Housing crunch needs a solution

A housing crunch in Carbon County is hard to believe for me.

I live in Hanna where housing always seemed available but it is here along with almost every town in the county. How long is anyone’s guess, but people coming to this area are discovering what I did over 20 years ago. Carbon County is fantastic.

I bought my first Carbon County house in Saratoga. It was a two bedroom townhouse on Elm Street and I loved it. The only problem? It was too small for all the stuff I had. I didn’t even realize how much because ,when my wife and I separated, I pretty much packed what was mine and put it in storage. Then I moved to Hawaii and began my adventure of living in a lot of places in the Pacific.

I eventually found a larger house in Hanna which was awesome and moved there and just rented out the house in Togie. I don’t remember what I charged, but I thought it was reasonable.

When I sold the townhouse after owning it for about eight years, I doubled my money. I really didn’t pay a lot for it, all things considered.

That is my point, a house in Carbon County was fairly affordable.

Maybe because I had lived in some seriously expensive places, I found Carbon County a bargain when I finally decided it was time to purchase a home. I wanted a base in the United States while I made my living overseas and, for me, my house in Hanna fit the bill.

Not having a huge mortgage allowed me to afford a decent residence when I lived other places. Also I loved Hanna. The Hanna Recreation Center was half the reason I came to this town. The pool and basketball courts are great. The weight room did the job and, for a while, there was hot tub to soak in after a swim.

I like Hanna so much, I bought the house next door because it was such a great deal and I live in it too. I have my own little compound. I have said in the past, where else but Carbon County could I do this.

I have my high desert to bike and hike in and, by car, I can be in two historic towns in 15 minutes. Medicine Bow and Elk Mountain have different looks, but I love visiting there. The Valley is no more than an hour away (not counting winter conditions) and it is so scenic. I like Rawlins, the Little Snake River Valley and Old Carbon.

Carbon County is the best. What is not so great is the cost of living shooting up, especially in the world of homeownership. It is especially wearing on me because I have two houses so I pay double in a lot of ways, even though it is just me.

Utilities crush me for one thing. Then, the taxes on the homes have been going up. I’m amazed at what the county thinks one of my houses is worth.

Still, for all practical purposes, Hanna is inexpensive compared to almost all other towns in Carbon County. Medicine Bow might have homes around the same price as Hanna.

But that is all changing.

I watched this happen in Annapolis, Maryland. I had rented there for two years and later my wife and I almost bought a house on the river less than 10 miles from downtown. I remember it being about $85,000. Today that would probably be about $120,000. We opted to live closer to D.C. I went to visit that same area five years ago and homes are $5 to $10 million. The house we looked at would be seven figures, but I don’t know how much.

Honolulu was insanely expensive when I lived there about 30 years ago and the middle class lived outside town for the most part. There were neighborhoods out by the University of Hawaii and Pearl Harbor which had homes under a million dollars and apartments could be rented for about a grand a month, depending on where you were. I knew people who easily spent half their income just for housing.

I was lucky. My first five months I shared a baby mansion with three other people in Kahala, the Beverly Hills of Honolulu. My front yard view was Diamond Head. It was an amazing place and, because my room was downstairs instead of looking out at the ocean, I only paid $500 a month. That was a great price. The two people upstairs paid a grand a piece.

Our neighbor was literally Jim Nabors and I used to hang out and swim at Doris Duke’s (a famous heiress in her time) inner stone harbor just off the beach. Still, I jumped at the chance to be an assistant manager of an AYH (American Youth Hostel) in Waikiki because my housing was free. Plus I was a block from Waikiki Beach. It was a fantastic time in my life, but I was well aware I was living in a place where it was hard for the average middle class person to make ends meet. Countless people from the Mainland pulled up stakes because it just was impossible to survive. It was a tourist haven for sure, but locals serving them usually had to work two jobs.

I saw the same thing happening in Noosa Queensland, Australia. The city (if it could be called that) was actually a combination of four towns which were side-by-side. Again, I lucked out and lived at Noosa Beach; the swanky, tourist mecca of Australia. I got an apartment in one of the few condo buildings in town. The price wasn’t bad, especially considering it was furnished. While there, I again saw firsthand how difficult it was to live in an expensive town where affordable housing was hard to find.

Traveling around the world also exposed me to crazy expensive cities. Geneva and Hong Kong have to be the top two I saw. Friends lived in both places, so I got a real taste of living like they did. I spent two weeks in Geneva and I have been to Hong Kong easily a dozen times. As much as I enjoyed both cities, I knew they were way too rich for my blood.

When I bought my houses in Carbon County, I never thought I would see the housing market squeeze out the middle class worker the way it is starting to. But it is happening because there is not the housing stock for the demand. People from outside Wyoming have discovered the Valley and, with that, Carbon County.

I don’t blame anybody for wanting to have a home here. The fear I have is seeing towns in this county not be able to sustain the jobs of educators, service folk and retirees who lived here their whole life because it is too expensive to live here.

I don’t believe we have priced the middle class out of the housing market yet, but I wouldn’t want to look for a place in Saratoga right now.

It is comforting to know that Hanna, small community that it is, does have an area run by the town, which has affordable housing based on income. The units are nice too.

I am going to be learning more about how Hanna does this in the near future.

There is little doubt, no resident wants to leave this county or their home because they just can’t afford it any longer. It is my belief, all options should be looked at, before affordable housing in Carbon County does become a problem that can’t be remedied.