Month: August 2022

HAILEY, Idaho — Near the private jets that shuttle billionaires to their opulent Sun Valley getaways, Ana Ramon Bartolome and her family have spent this summer living in the only place available to them: behind a blue tarp in a sweltering two-car garage.

With no refrigerator, the extended family of four adults and two young children keeps produce on plywood shelves. With no sink, they wash dishes and themselves at the nearby park. With no bedrooms, the six of them sleep on three single mattresses on the floor.

“I’m very anxious, depressed and scared,” said Bartolome, who makes her living tending to the homes of wealthy residents but cannot afford even the cheapest housing in the famous ski-and-golf playground.

Resort towns have long grappled with how to house their workers, but in places such as Sun Valley, those challenges have become a crisis as the chasm widens between those who have two homes and those who have two jobs. Fueled in part by a pandemic migration that has gobbled up the region’s limited housing supply, rents have soared over the past two years, leaving priced-out workers living in trucks, trailers or tents.

It is not just service workers struggling to hold on. A program director at the YMCA is living in a camper on a slice of land in Hailey. A high school principal in Carey was living in a camper but then upgraded to a tiny apartment in an industrial building. A City Council member in Ketchum is bouncing between the homes of friends and family, unable to afford a place of his own. A small-business owner in Sun Valley spends each night driving dirt roads into the wilderness, parking his box truck under the trees and settling down for the night.

The housing shortfall is now threatening to paralyze what had been a thriving economy and cherished sense of community. The hospital, school district and sheriff’s office have each seen prospective employees bail on job offers after realizing the cost of living was untenable. The Fire Department that covers Sun Valley has started a $2.75 million fundraising campaign to build housing for their firefighters.

Already, restaurants unable to hire enough service workers are closing or shortening hours. And the problems are starting to spread to other businesses, said Michael David, a Ketchum council member who has been working on housing issues for the past two decades.

“It’s kind of a house of cards,” he said. “It is close to toppling.”

Built as a destination ski resort to mirror the iconic winter appeal of the Alps, the Sun Valley area has grown into an exclusive enclave for the wealthy and famous, drawing Hollywood celebrities, political elites from Washington, DC, and business titans from Wall Street, many of whom gather each year for Allen & Co.’s annual media finance conference, known as the “summer camp for billionaires.” They have scooped up desirable vacation properties nestled next to winter ski lodges and summer golf courses, away from the gawking crowds of their home cities.

With the onset of the pandemic, the region saw an influx of wealthy buyers looking for a work-from-home destination with plentiful amenities, and the migration sent housing costs soaring even further. In Ketchum, the town next to Sun Valley, officials found that home prices shot up more than 50% over the past two years, with the median reaching about $1.2 million. Two-bedroom rentals went from less than $2,000 a month to more than $3,000. Those jolts came after two decades of minimal residential construction in the city and a dramatic shift in recent years that converted renter-occupied units into those that were either kept largely vacant by their owners or used as short-term rentals.

Similar trends are happening in resort towns across the Rocky Mountain West, including Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Aspen, Colorado; and Whitefish, Montana. Although some larger employers, including the Sun Valley Co., have developed dorm-style living options for seasonal workers, those have done little to change the housing trajectories for the broader communities.

People filed into a regional food bank in Bellevue, Idaho, one recent afternoon, ordering boxes of food from a warehouse stocked with cereal, fresh produce and Idaho potatoes. One family there said they were being evicted from the trailer park where they live because the land was going to be redeveloped. They had been unable to find a new place and were fearful about what was coming next.

The food bank has experienced a surge in demand in the past two years, serving about 200 families each week to nearly 500 with the number still climbing, said Brooke Pace McKenna, a leader at the Hunger Coalition, which runs the food bank.

“More and more, we are seeing the teachers, the policemen, the Fire Department,” McKenna said. Kayla Burton had grown up in the Sun Valley region and moved away after high school more than a decade ago. When she returned last year to take a job as a high school principal, she and her husband de ella, who is a teacher, were shocked at how hard it was to find a place to live. Home prices were spinning out of control, she said, even for places that were in desperate need of repairs. When rentals became available, the properties were flooded with applicants. The couple looked at trying to build their own place but found that the cost was far out of reach.

Burton and her husband moved into a camper on their parents’ property. The couple have since managed to find a unit inside an industrial building with no air conditioning, leaving them wondering if it is the kind of place where they would want to start a family.

“We are in this weird limbo spot in our lives right now,” she said.

With some job applicants unwilling to make the move, the region’s school district now has 26 job openings, some that have gone unfilled for months. The district is working on plans to develop seven affordable-housing units for employees.

Gretchen Gorham, co-owner of Johnny G’s Subshack sandwich shop in Ketchum, said that although it was vital to find housing for firefighters, teachers and nurses, she also worried about the many people who service vehicles, equipment and homes.

This year, Ketchum officials asked voters to approve a tax increase to fund affordable housing for hundreds of workers over the next 10 years. It did not pass.

“We live in a town of Wizard of Oz,” Gorham said. “People say one thing, and then behind a closed curtain, they’re doing another.”

Officials in the region have been reaching for Band-Aid solutions. In Hailey, city rules prohibit RVs from parking on private property for more than 30 days, but council members have agreed not to enforce those rules for now; as a result, RVs can be seen in driveways and side yards across town. In Ketchum, officials considered opening a tent city for workers but decided against the idea. So, in an area whose main asset is its spectacular wilderness, some people have taken refuge in the woods.

Aaron Clark, 43, who owns a window-washing business, lost his long-term rental this past spring when the landlord sold the property for well beyond what Clark could afford. Knowing the exorbitant cost of all the other options around him, Clark moved into the box truck he uses to shuttle his ladders and washing equipment.

Inside the truck, he has a bed and cabinets, and he recently added amenities such as a sink with running water and solar power. He also got a refrigerator, so he no longer has to keep restocking an icebox for his food from it. Out the back is a shower hose with heated water.

Each night, when he’s done working, he drives out into the wilderness to park for the night. One recent day, he found a spot at the end of a potholed dirt road, next to a stream, where he spent a bit of time assessing the cryptocurrency market on his computer and then played fetch with his dog. Clark said he had found joy in the lifestyle, which at least has allowed him to save for when he eventually reenters the housing market.

But it has its challenges.

“It is a drain, every day, deciding, ‘Where am I going to park, where am I going to go?’” he said. “You get off work, you are tired, you are hungry, you are dirty, and now you have to decide what you are going to do next.”

For the region’s many Latino workers, about one-fourth to one-half are living in difficult situations, said Herbert Romero, co-founder of the Hispanic LatinUS Leadership Task Force of Blaine County, a group that works with the community. He said he had seen up to 10 people living in two-bedroom mobile homes. Others are living on couches. Some have been living in vehicles.

Ricky Williams, 37, grew up in the region before moving away and starting a career in firefighting. A year ago, he and his wife planned to return to the Sun Valley area, anticipating a high cost of living but still unprepared for what they would find.

He recalled checking out one dilapidated home that was on the market for $750,000 — well beyond their budget with him as a full-time firefighter and his wife as a small-business owner — and there was a rush of potential buyers on the day it was available to see. He said the couple was lucky to get one of the Fire Department’s existing housing units, paying discounted rent to live next to a fire station in exchange for being on call outside regular work hours.

Williams said he feared what was becoming of his hometown as he watched people priced out and moving away.

“It’s affected so many of my friends and family,” he said. “I came back here to this community to give back to the community. And I kind of see it slowly drifting away. It’s pretty heartbreaking.”

Gov. Andy Beshear pledged the state of Kentucky’s support in securing housing for residents affected by the flooding and paying for the funerals of the more than two dozen victims ahead of more heavy rain expected this week.

“The next couple days are going to continue to be tough, but I promise you life will get better,” Beshear said in a news conference on Sunday. “We will get everyone stabilized and in some form of housing, and we will remove the debris and we will move forward.”

At least 28 people have died following severe storms that led to mudslides, landslides and record flash flooding, Beshear said. Four children — siblings ranging in age from two to eight years old — are among the dead.

As many as 37 people were unaccounted for, according to a daily briefing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

On top of that, more flash flooding was possible in portions of Appalachia on Sunday and Monday as the latest storms roll through, the National Weather Service said. Rainfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour were possible in some of the same areas that were inundated last week.

A dozen shelters were open for flood victims in Kentucky with 388 occupants on Sunday, according to FEMA.

‘Bodies for weeks’

On an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning, Beshear said he knows “of several additional bodies” and that the death count will continue to rise, with the affected areas having received between 8 and 10 1/2 inches of rain .

“With the level of water, we’re going to be finding bodies for weeks, many of them swept hundreds of yards, maybe a quarter mile plus from where they were lost,” Beshear said.

In a YouTube video posted on Sunday, the governor said that his staffers were aware of “additional bodies that have been recovered” but could “not confirm those deaths at this time.”

At the news conference, Beshear said the region was facing a “moderate risk of excessive rain,” and that some areas could see flash flooding. Several counties remained under flood warnings and flood watches on Sunday and into the next few days, according to the National Weather Service.

“It really hurts the morale of folks that have seen this amount of rain,” the governor said of the expected rain. “We hope, and we certainly don’t believe for the region, [that] it’s going to cause additional massive flooding, but we have to be prepared,” he said.

Rescue officials have been struggling to reach hard-hit areas, some of which are among the poorest in the nation.

At the news conference, the governor became emotional as he described how poor cellphone service and undercounts of the population made it hard to determine how many people are missing.

“I wish we had a firm, real number of the people that are missing,” he said.

The National Guard has conducted more than 1,000 rescues through air lifts, Beshear said.

Moving forward

Amid complaints that hotels, motels and shelters in the area are full, Beshear said at the news conference that the state government plans to work directly with hotels to fund rooms, and that officials are setting up a shelter at Buckhorn Lake State Resort Park.

“Our commitment is we’re going to get everybody back up on their feet — every single person, no matter how long it takes and no matter what it takes,” Beshear said at the news conference.

The governor urged people to donate new clothes and drinking water, and to send money to the Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund, which he said will pay for the funerals of the victims.

“People shouldn’t have to go through a reimbursement process that takes months when they’re grieving for a loved one,” the governor said. “No forms, no applications, we’ll work directly with the funeral homes.”

FEMA announced Friday that President Biden issued a major disaster declaration, making federal assistance available to the state.

On Saturday, Biden said he added Individual Assistance to that declaration with the help of further assisting displaced families.

Additionally, 80 FEMA workers are on the ground and the governor plans to request more, Perry County Judge Executive Scott Alexander said at the news conference.

“This is not going to be an easy rebuild, but I’m here to tell you that the commonwealth of Kentucky is going to stand with you every single day until it’s fully rebuilt,” Beshear said.

‘A long process’

In the tiny community of Wayland, Phillip Michael Caudill was working Saturday to clean up debris and recover what he could from the home he shares with his wife and three children. The waters had receded from the house but left a mess behind along with questions about what he and his family will do next.

“We’re just hoping we can get some help,” said Caudill, who is staying with his family at Jenny Wiley State Park in a free room, for now.

Caudill, a firefighter in the nearby Garrett community, went out on rescues around 1 am Thursday but had to ask to leave around 3 am so he could go home, where waters were rapidly rising.

“That’s what made it so tough for me,” he said. “Here I am, sitting there, watching my house become immersed in water and you got people begging for help. And I couldn’t help,” Caudill said.

The water was up to his knees when he arrived home, and he had to wade across the yard and carry two of his kids out to the car. He could barely shut the door of his SUV as they were leaving.

In Garrett on Saturday, couches, tables and pillows soaked by flooding were stacked in yards along the foothills of the mountainous region as people worked to clear out debris and shovel mud from driveways and roads under now-blue skies.

Hubert Thomas, 60, and his nephew Harvey, 37, fled to Jenny Wiley State Resort Park in Prestonsburg after floodwaters destroyed their home in Pine Top late Wednesday night. The two were able to rescue their dog, CJ, but fear the damages to the home are beyond repair. Hubert Thomas, a retired coal miner, said his entire life savings was invested in his home.

“I’ve got nothing now,” he said.

Harvey Thomas, an EMT, said he fell asleep to the sound of light rain, and it wasn’t long until his uncle woke him up warning him that water was getting dangerously close to the house.

“It was coming inside and it just kept getting worse,” he said. “There was, at one point, we looked at the front door and mine and his cars from him was playing bumper cars, like bumper boats, in the middle of our front yard.”

As for what’s next, Harvey Thomas said he doesn’t know, but he’s thankful to be alive.

“Mountain people are strong,” he said. “And like I said it’s not going to be tomorrow, probably not next month, but I think everybody’s going to be okay. It’s just going to be a long process.”