How to Save a Ski Town

I don't know about Tirol, but in Banff, the restrictions don't prevent construction of multi-unit buildings specifically for renters. I don't know exactly how ownership of these buildings work, but I think they're owned by the town through some non-profit org.

I don't live in Banff and I'm sure there are issues with this system, but it seems pretty reasonable. Service workers would definitely be priced out if every condo/apartment was owned privately and available as a short-term rental.

It's complicated in that states have a bunch of different rules, are apparently inconsistent in applying them, and there is also apparently not clear precedent. I agree that this seems a case tailor made for SCOTUS to have taken.

Here's just one "it's complicated" example. Say I lived in NH (I don't) and worked remote. (And let's simplify and imagine I never went to an office.) My closest office would be, in fact, be in Massachusetts but HQ is in North Carolina. Why would I pay MA given that I don't live or work there? Maybe I should pay NC? But now you've created a situation where heavily remote companies should establish HQs in no income tax states.

As I also noted, there are a bunch of theoretical rules related to business travel that haven't been historically enforced in most cases but seem to be increasingly so. Which may mean that a lot of employees may increasingly have to file multiple state returns depending upon various thresholds.

I think I knew that. And I've also known execs who spent substantial time between multiple offices who tracked for tax purposes.

However, for example, Concur now has an auditing service through E&Y for business travel in the US generally. It was implemented fairly recently and I unsurprisingly haven't traveled much but I did have one trip that triggered a "Is it correct you worked in this state for these three days" email so I guess I'll see what happens.

I really don't know what your issue is here.

Your original top-level comment more or less opens with an affirmation that markets will do the right thing:

> The market adjusts if it is correct to adjust, at least probably, according to the probably efficient market hypothesis. The question is whether it's correct for the market to adjust.

But that's not the question. The first question is whether this hypothesis is correct, and there's plenty of evidence that it's an inadequate model of the real world, particularly in contexts that involve external factors that cannot be controlled (like geography and federal ownership).

Then you move to:

> So yes, the solution to a durable increase in housing demand is to build more housing.

But a solid part of TFA was about how "build more housing" is not an option in these towns, at least not in the same that it might be in other geographic locations.

Shortly thereafter, you introduce a question that I don't see comes up from TFA at all:

> What about a transient increase in demand?

Nobody in the TFA is discussing a transient increase in demand, unless you are trying to classify "we live in a time where a bunch of people can afford to spend $1.8M on a 2nd home in Vail" as a transient phenomenon.

> Over the long-term, concealing a durable increase in demand with stringent tenant protections creates a double standard and a new kind of inequality.

There's a serious argument that the phenomena described in TFA are not a "durable increase in demand", but a more complicated pattern. Why? Well, first of all because the housing stock that has been subject to price pressure is in a different category from the stock sought out by the local workforce. Although the pricing across categories (e.g. a 5k sq ft mountain home vs. a studio apartment above a restaurant) are connected, it's not simple linear relationship, and a town could have a surplus of one and shortage of the other, and it would not cause the sort of pricing shifts that would occur in a homogenous market. Second, because the reason for the mismatch in supply/demand is not just that new construction hasn't happened yet, but because new construction is actively discouraged by the geography and the local politics.

So, these mountain resort towns are not in the same situation as, say, Atlanta, which simply has a large number of people who want to move there, across many different socio-economic demographics, and where the construction of new houses, while not entirely free of political control, is not functionally prevented from any attempt to meet demand.

> But we can't expect that construction to materialize where the market isn't convinced it's necessary, simply because it would meet our social objectives.

I didn't explicitly cite this sentence because it just seems so obviously misguided to me that I tried to get at the bigger picture. You appear to see a rational, efficient market making decisions ("where the market isn't convinced that it's necessary"), whereas I see something quite different at work.

> And we can't ignore the future to meet social objectives right now.

We regularly and intentionally do this. It just typically works out that the "social objectives" that are met by ignoring the future are the ones set by people who already have power and wealth.

OK, I think I see the problem. It's not that I didn't read what you said. It's that I don't agree with you.

Idk, we do live in a bit of a climate emergency so using government policy (not the free market) to discourage density seems like a bad way to achieve that. Also I guess I left out the worst bit of the high cost of living equilibrium. Homelessness has been connected pretty cleanly to high housing costs. It isn't even that surprising, people find moving difficult and even more so when you're at the bottom of the economy just scraping by and then you actually run out of money. There's also a common feeling that forcing people to move is a bad thing. That seems at least reasonable to me.