This case is exceptional, though, as it's not a big city in demand for its big-city-ness (where NIMBYs living there are going against the spirit of what makes the place successful); but rather, this is an out-of-the-way place, in demand for its out-of-the-way-ness, where NIMBY interests are aligned with what makes the place successful.

The people and developers interested in building there, are only interested because of the rate-limiting being applied to new construction there — which guarantees them (and everyone else who moved there previously) the cachet of exclusivity, and the inherent privacy of big-secluded-SFH-lot zoning.

But if those same people and developers were allowed to come in and build whatever they liked, as fast as they liked, they'd just flood the market with new construction — which would make a quick buck for them, but would destroy the only thing that makes anyone want to live there. People certainly don't live in a place like this for the vibrant community, nor for the amenities, nor — as should be evident from the article — for the jobs. They live there as a Veblen good. Making a Veblen good cheap defeats the purpose.

These sorts of rich privacy-oriented NIMBY communities — Beverly Hills is a well-known example of one — are certainly a bit ridiculous when they're taking up space in the middle of a big city, space that could otherwise have been put to use to densify that city and serve far more people who want to live in the greater area.

But in this case, there's no big city. Just a small town, in the middle of nowhere, full of NIMBYs. I'm not sure densification is the right solution. Maybe just let them have it, and choose somewhere else to live?

The problem is, "in the middle of nowhere" plus people who will throw down a million over asking all cash means that there's nowhere for people to live to bus tables, to run ski lifts, etc.

It's bad enough in SF with service workers commuting. The rich NIMBYs are going to find their idyllic paradise a lot less pleasant when they realize service workers aren't going to commute 3 hours each way from the nearest city just to bus their tables.

If they're rich, they should be able to easily solve this problem as soon as it starts causing trouble for them, by paying the workers much more money.

The article says doctors at the local hospital making offers on million dollar places are getting outgunned by out-of-towners making cash offers. It seems optimistic to think that anyone is going to pay e.g. someone working at the deli counter in the grocery store enough to afford the cost of living in the area.

And if somehow there is a push to increase minimum wage in the town to help with that, I guarantee I can tell you what will happen next: landlords will increase rents to slurp that into their accounts, leaving them with the same problem.

This doesn't make sense?

By definition, as long as there are more prospective renters than actual housing units available, prospective renters will compete with each other spontaneously by bidding up their offers. That's true everywhere.

That's just how competition and having multiple people submitting multiple offers work... the best offer is accepted.

One of the components of the solution is a property tax regime that strongly favors occupancy. Not a homeowner’s exemption.

If a house is going to be built, it should be used. Don’t let them sit empty.

Also one that favors ownership... 100% higher for winter properties, 400% higher for AirBnbs and rentals

I’m not sure I agree. In a nice ski town, a lot of people aren’t going to be able to afford to own. Because of the topography, you’re never going to be able to build as many housing units as you need to make them affordable for everyone. It’s just a fact of life. That’s what makes it especially important to use the homes you can build.

Rich people can afford those high taxes. Taxes don't get us to more housing. There have to be rules to build more housing. Nothing works without more housing being built, and housing has to be somewhat oriented toward more affordable housing (the missing middle).

Raising taxes for these groups is about curbing demand, which in theory should lower prices. I think the real problem is that there isn't actually that many people that would be affected by these taxes, but if you could show me 30% of a town was Airbnb, I could see it working.

Rich people own, poor people rent.

So we should tax the poor people more?

I see that. For mountain towns, there can be a practical constraint on the number of houses you can build, given the geography. The town would have to sprawl a long way, and people on the edge of town would be far away from all the services, and literally become marginalized. This is the complaint mentioned in the article about the proposed plan of building thousands of new houses. I don't know about Steamboat Springs, but this is a problem in other places I've been, where you've got a small, desirable town in a narrow valley between huge mountains: where will you build those new houses, 10 miles outside of town?

Seems weird that they'd want to build SFHs rather than condos. Ski towns love condos. The density keeps everything nice and walkable and touristy for the snowbirds — and they're easier to heat, too.

And also, the surrounding 10-200 miles outside of town is a National Forest.

These mountains towns are idyllic because they haven't been built up.

Is more people living in that area beneficial to society?

The subtext here is that the big seasonal employers can find anyone to work locally. And all the other businesses can't pay people enough to work on the lowest tier jobs. Pay people enough that won't hit their bottom line. So you really have the very rich and the somewhat rich fighting it out here. The solution would be temporary housing that is 20 miles away that they could bus in the workers but no one likes the way that would look.

Lower housing cost is generally beneficial to society. Making activities like skiing less exclusive and more accessible is also a benefit. One could argue that skiing doesn't directly benefit society. But by that logic there's not much benefit to art, entertainment, parks, and essentially anything other than food, housing, and healthcare.

Ski resorts are already way overcrowded, despite the insane lift prices. How is making it more accessible going to help anything? It's already at maximum capacity.

Build more mountains, duh! /s

If they really were at maximum capacity, then ticket sales would drop. But that's not happening.

No. Not if the price is at an equilibrium that optimizes for maximum capacity.

Then why are people spending so much to buy these houses? The demand is there, if the mountains really are as packed as you claim there wouldn't be so much demand to have easy access to the ski mountain.

This is my pet peeve. There is so much cheap land elsewhere but everyone HAS to live in Beverly Hills, 5th Ave, etc... etc...

Lots of places are just attractive because wealthy people live there and keep them nice. You densify it and it'll go to the drain quicker than anything.

I see a lot of talk of this 'increase supply' in Australia where house prices are out of control. Personally I think insatiable demand is a bigger problem and no increase in supply will fix it. Over last couple of decades we have had financial deregulation and cheap money - 30 year mortgages are a norm (used to be 20 years), tax system favoring property investment (losses claimed as tax return), global economy where anyone in the world can bid for local housing (e.g. rules change so foreign students can buy property), huge liquidity in pension funds (superannuation) allowed to do leverage/borrow so investment property can be purchased - again policy change in last decade or so. This is without even talking about stock reduction due to temporary rentals. I see big part of the problem interest groups driving policy change, rather then people wanting to live in desirable places. (edited - typo)

housing supply has outpaced population for a decade.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2023/dec/12/austra...

it's pretty impossible to take anything the media, lib/alp or industry say seriously when they got us where we are and are proposing more or of the same.

> State governments need to pass laws forcing cities to allow housing, or this will continue to just get worse and worse.

Why would the state do that?

States are run by politicians voted in by the people, who want their house prices to go up.

It's working as intended.

> States are run by politicians voted in by the people, who want their house prices to go up.

Or people who are there don’t want more people to be there.

Ski lifts, trails, etc all have capacity limits.

In this case, and frankly most cases, it's perfectly correct for the existing locals to not give a fig about anyone new trying to get in.

If they are as dense as they want to be already, then anyone else has no right to demand they get denser. The newcomers have no right to anything.

It's a problem that outsider newcomers are outbidding locals, and I don't know what the answer is to that problem, but I know the answer is not "Allow the newcomer outsiders to turn the place into some other kind of place for the benefit of someone else and to the detriment of themselves."

Absolutely one thing is for sure, that state governments should not pass any sort of laws that force the creation of more housing than the locals want, only that there is no racial/ethnic/sexual discrimination and maybe some minimum required spread to allow at least some places for all classes. IE the rich or white or whatever can't completely take ownership of all the shared public space and all possible properties, but the overall density doesn't have to increase if the current residents don't choose to.

Everyone only has a right to equal access. No one has a right to "you need to allow a developer to build denser housing in your neighborhood because I want to move in". It's as ridiculous as saying you need to let me rent a room in your house.

But isn't a zoning law that prevents the denser building an artificial restriction? So why do they have the right to demand whatever density is in place there? Why are the current residents entitled to a restriction that didn't apply to them when they moved in - after all, there could have been an even more restrictive limitation in place that would have prevented the original owners from moving in.

I sympathize with both ends of the conversation. Sure, maybe we don't want to turn that town into Manhattan or Tokyo, but this line of thinking is what creates the major housing crisis in California.

The zoning law is put in place by the people who live in the zone.

I think exactly the same thing about the housing crisis in California. I put the whole thing in scare quotes and don't recognize it as a crisis at all.

Other than the outbidder/displacer aspect I acknowledged, the "crisis" is nothing other than a bunch of people want something they have no right to.

I think the larger umbrella state and federal governments rights over smaller local municipalities is (or should be) limited to things like, you can't say "here, we're ok with discrimination" or murder or slavery etc. This housing & zoning thing could obviously also be a major tool for discrimination, so you have to watch for that.

But being as full as they want and saying "we're flattered, but no thanks" to more is not automatically discrimination.

The outbidders are a problem, and I don't know what the answer is for that, but probably anything simple that sounds good is probably wrong.

I think the same way that landowners colluding to keep rents high and keeping units vacant in lieu of renting at a lower price would be considered an anti-trust violation, homeowners voting for exceedingly strict zoning laws for self-benefit should be considered an anti-trust violation.

Your ownership of a house should not entitle you to decide what other people do with their land to such an absurd degree that you can manipulate the market in the area where you live.

No land within a country is it's own country. We are all members of communities.

That same argument does also apply to the larger state and federal community, but it applies to different classes of things at different scales, and needs to be justified by some need of the larger entity somehow. The local community gets to decide how dense they want to be unless the state can show that somehow the state actually requires that a particular town get denser for some reason.

Short of that, the current residents can absolutely collectively decide that one inconsiderate douche may not, for instance, operate a chicken farm in a residential neighborhood, or, allow a developer to increase the overall density within a given area where the voting majority of other residents don't want it.

If you want to have no such thing as zoning, so that every property owner is their own king of a 50 foot country, that should have to come bundled with an equal freedom of the other neighborhood kings to deal with the one pissing in the pool in whatever way amuses them.

> State governments need to pass laws forcing cities to allow housing, or this will continue to just get worse and worse.

Honestly, for places like this, they just need to pass laws forbidding anyone except bona fide residents of the community from purchasing a home in this area.

Already lived there full time for 5 years? Have a job offer at a recognized business in the area? Legitimate family connection? Etc? You're good.

Out-of-town millionaire? Have multiple homes across the country/world? Are an LLC? Get lost.

Sure it would prevent existing residents from cashing in on a boom, but who cares about that? I don't.