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STATELINE, Nev. (AP) — Lake Tahoe's working class neighborhoods are suffering during an uneven economic recovery because of under-paying jobs, out-of-reach housing costs and aging infrastructure, according to a nonprofit group formed five years ago to develop strategies to diversify the economy.
More than 3 million visitors annually pump an estimated $2 billion into the Tahoe area's economy, but most tourists rarely see the blight off the beaten path where seasonal workers live in rundown apartments and old motel rooms converted into long-term housing, according to a recent report by the Tahoe Prosperity Center.
"It's a tough place to make a living," said Heidi Hill Drum, executive director of the center.
"Tahoe is always going to be a great place to visit. We need to make it a great place to live," she told the Tahoe Daily Tribune (http://tinyurl.com/jghnxyp ).
Among other things, the study entitled "Measuring For Prosperity," found that tourism-related jobs accounted for 50 percent of all jobs in the basin in 2003, but only 44 percent by 2013. Overall employment declined by 5,000 jobs during that period.
Unemployment has improved since 2010, but remains above state averages for both California and Nevada. Casino revenues have declined steadily since 2000, and dramatically since 2006 — trends that are much steeper in the Tahoe basin than Nevada overall, the report said.
"Newer hotel, restaurants and retail projects have had excellent success in the past couple of years," the study said. But many of the jobs are part-time and wages often too low to afford housing, so they commute from outside the basin to work.
"Young people may find many impediments to remaining in the region in terms of high housing costs, and lack of full-time living jobs," the study said.
Drum said the most surprising finding was that the region has a greater income-to-housing-cost disparity than even San Francisco — a metropolitan region commonly associated with a high cost of living.
The Tahoe region's average-household-income-to-home-value ratio is 10-to-1, meaning average home cost is roughly 10 times higher than average annual wages. San Francisco, by comparison, is 8-to-1.
Jesse Walker, a Tahoe-based economist who worked as a consultant on the report, said 3-to-1 is considered a more desirable, affordable ratio that exists in many other parts of the country.
The reason for such a discrepancy can be credited to low per-capita income. For example, the report says the average annual income for a South Lake Tahoe resident is below $25,000, the study said. Basin-wide, that average is in the low 30s to high 20s, while the median single-family-home price is closer to $500,000.
"If we don't do something to improve the ability for our workforce to afford quality housing, we are going to see them leave the basin in droves to pursue both housing and employment opportunities in Reno, Carson Valley and elsewhere," Walker said. "This is already occurring, and with the projected growth in Reno over the next five to 10 years, it will only get worse."
Drum agreed.
"The visitors will come anyway," she said. "If you create communities that have quality of life, it will benefit visitors. If we're raising the bar for our residents with restaurants, affordable housing and mixed-use development, it will benefit everyone.
"We're not talking about new development; we're talking about redevelopment," Drum added. "It's better for the environment. Outdated buildings are the main reason we're seeing sediment go into the lake. With redevelopment you get environmental benefits."
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