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How to Save a Ski Town

outsideonline.com

11–20 of 298 posts

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#11
The principle I've long held is that cities and towns should primarily be for those who reside in those towns.

In this case, only residents should be voting on things like ballot measures. This article talks about a few towns, some where I'm sure there are a lot of residents with multiple homes, some of which I'm sure that isn't the case. But nonresident owners shouldn't be dictating public policy, period.

So the first thing you do is you is put in a city income tax and make all homeowners residents for tax purposes. And that's tax on all your income. To those who say they'll just hide behind LLCs and trusts, you do two things:

1. You tax the beneficial owner of the property;

2. Properties with no clear beneficial owner are simply taxed punitively with property tax.

This article is just further evidence that AirBnB is a cancer on housing, as if we needed further confirmation (which we didn't).

At a higher level, we need to do something about the ultra-rich borrowing to avoid tax. A good starting point is that any borrowed funds, or at least any borrowed funds for certain purposes such as buying real estate, are treated as repatriated or realized income and taxed accordingly.

And while we're at it, let's starting non-primary residences on unrealized capital gains unless it's a long term rental.

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#12
post #4

No mention of "demand" and only one of "supply:" "The limited supply of affordable housing for workers has been a challenge for decades." Prices occur where demand and supply intersect. There are two ways to lower them: lower demand or raise supply. Supply restrictions raise prices. There are a lot of words here that fail to deal with price fundamentals.

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Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#13
Ironic coming from one of the media outlets responsible for destroying so many mountain towns by putting them on "must-visit" destination lists for the IG crowd.

But those $200 camp chairs and $800 puffy jackets aren't going to sell themselves, I suppose...

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#14
post #6
post #2

I imagine the Swiss have dealt with similar situations, I wonder what they would suggest? Pay employees way more is probably step one. I'm the "build more housing" guy, but it looks like the Swiss have chosen a different path?

If the market could build its way out of this, it already would have. There's not enough money in building and leasing units to rent to burger-flippers and dog-walkers, when there are millionaires lining up to make all-cash purchases. You either have to pay people enough to afford a mortgage in the area, or you watch all your manual laborers move to the big cities.

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

I believe the author mentions that there was a proposed large apartment building (250 ish units) that could, presumably, have alleviated some of the demand but that it was voted down by nimby types to avoid CB “becoming aurora”

I’d think then that it’s less so the market preventing building than it is voters and activist home owners

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#15

Honest question, have any of these ski towns tried allowing the construction of a significant amount of housing? I.e. housing growth that actually scales with the growth in demand? None of the ones I've visited seem at all dense. (Been to Vail, Beaver Creek, Park City, and all over Tahoe.) All the consternation over the housing crisis is maddening to me because it seems like universally (in the US), we're willing to…

I’m not aware of any, no. But I’d love to see one of these cities take a pro building stance

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#16

Honest question, have any of these ski towns tried allowing the construction of a significant amount of housing? I.e. housing growth that actually scales with the growth in demand? None of the ones I've visited seem at all dense. (Been to Vail, Beaver Creek, Park City, and all over Tahoe.) All the consternation over the housing crisis is maddening to me because it seems like universally (in the US), we're willing to…

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Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#17

Honest question, have any of these ski towns tried allowing the construction of a significant amount of housing? I.e. housing growth that actually scales with the growth in demand? None of the ones I've visited seem at all dense. (Been to Vail, Beaver Creek, Park City, and all over Tahoe.) All the consternation over the housing crisis is maddening to me because it seems like universally (in the US), we're willing to…

I ask genuinely: is the basic economic argument in a mountain town like CB the same as it is in a place like Denver?

It feels like it might be different given how much surrounding land is (federally) protected, or just looks super expensive / impractical to build on.

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#18

Honest question, have any of these ski towns tried allowing the construction of a significant amount of housing? I.e. housing growth that actually scales with the growth in demand? None of the ones I've visited seem at all dense. (Been to Vail, Beaver Creek, Park City, and all over Tahoe.) All the consternation over the housing crisis is maddening to me because it seems like universally (in the US), we're willing to…

[deleted]

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#19

Honest question, have any of these ski towns tried allowing the construction of a significant amount of housing? I.e. housing growth that actually scales with the growth in demand? None of the ones I've visited seem at all dense. (Been to Vail, Beaver Creek, Park City, and all over Tahoe.) All the consternation over the housing crisis is maddening to me because it seems like universally (in the US), we're willing to…

The article addresses this. In short, NIMBYism from second and third home owners makes this difficult.

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#20
post #4

No mention of "demand" and only one of "supply:" "The limited supply of affordable housing for workers has been a challenge for decades." Prices occur where demand and supply intersect. There are two ways to lower them: lower demand or raise supply. Supply restrictions raise prices. There are a lot of words here that fail to deal with price fundamentals.

What are you even saying? Prices go up because the locals are being priced out by people buying second homes and AirBNB takes up all the available rentals. The mayor of the town nearly got evicted because his landlord was going to convert it.
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