A 'cowboy ski town' where high earners can't afford a home faces housing battle

Is more people living in that area beneficial to society?

This case is exceptional, though, as it's not a big city in demand for its big-city-ness (where NIMBYs living there are going against the spirit of what makes the place successful); but rather, this is an out-of-the-way place, in demand for its out-of-the-way-ness, where NIMBY interests are aligned with what makes the place successful.

The people and developers interested in building there, are only interested because of the rate-limiting being applied to new construction there — which guarantees them (and everyone else who moved there previously) the cachet of exclusivity, and the inherent privacy of big-secluded-SFH-lot zoning.

But if those same people and developers were allowed to come in and build whatever they liked, as fast as they liked, they'd just flood the market with new construction — which would make a quick buck for them, but would destroy the only thing that makes anyone want to live there. People certainly don't live in a place like this for the vibrant community, nor for the amenities, nor — as should be evident from the article — for the jobs. They live there as a Veblen good. Making a Veblen good cheap defeats the purpose.

These sorts of rich privacy-oriented NIMBY communities — Beverly Hills is a well-known example of one — are certainly a bit ridiculous when they're taking up space in the middle of a big city, space that could otherwise have been put to use to densify that city and serve far more people who want to live in the greater area.

But in this case, there's no big city. Just a small town, in the middle of nowhere, full of NIMBYs. I'm not sure densification is the right solution. Maybe just let them have it, and choose somewhere else to live?

I see that. For mountain towns, there can be a practical constraint on the number of houses you can build, given the geography. The town would have to sprawl a long way, and people on the edge of town would be far away from all the services, and literally become marginalized. This is the complaint mentioned in the article about the proposed plan of building thousands of new houses. I don't know about Steamboat Springs, but this is a problem in other places I've been, where you've got a small, desirable town in a narrow valley between huge mountains: where will you build those new houses, 10 miles outside of town?

One of the components of the solution is a property tax regime that strongly favors occupancy. Not a homeowner’s exemption.

If a house is going to be built, it should be used. Don’t let them sit empty.

I see a lot of talk of this 'increase supply' in Australia where house prices are out of control. Personally I think insatiable demand is a bigger problem and no increase in supply will fix it. Over last couple of decades we have had financial deregulation and cheap money - 30 year mortgages are a norm (used to be 20 years), tax system favoring property investment (losses claimed as tax return), global economy where anyone in the world can bid for local housing (e.g. rules change so foreign students can buy property), huge liquidity in pension funds (superannuation) allowed to do leverage/borrow so investment property can be purchased - again policy change in last decade or so. This is without even talking about stock reduction due to temporary rentals. I see big part of the problem interest groups driving policy change, rather then people wanting to live in desirable places. (edited - typo)

> State governments need to pass laws forcing cities to allow housing, or this will continue to just get worse and worse.

Why would the state do that?

States are run by politicians voted in by the people, who want their house prices to go up.

It's working as intended.

In this case, and frankly most cases, it's perfectly correct for the existing locals to not give a fig about anyone new trying to get in.

If they are as dense as they want to be already, then anyone else has no right to demand they get denser. The newcomers have no right to anything.

It's a problem that outsider newcomers are outbidding locals, and I don't know what the answer is to that problem, but I know the answer is not "Allow the newcomer outsiders to turn the place into some other kind of place for the benefit of someone else and to the detriment of themselves."

Absolutely one thing is for sure, that state governments should not pass any sort of laws that force the creation of more housing than the locals want, only that there is no racial/ethnic/sexual discrimination and maybe some minimum required spread to allow at least some places for all classes. IE the rich or white or whatever can't completely take ownership of all the shared public space and all possible properties, but the overall density doesn't have to increase if the current residents don't choose to.

Everyone only has a right to equal access. No one has a right to "you need to allow a developer to build denser housing in your neighborhood because I want to move in". It's as ridiculous as saying you need to let me rent a room in your house.

> State governments need to pass laws forcing cities to allow housing, or this will continue to just get worse and worse.

Honestly, for places like this, they just need to pass laws forbidding anyone except bona fide residents of the community from purchasing a home in this area.

Already lived there full time for 5 years? Have a job offer at a recognized business in the area? Legitimate family connection? Etc? You're good.

Out-of-town millionaire? Have multiple homes across the country/world? Are an LLC? Get lost.

Sure it would prevent existing residents from cashing in on a boom, but who cares about that? I don't.

You can still winter there for a short stretch

I don't see where in the article they say there aren't schools, hospitals, etc. in town. I think the idea is that people who have jobs there but can't afford to buy homes would have to commute in from neighboring communities—sometimes a long way.

Services like sanitation still exist, they're staffed by people who live out of town. Like much of San Francisco's services.

Houses are expensive because the desire to live near a good skiing mountain is high. That, and the potential to rent it out.

Its a ski town. Vacation homes is what is driving up the prices and they don't care about if they can get a hair cut or not or if the local school can hire teachers. Ski resort is either bussing in their employees or has employee housing.

Speaking from personal experience (having visited Steamboat dozens of times) it has a service economy, a school system, including a college (Colorado Mountain College Steamboat Springs), a hospital, firefighters and sanitation workers. It has grocery stores, pharmacies, parks, maintained sporting areas and every sort of amenity.

Don't get me wrong, housing is a serious issue for workers. Many of the large hotels and employers there have housing programs for employees.

https://www.steamboat.com/employment/housing

And despite being a "ski town" (and it certainly is), there is a lot to do there in the summer. The ski trails are used for mountain biking, with gondola rides available. There is also fishing, hiking, rafting, hot-air balloon rides and a variety of other things to do outside of the winter season. There aren't as many flights out to Yampa during the summer season, but a couple of airlines run all year round.

Highly recommend visiting in any season.

In the middle of nowhere, it's mostly sociopolitical where dumb money vies to belong to some trend or near celebrities. If you're not already absurdly rich, then trying to play that game is a fool's errand.

If you have a multi-million dollar extra home you use only for seasonal vacations, these really don't bother you much. And that is the problem.

> get groceries, get a haircut, see a movie, get prescriptions filled, eat out or go out for drinks, visit (maintained) parks, use (maintained) sporting areas like baseball diamonds or tennis courts... etc.

Have a staffer drive in with all the fresh goods you want, just before you fly in. They'll also deliver some of your favorite clothes so you can travel light. You got a haircut last week before you flew in. You have a private movie theater in your fancy house. And so on.

Nothing to be done

Interest rates aren't the issue. Many of these are all cash buyers as per the article. The issue is supply and demand. Building lots more housing in ski towns is what will bring prices down.

I’m also in a mountain ski town (same one as you after some profile snooping).

Housing prices aren’t going to come down for a while, it’s gone from a happy little remote town to a nice-place-to-be.

Anecdotally, I've heard from friends that sort of thing happens with some regularity. A (especially second home) ski condo is one of the most optional large assets you can imagine and even more so if it's really inflated in price. (A lot of people probably also grow out of this sort of thing over time.)

As an aside, a second home is something that's never appealed to me. Neither the effort, the expense, nor the ties to a specific location seem like great tradeoffs for most people.

All high income earners beyond a certain amount (on a graduated scale) should be required to found a new city and pay much higher taxes. Also needed: UBI because around a hundred million Americans are being shut out and left behind.

Bozeman?

Although it has it's downsides, Salt Lake City?

There are a bunch of smaller ski towns but I'm not sure most of them would really appeal to me long-term.

Few of them. As you get older, if you want good medical care, you likely want to see the same doctor at a well equipped facility. Ski towns can rarely provide those (mostly rotating staff, just essentials, potentially costly air transport if you need to get something non-trivial)

We have the same problem here in Canada. There should be a higher-level authority deciding how much municipalities should zone since housing is now a national problem.

Everyone has a bit of NIMBY in them. I don't think it's a useful or constructive pejorative at this point.

No doubt we need more housing, but not every growth plan is a good one and perhaps we'd get closer if we stopped the name calling.

This. It didn't start with the pandemic or WFH - in the two decades I spent in Colorado, I heard similar stories from just about everyone I met who lived (or more often, used to live) in the various ski towns.

I loved living in Colorado, but during the pandemic took the opportunity to sell and move out - it was clear to me that things weren't going to get better any time soon. And for folks talking about a "crash" or "correction" - that happened to some extent after 2008; it mostly just resulted in big investors snapping up a lot of property at a discount and holding onto it until they could sell at a profit - didn't really help at all for the most housing-constrained areas.