The 900-pound bull moose in the room

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

By Richard Anderson

It remains to be seen if Jackson Hole can develop its way out of its problems. Affordable housing certainly will allow more middle-class working families to continue to live in and contribute to the community, but will those affordable developments – whose affordability is achieved through density – adversely affect the natural environment for which we all feel a responsibility to protect? Quite possibly.

And is it true that affordable housing simply begets the need for more affordable housing, as some outspoken critics of recent dense proposals have said? The theory sounds reasonable: Middle-class families – be they providers of essential community services such as nurses, teachers and policemen or members of the service sector of the economy such as river guides, ski instructors or retail workers – end up requiring more services, which require more workers, which require more affordable housing, etc., etc.

But is there any data to back that up? Do middle-class families demand more or different services than families that can afford market homes or second-home owners that spend a few weeks out of the year in their condo and maybe rent it out on a short-term basis the rest of the year – or maybe not?

Doesn’t market-home development spawn the same need for electricians, plumbers, teachers, ski shop thralls, grocery store baggers? Don’t market-home owners attract out-of-town visitors who want to float the Snake, climb the Grand, ski the Village?

Sometimes it seems that, at the heart of the debate (or at least this aspect of the debate) lies a conversation Jackson Hole is not particularly excited to have: a conversation about class and entitlement and who deserves the privilege of living in Jackson Hole.

Pure, raw, survival-of-the-fittest capitalism would cull the weak (i.e. the poor or at least the not-wealthy) from the valley, leaving only those with the resources to buy a (on average) $1.2 million home, along with a few lucky (but aging) folks who bought in before home prices became a joke (or a nightmare), and of course those already ensconced in their affordable homes. Would that be acceptable? No doubt it would be for those lucky few, and probably less so for those still trying to figure out how to stick around in the valley.

But I’m loath to overgeneralize: Of course there are plenty of market homeowners who would acutely feel the loss of a diverse community. The tricky thing about having that conversation about class is that attitudes about such subjects don’t necessarily coincide neatly with income. Do they? We may never find out for sure, unless we address that 900-pound bull moose that has been in the room for quite some time now.

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The 900-pound bull moose in the room | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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