||| FROM MARKETPLACE.ORG ||| POSTED AT REQUEST OF ORCASONIAN READER
Amber Kennedy worked at a pizza shop for the summer last year in Ketchum, Idaho. She was hoping to stick around in the resort town, but other seasonal workers told her and her roommates: “Don’t even try.”
“A lot of our friends worked and lived down here in the winters, and they were like, ‘No. It’s impossible to find housing,’” she said.
But they lucked out. They rented a 3½-bedroom log cabin right in downtown Ketchum, home to the Sun Valley Resort.
“We’re able to walk everywhere — the grocery store, wherever — which has been amazing this winter,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy found her rental through Lease to Locals, a program for property owners with empty houses or Airbnbs. It pays them to rent to local workers.
Now, Kennedy works full time at a real estate firm, while her roommates work at the ski resort in town, a bar and a nonprofit. Jim Slanetz is their landlord and also a City Council member.
“It’s hard to live in a mountain town,” he said. “It’s hard to survive, and it’s hard to find housing.”
Real estate prices in mountain resort towns skyrocketed during the pandemic. Now, these communities are trying to stop the bleed of local workers being priced out. Several are offering cash incentives to get property owners to rent to locals.
Perhaps this is an idea worth exploring for SJC? The details will matter greatly of course…
Perhaps lodging taxes could be redirected from the Visitors Bureau to a rent subsidy program? It will take a LOT of money to subsidize the difference between the income from an annual lease versus the income from a vacation rental. In my experience, a vacation rental property will generate about 3 times the gross income of an annual lease.
Of course this notion is not going to solve the problem of real estate values increasing faster than wages, but it might be worth discussing as a mitigation plan that could help.