As more of us seek a high quality of life that includes access to backcountry skiing, the boomtown cycle in mountain towns makes housing more scarce and less affordable. A report has some solutions for communities willing to rethink how the boom can have room.
Room? The cityscape and skiscape merge in Salt Lake City. Photo: Peter Vordenberg
Go to any, literally, any “desirable” town out West and follow the local news. Similar themes arise; crowded trailheads, swarming tourists, (this winter at least) locals getting steep and deep, and limited and costly housing. If you moved to or visited a community to access prime touring terrain, as some of our readers have, you know this news cycle.
A study released in May 2023 from Headwaters Economics titled: Amenity Trap how high-amenity communities can avoid being loved to death is solutions-oriented research. The plight of mountain towns or those places just down the road, close-to-a-mountain towns, is well documented. Even for those arriving with marketable skills and hard-working tendencies, planning to stay in one of these communities is hardscrabble at best.
The term Headwaters uses to describe the hyper-local powder stash you love, or the easy access pre-work on-piste skin track, are “amenities.” In economics and daily life, amenities make our lives more enjoyable. Communities built adjacent to public lands with plentiful touring opportunities are high-amenity communities. We know these places; open space abounds (usually Federal land), and there’s trail running, mountain biking, and climbing.
Whether these places, the high-amenity communities, have been loved or exploited to death is up for debate. Undebatable are the profound pressures these enclaves are experiencing.
Housing for the People
Let’s focus on housing in these places, particularly affordable housing, as that piece of the how-to-make-it puzzle still needs to be solved for many seeking backcountry turns a relatively short distance from their homes. The housing issue is complex, and to reduce it to a single variable, like deep-pocketed out-of-town homebuyers, is easy and flawed. Headwaters does cite wealthier homebuyers as driving up costs. Yet, basic principles of supply and demand are in play.
High-amenity communities are typically places of high demand and short supply, considering available housing stock. Other factors include properties purchased solely as investments or as second homes. The problems include a need for buildable land and on and on and on.
Headwaters, a respected consulting firm in natural resource and community economics, offers solutions too. The report is not fixated on the doom and gloom, although there is plenty of that.
The solutions presented are a call to action, especially for those marginalized by scarce and expensive housing. The authors cite examples where local municipalities have tried to problem solve by securing buildable land, rezoning, and modifying codes regulating short-term rental properties.
For example, in much of the city, Bozeman (a recent poster child of high-amenity communities and a lack of affordable housing) restricts short-term rentals in homes that are not owner-occupied. Rules like that, although only one aspect of the solution, takes community support and involvement.
“…young people who live (or want to live) in high-amenity communities improve these places. That’s a fact; otherwise, without them, we know how it goes – too much low-density housing and pickleball court development.”
Places like Bozeman and Bend (Bend has over 100,000 residents) are booming small cities. Honestly, Bend also feels like a straight-up city; there’s nothing small about it. (More mass transit, please.) Although not true mountain towns like Crested Butte or Jackson, these locales still attract similar demographics seeking the same amenities. These amenities feel more like mental health necessities, which means good human-powered skiing and outdoor access.
Headwaters notes that housing isn’t created in a vacuum: local fiscal policy and a changing climate that make high-amenity communities prone to catastrophic wildfires impact housing costs and availability. All these things and more are intertwined, which complicates real solutions.
Still high and mighty in Leadville, Colorado. The ton experienced its first boom in the 1860s. Photo: Alex Lee
The Boom Needs Room
Young energy, the energy of a new generation of backcountry skiers and splitboarders adds to the experience in these places; they imagine possibilities in the mountains older generations weren’t ready to take on. And they bring new ideas, faces, and perspectives to the local communal fabric.
Along those lines, young people who live (or want to live) in high-amenity communities improve these places. That’s a fact; otherwise, without them, we know how it goes – too much low-density housing and pickleball court development.
The desire to live in high-amenity towns and cities has existed for a while. The opening paragraphs of the essay Pubic Lands, Place, and Quality of Life by Gundars Rudzitis highlight in-migration statistics to high-amenity places that make the head spin. Rudzitis looks specifically at a subset of high-amenity counties that border designated wilderness. He calls them nonmetropolitan wilderness counties.
Here’s a teaser from Rudzitis:
“I discovered that during the 1960s, nonmetropolitan wilderness counties had population increases three times greater than other nonmetropolitan areas. In the 1970s, they grew at twice the rate of other nonmetropolitan counties. In the 1980s, wilderness-county population increased 24%—six times faster than the 4% nonmetropolitan national average and almost twice as fast as counties in the nonmetropolitan West. These trends continued in the 1990s with population growth of 30%, more than twice the U.S. metropolitan rate.”
The growth rates in these communities are astounding. But through this longitudinal lens, it is clear we have been here before. Only this time, there’s less room for the boom.
Backcountry skiers are doers. Housing won’t magically become more affordable or plentiful in these high-amenity places. And finding the next best place is challenging.
Headwaters’ solutions require our young voices (and some old ones, too) to be involved locally. We want you as part of these places. Be the squeaky wheel, so your energy remains in these communities for the long haul.