The region’s popularity has seen a surge, sending real estate prices soaring and pushing locals out
While not everyone agreed with the guide’s blunt recommendation, the superlative spoke to a reality that’s become impossible to ignore: Tahoe had changed significantly in the pandemic yearsSigns of the region’s popularity are evident all around its tree-lined shores in the form of endlessly booked short-term vacation rentals and for sale signs that popped up outside modest family cabins and multimillion-dollar chalets alike.
The millions of visitors are sustained by a population of just 56,000 residents who keep the community running by working in law enforcement, fire departments and at local hospitals, staffing restaurants and ski resorts and teaching students. Those who have settled here permanently were usually drawn to the area’s natural beauty and outdoor lifestyle.
“We have extremely high land costs, compound that with some of the highest construction costs in the whole country and you have limited actual locations for those projects. It makes it extremely difficult,” said Daniel Fraiman, a developer in Tahoe. The area’s population was on the decline for 20 years, particularly after the great recession in 2008, but the area’s housing challenges began to pile up amid strict housing regulations and vocal opposition to affordable housing projects. Between 2012 and 2021, the region expanded its housing inventory by only 1%, most of which were large, expensive homes for second-home owners.
Brenda Heermann holds a sign discouraging tourists from visiting Meyers, California, a community near Lake Tahoe.More than 3,000 people moved to the basin in 2020 at the height of the pandemic – the largest one-year population increase on record – and the need for housing was greater than anyone had prepared for. Longtime residents found themselves with nowhere to go when their landlords announced they would sell their properties.
The region needs tourism to survive – something Kueker, who builds custom homes, knows personally. “We’re a resort town – we rely on that money. All my clients are from out of town,” he said. But without more affordable housing, “[Tahoe] will only be for the wealthy.”Twenty minutes from the lake’s north shore lies a vision of what a more sustainable Tahoe could look like.
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