Last week on the podcast, Cody Townsend and I talked about the affordable housing shortages and the profusion of short term rentals that have become increasingly common in mountain towns. This week, our guest is Dr. Jenny Stuber, a sociologist and author of the book, Aspen and the American Dream: How One Town Manages Inequality in the Era of Supergentrification.
In our conversation today, Jenny talks about some of the policies that the town of Aspen has employed, and which of them might be applicable to other towns trying to navigate the needs of full-time residents, part-time residents, local workers, and the visitors that many of these towns rely on.
So whether you live in a mountain town or love to visit them, our hope is that this conversation will help you better understand and think through the various factors and forces at play, and how we all can work to mitigate them.
TOPICS & TIMES:
- Jenny’s history with Aspen (3:25)
- Growth in mountain towns (7:21)
- “Standing up to capital” (16:22)
- Locals & visitors (22:59)
- Affordable housing (30:36)
- The “not in my backyard” problem (37:16)
- The Covid factor (46:16)
- Short-term rentals (52:49)
- Economic Development offices (1:01:32)
- Manufacturing in mountain towns? (1:06:44)
RELATED LINKS
Great move, extending your range of subject matter. Can’t go wrong chatting with smart, thoughtful people, on interesting and relevant topics. More please.
This was awesome. More mountain town policy podcasts indeed!
This was excellent and terrifying. In VT we’re seeing this move at an almost incomprehensible speed. On the market right now you can by either a tear-down (for $150k) or a million$+ (also often over-priced) home. It goes up from there. So many great and salient insights from Dr. Stuber:
First, someone who can contemplate buying a $350K SECOND home in ASPEN has an *arguably* legit case to be middle class! (Only slightly tweaking her here.)
Thanks for the great content.
Nice. Great topic. Same deal here in parts of New England. Check out the antics going on on Nantucket with short-term rentals.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nantuckets-short-term-rental-war-is-pitting-neighbor-against-neighbor-11623326401
Great Podcast!
Even though it’s about mountain towns I think about 70% or more of the same housing problems are becoming an issue in many areas like where I’m at here in the PNW.
Appreciate the dissection of a complicated issue. There’s always going to be more demand than supply for living in the mountain west. Places like Aspen, Jackson, and Telluride have always been tourist based economies for the rich. But I wish there was more discussion on how the trend has seeped its way into once non-tourist and off the beaten path places like a certain town in Montana that starts with a B. My hometown used to just be a town that happened to be in the mountains. Now it’s turned into a trendy ‘mountain town’ with twice as many people; mostly from out of state. It’s not just the wealthy that are creating housing issues; it’s just more and more people moving to these places. Demand > supply and will be until we run out of water or the fires make it impossible to live here anymore. Then as western civilization always does, we’ll move on to the next best place and ruin it.
Great episode. As others have mentioned, these dynamics are also at play in seasonal coastal communities. Demand will always outstrip supply. My issue is when people leave a community where they made their money, and they leave because they prefer the new community, but then they go and try to make the new community like their former community: sterilized, overdeveloped.
Then the less wealthy but more interesting folks will move on to more affordable locations (and displace the poor living there aka gentrify), make them desirable, and the wealthy will follow and repeat the cycle. Same thing happens in urban neighborhoods.
Aspen Highlands is so fun, but Aspen is ridiculous. Coffee! Aspen’s second most popular stimulant!