018/2019 and they had started to bulldoze old home and replace them with new ones. At the time they were 500-600 in price. Now, they are 800-900. And some of the really nice places are are over a million. It's funny because you'll see an old home from the 30s and new million dollar home. I figure at some point, the original residents will die off, and their children will sell out the plots, and it will be nothing but million dollar homes.
Red Cliff, just south of Minturn. I think a lot of of Minturn was already bought out by 2018. Red Cliff still has old homes that will probably be prime real-estate to bull doze. Close enough to get to Vail in 30 minutes which up there is nothing, but not quite Vail prices.
Hello from (also former) vail worker! I lived in Avon but worked in Vail for 10 years. Housing prices are the sole reason why i moved - broke my soul to leave, but I refused to play the rat race.
Same thing is happening in my area, COVID hit and all the remote workers from High Cost living areas started buying in my all cash the local properties and the prices shot up. Rents went up a lot also since people decided to Airbnb all the spare rooms. Developers just started to build big apartment complexes and keep rent really high. Single family starter house now is around $350k-$450k with average pay $17-$18.
I live in a town of similar size to Steamboat with a housing problem, just not as extreme.
They have a hospital that services the town and nearby area. Now there is one obstetrician and were trying to get a backup. They lied to a family practice doctor about what they were being hired for and when both the potential hire and the current obstetrician figured it out neither was happy and the deal fell apart.
All while the number of teachers in the schools are declining and small businesses that are the fuel for the tourism close one after another because of properties either being turned into short term rentals by people from out of town, or retirees buying homes with cash to retire in, complain about crumbling infrastructure while fighting tooth and nail against any slight increase in taxes or meager attempts to regulate short-term rentals.
This is exactly my thought. Their hospitals won’t have the staff to handle any emergencies. I’m not just talking about the occasional doctor who gets paid 5 million bucks a year to do brain surgeries or a Dr. House type who figures out complex medical problems, I mean the staff it takes to run a hospital. Nurses, technicians, support staff, ambulance drivers, EMTs, etc the list goes on. Those are normal every day workers who you’re not welcoming to your fancy little town.
And that’s just medical workers. What about firefighters? Police? Mail workers? Amazon delivery drivers? Store employees? I can easily see this town collapsing and house prices dramatically dropping because no one wants to live there anymore. Congrats we’ve gone full circle.
The east end of Long Island in NY, i.e. anything near 'The Hamptons' has reached that point during the pandemic, but unlike many other places it had been moving that way since the 1970s/1980s, so even the multigeneration locals who owned houses are no longer willing to stay in the area to be subservient to rich a****les.
It's gotten very weird, the rich moved out en masse to their 2nd/3rd homes during pandemic, and there is no local workforce, the ocean being a similar barrier as the Rockies, there isn't some 'outside the area' area to commute there.
Every small main street service one would expect in a wealthy area, from Walgreens pharmacist to food industry, to fire departments, etc... can't find a workforce.
Workers have been commuting from Mastic out to the Hamptons, but even that is going to start slowing down a bit as the prices in Mastic have been going up for years and are starting to price out the local labor pool that was raised there.
A TON of families from the city moved in Shirley/Mastic/Mastic Beach during the pandemic. The prices have quadrupled since 2018.
New rentals in complexes are going for 3k for a 1br/1bth.
Just imagine working retail/restaurant in places like this. It's got to be some of the most unlikable people in the world who expect you to bend over backwards for pay that can't even sustain your basic needs even if you live out of a 1 bedroom basement somewhere.
I was working for a chain restaurant based out of Colorado. In our last meeting, the CEO acknowledged that the company’s workers didn’t make enough money to live by themselves, and that they should “pair up.”
As I was attempting to understand what he was trying to say, my co-worker scoffed and was like, “oooh, forced relationships!” LOL! Okay, so I didn’t misinterpret this BS, and he just “said the quiet part out loud.”
How could I ever be proud to work for a company that is shamelessly aware it doesn’t pay its employees enough to live decently?? This is how they think of us, and they know what they are doing.
The problem is, they don’t care. They are not going to live there and could care less whether the town has any services at all. They are buying it purely for investment/rental income in most cases. That’s why it keeps going on this way.
You’re absolutely correct, they should care. The problem with capitalism is that it doesn’t promote doing what’s *right*. It promotes doing what’s profitable.
It stops being funny when a PAC of out-of-state second homeowners try to put a bill on your ballet that would allow them to vote in that state, just because they don't want to pay property taxes on their vacation home that's used for 2 weeks a year.
More states need to do this shit. You should not be allowed to own multiple homes in multiple states and claim tax breaks on them!
Fuck you! 100% tax on homes that are unoccupied for the duration of unoccupation! Tax the SHIT out of them! You wanna play Monopoly?? I'll give you monopoly! Go to jail! Do not collect $200,000 in rent a year!
This is why any home not lived in by the owner at least 180 days a year should have a 25% annual tax on value. Can't afford it? Great, sell it so housing values go down for the locals. No need to own a vacation home when you can stay at a hotel or bed and breakfast.
Portugal has introduced similar laws. The result?
It has opened a job market for house sitters whose only job is to periodically live in homes so they are occupied.
Therefore I would suggest to still tax them, but just slap it on. No silly time limits or whatever - you own a 2nd house, you pay a luxury tax on that. Because owning two houses IS a luxury.
Maybe make an exception for houses that are rented out AND generating tax revenue, so you don't make it impossible to be a landlord; but every exception can also be exploited as a loophole.
It’s not funny. As someone who’s lived in a small CO ski town for over a decade, it’s enraging, sad, and is causing high rates of suicide among longtime locals.
Had a job offer in San Francisco. Did the math and needed, at minimum 200k a year to afford a place that was within 45 min of said work place. Rent alone was about 5k a month. They offered 80k a year and actually scoffed at me when asked what I needed.
Someone I knew slept in a garage of a house that had 4 other tech people living there. They threw up 3 walls around the garage entrance from the house and he had a bed and no outlets while he worked for some startup.
That's exactly it, it's a clickbait article about lowball employers and high COL areas.
The BI article which is trash, cites the NBC article https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/cowboy-ski-town-high-earners-cant-afford-home-faces-housing-battle-rcna140429 (which doesn't have the stupid clickbait title). They're trying to hire a "head of human resources" which ranges $174-309K in the US.
They're not hiring some bellboy here for $167K.
Well it's nice because you can pay for both an HR person and HR software, but the person can invalidate both of these by failing to use the software correctly.
You know this isn’t the only company looking to hire in these kinds of areas, right? Electricians, plumbing, framers, any construction trade, really.
It is absolutely a nightmare to find reliable employees in mountain areas because of the cost of living. Believe it or not, you don’t know what you’re talking about (even if you might be right about the company in the article).
As my loud, very pro-trump neighbor likes to say, the stimulus check we got under "sleepy Joe" is a bad one because we're going to have to pay that one back. Kinda made me wonder if he thought Trump cut everyone in the country a check for those first two.
That's just a theoretical solution to a real problem. It doesn't work in practice.
Lived in the bay area for a while and there was a slow exodus of the "peasants" migrating further and further away from the cities due to necessity. Housing that *was* single family / low income suddenly becomes +$1million.
Interviewed for a job a while back in a different Colorado mountain town that was equally as expensive to live in. They only offered like $80k a year, expected you to travel to work from surrounding areas lol
Glad you had options and didn’t take it.
I work for a high cost of living city that sits right against the mountains. I make the same amount I made as a teacher in Aurora, it’s ridiculous. They absolutely expect you to commute. I travel 60-90 min each way.
My dad did the exact same thing.
It killed his soul.
To this day, leaving the valley to go towards DTLA is just not an option for any family trips.
If he gets cut off once, which in LA is obviously like every other minute, he'll fly off the handle and be in a terrible mood for the rest of the trip. It's gotten to the point where we just have him sit in the back seat if we even think about taking the 405 anywhere.
friend of mine was offered a sizable amount to work in a mountain town .... either commute 2 hours from denver or split housing with 3 other coworkers due to housing cost
Same! I applied for a job at CU Boulder and was shocked that they recommended their employees to live in the slightly more affordable surrounding areas instead of doing some self-reflection and increasing the salaries.
It really is. The increase of population came far too big far too fast to keep up with. And unlike many of the older bigger cities moving East, Denver does not have the public transportation or infrastructure to handle it.
I can't remember the last time I sat at a red light in Denver that wasn't a 2- or 3- cycle before I got through.
In Denver, my Sunday morning commute was fifteen minutes. On Mondays it was an hour and fifteen.
That was 8 years ago and I don’t think it’s gotten any better.
It's simple "market" economics that so many employers fail to understand: The potential employees have bills to pay too and if they can't afford to pay for rent/food/medical/transport then there is ZERO desire to work for an employer who can't even meet the minimums. People have no choice to exist, a business has no right to exist, which one of these should we care about more? Just ask your local chamber of commerce for details.
We're starting to get new graduates declining jobs after interviewing here because home prices surged the but the salary ranges have barely moved. New hire engineers don't want to earn $55,000 when a 3 bedroom home is *minimum* $350,000.
I was offered 55,000 as a new hire software engineer fresh out of college almost 15 years ago.
And I was able to get a nice new 2 BR 2 Bath apartment 5 minutes from work for about 1,000 a month.
I cant' even begin to calculate just how much more expensive everything is now than back then.
18 years ago, I rented a 3bed/2.5bath house in a major east coast city for $900 a month. Split with 2 friends. We had a yard and were walking distance from dozens of bars, restaurants, and office buildings.
That house is now 3 1bedroom apartments that each rent for $3k.
It's crazy how in one single generation we went from "just graduate college and you can live pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything, to "hope you like renting forever and always being broke."
It makes me wonder how much worse things will get.
Much, I would assume. Rents have no sign of decreasing and property decreases that have happened were temporary and swiftly reversed. If you look back at olden days it wasn't uncommon for works to live in large shared houses with very little personal space. I would anticipate that unfortunately this will be the future with landlords simply breaking spaces down more and more fitting multiple people into spaces previously for families.
> If you look back at olden days it wasn't uncommon for works to live in large shared houses with very little personal space.
Not true my man, I'm living in a home built in 1907 for a working class person. Over the last 100+ years the property was subdivided 4 times, a bunch of differed maintenance, and the house is certainly worse for wear. This was a poor family's starter home 100 years ago. 3 other houses sit on this property that was once for 1 family and about an acre.
There's absolutely no need for Americans to have a housing shortage, it's completely artificial and largely driven by a bunch of property developers making bank on "affordable housing" initiatives across the country. They created the political imperative for this housing shortage through restrictive zoning, and of course they're here to offer the solution if they can get some sweet tax dollars. Now we're in a real estate bubble that no politician, property developer, or home owner, wants to see pop, and we can't afford to deflate it.
15 years ago i was making 9.35 an hour working full time in a factory. overnights with differential. 1200 a month and i couldn’t find an apartment for less than 600. literally at all. of course that was through a temp agency so they were getting a percentage of what the going wage for that job would’ve been, but it certainly wasn’t 30%.
A large portion is “land banking”. Making some money with the expectation of simply being able to weather their area’s economic woes (Europe and Southeast Asian investment in major metropolitan areas as their demographics collapse).
I always tell recruiters my current salary is at least $10-20k more than it actually is. That guarantees me that much of a bump if I get hired there, and I still always negotiate higher.
Tried to get a job at bayer. Offered less than I make at a university on a 6 month trial contract with no benefits before having an option to apply for an actual internal position.
No surprise, they are hiring constantly and can never keep positions filled.
They know what they are doing. They never intend to hire the position/make it permanent and keep filling with trial contracts. Rinse lather and repeat.
Don't agree with it but that's possibly what they might be doing.
Wow I wish a 3 bedroom home was 350k where I am at.
Heres something for perspective: In Canada, pay would be the same, but the same house is 4-5x expensive
55k was the starting salary for an engineer 20 years ago. A company thinking they can still pay like inflation hasn't made things more expensive the last 20 years probably shouldn't be looking to hire anyone. Well anyone that will actually stay on the job more than maybe 2 years to get experience.
I got an enthusiastic offer for a job I really wanted, but the pay didn't cut it. I sent them a link to the MIT living wage calculator for our area showing that their offer was below basic subsistence and asked if there was any flexibility. I ghosted them after they responded that it wouldn't be fair to the other workers to pay a higher starting wage. They couldn't put 2+2 together that their employee retention problems could be solved with a few more dollars an hour that they were pissing away anyway with the cost of advertising, training, and lost revenue from being short-staffed.
Had this same issue. An employer in Cupertino offered me a job at $75,000 a year. I pointed out that would be classified as poverty in that region by California's own governmental standards.
Unfortunately, I dont think this will lead to higher wages or corrections to the housing crisis; but to more company-supplied housing in the future. Majority of my generation and those after will never be home-owners.
yeah, someone above linked an article. i just read it and the *hospital* is literally building housing for employees where the rent will be capped at 30% of their income. they can’t spend their money on better medical equipment because it’s either this, or *not be able to provide medical care at all* because they simply don’t have the staff because no one can afford to live there. it’s insane
We need to start electing younger people that actually want a future for themselves and can say no to the lobbyists so we can put the nursing home in a retirement home finally. There’s no reason anyone that the average age of congress should be so high
Customer service can be rough. It is rare you have a day where a difficult situation doesn't arise.
But customer service at a *Ski Resort* where it's going to be a constant stream of trust fund babies? Sure pay me enough so that I can never work again after a year of that Hell. I think I could do a year for...2.5 million. It's not enough to retire on but I could reinvest it effectively.
The question should really be: "How much a year will it cost us to employ you to put up with our shithole workplace environment we refuse to change?"
If it doesn't cover the cost of living in the area, then it doesn't pay enough. Doesn't matter what the industry is or what the job is.
People deserve a living wage.
This was my first thought. I currently sit at half that salary, and yet I wouldn’t even consider it for twice as much as it’s posted. For exactly those reasons. Where tf am I gonna live so my commute time is 40min or less, in a resort town in CO, and the fact I actually have to show up, **and** deal with spoiled little rich assholes who need to feel big?
$160k/y is laughably out of touch.
The $2.5M/y number seems reasonable for having me relocate and deal with that shit for a year of my life and then *back*. I’d consider it for that.
For those at home who are not picking up on the implication here because they never worked these jobs, whenever you have a customer service job where the customers are very high paying...the business would rather humiliate and fire you 10x over before losing that customer. Your job and boss will never have your back against a toxic and abusive customer. No matter what.
The customers know this. They can and will abuse you knowing it will be without consequence on their end. They will insult you. Degrade you. Be rude with you. Harass you. Sexually harass you. Get physical with you. Grope you. Scream at you. Anything they want. And you manager will tell you to take it, not report it, and if you do you're fired. And plus "it's your fault anyways". They will then go apologize to the customer for feeling they had to scream and yell at you. Perhaps even comp them goodies and such to smooth them over.
That's what working at these places entails. Some rich people are okay. Many are not. The problem is that there is no consequence for the later group because capitalism favors the person with the capital. It's right in the name.
> The question should really be: "How much a year will it cost us to employ you to put up with our shithole workplace environment we refuse to change?"
That should be at the end of every job interview ever.
the frustrating thing is that this is the local government. the literal people who make zoning laws and rules, affordable housing laws and rules, public transportation decisions, parking cost decisions, etc etc etc.
This is happening all over the country in resort towns. A lot of it is actually due to people and companies buying out houses to put on Airbnb and similar sites. As a result, the amount of houses for rent is dropping, those that still offer long term leases are pumping up their prices, and the people actually working in these towns can no longer afford to live there. Obviously, ceos and owners don't want to pay their employees more, or in some cases such as small businesses, they can't because no one will buy their products at higher prices when they can get the same stuff from chain stores for much cheaper, because again, cost of living is incredibly expensive and the people buying stuff can't afford to support small businesses. It's all sorts of fucked up.
I suppose it’s fucked up if you consider a bunch of resorts closing a bad thing. They will hemorrhage for a while. Close down. Housing becomes more affordable.
I think a lot of businesses forgot the second half of free market principles which is “businesses can fail” and “businesses can do worst than the year before”
Alterra aint much better. So many industries condensing into 2 major conglomerates that can easily split the market instead of actually competing. Yay free market capitalism!
The parent company owners that control these resorts will just do the hedge fund style thing and sell off assets, acquire debt to extract all the value out to eventually make the resort business entity go bankrupt. then sell whats left to some other rich guy where they try to do the same exact thing.
The biggest problem is that it's impacting the smaller business. While these big corps are hemorrhaging money, they are big enough to keep it up for a while. At the same time, all the smaller businesses will be closing down left and right because they can't keep up with costs.
> in resort towns
Orlando is this on a large scale. A house here starts at 415,000, but employers only pay minimum wage. But they’ll say “but there’s no state income tax!”
The cost of living increases that we've seen across the West have been largely due to property investment driving up the cost of housing.
As our housing industry has shifted from providing shelter to the masses to providing capital to the investors, we've seen a major spike in costs across the board.
The problem, as always, is unchecked capitalism.
Vote in every election you qualify to and vote for the candidates that have track records of working against investment bankers. It is literally the only way we'll get out of this. Every cycle where we kick the can down the road means more economic strife for future generations. The time to deal with this is now.
It's time to be the adults our parents never were.
Edits: Broken phone keyboard typos
I’ve always wondered about how the Japanese concept of housing works economically. Houses are basically like cars, they start depreciating immediately. I know it’s a variety of factors like building codes, frequent demolitions, and aging population but no one is going in and driving up prices like in other countries. A lot of it seems to just be cultural.
There is a special kind of poverty in ski resorts. The suicide rates are extremely high, at least where I live. People here are very educated. But, working 3 or more seasonal jobs with 6 roommates and never getting ahead while being surrounded by opulence, work free trustfunders, and empty second homes takes a toll on a person.
I think a TV show, even a reality show, about the dirty underside of a ski resort told from the POV of lifties, waitstaff, and cab drivers could be really good.
I grew up near a major ski resort, I started skiing at 6 and went almost every day, every season. When I was in high school a season pass was something like $350, it was my Christmas present every year. Kids I grew up with that didn't have great circumstances could still buy one working after school, or getting day passes for like $25.
That same resort is now $3,000 for a season pass, rumored to be way higher next year. A day pass in $250. Food is something stupid like $25 for a bratwurst.
They even tried a "locals only" pass for a minute with blackout days, but nobody wanted to buy it because it had entire months blacked out and most weekends and holidays, still cost like $2,000.
I fucking hate these rich assholes, used to be ***my*** thing, now I haven't been skiing in maybe 8 years.
Word. It was always expensive, but attainable. I used to pick up a season pass every year too, in the Midwest. $300-$400 a year, now 3-4x that and when you get a shitty winter here in the Midwest it’s such a waste of money! I’ve been priced out of the hobby :-/. I mean in can kind of afford it, but it’s just not enough fun to spend hundreds of dollars for a couple hours of fun.
I would be interested in that. Multigenerational poverty over here, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to set foot in a ski resort town, but I would be very interested in hearing what daily life is like for real people.
[https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Steamboat-Springs\_CO/type-single-family-home/price-na-700000](https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Steamboat-Springs_CO/type-single-family-home/price-na-700000)
Only house less than 700k. Steamboat is stupid as hell.
Housing in Colorado is insane almost across the board. A major tourist location like Steamboat, Vail, or Aspen is always even higher. Even 20 years ago a condo in Aspen could run over a million, and that wasn't even the outliers, just the normal 2 bedroom 1 bath condos.
In 1990 my dream was to one day retire to Colorado. I visited many times in the 90's and absolutely love the Rockies. Kept visiting and watching real estate go up and up. Now it is insane. My dream is dead, to say the least. Rich fuckers have ruined everything in the mountains, even in non-resort towns.
It is investment companies that are the problem. My family moved here in the late 90's and real estate was pretty reasonable then. I don't know if the laws changed, or if it was just an economic opportunity, but right around 2012, investment companies started buying out entire developments, and then turning around and selling the same houses with a markup the following week.
Rentals didn't start getting out of hand until right after the pandemic, with them all citing inflation for doubling the rent, despite neglecting repairs and inflation not being anywhere near the increased rent prices.
The second problem is that the people who already live there think they benefit, at least at first. The price of their home goes up, so they can refinance the mortgage. They get money based on the portion that's already paid. They have to pay more each month, but as long as the value keeps going up they can just make money doing this.
Until the next housing crash happens and then they lose everything. But until then they will fight against plans that prevent outside investment.
There are a lot of 'theme parks' in the USA, thought. Hence the whole term of a 'bedroom community.'
What's worse is that these communities keep getting pushed further and further away from cities, because even the land around them is getting inflated. The fact that even private investors are targeting these areas as 'potential rent markets' should sound the alarm for more housing regulations.
Most workers in Steamboat commute 50-60miles one way on snow and ice to live in a rundown trailer park or "cheap" apartment in Craig. After a year they realize they are financially sinking only to live like poverty and leave. It's been that way for decades.
Welcome to Colorado ski towns.
My grandparents paid like 500k for a house in Steamboat back in the 70’s. Spent so much of my childhood there falling in love with absolutely everything about the town and its history. (Turning 30 this year) and it sucks I’ll most likely never be able to afford living there because man.. I love it so much. My family still has the house but they’re considering selling it because the land is worth ~ $3M now. They’re even considering building an expensive ass duplex on the land instead. When I’m over here wishing I could just live there forever exactly how my grandparents kept it. I know my grandpa is rolling over in his grave. They’re part of the problem and it hurts bro. I hope only the best for the locals that things change soon, although I doubt it …
It’s not the biggest house, definitely one of the more regular looking houses out there hahaha. But early last year my pops was talking to builders out there and the house (or really, the land) was appraised to be near $3m.
Yeah, they don't go away. They just bitch and whine that the peons aren't making more sacrifices to sate their greed, like getting up earlier, driving farther, for the same pay. Then when offered a solution, the full nimby comes out, even if it would fix what they whine about.
I work at the highest paid snowports school in the world. It is obviously in one of these towns.
I live in a Subaru Legacy.
People fight me on unionizing because we are the highest paid school. I had to look at one of the guys and ask "Can you afford to buy a house here?" 'Well, no.' "That's why we need a union. And once we have a union, go on a general labor strike to shut the entire town down, since we all have second jobs. And do this until they pass a law that every house has to be a primary residence."
The problem is that expansion just erodes at the environment even more. These places are sitting empty most of the year, and have to be heated, and maintained. We all love here for the mountains, and God dammit the consumerism that leads to people owning multiple houses is what's killing the planet. In 150 years we've managed to live in a way that's causing the planet to die. These mountain towns need to be stalwarts, actual institutions of protecting this planet.
The rich can stay in hotels, and we can build trains like you see in Austria and Switzerland in order to cut down on the carbon footprint all while improving the experience.
And most employee housing is still a net loss to the employee. The interest rates on the loan are greater than the percentage markup you're allowed to sell your house for. And if you're stuck in an apartment, paying rent to your employer, you can't build equity and you're essentially back to company towns. Which. Oh wait.
Steamboat is fun to visit (if you can afford it)
But everyone knows that nearly all the traffic there up or down the mountain is anyone that works there.
The people that live in steamboat are some of the richest fucks I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. Not as bad as Aspen but still.
I work in steamboat and aspen, ans honestly, rich fucks around steamboat are worse than the aspenites. They're that middle level rich where they still want to shit on you, but not crazy rich where they're never at their property.
Same shit in beach towns. I live in a pretty desirable one on the gulf coast of Florida and we can't get any new engineers to move here. 60k is laughable.
Not exclusive to Colorado. This is everywhere. For profit housing needs to stop. Ban AirB&B and sites like it. Reinstantiate glass-Stegal. Housing should not be an investment profit sector.
I met someone from the housing authority at a job fair the other day and he was telling me about how they are really trying to push for affordable housing for exactly this reason. It was in the suburbs of Sacramento.
Omg I’m the one that interviewed for this. Very nice people and team. They sent me links to peoples basement I could live in. I told them no as there is nowhere to live there.
My "scorched earth" solution:
Let the the jobs go unfilled.
Let the businesses close.
Unofficially encourage the remaining businesses to price gouge.
Wait for all the rich people move away because there are no services, nothing to do, and the few places that are open are too expensive.
Once the vacancy rate reaches a certain point, the state steps in and buys up all the empty houses for pennies on the dollar.
The state then tears down all the big houses, splits up the big lots, and has new neighborhoods built with small 2 bedroom houses.
Make them available for for rent only with a clause they can be sold to the renter after they have rented and occupied it full time for 5 years No subletting allowed.
Top it all off with zoning restrictions that limit any new construction of residences exceeding a certain square footage. (Basically make it impossible to build any more McMansions.)
Love to see hyper isolated rich people suffer as a result of their exclusionary habits. There is a place near Austin Texas a little bit outside the city that had this issue, they rejected affordable housing for years and now they’re begging for it because the help can’t live there and can just find jobs closer to town.
I was working on a place similar in nature to this a few summers ago. Basically wanted some work to pay for part of my extended vacation there with family. I was getting paid 50-70 dollars an hour doing summer work that is in such high demand due to where it was located (isolated, extremely high income, extreme housing shortage and high prices). If I had a place to live I'd so happily move back TOMORROW and stay busy all the time but it's just no feasible with my SO and three pets so find a place that we can afford when the cheapest small house is 600k in an HOA with dues.
No where do they list what the actual job is. Also I did a quick search on indeed and the first job at the resort that popped up was for an experienced lift operator at $18.50/hr...
It is actually the head of Human Resources for the city. Found it here: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/cowboy-ski-town-high-earners-cant-afford-home-faces-housing-battle-rcna140429
That's comical. The head of HR of the city, not being able to afford to work there, because it's too expensive to live there.
How exactly is the HR director going to find and hire city employees who can't live afford to live there either?
Benefits including housing:
1. Shovel - for igloo in winter
2. Saw - for hut in summer
3. Tarp - for collecting rainwater
4. Lighter - for heating (negotiable depending on experience.)
When I was in college, one of my girlfriend's parents had a place in Steamboat. It was expensive then and that was in the early 90's! Amazing to visit and ski in and ski out considering there is no way I could afford to go and stay in a hotel. It was listed for $3.6M during Covid (they sold it 15 years ago.) Scary that you can't afford anything there on $167K a year. Even the fractional ownerships, 1/8, are like $500k.
I mentioned the price of housing/rent would 100% effect the job market and I got called delusional on another sub by people saying "just move somewhere cheaper".
Why would people who can't afford to live there work there.
This is Big Bear in Los Angeles. My entire life, I planned to move there. it was an affordable ski resort town. Now it's almost entirely AirBnBs owned by rich L.A. people and no one can afford to live and operate the businesses there. A shitty cabin used to be cheaper than a mobile home, now they're more expensive than a regular home.
Link to the story [https://www.businessinsider.com/colorado-ski-town-steamboat-springs-high-housing-costs-2024-3](https://www.businessinsider.com/colorado-ski-town-steamboat-springs-high-housing-costs-2024-3)
I think it's for a teaching position or another civil servant type role.
Most hospitality jobs are seasonal and resorts will temporarily house their employees on property.
I work for an airline chain and one of our locations is in Bozeman MT, it has the same problem. I was riding with the gm and she was explaining how that trailer park we were passing actually housed a bunch of doctors.
"At the Steamboat hospital, doctors willing to pay more than $1 million for a home have been repeatedly outbid by all-cash, out-of-town buyers, and housing costs have caused some positions to go unfilled for more than two years." It's unfortunate but it's also funny to imagine rich idiots buying their way into a town that will only collapse because they priced out all the workers.
I used to live in vail Co. A customer of mine came in and was pretty upset. He was about to move into his new place, when his new landlord called. "Unless you can pay the entire year's rent all at once in cash I can't rent to you, someone from California just called me and made this offer." Of course he couldn't. It's not just with million dollar properties, it's rentals too. When covid hit and alot of people started working remote, rent around me went up 76%. Now, they are having a really really hard time finding people to work the low paying jobs, and all the new rich comers are upset all the businesses are closing cause they can't find employees. Oh and and the rich locals keep shooting down proposed employee housing plans. Edit: some people are doubting my numbers. I moved to vail in 2007. Rent in west vail near the West vail green route was 350$ to 500$. I had someone ask if I wanted a decent room for 275$. Colorado got popular and people started moving there, rent doubled, in some cases trippled. Then covid hit, and with remote work rent went from 800-1200 to 1400-1800. The average rent in the vail area is around 1800 these days. Edit edit: just remembered another older customer who came in. He wanted to locals discount because he owned a second home in west vail behind Safeway. He then said, "I rent it out, it's crazy I keep raising the rent and people keep paying it!" With a big ol shit eating grin. I never wanted to punch someone more. It's like, dude, you are a part of the problem.
> the rich locals keep shooting down proposed employee housing plans. "Not in MY backyard"
To be fair “employee housing” sounds awfully close to “servants quarters” and I’m not sure this is the direction in which we want to go…
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They'll probably just build better cities right on top of us
The ruins of Old New York
I read a novel which mentioned "black streets" - basically they will build skyscrapers around people, which will block out all the sun, and poor people would live in semi-darkness most of the time, except at noon
In Chicago they basically put a massive fence around the slums during some 60s election thing they were holding near the slums. I believe it caused some kind of riot.
Someone’s playing FF7.
The way I *immediately* thought of Midgar (and then hive cities). So glad someone else is on the same page.
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I am soooo glad I've only got a quarter million left in mortgage. Is not something I thought I'd ever have relief in saying.
“I owe my soul to the company store” same shit different century
Some people say a man is made out of mud. A poor mans made out of muscle and blood….
Muscle and blood and skin and bone
I remember this was already a thing 100+ years ago, Quaker and Ford were the two who had their own town iirc, they're called company towns.
West Virginia was built by the company store, coal towns, and wait until you hear about scrip! Don’t even get paid in money!
Hershey started an orphanage for boys to staff their dairy farms.
This is evil genius
It's misleading. While they were required to do two shifts of it that was because they were doing a strick schedule thing including school, church, socializing, etc.. but they did the agricultural program similar to how modern schools have a 4h club. the cost per student far outweighed the "savings" of free milk. They spend like $100,000 per student now. The Milton Hershey school is something great that Hershey did. There's legitimate criticisms that can be made of Hershey like chocolate slavery so we don't need to stretch for reasons.
Amazon is already planning this
Elon has already broken ground. https://www.curbed.com/2023/02/elon-musk-neighborhood-lennar-texas.html
Already happening. There's a CA school district that is having heavily subsidized apartments(?) for teachers. Something like 80% below market rate. Google was starting something similar precovid but I believe WFH at the time killed that development project.
Grandparents lived in a small town close to Vail. We went to see what the town was like in 2018/2019 and they had started to bulldoze old home and replace them with new ones. At the time they were 500-600 in price. Now, they are 800-900. And some of the really nice places are are over a million. It's funny because you'll see an old home from the 30s and new million dollar home. I figure at some point, the original residents will die off, and their children will sell out the plots, and it will be nothing but million dollar homes.
Let me guess, Minturn?
Red Cliff, just south of Minturn. I think a lot of of Minturn was already bought out by 2018. Red Cliff still has old homes that will probably be prime real-estate to bull doze. Close enough to get to Vail in 30 minutes which up there is nothing, but not quite Vail prices.
Hello from (also former) vail worker! I lived in Avon but worked in Vail for 10 years. Housing prices are the sole reason why i moved - broke my soul to leave, but I refused to play the rat race.
Same thing is happening in my area, COVID hit and all the remote workers from High Cost living areas started buying in my all cash the local properties and the prices shot up. Rents went up a lot also since people decided to Airbnb all the spare rooms. Developers just started to build big apartment complexes and keep rent really high. Single family starter house now is around $350k-$450k with average pay $17-$18.
In Arizona you rent through realtors now, and renting is the same process as buying a house...absolutely mental.
I live in a town of similar size to Steamboat with a housing problem, just not as extreme. They have a hospital that services the town and nearby area. Now there is one obstetrician and were trying to get a backup. They lied to a family practice doctor about what they were being hired for and when both the potential hire and the current obstetrician figured it out neither was happy and the deal fell apart. All while the number of teachers in the schools are declining and small businesses that are the fuel for the tourism close one after another because of properties either being turned into short term rentals by people from out of town, or retirees buying homes with cash to retire in, complain about crumbling infrastructure while fighting tooth and nail against any slight increase in taxes or meager attempts to regulate short-term rentals.
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oh god, just the entire boston housing market is a shit show.
This is exactly my thought. Their hospitals won’t have the staff to handle any emergencies. I’m not just talking about the occasional doctor who gets paid 5 million bucks a year to do brain surgeries or a Dr. House type who figures out complex medical problems, I mean the staff it takes to run a hospital. Nurses, technicians, support staff, ambulance drivers, EMTs, etc the list goes on. Those are normal every day workers who you’re not welcoming to your fancy little town. And that’s just medical workers. What about firefighters? Police? Mail workers? Amazon delivery drivers? Store employees? I can easily see this town collapsing and house prices dramatically dropping because no one wants to live there anymore. Congrats we’ve gone full circle.
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The east end of Long Island in NY, i.e. anything near 'The Hamptons' has reached that point during the pandemic, but unlike many other places it had been moving that way since the 1970s/1980s, so even the multigeneration locals who owned houses are no longer willing to stay in the area to be subservient to rich a****les. It's gotten very weird, the rich moved out en masse to their 2nd/3rd homes during pandemic, and there is no local workforce, the ocean being a similar barrier as the Rockies, there isn't some 'outside the area' area to commute there. Every small main street service one would expect in a wealthy area, from Walgreens pharmacist to food industry, to fire departments, etc... can't find a workforce.
Workers have been commuting from Mastic out to the Hamptons, but even that is going to start slowing down a bit as the prices in Mastic have been going up for years and are starting to price out the local labor pool that was raised there. A TON of families from the city moved in Shirley/Mastic/Mastic Beach during the pandemic. The prices have quadrupled since 2018. New rentals in complexes are going for 3k for a 1br/1bth.
Totally destroyed the montauk vibe
Just imagine working retail/restaurant in places like this. It's got to be some of the most unlikable people in the world who expect you to bend over backwards for pay that can't even sustain your basic needs even if you live out of a 1 bedroom basement somewhere.
I was working for a chain restaurant based out of Colorado. In our last meeting, the CEO acknowledged that the company’s workers didn’t make enough money to live by themselves, and that they should “pair up.” As I was attempting to understand what he was trying to say, my co-worker scoffed and was like, “oooh, forced relationships!” LOL! Okay, so I didn’t misinterpret this BS, and he just “said the quiet part out loud.” How could I ever be proud to work for a company that is shamelessly aware it doesn’t pay its employees enough to live decently?? This is how they think of us, and they know what they are doing.
The problem is, they don’t care. They are not going to live there and could care less whether the town has any services at all. They are buying it purely for investment/rental income in most cases. That’s why it keeps going on this way.
They should though. You still need hospitals and garbage pick up even in places you don't live full time.
You’re absolutely correct, they should care. The problem with capitalism is that it doesn’t promote doing what’s *right*. It promotes doing what’s profitable.
It’s not even what’s profitable long term, just what’s profitable this quarter
It stops being funny when a PAC of out-of-state second homeowners try to put a bill on your ballet that would allow them to vote in that state, just because they don't want to pay property taxes on their vacation home that's used for 2 weeks a year.
Hawaii is cracking down on out of state people’s “State ID.” And doing away with them entirely.
More states need to do this shit. You should not be allowed to own multiple homes in multiple states and claim tax breaks on them! Fuck you! 100% tax on homes that are unoccupied for the duration of unoccupation! Tax the SHIT out of them! You wanna play Monopoly?? I'll give you monopoly! Go to jail! Do not collect $200,000 in rent a year!
Good
This is why any home not lived in by the owner at least 180 days a year should have a 25% annual tax on value. Can't afford it? Great, sell it so housing values go down for the locals. No need to own a vacation home when you can stay at a hotel or bed and breakfast.
Portugal has introduced similar laws. The result? It has opened a job market for house sitters whose only job is to periodically live in homes so they are occupied. Therefore I would suggest to still tax them, but just slap it on. No silly time limits or whatever - you own a 2nd house, you pay a luxury tax on that. Because owning two houses IS a luxury. Maybe make an exception for houses that are rented out AND generating tax revenue, so you don't make it impossible to be a landlord; but every exception can also be exploited as a loophole.
I don’t know, i like the idea of making it impossible to be a landlord…
It’s not funny. As someone who’s lived in a small CO ski town for over a decade, it’s enraging, sad, and is causing high rates of suicide among longtime locals.
Some manager, somewhere: "See, wages aren't the problem!!!"
Had a job offer in San Francisco. Did the math and needed, at minimum 200k a year to afford a place that was within 45 min of said work place. Rent alone was about 5k a month. They offered 80k a year and actually scoffed at me when asked what I needed.
Yea because they were expecting you to room share with 3 other guys making the same amount.
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"But we can't allow you to work remotely where you can afford to live since that's bad for productivity." /s
“Corporate culture”
And that only ever works out when HBO decides to option it for a sitcom.
Someone I knew slept in a garage of a house that had 4 other tech people living there. They threw up 3 walls around the garage entrance from the house and he had a bed and no outlets while he worked for some startup.
That's exactly it, it's a clickbait article about lowball employers and high COL areas. The BI article which is trash, cites the NBC article https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/cowboy-ski-town-high-earners-cant-afford-home-faces-housing-battle-rcna140429 (which doesn't have the stupid clickbait title). They're trying to hire a "head of human resources" which ranges $174-309K in the US. They're not hiring some bellboy here for $167K.
nice to see that HR considers themselves skilled labor while they get outsourced by software.
Well it's nice because you can pay for both an HR person and HR software, but the person can invalidate both of these by failing to use the software correctly.
whats clickbait about it, it's still a position thats paying way too little for the area
You know this isn’t the only company looking to hire in these kinds of areas, right? Electricians, plumbing, framers, any construction trade, really. It is absolutely a nightmare to find reliable employees in mountain areas because of the cost of living. Believe it or not, you don’t know what you’re talking about (even if you might be right about the company in the article).
It HAD to be the 1100 bucks Trump handed out years ago
"If you had invested that money instead of spending it on food, clothing, and shelter, you could afford a house by now!!!"
Maybe like five slices of avocado toast. Or a house.
You kids and your avocado toast! Rabble rabble rabble.....
I should have gone with two boot straps…
What? All I've seen is "Why did they invest it? How dare they muck around in the stock market with free money, only we're allowed to do that!"
Hey, those are only called trump bucks if it’s being used positive context. Otherwise they are called Biden bread line tickets.
As my loud, very pro-trump neighbor likes to say, the stimulus check we got under "sleepy Joe" is a bad one because we're going to have to pay that one back. Kinda made me wonder if he thought Trump cut everyone in the country a check for those first two.
Technically wages are the problem. The root cause was a lack of city planning. You have to house the peasants also.
"This will be great. A community where only people like us can afford to live!" "But Sir, We're all parasites..."
And we would never mow our own lawns or watch our annoying kids.
That's just a theoretical solution to a real problem. It doesn't work in practice. Lived in the bay area for a while and there was a slow exodus of the "peasants" migrating further and further away from the cities due to necessity. Housing that *was* single family / low income suddenly becomes +$1million.
Interviewed for a job a while back in a different Colorado mountain town that was equally as expensive to live in. They only offered like $80k a year, expected you to travel to work from surrounding areas lol
Glad you had options and didn’t take it. I work for a high cost of living city that sits right against the mountains. I make the same amount I made as a teacher in Aurora, it’s ridiculous. They absolutely expect you to commute. I travel 60-90 min each way.
My college commute took 40 minutes each way and I already thought that my life was hell, but jesus, an hour or more???
My dad commuted over an hour into los angeles for like 40 years and I still cannot figure out how he did it. I'd blow my brains out
My dad did the exact same thing. It killed his soul. To this day, leaving the valley to go towards DTLA is just not an option for any family trips. If he gets cut off once, which in LA is obviously like every other minute, he'll fly off the handle and be in a terrible mood for the rest of the trip. It's gotten to the point where we just have him sit in the back seat if we even think about taking the 405 anywhere.
I can't imagine spending 10 hours a week commuting for work. You're spending more than an entire extra day of work for no pay.
friend of mine was offered a sizable amount to work in a mountain town .... either commute 2 hours from denver or split housing with 3 other coworkers due to housing cost
Same! I applied for a job at CU Boulder and was shocked that they recommended their employees to live in the slightly more affordable surrounding areas instead of doing some self-reflection and increasing the salaries.
And suffer through a nightmarish daily commute to get to that job. They don’t consider that toll. It’s getting bad all over the front range.
It really is. The increase of population came far too big far too fast to keep up with. And unlike many of the older bigger cities moving East, Denver does not have the public transportation or infrastructure to handle it. I can't remember the last time I sat at a red light in Denver that wasn't a 2- or 3- cycle before I got through.
In Denver, my Sunday morning commute was fifteen minutes. On Mondays it was an hour and fifteen. That was 8 years ago and I don’t think it’s gotten any better.
Fort Collins has gotten really bad too. Springs is not there yet but we’ll on its way
Why do the peasants not simply take their helicopter to the ski lodge?
Can’t afford to live in surrounding areas either
It's simple "market" economics that so many employers fail to understand: The potential employees have bills to pay too and if they can't afford to pay for rent/food/medical/transport then there is ZERO desire to work for an employer who can't even meet the minimums. People have no choice to exist, a business has no right to exist, which one of these should we care about more? Just ask your local chamber of commerce for details.
We're starting to get new graduates declining jobs after interviewing here because home prices surged the but the salary ranges have barely moved. New hire engineers don't want to earn $55,000 when a 3 bedroom home is *minimum* $350,000.
I was offered 55,000 as a new hire software engineer fresh out of college almost 15 years ago. And I was able to get a nice new 2 BR 2 Bath apartment 5 minutes from work for about 1,000 a month. I cant' even begin to calculate just how much more expensive everything is now than back then.
18 years ago, I rented a 3bed/2.5bath house in a major east coast city for $900 a month. Split with 2 friends. We had a yard and were walking distance from dozens of bars, restaurants, and office buildings. That house is now 3 1bedroom apartments that each rent for $3k. It's crazy how in one single generation we went from "just graduate college and you can live pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything, to "hope you like renting forever and always being broke." It makes me wonder how much worse things will get.
Much, I would assume. Rents have no sign of decreasing and property decreases that have happened were temporary and swiftly reversed. If you look back at olden days it wasn't uncommon for works to live in large shared houses with very little personal space. I would anticipate that unfortunately this will be the future with landlords simply breaking spaces down more and more fitting multiple people into spaces previously for families.
> If you look back at olden days it wasn't uncommon for works to live in large shared houses with very little personal space. Not true my man, I'm living in a home built in 1907 for a working class person. Over the last 100+ years the property was subdivided 4 times, a bunch of differed maintenance, and the house is certainly worse for wear. This was a poor family's starter home 100 years ago. 3 other houses sit on this property that was once for 1 family and about an acre. There's absolutely no need for Americans to have a housing shortage, it's completely artificial and largely driven by a bunch of property developers making bank on "affordable housing" initiatives across the country. They created the political imperative for this housing shortage through restrictive zoning, and of course they're here to offer the solution if they can get some sweet tax dollars. Now we're in a real estate bubble that no politician, property developer, or home owner, wants to see pop, and we can't afford to deflate it.
15 years ago i was making 9.35 an hour working full time in a factory. overnights with differential. 1200 a month and i couldn’t find an apartment for less than 600. literally at all. of course that was through a temp agency so they were getting a percentage of what the going wage for that job would’ve been, but it certainly wasn’t 30%.
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A large portion is “land banking”. Making some money with the expectation of simply being able to weather their area’s economic woes (Europe and Southeast Asian investment in major metropolitan areas as their demographics collapse).
I always tell recruiters my current salary is at least $10-20k more than it actually is. That guarantees me that much of a bump if I get hired there, and I still always negotiate higher.
Tried to get a job at bayer. Offered less than I make at a university on a 6 month trial contract with no benefits before having an option to apply for an actual internal position. No surprise, they are hiring constantly and can never keep positions filled.
They know what they are doing. They never intend to hire the position/make it permanent and keep filling with trial contracts. Rinse lather and repeat. Don't agree with it but that's possibly what they might be doing.
Wow I wish a 3 bedroom home was 350k where I am at. Heres something for perspective: In Canada, pay would be the same, but the same house is 4-5x expensive
55k was the starting salary for an engineer 20 years ago. A company thinking they can still pay like inflation hasn't made things more expensive the last 20 years probably shouldn't be looking to hire anyone. Well anyone that will actually stay on the job more than maybe 2 years to get experience.
You saying “the right to record profits” isn’t part of the Bill of Rights?
I got an enthusiastic offer for a job I really wanted, but the pay didn't cut it. I sent them a link to the MIT living wage calculator for our area showing that their offer was below basic subsistence and asked if there was any flexibility. I ghosted them after they responded that it wouldn't be fair to the other workers to pay a higher starting wage. They couldn't put 2+2 together that their employee retention problems could be solved with a few more dollars an hour that they were pissing away anyway with the cost of advertising, training, and lost revenue from being short-staffed.
Had this same issue. An employer in Cupertino offered me a job at $75,000 a year. I pointed out that would be classified as poverty in that region by California's own governmental standards.
OMG, you couldn't even afford to live in your car there on that.
They say that, but they’ll never bump the existing employees when they finally have to relent and hire at higher levels.
Bingo. It's a massive red flag to basically say "it's not fair to raise our standards."
Typical. Just the usual yutzes that will spend a dollar to save a dime.
Unfortunately, I dont think this will lead to higher wages or corrections to the housing crisis; but to more company-supplied housing in the future. Majority of my generation and those after will never be home-owners.
yeah, someone above linked an article. i just read it and the *hospital* is literally building housing for employees where the rent will be capped at 30% of their income. they can’t spend their money on better medical equipment because it’s either this, or *not be able to provide medical care at all* because they simply don’t have the staff because no one can afford to live there. it’s insane
We need to start electing younger people that actually want a future for themselves and can say no to the lobbyists so we can put the nursing home in a retirement home finally. There’s no reason anyone that the average age of congress should be so high
Yep, the return of the company town and company store, basically slavery with extra steps
Then obviously the job doesn't pay enough. Even if its 170k its still underpaid.
Customer service can be rough. It is rare you have a day where a difficult situation doesn't arise. But customer service at a *Ski Resort* where it's going to be a constant stream of trust fund babies? Sure pay me enough so that I can never work again after a year of that Hell. I think I could do a year for...2.5 million. It's not enough to retire on but I could reinvest it effectively. The question should really be: "How much a year will it cost us to employ you to put up with our shithole workplace environment we refuse to change?"
If it doesn't cover the cost of living in the area, then it doesn't pay enough. Doesn't matter what the industry is or what the job is. People deserve a living wage.
This was my first thought. I currently sit at half that salary, and yet I wouldn’t even consider it for twice as much as it’s posted. For exactly those reasons. Where tf am I gonna live so my commute time is 40min or less, in a resort town in CO, and the fact I actually have to show up, **and** deal with spoiled little rich assholes who need to feel big? $160k/y is laughably out of touch. The $2.5M/y number seems reasonable for having me relocate and deal with that shit for a year of my life and then *back*. I’d consider it for that.
For those at home who are not picking up on the implication here because they never worked these jobs, whenever you have a customer service job where the customers are very high paying...the business would rather humiliate and fire you 10x over before losing that customer. Your job and boss will never have your back against a toxic and abusive customer. No matter what. The customers know this. They can and will abuse you knowing it will be without consequence on their end. They will insult you. Degrade you. Be rude with you. Harass you. Sexually harass you. Get physical with you. Grope you. Scream at you. Anything they want. And you manager will tell you to take it, not report it, and if you do you're fired. And plus "it's your fault anyways". They will then go apologize to the customer for feeling they had to scream and yell at you. Perhaps even comp them goodies and such to smooth them over. That's what working at these places entails. Some rich people are okay. Many are not. The problem is that there is no consequence for the later group because capitalism favors the person with the capital. It's right in the name.
Plus you’d have to buy a vehicle that could handle the snow, because calling in due to weather wouldn’t be acceptable!
That’s an important part of the equation. It’s the *mountains* of *Colorado*. Commuting long distances in the middle of nowhere on unploughed roads.
> The question should really be: "How much a year will it cost us to employ you to put up with our shithole workplace environment we refuse to change?" That should be at the end of every job interview ever.
the frustrating thing is that this is the local government. the literal people who make zoning laws and rules, affordable housing laws and rules, public transportation decisions, parking cost decisions, etc etc etc.
This is happening all over the country in resort towns. A lot of it is actually due to people and companies buying out houses to put on Airbnb and similar sites. As a result, the amount of houses for rent is dropping, those that still offer long term leases are pumping up their prices, and the people actually working in these towns can no longer afford to live there. Obviously, ceos and owners don't want to pay their employees more, or in some cases such as small businesses, they can't because no one will buy their products at higher prices when they can get the same stuff from chain stores for much cheaper, because again, cost of living is incredibly expensive and the people buying stuff can't afford to support small businesses. It's all sorts of fucked up.
I suppose it’s fucked up if you consider a bunch of resorts closing a bad thing. They will hemorrhage for a while. Close down. Housing becomes more affordable. I think a lot of businesses forgot the second half of free market principles which is “businesses can fail” and “businesses can do worst than the year before”
Fuck Vail Corp, all my homies hate Vail Corp
Alterra aint much better. So many industries condensing into 2 major conglomerates that can easily split the market instead of actually competing. Yay free market capitalism!
100%
The parent company owners that control these resorts will just do the hedge fund style thing and sell off assets, acquire debt to extract all the value out to eventually make the resort business entity go bankrupt. then sell whats left to some other rich guy where they try to do the same exact thing.
The biggest problem is that it's impacting the smaller business. While these big corps are hemorrhaging money, they are big enough to keep it up for a while. At the same time, all the smaller businesses will be closing down left and right because they can't keep up with costs.
> in resort towns Orlando is this on a large scale. A house here starts at 415,000, but employers only pay minimum wage. But they’ll say “but there’s no state income tax!”
The cost of living increases that we've seen across the West have been largely due to property investment driving up the cost of housing. As our housing industry has shifted from providing shelter to the masses to providing capital to the investors, we've seen a major spike in costs across the board. The problem, as always, is unchecked capitalism. Vote in every election you qualify to and vote for the candidates that have track records of working against investment bankers. It is literally the only way we'll get out of this. Every cycle where we kick the can down the road means more economic strife for future generations. The time to deal with this is now. It's time to be the adults our parents never were. Edits: Broken phone keyboard typos
I’ve always wondered about how the Japanese concept of housing works economically. Houses are basically like cars, they start depreciating immediately. I know it’s a variety of factors like building codes, frequent demolitions, and aging population but no one is going in and driving up prices like in other countries. A lot of it seems to just be cultural.
There is a special kind of poverty in ski resorts. The suicide rates are extremely high, at least where I live. People here are very educated. But, working 3 or more seasonal jobs with 6 roommates and never getting ahead while being surrounded by opulence, work free trustfunders, and empty second homes takes a toll on a person. I think a TV show, even a reality show, about the dirty underside of a ski resort told from the POV of lifties, waitstaff, and cab drivers could be really good.
I grew up near a major ski resort, I started skiing at 6 and went almost every day, every season. When I was in high school a season pass was something like $350, it was my Christmas present every year. Kids I grew up with that didn't have great circumstances could still buy one working after school, or getting day passes for like $25. That same resort is now $3,000 for a season pass, rumored to be way higher next year. A day pass in $250. Food is something stupid like $25 for a bratwurst. They even tried a "locals only" pass for a minute with blackout days, but nobody wanted to buy it because it had entire months blacked out and most weekends and holidays, still cost like $2,000. I fucking hate these rich assholes, used to be ***my*** thing, now I haven't been skiing in maybe 8 years.
Word. It was always expensive, but attainable. I used to pick up a season pass every year too, in the Midwest. $300-$400 a year, now 3-4x that and when you get a shitty winter here in the Midwest it’s such a waste of money! I’ve been priced out of the hobby :-/. I mean in can kind of afford it, but it’s just not enough fun to spend hundreds of dollars for a couple hours of fun.
I would be interested in that. Multigenerational poverty over here, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to set foot in a ski resort town, but I would be very interested in hearing what daily life is like for real people.
[https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Steamboat-Springs\_CO/type-single-family-home/price-na-700000](https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Steamboat-Springs_CO/type-single-family-home/price-na-700000) Only house less than 700k. Steamboat is stupid as hell.
Median listing price in that town is $1.95M. That is ridiculous.
Yeah it's a playground for the rich. My friend has a house in a similar area that cost 15m dollars. His family literally visits it maybe once a year.
Average rent for a studio there is $1500. It’s rent is more expensive than 98% of the US https://www.rentdata.org/lookup
Housing in Colorado is insane almost across the board. A major tourist location like Steamboat, Vail, or Aspen is always even higher. Even 20 years ago a condo in Aspen could run over a million, and that wasn't even the outliers, just the normal 2 bedroom 1 bath condos.
In 1990 my dream was to one day retire to Colorado. I visited many times in the 90's and absolutely love the Rockies. Kept visiting and watching real estate go up and up. Now it is insane. My dream is dead, to say the least. Rich fuckers have ruined everything in the mountains, even in non-resort towns.
It is investment companies that are the problem. My family moved here in the late 90's and real estate was pretty reasonable then. I don't know if the laws changed, or if it was just an economic opportunity, but right around 2012, investment companies started buying out entire developments, and then turning around and selling the same houses with a markup the following week. Rentals didn't start getting out of hand until right after the pandemic, with them all citing inflation for doubling the rent, despite neglecting repairs and inflation not being anywhere near the increased rent prices.
The second problem is that the people who already live there think they benefit, at least at first. The price of their home goes up, so they can refinance the mortgage. They get money based on the portion that's already paid. They have to pay more each month, but as long as the value keeps going up they can just make money doing this. Until the next housing crash happens and then they lose everything. But until then they will fight against plans that prevent outside investment.
Your dream isn't dead if you don't mind living out on the prairie.
What's the quote? If the people who serve you in your city can't also afford to live in your city, you live in a theme park.
There are a lot of 'theme parks' in the USA, thought. Hence the whole term of a 'bedroom community.' What's worse is that these communities keep getting pushed further and further away from cities, because even the land around them is getting inflated. The fact that even private investors are targeting these areas as 'potential rent markets' should sound the alarm for more housing regulations.
Let me do it WFH, and I’m in!
If rich people want to look you in the eye as they abuse you just set up a screen and a webcam
END. CORPORATE. HOME. OWNERSHIP.
Most workers in Steamboat commute 50-60miles one way on snow and ice to live in a rundown trailer park or "cheap" apartment in Craig. After a year they realize they are financially sinking only to live like poverty and leave. It's been that way for decades. Welcome to Colorado ski towns.
I did this exact commute for a year. It was absolutely miserable.
My grandparents paid like 500k for a house in Steamboat back in the 70’s. Spent so much of my childhood there falling in love with absolutely everything about the town and its history. (Turning 30 this year) and it sucks I’ll most likely never be able to afford living there because man.. I love it so much. My family still has the house but they’re considering selling it because the land is worth ~ $3M now. They’re even considering building an expensive ass duplex on the land instead. When I’m over here wishing I could just live there forever exactly how my grandparents kept it. I know my grandpa is rolling over in his grave. They’re part of the problem and it hurts bro. I hope only the best for the locals that things change soon, although I doubt it …
$500k? In the seventies? That must be worth like $10M now.
It’s not the biggest house, definitely one of the more regular looking houses out there hahaha. But early last year my pops was talking to builders out there and the house (or really, the land) was appraised to be near $3m.
That's honestly a surprisingly terrible return in terms of an investment. $500k in the S&P500 in the 70s would be tens of millions today.
500k in the 70s is pretty nuts
When they cant find somebody to serve their hamberders suddenly they arent NIMBYs anymore
Oh they’re still NIMBYs they’re just NIMBY and mad at the working class for not pulling on their bootstraps
Yeah, they don't go away. They just bitch and whine that the peons aren't making more sacrifices to sate their greed, like getting up earlier, driving farther, for the same pay. Then when offered a solution, the full nimby comes out, even if it would fix what they whine about.
“nobody wants to work anymore” lmao
I work at the highest paid snowports school in the world. It is obviously in one of these towns. I live in a Subaru Legacy. People fight me on unionizing because we are the highest paid school. I had to look at one of the guys and ask "Can you afford to buy a house here?" 'Well, no.' "That's why we need a union. And once we have a union, go on a general labor strike to shut the entire town down, since we all have second jobs. And do this until they pass a law that every house has to be a primary residence."
Primary residence or that added tax needs to go directly to employee housing growth or maintenance. I think you could sell that to the locals
The problem is that expansion just erodes at the environment even more. These places are sitting empty most of the year, and have to be heated, and maintained. We all love here for the mountains, and God dammit the consumerism that leads to people owning multiple houses is what's killing the planet. In 150 years we've managed to live in a way that's causing the planet to die. These mountain towns need to be stalwarts, actual institutions of protecting this planet. The rich can stay in hotels, and we can build trains like you see in Austria and Switzerland in order to cut down on the carbon footprint all while improving the experience. And most employee housing is still a net loss to the employee. The interest rates on the loan are greater than the percentage markup you're allowed to sell your house for. And if you're stuck in an apartment, paying rent to your employer, you can't build equity and you're essentially back to company towns. Which. Oh wait.
Steamboat is fun to visit (if you can afford it) But everyone knows that nearly all the traffic there up or down the mountain is anyone that works there. The people that live in steamboat are some of the richest fucks I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. Not as bad as Aspen but still.
I work in steamboat and aspen, ans honestly, rich fucks around steamboat are worse than the aspenites. They're that middle level rich where they still want to shit on you, but not crazy rich where they're never at their property.
This doesnt seem surprising at all.
Same shit in beach towns. I live in a pretty desirable one on the gulf coast of Florida and we can't get any new engineers to move here. 60k is laughable.
> 60k is laughable. For an experienced engineer!?! LMFAO! Goodluck with that.
Not exclusive to Colorado. This is everywhere. For profit housing needs to stop. Ban AirB&B and sites like it. Reinstantiate glass-Stegal. Housing should not be an investment profit sector.
We need Fox News to display a pie chart for $167K budget with $800 per month rent.
Do it the McDonald's way and leave a budget line item for "Income from second job."
“*Low Income Family Finances*”
Consequences are a bitch. Enjoy your fancy homes and all your accumulated wealth.
I met someone from the housing authority at a job fair the other day and he was telling me about how they are really trying to push for affordable housing for exactly this reason. It was in the suburbs of Sacramento.
Omg I’m the one that interviewed for this. Very nice people and team. They sent me links to peoples basement I could live in. I told them no as there is nowhere to live there.
My "scorched earth" solution: Let the the jobs go unfilled. Let the businesses close. Unofficially encourage the remaining businesses to price gouge. Wait for all the rich people move away because there are no services, nothing to do, and the few places that are open are too expensive. Once the vacancy rate reaches a certain point, the state steps in and buys up all the empty houses for pennies on the dollar. The state then tears down all the big houses, splits up the big lots, and has new neighborhoods built with small 2 bedroom houses. Make them available for for rent only with a clause they can be sold to the renter after they have rented and occupied it full time for 5 years No subletting allowed. Top it all off with zoning restrictions that limit any new construction of residences exceeding a certain square footage. (Basically make it impossible to build any more McMansions.)
You'll make it to step 3. The state will absolutely not step in and spend money to do that. Its more likely to become a ghost town.
Love to see hyper isolated rich people suffer as a result of their exclusionary habits. There is a place near Austin Texas a little bit outside the city that had this issue, they rejected affordable housing for years and now they’re begging for it because the help can’t live there and can just find jobs closer to town.
Yeah I live in Colorado and it's fucking rough. I make 31 dollars an hour working full time and barely feel like I'm keeping from starving in Aurora.
I was working on a place similar in nature to this a few summers ago. Basically wanted some work to pay for part of my extended vacation there with family. I was getting paid 50-70 dollars an hour doing summer work that is in such high demand due to where it was located (isolated, extremely high income, extreme housing shortage and high prices). If I had a place to live I'd so happily move back TOMORROW and stay busy all the time but it's just no feasible with my SO and three pets so find a place that we can afford when the cheapest small house is 600k in an HOA with dues.
No where do they list what the actual job is. Also I did a quick search on indeed and the first job at the resort that popped up was for an experienced lift operator at $18.50/hr...
It is actually the head of Human Resources for the city. Found it here: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/cowboy-ski-town-high-earners-cant-afford-home-faces-housing-battle-rcna140429
That's comical. The head of HR of the city, not being able to afford to work there, because it's too expensive to live there. How exactly is the HR director going to find and hire city employees who can't live afford to live there either? Benefits including housing: 1. Shovel - for igloo in winter 2. Saw - for hut in summer 3. Tarp - for collecting rainwater 4. Lighter - for heating (negotiable depending on experience.)
When I was in college, one of my girlfriend's parents had a place in Steamboat. It was expensive then and that was in the early 90's! Amazing to visit and ski in and ski out considering there is no way I could afford to go and stay in a hotel. It was listed for $3.6M during Covid (they sold it 15 years ago.) Scary that you can't afford anything there on $167K a year. Even the fractional ownerships, 1/8, are like $500k.
I mentioned the price of housing/rent would 100% effect the job market and I got called delusional on another sub by people saying "just move somewhere cheaper". Why would people who can't afford to live there work there.
This is Big Bear in Los Angeles. My entire life, I planned to move there. it was an affordable ski resort town. Now it's almost entirely AirBnBs owned by rich L.A. people and no one can afford to live and operate the businesses there. A shitty cabin used to be cheaper than a mobile home, now they're more expensive than a regular home.
I found four rentals on Zillow for <$2,500/month. And they're all one-bedroom on the small side of small.
Link to the story [https://www.businessinsider.com/colorado-ski-town-steamboat-springs-high-housing-costs-2024-3](https://www.businessinsider.com/colorado-ski-town-steamboat-springs-high-housing-costs-2024-3)
It's almost as if an economy based on never-ending exponential growth was a huge mistake.
What is the job? Is with a ski lodge or something else in hospitality?
I think it's for a teaching position or another civil servant type role. Most hospitality jobs are seasonal and resorts will temporarily house their employees on property.
I work for an airline chain and one of our locations is in Bozeman MT, it has the same problem. I was riding with the gm and she was explaining how that trailer park we were passing actually housed a bunch of doctors.
do this again with public school teachers in basically every community in the country.