How to Save a Ski Town

> If the market could build its way out of this, it already would have.

Indeed, if it was legal to build it would have been done already.

"None of the ones I've visited seem at all dense. (Been to Vail, Beaver Creek, Park City, and all over Tahoe.)"

Would you want that ?

When you visited these places, did you wish they had more, and larger, buildings ?

Visiting or living in a "ski town" is, ipso facto, an aesthetic choice that one makes. It is not imposed on anyone nor is it a right to be conferred.

I am open minded to the idea that some people prefer a never-ending monoculture of marginally dense just-barely-sub-urban living areas. I hate this idea, however, and I hope you will look elsewhere to pursue it.

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It's worth remembering that the lack of density is what people like so much about the towns. I can say personally an apartment building makes it hard to enjoy the mountain view when you're on a stroll through the town :) The unfortunate reality is that I think the only way to truly prevent this is to only allow someone who is working in town to own a home with a percentage allowance for remote workers. The biggest step being to prevent vacation homes from being a thing. Even still I don't think this fully solves the problem as most of the positions in mountain towns are low skilled so generally aren't super well paid.

There's a few compounding factors that the article touches on but doesn't really put much emphasis. I'm up in the Canadian Rockies but I have friends spread out among a few of the towns so I'll try and give some perspective across the areas.

Lake Louise: Not really worth commenting on this as almost all homes are owned by local businesses due to national park rules.

Banff: Limited due to how land ownership works within the national park as well as limits the Federal government puts on expanding the town. Thankfully due to the land ownership constraints it avoids the vacation property issue some what although not entirely.

This town also pickups spill over from Lake Louise.

Canmore: Catches the remaining spill over from Lake Louise and Banff further constraining holding it's own workers. This is the closest town to the national park so lots of people own vacation homes here. This town is surrounded by a national park, provincial park, and by Aboriginal land so it has no room to grow. The town has put limits on where air bnb's can be run but they're so profitable people eat the current fines.

An interesting side note with this town is that at the start of the pandemic a lot of the people with vacation homes went here overloading the local grocery stores ability to supply things. The shelves were extra bare for weeks which was quite frustrating.

Fernie: Was doing alright before the pandemic but was feeling the squeeze a bit. As soon as working from home was the norm for people houses disappeared in a flash and what was left almost doubled in price over the two years. In those two years my friends got priced out of the market.

A lot of developers here got burned in the oil crash in 2008 which will probably slow any quick growth to expand the town.

Golden: Don't have any friends here but from what I've seen there's been lots of aggressive development but more on the nicer vacation home side. Nothing that would fit as a good starter house for a family.

There are a lot of comments about eliminating investment properties and providing subsidized housing. Why don't we let the market work itself out? Let's see how magical Crested Butte is in a few years with no intervention. I suspect you'll be able to get a nice ski-in/ski-out condo at a significant discount when there are no longer any businesses open in the town.