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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

Simple question: Why can't the restaurants and such raise prices? And thus pay??

The non-locals drove up the price of housing and were still ready, willing, and able to pay. Why should that cycle stop there?

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My partner has lived in Crested Butte for 18 years and I just came back from a weekend there. Restaurant prices are already high and each one has "help wanted" signs out front because nobody can work for minimum wage and not even afford to live there. Raising prices of a $20 cocktail to $25 does not allow the restaurant to pay hourly, local workers enough money to afford a house that's over $800k or rent that's over $2k/mo. The numbers just plain don't add up.

Resort towns should be considered more like cruise ships. I wouldn't expect a deckhand to afford a condo on a oceanliner, but if their labor is needed it seems its not an issue for the employer to provide housing. Plenty of industries provide housing for their workers. If housing is such an issue for labor to cover itself, capital should just pay for what its labor requires to exist. Somehow along the line we went from developing commercial properties with a second or third floor apartment along our mainstreets into properties devoid of any housing but perhaps plenty of space devoted to someone parking for twenty minutes. It's time we go back and enforce this stipulation on housing. Let's see the inevitable new starbucks in town manifest as a mixed use building instead of yet another drive through that bogs down another intersection.

This is where it's headed. The complete Disney-ification of ski towns. 2 or 3 mega resort companies will control the entire economy surrounding the resort: hotels, restaurants, spas, theaters, etc. Some of the amenities will operate at a loss, but their presence will push up the value of the higher margin amenities.

Frankly, this is true for any "tourist attraction." The attraction has limited geography. The population is increasing. Housing supply is relatively fixed, demand isn't.

Either these attrictions build vertical, or suddenly more tourist attraction locations come online, or mortgage rates increase significantally for any home after the first one.

None of those things are going to happen.

It's where it used to be from the start ironically for most of these resort towns.

Many of the ski resort companies do offer housing, which is great. There are two primary issues with that at the moment: not enough housing and, the bigger one, when your housing is directly tied to your job what happens if you are fired? Colorado, for example, is an "at will" state--that means someone can be let go for any or no reason with no notice. If the company is providing housing, then the person is forced to up and move...but where do they move to?

But why don't the numbers add up is my question. There is a want, a need in the market and that - as it does for housing - drives price.

In fact, I bet if "amenities" went up in price the cost of housing (read: demand) would fall.

That's how it works, unless someone or something has their thumb on the scale.

Raising prices, and thus pay, would work if the people who drove up housing costs occupied those houses. But the houses are vacant. So they'll eventually drive out the locals, which will cause local businesses to close because they can't get workers, which will then decrease the value of the vacant houses. The investors will then sell, and the cycle will restart.

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