14338557:BrandoComando said:
This is a really, really good explanation of the housing crisis going on in Tahoe right now.
There are very few high-paying jobs there are in the Basin. Most high-paying jobs are small tech firms that moved their offices up from the Bay. A lack of high-paying jobs is common with a lot of mountain communities, but there are some additional geographic factors that affect Tahoe.
You explained the first issue with short-term rentals pricing people out. Four hours to the east is one of the largest, highest-earning metro areas in the country. These are hundreds of thousands of people with excess funds looking to recreate. Tahoe is their first choice. It's easy for them to price out locals with their fuck-you tech money. With how airbnb and vrbo created their business models, second homes have become investments that pay for themselves. Who wouldn't buy a sweet vacation home that paid its own mortgage? When there are no legal barriers, it only makes sense to buy when you can afford the down payment.
Second, 30-45 minutes to the east is Reno and Carson. They're more affordable communities, which means workers are willing to work for less pay since their living expenses aren't as high. Minimum wage in CA is almost twice the minimum wage in Nevada. There's a daily commute of hundreds of workers over Spooner Summit each day to fill the minimum wage service jobs in South Lake. The same thing happens for Truckee and North Lake with workers living in Reno on an even larger scale. If a business can fill their positions with out-of-towners, where's the pressure to increase pay to support locals?
Third, politics have been painfully slow to react. North Lake is in Placer County, which contains wealthy, conservative suburbs of Sacramento. These people love taking advantage of cheap rentals 2 hours up the hill. They don't live in the Basin, so they aren't seeing the effects of the crisis. Why would they vote to make their weekend getaways more expensive? The congressional district for the whole lake has the same issue. Sac suburbanites make legislative decisions for the whole region. Smaller, local politics feel pressured to protect the tourism industry that supports the Basin, and haven't supported local workers as much as they need to.
All of this travel and commuting increases vehicle traffic and puts further strain on the environment of the Basin. It's created an atmosphere that's hostile towards Bay Area travelers. Tahoe and its community is being taken advantage of and it's not reaping the benefits like it should. They need to tax the shit out of these rentals to the point where it discourages second home buying. If you buy a home and use it like a hotel, it should be taxed like a hotel. They need to subsidize affordable housing and cater less towards the tech billionaires who visit once a year and build fugly lakefront mansions.
Yeah, you pretty much nailed it, however... note that North Lake Tahoe is a mess of multiple counties. You have Placer County, yes, but you also have Nevada County which makes up most of Truckee, so places that are served by people who live locally, such as Olympic Valley, Tahoe City and the west side of the lake are more beholden to shit happening in Auburn than Truckee 10 miles away. Getting low-income developments approved is a total mess and municipal governments don't have the power to flex on the county.
El Dorado County where Southlake is has the same problem as Placer County.. the powers that be are down the road a few hours and the largest pop. center is El Dorado Hills, which is full of a bunch of white suburbanites who don't give a fuck any more than their Placer County contemporaries in Rocklin and Roseville.
There's always talk about getting something like a basin-wide bus system going, similar to what you have in Aspen/Carbondale or other ski town areas, however, good luck getting that done with 3 different California Counties, 3 different Nevada Counties, 2 sets of state laws, and and overwhelming ambivalence from the powers that be to care about the locals about public transportation. Doing anything Basin-wide is absolutely impossible at this time. The people in Tahoe feel like they are not being listened to by anyone for any of their legitimate concerns, and Its making things severely strained for the communities there.
It's just such a frustrating situation... like you said, the travel and commuting in the basin is putting a severe strain on the environment, but also takes a huge toll on the locals. I actually used to
hate powder days, especially on weekends because I would have to pay 4 bucks for a gallon of gas in my 10 year old car to drive 13 miles from truckee to olympic valley every day in stop and go traffic - it would take me a god damn hour in both directions, and all to make far less than I deserved for my labour and expertise.
I was able to eventually get a job within the confines of Truckee itself so I didnt have to go through the 89 gauntlet, and was being paid an acceptable amount, but the problem ultimately came down to housing, and I just couldnt find anything locally at the time. It was a pretty whack situation so I bolted the country again.
