Any thoughts on living near Ketchum, ID?

[Mosby]

Do you have a tent? https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/l...ents/277-6dcd3da9-7ce7-4722-81de-b1e379e0300a

I took a shower at the Ketchum YMCA a few years ago after an archery hunt. Cost $10 for the shower. Really nice YMCA. Met a nice older guy at a campsite. He made up a story about being on vacation and his wife going back to CA first. I would have bet a million bucks the guy was living out of his car and tent for $20 bucks a day, if he was paying at all.

 

[MuleyFever]

Actually never mind. Sorry to derail.

If you captured my original response and want to respond then ok but this topic is not what the OP asked for.

 

[Billinsd]

Supply and demand works the other way too.

Supply can go up and down as well as demand and they effect each other.

If there is a demand for more workers then more workers have to come. The unemployment rate as of 5/21 was 2.8% in UT. I am sure you are aware that 0% is not thought to even be attainable and that 2.8% is even below what many consider full employment. Simply paying more will not fill the

I think you are saying that if EVERY ABLE bodied, working age person in Utah was working and there was 0% unemployment, workers from outside of Utah would be required? Not necessarily, businesses could close. However, yes you would draw more workers to Utah. This is happening. Utah is drawing many workers from California who can't afford to live in California to Utah at a lower wage and much lower cost of living. What you are saying is like each state, like Utah and town like Ketchum is in a bubble and no one else from anywhere else is the country will come and fill the ranks, so immigrants, right, you didn't say illegals are required. I understand your point, but disagree. A good buddy told me the farmers 100 miles east of me need cheap immigrant labor or a head of lettuce will be $100 a head!! I said if lettuce becomes $100 a head, people won't buy it, or someone will invent a way of mechanically harvesting it with little labor. I am got guaranteed cheap produce or restaurants or other places that require cheap labor. I believe technology will soon solve our cheap labor problems. Freedom isn't free and no one owes anyone anything, except peace freedom and liberty.

 

[Poser]

The thing is with these super exclusive mountain towns is that, short of having direct family ties to the area, the primary desirability for a working class person to live and work there is the direct access to the available lifestyle. You can be a dishwasher, barista, bartender, cook, server anywhere. For that matter, you can be a firefighter, cop, EMT or middle school teacher anywhere. At what point does the commuting distance make such jobs untenable? It’s pretty standard for working class folks to live in their vehicles in Moab, but that gets really difficult to endure in colder areas. The underbelly of these exclusive mountain towns is that they also tend to have extraordinarily high suicide rates and it ain’t the rich folks committing suicide.

Why Deaths by Suicide Are So High in Ski and Snowboard Towns

These idyllic locales breed a particular kind of malaise.

www.google.com

And yet, someone has plow the streets, make the donuts, do the landscaping, staff the chairlifts (Aspen does an annual food drive to to feed the lifties), drive the school buses etc or the town can’t operate in a way that makes it desirable for the people who own homes with a median value of 1.3 million dollars. For that matter, on the affordability scale, a person would need to be making 100k a year to properly afford a 2 bedroom apt in Ketchum at an average cost of 3k a month. It would cost 9k just to move in to such an apt. The whole thing seems entirely unsustainable. Even if the rich folks are living there year around, you think their kids are going to be shoveling snow off roof tops, slinging chairlifts or stocking grocery store shelves for $11 an hour?

It would seem that such a dynamic has a peak and then It invariably crashes unless you have a population of willing workers who will tolerate (possibly extreme by american standards) substandard living conditions to plug the labor holes. Seriously, who is going to work as a janitor at ketchum middle school, commuting 4 hours a day to make less than 35k? That makes 0 sense. https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk...deed.com/m/jobs?q=Maintenance&l=Ketchum%2C+ID

 

[Spoonbill]

The park is extremely small maybe 1/4 acre at most, with homes/condos bordering it who's residents would recall the mayor should this happen.
I think this "tent city" was said in jest due to the proposed affordable housing project in town getting no support from a majority of residents.
There is affordable housing south of Ketchum but people don't want to drive.
Just about every town that has experienced our rate of growth in the last few years has the same problem, don't know why this is generating any attention when there are currently tens of thousands of people living in tents in many major cities and nobody cares.
Our valley also has been flooded with non documented workers that has driven wages back 20yrs also adding to inability for service workers to afford housing.

I’d rather live in a tent than live at Balmoral apartments. I see your point, there are places in Hailey and Bellevue to live that can be affordable but people want to live walking distance to the chairlift and the Casino.
Like I mentioned earlier, the OP may like living in Hailey or Bellevue better than Ketchum, especially the way Hailey has grown in the last few years, there is less reason to go to Ketchum. If you don’t mind a true small town and a drive, Carey may be worth looking at. They have their own school that is funded by Blaine county so it is pretty nice for a small town highschool. Hunting and fishing is pretty decent as well.

 

[IdahoElk]

Oh yeah, this is the Mexicans fault. Jesus, I can't roll my eyes hard enough.

No, I blame the employers that are paying them $20 cash, no insurance or Workmans comp and billing them out to the customer at $70, it's usury in its worst form.
I work construction and it's almost non existent to see Caucasian 20-30 year olds in the trader because of the ridiculous wages.
The smart kids here learn a trade where you need to be licensed, that weeds out the competition and gets them $60-$80hr and lets them be home owners.
My advice is if you want to live in an expensive destination resort area you better be educated(engineer, lawyer, doctor ,architect ) or have a skill that pays good money and does not directly compete with our friends from the south because you will lose every time.

 

[IdahoElk]

I’d rather live in a tent than live at Balmoral apartments. I see your point, there are places in Hailey and Bellevue to live that can be affordable but people want to live walking distance to the chairlift and the Casino.
Like I mentioned earlier, the OP may like living in Hailey or Bellevue better than Ketchum, especially the way Hailey has grown in the last few years, there is less reason to go to Ketchum. If you don’t mind a true small town and a drive, Carey may be worth looking at. They have their own school that is funded by Blaine county so it is pretty nice for a small town highschool. Hunting and fishing is pretty decent as well.

Now affordable is maybe bellevue but most likely Fairfield and Carey, this all happened in the last few years.

 

[zion zig zag]

You triggered him.

Damn, that's a tired trope. You don't normally come across as so simple.

 

[Billinsd]

Damn, that's a tired trope. You don't normally come across as so simple.

Thank you very much, I'll take that as a compliment. Very true and I hate that "triggered" term, so it was very out of character for me to use it....I was disappointed that you seemed to give up and get mad, so I got lazy. Carry on...

 

[zion zig zag]

Thank you very much, I'll take that as a compliment. Very true and I hate that "triggered" term, so it was very out of character for me to use it....I was disappointed that you seemed to give up and get mad, so I got lazy. Carry on...

I appreciate the mea culpa, and I could definitely take a lesson from that in these days of internet arguing.