THE OTHER HOUSING COST
As Real Estate Prices Soar, Resort Workers Flee
By David Frey, 9-27-06
It used to be, Aspen and Vail could rely on workers to trudge uphill from Garfield County to do the resort areas' dirty work. But those days are disappearing. With a high cost of living spreading through the resort area, the region's workforce is dwindling, and workers are finding jobs closer to home. That has officials worried about a looming worker shortage crisis across the region.
"We've never encountered anything quite like that, where there are not enough workers to fill the demands, and that becomes an economic cataclysm," says Don Cohen of the Economic Council of Eagle County, home to Vail Resorts.
Cohen shared the stage on Tuesday with County Commissioner Dorothea Farris, of Pitkin County, home to Aspen, and County Commissioner Tresi Houpt, of Garfield County, home to what has long been a reliable supply of resort workers. They were addressing the annual business conference hosted by the chamber of commerce in Carbondale, once a worker's hangout, now increasingly a redoubt for wealthy retirees.
It's a "perfect storm," Houpt said, that has caused Garfield County home prices to skyrocket. There's the "Pitkin County influence" as Aspen's wealth spreads downhill, raising land values and the cost of materials. And there's the booming natural gas industry, with an influx of workers snatching up any affordable home or apartment they can find.
"We've run out of stock," Houpt said. "For a county that has historically been the affordable housing county, we're now finding that hotel rooms are completely booked between Glenwood Springs and Parachute."
Because the county has always been more affordable than its upvalley neighbors, it's been late in the game on affordable housing. Aspen and Pitkin County host some 3,000 workforce unit, a number that's starting to dwindle as more and more owners take their old rental units and make them retirement homes. Garfield County has just 19 employee units. Eagle County is holding a lottery for a new 300-unit affordable housing complex it's building in the worker haven of Edwards. It also boasts the biggest free bus system in the country, Cohen said, hauling in workers from as far away as the former mining town of Leadville.
But with Leadville's old Climax mine expected to reopen again, that could mean a further cramp in a region already short on labor, Farris warned. The state demographer's office predicts Eagle County's population will rise to 80,000 by 2020 and jobs will grow to 100,000. Garfield County's population is expected to balloon, too, and while Pitkin County's growth is expected to be more modest, jobs are expected to continue to soar.
The chronic labor shortage has left the region turning to immigrant labor and special visa holders to fill jobs -- on the slopes, in the fields and at construction sites. It's a problem most state legislators don't understand, said state Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, and they didn't grasp it when they gathered in a special session to tackle immigration reform this summer.
"I wouldn't call it an immigration issue. I'd call it a workforce issue," Curry said, complaining that there aren't enough visas issued to fill all the job vacancies. It's an issue she urged Congress to take up.
"Maybe spend a little less time deciding how long the fence should be on the border and a little more time trying to get the workforce to the region," she said.
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What a setback. We could also build some transportation infrastructure.
How about illegal aliens? Won't they come and sleep in tents? This can't go on. Write your congressman!
Affordable housing is not only necessary to economic health, it is ESSENTIAL. Pitkin County has been much more committed and diligent to workforce housing, and see what's happening there? This should serve as a wake-up call to those Teton County Wyoming Commissioners, but my guess is that they still think they're doing enough.
Perhaps this is a situation that should call upon private enterprise for a solution rather than continually asking or expecting gov.org to "do something"?
There is a significant portion of the cost of all housing that is created by gov.org and those costs will not evaporate. So when you march in the streets in favor of more/more-and-yet-more land use regulations that drive up the cost of housing you do need to plug in the cause and effect within the workplace as well as in the housing marketplace throughout the West. Some of us can actually remember the days when "the average Joe" could live comfortably in places like Aspen and Boulder.
Solutions are always illusive and seldom are decisions easy to make.
But it would not be wise for any of us who love the West to fail to plug in all the repercussions while current discussions are now going on regarding land use and the communities we seek to structure for the future.
Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. Scarce land is the goods, and relaxed taxation on the monied class is the too much money.
The phenomena of service industry inaffordability of housing is everywhere in the West where recreation and leisure have swallowed all the available land. Capital does not build low rent housing where McMansions are the norm. The help drives. Sometimes long distances. And, the work is seasonal. You gotta wonder how many fire fighters this summer are now waiting for their lift operator, waitperson, etc. job for the winter to start.
The good news is that the market will solve the problem without public subsidy. The people with too much money will pay whatever it takes to provide for their leisure and comfort. Another industry will arise. Buses from afar, a wing on the house for help, lodge affiliated dorms, whatever. Think about how is has been done at Yellowstone, Glacier, Zion, wherever, for the better part of a century. bear bait