A few passing clouds. Low around 55F. Winds light and variable..

A few passing clouds. Low around 55F. Winds light and variable.

A picturesque seasonal tourist community becomes enmeshed in short-term rentals, flooding it with new wealth. Local government struggles to regulate the industry that fuels its economy as it worsens its housing squeeze. Soon, empty motels convert into “affordable” apartments for $2,100 a month, a nearly impossible rent for tourism industry wage-earners, bringing to bear difficult questions about whether to stay or go.

The town is Steamboat Springs, Colorado, not Traverse City, and the reporting is from the Associated Press, not the Record-Eagle. But just as a snowpants-clad child steps into the snowy footpath cleared by an adult, our community seems to trundle behind what’s happened in “already discovered” western communities, eyes too focused on following the ease of the pre-cut steps — not on where we’re going.

Simply, we need to do more, sooner, before those footsteps lead us to a place we don’t want to be.

Projects like the proposed Acme Township’s repurposing of the Kmart and Tom’s deserve balanced consideration. Housing — the project pledges to build 186 apartment units in the former parking lot — and repurposing some of the commercial space into warehouse and self-storage could be a good move. Good community-minded questions came forward about the compatibility of the uses and the developers, as the one-time president pleaded guilty in April to tax evasion. The current president, his son, says he has no ties to the project.

Stewardship needs to be a part of any equation as we’ve seen affordable housing rentals flip to market rate in relatively short order and subsidized housing hijinks, but exploring options is positive.

There’s more positivity on the legal front as well, as a Michigan court recently held a litigious private equity firm to the terms and faith of an agreement to keep 250 housing units for low-income seniors in Detroit run by a nonprofit, reports WBUR. The move may have implications across the affordable housing industry as a way to keep tax-credited projects affordable against investor actions.

Across the country, housing-strapped communities are trying new things. In one Georgia neighborhood, an experiment with intergenerational housing places an older adult at the helm in a temporary home for single moms. A community in England is giving breaks to developers in exchange for building 58 affordable homes. A nonprofit in Boise, Idaho is finding success in both land trusts and converted shipping container homes.

But a balanced approach will also consider short-term rentals as well as development projects, as the glut of one fuels the need for the other — and most of these development projects will involve tax subsidies of some kind.

The ability to keep this balance continues to wobble as House Bill 4722 legislation, powered by the real estate lobby, seeks to strip local prohibition of short term rentals. It passed the House and is now in Senate committee.

Back to Colorado: Steamboat Springs City Council passed a ban on new short-term rentals in most of town and voters will consider a ballot measure to tax the STRs at 9 percent to fund affordable housing projects.

The move, as expected, is wildly divisive.

But we should watch carefully, with our heads up and eyes forward on the whole landscape, instead of trudging in the larger footsteps before us.

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