Young families getting priced out of Park City housing market

PARK CITY — Can a community be complete if most of the people who work there can't live there? If the answer is no, then Park City is becoming a victim of its own success. Affordable housing for young families in Park City is quickly getting swallowed up by a surge in growth and development in the resort town.

"The community here in Park City is very, very special. Everybody has beautiful hearts for helping other people, so I like it living here," says Roberto Sosa. For the past few years, Sosa and his wife, Marisol, have been working in Park City and trying to find affordable housing for their family. That has often meant sharing a small apartment with other families.

The reality is that the Sosas would like to call Park City home but they can no longer afford to live there. "It's a little difficult about the prices and the rent. Here, it's very high," says Sosa. In fact, the family closed on a home in Kamas earlier this month. Sosa says, "It is cheaper there, like a half price than living here (Park City)."

Rob Harter is executive director of the Christian Center of Park City and also the Sosas' boss. Harter says, "If they (families like the Sosas) want to get a home, they usually go to Heber or they go to eastern Summit County, which is Kamas, Coalville, etc., because Park City has just priced them out."

Harter worries a lot about the clients that he serves, people who keep Park City running but can't afford to live in the community. "The trouble is for people who are in the service industry, it's very difficult to find housing permanently here," says Sosa.

Joann O'Brien is a Realtor in Park City with Media One Real Estate. She has lived in the area since the late 1980s and has seen the growth firsthand. Today, she says, "It's just extremely difficult to get into a house with a young family or starting a young family because it's going to be about $600,000 or more."

So, who can afford homes in Park City? O'Brien believes that "the second homeowner or the more established buyer is really pushing the first homeowner out" at current prices.

This month, Trulia.com, a national online residential real estate site — listed the average two-bedroom home in Park City for almost $800,000 and the average three-bedroom home for almost $1.4 million.

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City leaders are scrambling to address the problem. Liza Simpson is a Park City councilor. "Due to our (Park City's) success, our rousing success as a resort community, the entire community has gotten more and more expensive to live in," she said.

Too expensive, and not just for first-time homebuyers. "Even the well-to-do people who have two good jobs really can't get into anything here," says Scott Loomis. Loomis is the executive director of Mountainlands Community Housing Trust, a nonprofit group that is building and renovating affordable housing projects in the Park City area.

Gabe and Carrie Westberg are professionals with two good incomes who were priced out of a home in Park City. They recently purchased a home in Summit Park, about 20 minutes outside of Park City. The Westbergs love their fixer-upper. Gabe says, "It kind of feels like a tree house, which is killer."

However, Carrie says the experience of searching for a home in Park City was a bit frustrating. "Surprising, no, because it is Park City and you kind of know what's out there in real estate. But it was humbling and it was pretty discouraging too."

"Our young famlies aren't able to live here," says Rhoda Stauffer, housing specialist with the city of Park City. It's a trend Stauffer and other city leaders saw developing in the 2010 census but they are ready to turn it around.

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Simpson says the Park City Council has "committed just over $40 million in future funding from a variety of sources to tackle this issue. That's up from a previous commitment of just under $10 million."

That is money the city will use on more housing projects like the Snow Creek Cottages — two- and three-bedroom homes priced under $300,000. Stauffer describes the project saying, "The city owned this property. We decided to take the land costs out of it. We simply built the units and sold them, sold them basically for what it cost us to build the units."

In fact, Park City plans to use and reuse a lot of properties it already owns and work with organizations like the Mountainlands Community Housing Trust. Loomis says, "We've built 253 apartments, and/or purchasesd them, and 172 homes."

The nonprofit group built the Line Condominiums inside the city limits. The under $200,000 condos can't be resold for a profit. And the trust vows to keep creating affordable housing within the city and surrounding area until demand for it dries up. "There is no magic bullet, it is one unit at a time and one apartment complex at a time," says Loomis.

City and community leaders hope all the efforts will bring more young families back into the fabric of Park City. Realtor O'Brien says, "It's still a glorious place to live. This is a fabulous place to raise children. The air is clean, it's safe."

Vail Resorts' purchase of Park City Mountain Resort and The Canyons requires the company to build over 300 units on site at those resorts to house employees. Park City leaders say Vail will not be issued any new building permits until those requirements are met.

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