OPINION: Jackson can teach Whitefish a lesson

As I read the Daily Inter Lake article about the employee housing problem in Whitefish, I flashed back to my years in Jackson, Wyo., where the exact same condition existed.

Whitefish and Jackson are very similar in that they are both ski towns adjacent to national parks in areas of great natural beauty. They have nearly the exact same sources of income and share the common problems associated with a large influx tourists and wealthy new residents and escalating property values based on the ability of out-of-staters to pay artificially high prices for land and housing. Who can blame anybody for wanting to live here or think they should not be able to?

 I attended a meeting very much like the one that took place in Whitefish and listened to everybody’s proposed solutions to the problem. I don’t remember all of them but I remember one in particular and his words have stuck in my mind for 20 years. He stated that, “Working-class people are workers and they are resourceful. They will always find a way to work when they need to and if they don’t they move on. It is not the responsibility of the community or the property owners to provide them with the means to work, only the opportunity. It is not in the best interest of the property owners of Jackson Hole to provide low-income housing as it will surely reduce overall property values and there are many of us here who did not move to Jackson to live amongst working-class people.”

I really don’t know how that guy got out of there alive or even if he did. I surely do not believe that is the prevailing attitude but I guarantee you it is out there to some extent and will have some influence on the solution to the problem.

Back then (1990-2000) before the Internet and cellphones people had to have money to buy into and live in Jackson. They arrived with a lot of money and surely didn’t make much while they were there. There was just no practical way to do that. As a home inspector I looked at houses for new residents on a daily basis and met over 1,000 of them. I met unemployed young snowboarders that had no jobs and bought multi-million dollar houses. I inspected homes for people who had never been to Wyoming and bought 10,000 square-foot vacation homes over the phone. Property values were ludicrous. My best friend sold an 1,100 square-foot home with no garage, that needed paint and a new roof, and sat on a postage-stamp size lot for $425K in 2000. He received multiple cash offers the day he put it in the paper. No Realtor needed. He upgraded to a larger home he now shares with his two daughters. They were educated in Wyoming and have master’s degrees in education and teach in the public schools there. He is educated, resourceful, and Real Estate savvy and he told me there is no way either girl will every be able to buy a home there and really can’t even afford rent! And he has years of experience there and is very involved in the community.

Housing prices escalate at an even greater rate now that people of less wealth can purchase high priced homes because they can get mortgages based on high incomes as they can work at home over the Internet and earn New York and Silicon Valley wages here in the Flathead. How can someone cleaning rooms, working at a retail store or restaurant, or laboring in the trades as I did, ever hope to enter the housing market when that is the competition? Sorry to disappoint, but it can just not happen. No offense, but those are the plain and simple facts. Supply, demand, ability to pay.

For many years I worked very hard in Jackson and tried to get to a point where I could live and work in the same town. As a carpenter there, I made better wages than I ever dreamed of, but as time passed the vision of affording a home became more and more distant. I lived in Victor, Idaho, and drove the 8,500-foot Teton Pass every day (sometimes twice). It is treacherous and long. Closed often in winter due to snow. I did that for eight years so nobody can say I didn’t try. It just was not going to happen.

I moved on to Kalispell. I sympathize with the many people who face what I did long ago and would love to suggest a solution but I can’t. Well I can, but completely shutting down all the Internet might create a different set of problems.

I have done 4,000 home inspections here in the Flathead and meet new residents on a daily basis. The income of the average new home-buying resident greatly exceeds that of the locals, myself included. That is not going to change and the cycle it sets in motion has no simple solution. I am concerned as I have two sons and they will face the same difficulties as my friend’s daughters.

I recommend that those trying to find some relief to the problem visit with the commissioners in Jackson, Wyo. They won’t learn the solution as the problem still exists there but they can at least learn what didn’t work and not waste time pursuing those ideas, and might even be able to pool knowledge and get somewhere. And in regards to the statement in the Inter Lake that the issue is reaching “crisis level,” I reply “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Marty, of Kila, owns Procheck Home Inspection.