Julie Brown Davis writes: South Lake Tahoe is like many resort towns in the West, where tourism is the main driver of the economy, and has been for the last century.
Today, the Tahoe area sees an estimated 15 million visitors a year. A vast majority of jobs are in the service industry. Half of the city’s residents earn less than $49,000 a year.
With a $655,950 median sales price for single-family homes, locals can’t compete with out-of-town buyers looking for second homes. So, like many mountain resort communities where housing and wages are grossly mismatched, South Lake Tahoe is losing its full-time residents.
In Park City, Utah, 66% of the homes are empty six months out of the year or more, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data in 2022. Compare that to Salt Lake City, one mountain pass and a county line away, which has a vacancy rate of only 5%, and it becomes evident how this particular element of the housing crisis isolates itself to small mountain communities that rely on a local workforce.
Read more about how housing shortages are forcing resort towns to address second-home ownership in their communities.
More in The West
- Elon Musk has a warning about California (POLITICO)
- In long lines, Nevada early voters say this is election of their lifetimes (The Nevada Independent)
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