- The 13,000-person mountain town is dealing with an 80 percent increase in the average price of a single-family home
- Even high-earners are now being priced out of home ownership, which has left local institutions like, the hospital, struggling to retain staff
A Colorado ski resort billed as a playground for wealthy elites and Olympians-in-training has become so exclusive the locals who help run it are being priced out of the housing market.
Steamboat Springs draws tens of thousands of visitors every year thanks to its trademarked Champagne Snow powder and quaint charm.
But despite a $200 million investment to make it the state’s second-largest ski resort after Vail, many locals are being left out in the cold.
And it’s all thanks to the red-hot Airbnb market catering to vacationers and influencers that has taken over the housing industry.
The housing crisis is so serious in the 13,000-people city, that the local hospital is losing job candidates left and right due to the surging real estate market.
The small mountain town, about a three-hour drive from Denver, cannot find a head of human resources for the city because the offered $167,000 salary will no longer put anyone in a position to buy a house in the area.
The self-described cowboy ski resort has been known primarily as an area where aspiring winter Olympians come to train among the salt-of-the-Earth locals who are by-and-large middle-income professionals.
That reputation stood in semi-stark comparison to other, more glamorous ski towns like Vail, Aspen, Jackson Hole and Sun Valley.
But a cash injection from owners Alterra Mountain Company has now cemented it as a world-renowned destination. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are among the roughly 42 percent of out-of-towners who own property in the area.
In 2008, the resort trademarked Champagne Snow to describe its fluffy powder, a phrase likely coined by rancher Joe McElroy as a way to describe the way the snow would shoot up his nose while carving the slopes.
Visitors have reported paying as much as $280 for ski lift passes, making Steamboat Springs one of the most expensive resorts in the state.
But it appears to be locals who are paying the true cost. Doctors willing to put down more than $1million on a house are repeatedly outbid by out-of-town buyers putting down all-cash, over-asking price offers.
According to an NBC report, the city’s local ski resort has been leasing a hotel for its employees to live in because the homes they were once able to rent are now mostly on the market as expensive, short-term rentals for visitors.
Loryn Duke, the Steamboat ski resort’s director of communications, told the outlet: ‘Houses used to be for employees and hotels for guests. Now houses are for guests and hotels are for employee housing. We have a lot of great staff who are early in their careers or have young families, but they just aren’t able to put down those roots.’
‘I know that it’s so hard for folks outside of mountain or resort communities to even wrap their heads around, but housing is just so through the roof that unless you’re extremely wealthy, it’s unattainable,’ said Margaret Bowes, the executive director of the Colorado Association of Ski Towns.
Steamboat, as well as other mountain towns and formerly quaint travel destinations across the American Southwest, have been smacked by the pandemic-fueled real estate explosion.
Remote workers, short-term rental investors, and second-home buyers have swept in and caused home prices to essentially double with no sign they will fall anytime soon.
In Steamboat, local officials are attempting to ease the strain by proposing building thousands of new housing units on a 534-acre ranch that the city’s housing authority purchased with an anonymous $24million donation.
In phases, the office wants to build more than 2,200 units. Sale and rentals of the properties would be restricted to those who live locally on a fulltime basis and meet certain income requirements.
Even residents who are opposed to the project, believing it to be too large-scale a project for a city with limited infrastructure, understand that the housing issue is a real one.
Since 2020, single-family home prices in Steamboat have increased by 80 percent to, on average, $1.8million. For already existing homeowners, their property taxes have shot up, on average, by 86 percent.
Those numbers put even starter-home ownership out of reach for anyone making less than $200,000 annually, and even for that tier of income earner, the home prices make taking high-paying jobs in the area unattractive.
A local realtor for the past two decades told NBC: ‘We are seeing across all segments of the market even high-paid professionals, they’re turning down jobs because they spend a little time looking at housing costs and they can’t do it.
‘The people who are coming here are paying a million dollars for an entry-level house – a totally entry-level, 50-year-old house.’
Leah Wood, president of the Yampa Valley Housing Authority, told the Steamboat Pilot the town had affordable housing units at the end of last year all with 100 percent occupancy.
She added the combined waiting list for the properties is around 800 people.
The president of the local hospital, Soniya Fidler said that ‘no income earner is immune’ from the insane housing prices.
‘I think that probably every week there’s someone who comes back and tells me we lost someone because of housing,’ she said.
The hospital, in order to stop bleeding staff and potentially beckon professionals to fill positions, some of which have been open for two years, has gone into the residential real estate field.
The institution is currently building 42 apartments that will rent at rates no higher than about 30 percent of the given hospital employee’s income.
‘It is hard because we are here to deliver health care, we’re not here to deliver houses. Usually, if we have the dollars to spend, it is on state-of-the-art equipment and upgrading our facilities,’ said Fidler.
‘But we don’t want to have to close services, especially because we can’t staff for it.’
Wood estimates that Steamboat Springs would need around 1,400 more units to house the local workforce.
On Facebook, a housing group for the town is inundated with tenants seeking a place to live often up to three or four months in advance of their move-in date.
Professional golf teacher Luis Gaspar lived in the city for six years before deciding to relocate.
He said when he first moved he found a one-bedroom apartment at Torian Plum Condominiums for $1,100 a month.
‘Two years after that, it was $2,300 for a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment,’ Gaspar told the Steamboat Pilot. ‘That is a more than 100 percent increase in two years.
‘Unless you have a really good salary in Steamboat, which is really hard to find because everything is a service job, it’s impossible. ‘That is why I had to leave. The community is great and everything, but I am working two, three jobs, 12 hours a day, just to make it by.’
In 2022, Steamboat Springs followed in the footsteps of many other tourist hotspots including New York and Lake Tahoe to bring in restrictions on short term lets in a bid to ease the housing crunch.
However opponents to bans have pointed out they just give rise to a black market for short term rentals and do little to stop wealthier individuals from purchasing second homes that remain vacant.
Occupiers moved on to a property on Ahipara’s Wharo Way in October 2021, after a significant pohutukawa tree they believed had been protected by being placed in a reserve was not protected at all.
Kaitāia GP Cecil Williams is thinking about leaving the town after 35 years, after being “forced” to sell his property, which had been occupied by a local iwi, for about $130,000 less than its Quotable Value.
Williams’ property at 1 Wharo Way, Ahipara, was first occupied in October 2021 by members of Te Rarawa who were unhappy that a culturally significant pōhutukawa on the property had been partly felled for a house site.
The iwi members were angry because they were led to believe the tree had been included in a reserve at the front of the land when it was subdivided. However, the reserve was later made smaller and the tree included in the property at 1 Wharo Way that the Williamses bought.
The iwi members felt betrayed over what were assurances the culturally significant site at Ahipara would be fully protected as a public reserve.
Williams said he and his wife, Marna, checked when they bought the section that there were no land claims or any other issues with it, and after being assured there were none, bought it for $500,000. The tree was not listed as protected or significant on the council’s website.
He said they were the innocent parties in the debacle and had done nothing wrong, yet were seriously out of pocket due to no actions of their own.
The land was occupied for almost a year before Far North District Council, in an effort to solve the impasse, agreed to buy the land from the Williamses.
At its August meeting where it agreed to buy the land, Kahika/Mayor Moko Tepania acknowledged that historic actions had seen undertakings to protect 1 Wharo Way broken. While the council would never be a default Office of Treaty Settlements, it had acknowledged there were special circumstances that led to the motion for council to negotiate the purchase of the land supported, he said.
Williams said the couple were caught in a fait accompli as they had to sell the land to the council because nobody else would buy a property that was being occupied and under such dispute.
“Who would buy land that was being occupied and nothing was being done to move the occupiers off?”
The couple are angry and upset that they had to settle with the council for $437,500 for the land when the QV valuation a year earlier was for $560,000, and feel they had no choice but to sell, given that nobody else would buy it.
At the start of the occupation, Williams offered to sell the land to Te Rarawa, or the council for the $500,000 they paid for it, and is now upset they are out of pocket by so much.
“It’s prime waterfront land, but the council’s independent valuation in September last year said it was only worth $400,000. Yet the council’s own Quotable Value in October the year before said the property was worth $560,000. I know prices have dropped a bit, but I can’t see how such a piece of coastal land has dropped by $160,000 in a year. That’s hard to take.”
FNDC has been approached for comment, but had not responded by publishing time.
Williams said the property was to be where they built their dream home to retire, but after 35 years as a GP in Kaitāia, the saga had left such a sour taste that they were seriously considering selling up their other property and moving away.
“It’s hard enough as it is to get GPs up here, but this has really hit us hard. The stress and the anxiety this has caused us, the sleepless nights and worry have been unbearable. Through no fault of our own we have now had to take a huge financial hit, and I’m upset that after all these years helping this community, we’ve had such little support and are seen as the bad guys.”
He said they were not aware the pōhutukawa was supposed to be protected or that it was supposed to have been on a reserve; had they known, they would not have bought the land in the first place.
Williams acknowledged he had stopped paying rates on the land from when the occupiers moved in because he was unable to use the land, and neither the council nor police would move the protesters off. The roughly $8000 outstanding rates were paid from the property sale price to the council.
Mike Dinsdale is the editor of the Northland Age who also covers general news for the Advocate. He has worked in Northland for almost 34 years and loves the region.
Depending on who’s doing the estimating, America is short anywhere from 2 million to 6 million homes. If you’ve tried to buy or rent a place in the past year, or you know anyone who has, then you didn’t need me to tell you that. Hardly anything’s on the market, and none of us can afford what is. The question is: Why?
That simple question, oddly, has been impossible to answer with any real precision. The housing shortage may be national, but the problem is local. Where homes get built, how many, what type, how big the lot has to be, how many meetings it takes to build something new — those things are all governed by zoning rules. And every town and village and city zones itself. Which means there are more than 30,000 different sets of zoning rules in America. When it comes to housing, we’re a nation of islands, governed by no central authority.
To make matters worse, each of those 30,000 islands has its very own language for those rules. Many maps favor the suburban ideal of single-family homes on expansive lots, while essentially disallowing every other form of housing. One place might call a two-family home a duplex (and allow it), where another code might call it a “townhome” or just “multifamily” (and nix it). In some places, “mixed-use” means a neighborhood that combines homes and shops (nope!); in others it means a combination of offices and industry (sure, why not?). Some cities have maps digitally coded into a standard geospatial data format; other towns still use paper. In city after city, the rules are woefully outdated, head-scratchingly obscure, or outright racist.
If you could decipher all those rules, and make comparisons between different cities and states, you might be able to figure out which rules let more homes get built, and which ones don’t. But no one has ever assembled America’s zoning regulations in one place, let alone force them to use the same words to mean the same things — until now.
For the first time, a team of researchers is compiling every city’s zoning rules into a National Zoning Atlas. That means everyone from policymakers to homeowners will be able to look at their local zoning maps and understand their town’s hidden architecture. And maybe, armed with that information, we’ll finally be able to remodel America’s fixer-upper of zoning policies into a tasteful showcase for starter homes and cheap apartments.
“Zoning is hugely influential on all of our lives, and people don’t know enough about it,” says Sara Bronin, an architect and attorney at Cornell University who founded the atlas. “Our project really aims to demystify these hidden rules, and encourage policymakers, researchers, and advocates to mine that information.”
The atlas also aims to translate the nation’s multitude of local zoning rules into what Bronin calls a “common set of definitions and practices” — a rationality that will enable analysts, at long last, to make “apples-to-apples comparisons.” In other words, we’ll finally be able to say, with certainty, which policies build more homes and bring prices down, and which policies don’t.
It’s still early — so far the atlas includes only 2,000 jurisdictions populated by 35 million Americans. That’s because it’s more than just a massive data project, crunching code into computers. “It’s a legal research project,” Bronin says, “one of the biggest legal research projects on local government law that has ever existed. We are effectively reading hundreds of thousands of pages of local ordinances and regulations.”
It’s hard to underestimate how powerful a tool the atlas will be. Bronin says people are already using it to effect policy changes — like the woman in Milford, Connecticut, who printed out screenshots from the atlas to persuade her town to change its policy prohibiting residents from building guest-house-type units in their backyards. Milford’s official zoning map was an incomprehensible mosaic of microscale neighborhood rules — but the easier-to-read atlas enabled the Milfordites to prove their case, and demand change.
Or look at the even bigger changes that were enacted in Montana, where housing prices spiked sharply during the pandemic as more people moved to Big Sky Country from out of state. Armed with the apples-to-apples zoning maps contained in the atlas, advocates for zoning reform were able to compare the rules in Montana with those of California. Cities and towns in both states, they could see, penalize or outright prohibit duplexes and other forms of housing that bring down prices and help prevent urban sprawl.
“We were able to come into legislative hearings and say: Here’s a map of Missoula’s zoning, here’s where you can build duplexes, and here’s where you can’t. And then we’d put a map next to it of Los Angeles’ zoning, and they looked identical,” says Kendall Cotton, a prime mover behind the push for zoning reform. “We said: Look, if Missoula zones like LA, it’s going to grow like LA. And in 25 years, it’s going to look a lot like LA.”
The beauty of that argument is that it appealed to both sides of the political divide — and not just because everybody came together over their shared hatred of Los Angeles. Enacting a more permissive set of zoning rules gave everyone something they wanted. Lefty political leaders knew that sprawl fuels climate change and that housing shortages exacerbate inequality. Right-leaning folks hoped to preserve their right to build whatever they wanted inside their own property lines.
“When we put it on a map, it was undeniable,” Cotton says. “They had to face facts and admit that what their zoning code represents is not conducive to building all the homes they’re going to need.” Montana passed new rules to accommodate smaller multiunit buildings and allow duplexes anywhere single-family homes are. Neighborhoods can now put homes and businesses side by side. And cities now have to meet aggressive targets for new home construction.
Of course, the atlas alone won’t fix everything. Sometimes outdated, racist, exclusionary zoning rules exist because the people who already own homes have seen their values skyrocket and want to keep things the way they are. It’s hard to imagine a map solving that.
“Land-use policy is politics,” says Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute who studies housing. “We can say all we want about what the data show, and hopefully that can help make a political point. But in reality, this requires elected officials and community groups to make the case for change. That’s a political question, not a data question.”
Freemark thinks the National Zoning Atlas is likely to make more of a difference at the state level than the local one. Yes, cities and towns make their own zoning rules. But state governments can overrule them, and the atlas may arm them with the information they need to do so. That was certainly the case in Montana. “Local governments would say to us, confidentially, that they were thankful, because the statewide legislation forces their hand,” Cotton says. “They can say it’s the legislature’s fault: Sorry, NIMBYs, now we’re all in on zoning reform.”
Still, even when changes are implemented, it will take more than a single legislative session to solve a shortage created by decades of underbuilding. “The state of California has been passing zoning change after zoning change,” Freemark says, “but it’s still facing low housing construction statewide.” But we have to start somewhere — and the atlas offers us a chance, for the first time, to make sense of the housing mess we’ve created.
It’s no coincidence that Bronin, the founder of the atlas, loves Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities.” in the novel, a tale-spinning Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan dozens of cities in the emperor’s far-flung realm that may or may not exist, or may only exist because Polo describes them. That’s the thing about zoning: It doesn’t map what is (which homes are where) but what could be (which homes are allowed to go where). It’s a map of the future — and the future isn’t fixed. There’s an old saying: The map is not the terrain. That’s true. But the right map can change it.
Adam Rogers is a senior correspondent at Business Insider.
- EXCLUSIVE: Locals in Sulgrave called housing estate in village ‘horrendous’
- Locals say crime is so rife police use one local apartment as a holding cell
- Figures showed average property price plunged from £73,270 to £34,074
Locals living in the cheapest village in Britain claim they are helpless to stop house prices falling because crime is so rife in the area.
Properties in Sulgrave, located eight miles south of Newcastle, recently plummeted by 53.5 percent.
Startling figures showed the average property price plunged from £73,270 to £34,074 in the last year.
Residents say crime in the area is the main cause and even claimed incidents have got so frequent a local flat’s living room is used by police as a holding cell.
Others claim that young families are forced to regularly dodge used needles in the park and police patrols are a constant.
Within the suburb, which is part of Washington, a housing estate made up of Neville Court, Collingwood Court and Waterloo Court causes a litany of trouble in the area.
One man told MailOnline: ‘It’s horrendous over there. It’s absolutely horrible. If a bomb was dropped on it I don’t think anyone would care, apart from the people who live there.’
The crime-ridden compound of flats is covered with large metal gates and spiked rails, which neighbours have compared to a “prison”.
Fly-tipped rubbish is strewn across communal spaces and a number of windows and doors can be seen to be boarded up with signs warning of CCTV.
Jessica Kitchin, 28, has lived in Sulgrave her whole life. The Asda worker said she worries for her child’s safety after discovering needles in their local park.
She said: ‘There’s always something going on, there are always some sort of sirens going off.
‘There’s a large police presence around here. I’ve seen needles on the path and needles in the park.
‘As a parent, it makes you worry. I don’t want my child to be playing where there are discarded needles or drug users.
‘Someone jumped – or was pushed – off the bridge nearby, things like that are always happening.
‘We live in my dad’s house and we’re saving up to move away eventually. The homes are cheap, I think there are a lot of landlords that own a number of flats and rent them out.’
Her partner, Zachary Hallowell, 28, moved to the area five years ago from Whitley Bay, North Tyneside.
The Sainsbury’s worker added: ‘There was an explosion in the block of flats a while back, I think the guy was trying to steal his neighbour’s electricity or gas.
‘A Christmas tree in one of the houses behind ours was set alight last month.
‘The block of flats looks like a prison, it’s covered in a big metal fence and barbed wire.’
One anonymous resident, who lives one street away from the ramshackle apartment complex, said: ‘I wouldn’t want to live in there. I was told the police use one of the flats as a holding cell because there’s so much crime but I don’t know how true that is.
‘You see a lot of police cars patrolling the streets or attending to something.
‘It’s horrendous over there. It’s absolutely horrible. If a bomb was dropped on it I don’t think anyone would care, apart from the people who live there.
‘I have two giant trees in my garden so I don’t have to look out onto the eyesore.’
However, the father claims the surrounding Sulgrave village is a nice place to live.
He added: ‘Some of the flats are only £350 a month to rent out so it is cheap. Apart from the flats, it is a nice area to live.
‘I’ve lived here for 13 years. My son, 12, plays in the street with the other kids and you get to know the parents.
‘A lot of people own their own homes and have been here for years.’
Another neighbour, who did not want to be named, added: ‘I pay £400 for rent but I’m trying to move as fast as I can.
‘I broke up with my partner in November and was living in hotels, I found this because it was cheap. My neighbours door is always bashed in. It’s awful.’
However, others claim they wouldn’t dream of living anywhere other than the inexpensive village.
Mum-of-two Angel Kent moved into a three-bed council house nine months ago and pays just over £400 per month in rent.
The 23-year-old said: ‘There are some people who have been released from prison and live in the apartment complex but they stick to themselves and don’t cause you any bother.
‘They actually ask if you want hello with the pram and always say hi.
‘My uncle lives over there and they’re nice, if he asks them to turn their music down they do.
‘I used to knock about here as a teenager and nothing happened then either.
‘For a long time, it didn’t have a community feel but it’s starting to get that back. There are soft plays and things for the kids opening up.
‘You’re near to a high street and other amenities. I have a lot of family close by.
‘People stay here because it’s friendly, family are close by and it’s cheap. There are also two schools in the area so it’s great for families.’
Ken Pringle purchased a spacious two-bedroomed flat in Collingwood Court that spans over two floors for just £33,000 back in 2022.
The 65-year-old even has a large garage outside for storage. The plant operator said: ‘It looks rough but it’s nice.
‘I can’t complain about the price, it was only £33k. I used to live in London and Middlesex and you would never get a flat like this for that amount down there.
‘It has a bad reputation because of drug use but that happens everywhere. When you’re in your flat and close the door, it’s peaceful.
‘There’s loads of space on the complex and there’s even a games room with a pool table to keep kids out of trouble.
‘I absolutely love living here. I’m here for the long haul, I won’t be moving again.
‘It’s a brilliant place to live, you’re close to a retail park, shopping centre and public transport. You’re in between Sunderland and Newcastle.
‘It was state of the art when it was build in the 60’s.’
John Webster, 69, a retired trainee store manager said: ‘There is a community feel, I’ve lived here for 25 years.
‘I get a pensioners discount on rent and it’s very cheap. It’s a nice place to live, it’s peaceful – but I wouldn’t want to live in the flats.’
One pensioner, 69, a retired civil servant who has lived in the village for 39 years, said: ‘We first moved into the flats in the 80’s because they were ex-council and were selling them off quite cheap.
‘It had a really great community feel but a lot of people moved away. We moved just outside of the complex into our home.
‘There is some anti-social behaviour from inside the flats but the crime doesn’t usually spill into the rest of the village it’s contained in the complex.
‘It’s like a community within a community. There are police cars there quite often.
‘Our house was a bit more expensive than the average but it’s still a cheap place to buy.’
The latest crime figures for Washington show the Concord and Sulgrave area had the highest number of incidents in 2022 with 1,154 offences recorded.
The figures noted Concord and Sulgrave was the most dangerous neighbourhood in Washington for burglary, drug and public order offences as well as vehicle crime and violent and sexual offences.
A Northumbria Police spokesperson said: ‘We understand the corrosive and harmful impact that anti-social behaviour committed by a minority of individuals can have on the communities which we serve.
‘We carry out regular patrols to help reduce anti-social behaviour and disorder in the Sulgrave area and will continue to do so.
‘We are also involved in the Sulgrave Project, in which officers and representatives from our partner organisations regularly meet to discuss any issues affecting the area and how we can best tackle them.
‘As always, we take a proactive approach to tackling criminality of any kind and do our utmost to ensure that those responsible are identified and appropriately dealt with.
‘Anyone who is a victim of a crime or spots something suspicious in their community should inform us using the ‘Report’ page of our website or by calling 101.’