The final two speakers at the annual Routt County Economic Summit earlier this month told a sobering, cautionary tale of reductions in the civically engaged middle class in desirable mountain communities and how Steamboat Springs is heading down the same path.

Relating personal experiences and statistical analysis, former Pitkin County Commissioner Mick Ireland and Yale University Professor Justin Farrell talked about how Steamboat Springs can try to balance growth by looking at the policies and past mistakes and successes of towns such as Aspen and Jackson, Wyoming.

In a presentation of comparisons, Ireland pointed out how Steamboat is showing trends similar to Aspen, leading to a reduction in middle-class residents. Data in both cities shows declining voter registration numbers in short-term rental housing zones, increasing non-local ownership of homes leading to skyrocketing housing costs and decreasing birth rates by families pinched by tough economics and costly housing.

Steamboat “has all the earmarks or symptoms of what happened in Aspen,” Ireland said in a follow-up interview. “My argument, as presented, is that Steamboat Springs, Jackson Hole, Vail and Breckenridge differ in degree but not in kind on the impact of wealth inequality, tax policy and short-term rentals in hollowing out resort communities as workers and middle-class residents are driven out by luxury uses.”

Ireland joined sociology professor and researcher Farrell, author of “Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West,” in discussing the complex relationships between land, wealth and community in mountain towns.

The talks were part of the day-long Economic Summit on May 9 presented by the Steamboat Springs Chamber and Routt County Economic Development Partnership.

John Bristol, executive director at the Economic Development Partnership, said the final afternoon sessions focused on learning from other mountain communities in the West by looking at the decisions, challenges and opportunities “and what we should be thinking about here.”

Bristol said desirable mountain towns are “balancing some pretty tough pressures and protecting community character and heritage, tackling the realities out there around housing affordability and workforce stability.”

The speakers discussed the big picture of how mountain communities experience increased influxes of wealthy residents along with rising housing prices that impact existing residents and lower-income individuals who form the backbone of tourism-heavy economies.

Ireland, a former three-term mayor in Aspen who has presented data on housing and tax issues for 30 years, listed major reasons behind the mountain town housing crisis. Ireland said second-home ownership becomes a driver and consumer of service-sector employment, which then requires more housing for workers.

“Instead of providing workers, (second-home) properties now need to import service workers from outside the community to do the cleaning, cooking and maintenance that middle-class and working families generally do on their own homes,” Ireland said.

Increased second-home ownership makes housing more scarce and increases demands on existing housing. He said increasing amounts of short-term rentals ties to increases in wealth in the higher-income bracket when those individuals buy mountain housing for real estate investments and second homes.

“The working local is hard-pressed to compete in a real estate market where outsiders with enormous wealth are competing for the same properties,” Ireland said. “Second-home uses squeeze out local buyers as there are fewer properties priced to local working- and middle-class income earners.”

The speakers said the economic and housing crunch makes it increasingly difficult to retain middle-class employees and maintain community character with a shrinking employee pool and long commutes for workers from outside communities.

Ireland presented a map that showed a reduction in 183 registered voters from 2020 to 2024 in the southeast section of Steamboat where there is a concentration of short-term rentals. He believes registered voters are generally the civic-minded individuals who get involved in local campaigns, service groups and nonprofit organizations.

In a chart, Ireland showed the categories of housing in Steamboat that are owned by outside owners versus local individuals. Residential condominiums in Steamboat rank the highest in outside ownership at 73.4%, Ireland noted. In residential townhomes, 52.9% have outside ownership as do 39.4% of residential duplexes.

Ireland said local ownership of residential single-family homes is generally the last category to move to non-local ownership, yet that percentage has increased to 26.6% in Steamboat. That equates to 689 single-family homes in Steamboat owned by non-local individuals out of a total 2,596 single-family homes, he said.

Ireland believes homeowners volunteer at a higher rate than renters. Workers, if not worn out from long commutes, may volunteer in the towns where they live rather than where they commute to work, Ireland said.

“It’s second-home and short-term rental use that is driving much of the affordable housing shortage by changing the use of property to second-home tourist use,” Ireland said. “Single-family homes, the bedrock of local community, are being converted to second-homeowner use.”

The longtime Pitkin County leader said investments in short-term housing, which can operate similar to commercial lodging properties, increase those housing valuations and further drive up the cost of other homes, putting prices “further out of reach” for middle-class residents.

Libby Christensen, chair of the Economic Development Council of the Economic Development Partnership, reminded the audience that the concern of a significant percentage of non-local property ownership also applies across all of Routt County.

“This has important implications how we manage our lands, how we make decisions; it’s not just City Council but also county, and our community cohesion,” Christensen said.

According to Routt County Assessor Gary Peterson, 47.3% of property ownership in Routt County is listed with a mailing address outside of the county.

As Christensen introduced social scientist Farrell’s talk about his research on rural communities in transition, she noted “his work speaks directly to the tensions we continue to navigate here” that have “only been exacerbated since COVID.”

“We continue to struggle with economic opportunity versus affordability, conservation versus access, and tradition versus transformation,” Christensen said. “This is a really timely and important conversation for us all to have, and I hope it continues to spark discussions.”

Farrell closed out the Economic Summit with data from Jackson Hole, as well as Bozeman and Big Sky, Montana, noting “similar patterns are obviously unfolding here in Steamboat.” Farrell said the Western Slope counties of Routt, Eagle, Pitkin and San Miguel were all ranked as top “wealth attractor” counties in the U.S. from 2014-2022 based on outdoor attributes.

Farrell said the community questions are difficult to answer because “we lack the cultural scaffolding that once supported our ability to have shared answers and to come up with those — I think it’s coming apart.”

“Institutions and relationships that give us a common civic language, a shared presence together like this, have been fraying for decades,” Farrell said. “That civic muscle once built by steady participation in civic life has atrophied.”

He said the key to developing solutions for mountain town challenges is continuing social structures of neighborhood groups, civic clubs, sports leagues, churches and town halls “where people come together face-to-face, build trust, try to solve problems and practice caring for something bigger than themselves.”