Stability not included: housing in outdoorsy places enters its ‘dire’ phase
We lived for a year in a 250 square-foot tool shed that had been refitted with a tiny bathroom and a kitchenette, both less than two steps from the bedroom. The shed was in the alley behind a bed & breakfast with its back wall bordering a dirt access road between houses and dumpsters and telephone poles, which made it wicked convenient for an old high school buddy to move in with us as he mainly slept in his van.
It was a great find though, as prior to that my girlfriend and I rented a “shared room” for a couple months on Simpson Ave. We slept and kept our stuff in an unlocked bedroom while sharing the rest of the house – the kitchen and bathroom and living area – with somewhere between six and 12 other people who seemed to either live there, be planning to live there or had previously lived there.
We also lived in other strange and tiny houses, basement apartments, and even an uninsulated log cabin where the dog bowl often froze on sub-zero January mornings. Leases seemed to always be ending, or roommates coming back, or landlords changing their minds about being in the rental business.
Even in a gateway town for wild and natural places, and even during a supposedly carefree time of life, the effort of continually chasing housing wears you down. Some respond to by hunkering down with a second or third job, and some just push farther away – extending their commute down the canyon or over the mountains — just to find a little more stability, a little more room and maybe even a little affordability. In outdoorsy places, the combo of lots of people wanting to live there and not many places to actually live, has always been part of the game. Unfortunately, for those who want to stay and build a life in these places, it can feel like a game of musical chairs being played to a sad song, and the one left still standing quietly packs up their car and hits the road.
And that was 30 years ago.
Last week, in a twist that was either super ironic or incredibly appropriate, I was one of several who made an “official” statement in support of affordable housing (and conservation) to a Vermont senate committee. You can check it out here.
I wasn’t there as a former ski bum who spent a good chunk of his twenty-something years trying to crack the code of outdoorsy town housing. Instead, I was there as a business owner, a homeowner, and a board member of the Vermont Outdoor Business Alliance, a coalition of companies and individuals whose livelihoods are also connected in many ways to outdoorsy places and the workers who live there. Even though it was Zoom, I put on a clean shirt and even thought about a tie.
In my time in the outdoor recreation sector, being able to find housing (and a quiet place in the mountains) is basic economic infrastructure, and as such should be supported through regular care and feeding. (sidebar soapbox on conservation: For outdoor recreation businesses, conservation and affordable housing are as natural a pairing as merino socks and hiking boots. There is no “outdoor industry” without “outdoor,” after all).
Over the last couple months, the topic of affordable housing for workers in outdoorsy towns has been bubbling up all over the place. Late in the fall, an economist in Jackson Hole wrote this timely piece about the impact of new remote-working residents on housing. A little later, this piece in an Aspen newspaper tried to ring the warning bell that they were on the verge of losing an entire working class. And just a few days after this piece was published in Utah about housing and ski towns, a Vermont reporter nailed it on the head with a fantastic piece on how restaurants are losing workers because of their inability to find housing.
It’s like somebody is trying to tell us something.
The problem itself is broad and complicated, and has a lot of angles and entry points. From the inside, it’s feels like it’s the end of days for outdoorsy towns. But from the outside, I can certainly understand how some may see it as a dilemma of the upper class (see report: “increased rent burden falls most heavily on high-income, educated and white renters because they prefer housing and location amenities that are most desirable to tourists.”). Yet whatever angle you come in from, the situation has clearly been accelerated since the arrival of the ‘Rona.
In an email the other day, while honestly trying to be as brief as possible, the explanation of that “situation” came across like this …
The onset of the pandemic led to “shelter in place,” which sucked for most but was way easier for those lucky enough to be near or in outdoor recreation-centric communities.
There was a surge in awareness of the mental and physical benefits of outdoor access … as well as a totally understandable urge to get away from high-density urban populations.
Offices closed and workers were able to go remote and “work from anywhere."
This new prioritization of access to outdoor resources and freedom to “work from anywhere” were contributors to the “great migration”.
People moved to rural, outdoor communities, either renting or buying.
Those who didn’t move still came anyway, fueling additional growth in conversion of the housing market to short term rentals (air bnb).
This influx of new residents and constant visitation has put significant stress on local businesses of all sizes.
Those business lost a lot of employees initially to the extended unemployment benefits of the early pandemic, and many of those employees never returned.
These outdoor communities are generally very small in population, and have largely been unable to replace this missing workforce.
Everyone is hiring, help wanted signs are everywhere.
Wage gap: New residents are not interested in these jobs, as they are remote workers who make 5-6 times more than local jobs.
Housing gap: New residents have also bought (and continue to buy) real estate at record prices, replacing the “location dependent” workforce with “location neutral” income.
To stay open with limited workforce, local businesses are reducing hours and staff, which is leaving economic growth opportunities on the table as well as leaving them with a razor thin margin if any future employee losses can occur.
I’m definitely not trying to throw “new residents” or “remote workers” under the bus here at all (as I am both of those things to an extent). Besides, I’ve yet to hear anyone complain about their ability to sell their place at the top of the market. And in many Vermont towns, including my own, the boom in new residents has been a welcome influx in many ways. The dark side only comes out when people can’t find a carpenter, or a painter, or a hamburger. Or the grocery store is closed. Or the teachers quit. Or the nurses.
There’s no silver bullet, no one trick pony, no magic metaphor that is the single thing that can help outdoor towns transition through this moment. More likely and realistically, it’ll be a combination of things – a soup pot with various ingredients like employer provided housing, some sensible way to address the big-time impact of short-term rentals, higher wages of course, and a level of workforce training programs that creates legit career pathways for kids who grow up in outdoorsy towns and actually want to stay there.
I’m definitely not a policy guy … but I do think that talking about the issue and sharing information between communities can only be helpful. To that point (if you’ve gotten this far) here are a few links to check out. If you know of any additional organizations, pieces of legislation in other states, or articles on the topic please post them in the comments form below. Thanks, as always for your time.
Articles
“Elephants in the room … and in the grass (Co-thrive, Schecter)
“Lack of housing is getting expensive” (Aspen Times, Marolt)
“What towns tell us about the inequality crisis,” (Deseret News, Hansman)
“Vermont restaurants see ‘dire tipping point’ as Omicron recedes (Vtdigger, Thys)
Studies and policy papers
Why to fully fund Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB)
“Housing affordability in recreation-dependent counties” (Headwaters Economics)
“Affordable Housing and the Build Back Better Act” (Reuters)
“Affordable Housing in a Rural, Tourism-Based Community” (HUD)
Organizations