{"id":16387,"date":"2021-07-28T01:51:03","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T01:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=16387"},"modified":"2021-07-27T19:56:13","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T19:56:13","slug":"no-vacancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/28\/no-vacancy\/","title":{"rendered":"No Vacancy"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Valley housing crisis escalates, <\/i><\/span>so do the numbers of Airbnbs<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Eric Valentine<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Ketchum city council member and Airbnb operator Jim Slanetz. Photo credit: City of Ketchum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When former Valley resident Mark Oliver announced he\u2019d be closing down his Ketchum-based hotel and entertainment venue known as the Hot Water Inn, he left a massive Facebook post that was largely positive and grateful. But the post from April 2019 also contained a sincere warning:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis leads me to the lack of housing, VRBO, AirBnB and Homeaway,\u201d Oliver wrote in his Dear John. \u201cIf you own a rental and currently do this, I don\u2019t fault you for doing so, but know doing this is killing this town.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While it\u2019s a stretch to call Oliver\u2019s words prophetic\u2014every resort town has for years been dealing with similar affordability issues when it comes to housing its working class\u2014it\u2019s not a stretch to say the Valley\u2019s housing challenges have become the Valley\u2019s housing crisis. Mayors and other leaders here are making regional and national news for considering \u201ctent cities\u201d as a band-aid to the issue. A July issue of \u201cThe Wall Street Journal\u201d had this headline and underride: \u201cKetchum, Idaho, Has Plenty of Available Jobs, but Workers Can\u2019t Afford Housing: Businesses in the town, near the Sun Valley ski resort, can\u2019t fill openings as applicants are unable find a place to live; mayor proposed letting workers pitch tents in a park.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Tell us something we don\u2019t know<\/span><\/p>\n

While the WSJ article does what WSJ articles do\u2014craft a perfectly told journalistic story\u2014it may not have covered the whole story. The article points out the age-old market-driven issue of how the nature of resort communities makes them expensive to reside in and how the workers who make those communities run have trouble finding affordable places to live. It even deep-dived a bit to tell the plight of Ketchum city council member Michael David, a ski shop worker, who explained that he has been staying at friends\u2019 and relatives\u2019 vacation homes in recent years. <\/span><\/p>\n

What it didn\u2019t do was dive into the issue of temporary housing apps like the ones Oliver noted; specifically, how badly has the industry impacted housing availability. <\/span><\/p>\n

Although there\u2019s no comprehensive or perfect metric, common sense dictates that when one residential property is put into the vacation rental market, it\u2019s being taken out of the residential rental market. Assuming most working-class people can\u2019t afford to live alone, and since some working-class people actually have a spouse and children, it seems 3 is a safe number to use in the following math\/logic. <\/span><\/p>\n

According to Airdna, a leading vacation rental data aggregator, the Valley has a total of <\/span><\/p>\n

943 active units on apps like Airbnb, and almost all of them are entire homes, not single rooms. Multiply that by the number 3 and you get 2,829\u2014a tad more than the total population of Ketchum. Since 3 may be a factor too high, multiply the active units on Airbnb-type apps by 2 and you get 1,886\u2014about 500 more people than the population of Sun Valley. <\/span><\/p>\n

Incidentally, several of those housing units not available to residents are owned by Ketchum city council member Jim Slanetz, who acknowledges \u201cthe buzz on the street\u201d about his dabbling in Airbnb is not thought of positively. Slanetz explains that he is empathetic to renters and the challenges they face, but says, overall, he has actually added to the local housing supply.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve created more housing than I\u2019ve taken,\u201d explains Slanetz.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s in part because Slanetz has built single-family dwellings that he says he rents out long-term to residents. And attached to his personal residence are two additional dwelling units that are also rented out long-term to residents. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI basically live in a triplex where everyone renting here lives here,\u201d Slanetz said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Interestingly, two of Slanetz\u2019s Airbnbs today are not standard dwelling units anyway. They are treehouses, which were built almost a decade ago, Slanetz said, so that the rental income from them made it possible for him to make a life in the Valley pencil out.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI invested in this town. I didn\u2019t have a ton of money coming here but I took a chance and it worked out,\u201d Slanetz said. <\/span><\/p>\n

As for the traditional residential units of his that are off the residential market and on the Airbnb active list, Slanetz said those are all in the community core, which is zoned to be commercial or residential and in a resort town is understood to be largely short-term vacation spots, not working-class housing solutions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI could turn those into a bar\u201d or some other kind of establishment, Slanetz points out, but instead he is providing places to stay for people who end up frequenting businesses here.<\/span><\/p>\n

The math spells a big problem<\/span><\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the dilemma is still real. And it leads to the question: What can a city do about it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Just last week, Ketchum officials met with city leaders from Vail, Colorado, who faced\u2014and got one step ahead of, at least\u2014the same housing problem. They enacted and funded a law that paid residential homeowners to place deed restrictions on their units so only people in the local workforce would be allowed to live there. But it\u2019s not clear if that would pass muster in Idaho.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem lies at the state level,\u201d Slanetz said. \u201cPressure needs to be placed there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Slanetz is referring to the 2017 Idaho law on land use planning that prohibited local jurisdictions from denying people the right to list on Airbnb. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNeither a county nor a city may enact or enforce any ordinance that has the express or practical effect of prohibiting short-term rentals or vacation rentals in the county or city,\u201d the law states. It adds, \u201cNeither a county nor a city can regulate the operation of a short-term rental marketplace.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But it hasn\u2019t stopped Ketchum from taking action.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am delighted that the council supported our proposal to permit recreational vehicles (RVs) to be used as temporary housing on private land,\u201d wrote Ketchum mayor Neil Bradshaw.<\/span><\/p>\n

Permits will be required for qualified workers to live in an RV. <\/span><\/p>\n

The council also supported looking into regulation of short-term rentals by focus<\/span><\/p>\n

No Vacancy<\/b><\/p>\n

A look at each Valley city\u2019s number of active rentals on Airbnb and other temporary housing apps:<\/b><\/p>\n

Sun Valley: 351<\/b><\/p>\n

Ketchum: 482<\/b><\/p>\n

Hailey: 82<\/b><\/p>\n

Bellevue: 20<\/b><\/p>\n

Fairfield: 8<\/b><\/p>\n

Carey and Picabo data unavailable. <\/b><\/p>\n

Source: Airdna<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Valley housing crisis escalates, so do the numbers of Airbnbs By Eric Valentine When former Valley resident Mark Oliver announced he\u2019d be closing down his Ketchum-based hotel and entertainment venue known as the Hot Water Inn, he left a massive Facebook post that was largely positive and grateful. But the post from April 2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,82,88,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-community","8":"category-housing","9":"category-local","10":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16396,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16387\/revisions\/16396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}