Crested Butte's housing affordability crisis is turning into an employment crisis

[Duke]

This is what happens when an NBA or NFL sports "hero" is paid hundreds
of millions of dollars to throw a ball and the everyday workers that are
needed for a functioning society are forced to live in tents or their
cars due to the sub-standard hourly wages being offered to them. I
suppose you could fill these quaint mountain towns with Haitian
"migrants" to do the work they are unwilling to pay American wages for,
but it might clash with that wholesome mountain Western town image that
draws the upper middle class to spend their money there having "Little
Haiti" in the Rocky Mountain West.

https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/crested-buttes-housing-affordability-crisis-is-turning-into-an-employment-crisis


thedenverchannel.com
Crested Butte's housing affordability crisis is turning into an
employment crisis
Meghan Lopez
7-8 minutes

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Photo by: KMGH

All along Elk Ave. in Crested Butte, just about every store has a help
wanted sign in the window. The town is dealing with an employment
shortage caused by an affordable housing shortage.

Crested Butte

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — In just about every window of every shop along
Elk Avenue in Crested Butte, there’s a Help Wanted sign. All across the
town, businesses are struggling to find enough employees to keep their
doors open. These signs tell the story of a town that’s struggling.

Some have had to change their hours of operation or close down several
days each week entirely, simply because they cannot find the people to work.

“There’s tons of jobs, no people,” said Crested Butte Mayor Jim Schmidt.

It’s not the pay or pandemic unemployment benefits that businesses blame
for the worker shortage — it's the lack of affordable housing.

Like many mountain communities, the average price of homes has been
skyrocketing for years. The average home price in the town is now nearly
$900,000.

“Housing here is going for ridiculous prices. It’s still cheap compared
to Aspen, but very ridiculous for us,” Schmidt said.

Things have become so bad that the area decided to stop marketing to
tourists to come visit for the summer. For a town that’s economy runs on
tourism, this was a big decision.

“We sell tourism. We sell hospitality. It’s a concern that we can’t feed
everybody that comes here. They have to wait,” Schmidt said.

It’s not just retail and restaurants that are struggling. For months,
the town’s parks and recreation department wasn’t able to fill five
positions because there’s no affordable place for the would-be employees
to live.

Some workers are even camping in tents or vans in the U.S. Forest areas
nearby just to have some place to live.

“There’s a lot of people who are living out of the woods,” Schmidt said.

However, the Forest Service recently changed some of its rules to limit
long-term camping in certain areas due to things like trash in the area.

While the housing affordability issue isn’t new for mountain communities
like Crested Butte, it is growing. The COVID pandemic and new prevalence
of remote work has created a new migration of people looking to live
away from big cities.

The newfound popularity of short-term rental options, like Airbnb and
Vrbo, has also presented its own set of challenges for these towns.

The town council has taken a number of steps to try to help. It has
already been limiting the number of short-term rental licenses given out
each year to 30%. It has about 305 deed-restricted homes to keep the
price of some housing from appreciating too quickly.

Then in June, the town council took an unprecedented step and declared a
local disaster emergency over the affordable housing issue.

“I don’t think we wanted to send a message. I think we wanted to get
things done. We wanted to get things done rapidly,” Schmidt said.

The declaration allows the town to work around some building and
municipal codes. In some cases, it makes constructing a new home or a
mother-in-law suite a little easier. In others, it makes it so that
units don’t have to have two parking spaces per residence.

The declaration also eased some of the restrictions on camping in town
over the summer.

“We said that people, if they have a friend who has a camper, they can
put the camper in the backyard for the summer if they’re working here.
Not if they’re just visiting. We really want to take care of people who
are working here,” Schmidt said.

The town was also able to use the declaration to buy a hotel to help
house some employees.

The old Ruby Inn bed and breakfast was a staple of Crested Butte. It has
six rooms, two common areas, and a shared kitchen that will serve as
dormitory-style living for some town employees.

Schmidt is also hoping that the declaration will help free up some state
and federal resources to help.

Meanwhile, the town council has decided to move forward with a one-year
moratorium on new licenses for short-term rentals in town.

It is also considering asking voters to raise the sales and use tax as
well as the vacation rental tax to pay for affordable housing programs
and impose a tax on homes that are not the property owners’ primary
residence for at least six months of the year.

While the town council continues to look for ways to help, local
businesses are also stepping in.

Over at Secret Stash Pizza on Elk Avenue, the days are very busy. With
other restaurants adjusting their hours or closing down for a few days
each week, owner Kyleena Falzone said her business is up 38% this year.

The added business is a challenge, though, because the Secret Stash is
down 20 employees. Some of her workers live in vans and camp out. She
occasionally lets them use her home to do laundry.

Falzone has started taking housing matters for her employees into her
own hands.

“We built three, two-bedroom triplexes and it was almost a $900,000
investment. It’s deed-restricted, so this isn’t a for-profit venture.
This is like we care about employees, and we are walking the walk and we
are talking the talk,” she said.

Falzone’s investors advised her against the purchase, but she said she
felt compelled to get involved because her restaurant cannot survive
without its workers.

“We have to take care of the dishwashers and the bartenders and the
busboys and the retail clerks,” Falzone said.

She even tried to buy the 14-room hostel in town to create some
dormitory-style living for employees.

The only way she sees the town being able to accommodate all of the need
for affordable housing is high-density development, though she knows
there has been pushback against the idea for years.

“There’s this conflict of, I’ll just say it, the rich against the poor.
It’s everywhere and we need to take care of the people that are taking
care of the people that live here,” Falzone said.

She said she doesn’t necessarily agree with putting limits on short-term
rentals. Falzone owns two Airbnb’s in town and said she rents them out
in the winter and rents them out to employees in the off-season.

She said the short-term rental time allows her to be able to charge
those employees less per month when they stay there.

In the end, she said she doesn’t believe there is a short-term solution
to the long-term affordable housing problems.

All across mountain communities, affordable housing is becoming more of
a crisis by the year. The issue is now rippling into a serious
employment shortage.

For now, restaurants and businesses are asking visitors to have patience
when they visit and understand they might not be able to get the same
level of service as they experienced in previous years.


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