Chasing the Dragon - Part Four of High Altitude Tales

In the resort town of Jackson Hole, WY, the housing shortage is so bad that people are finding crazy workarounds for how to live there. Like this guy, living in his van. "It’s cold when you come back. And then the issue is, like, all your water freezes and all your stuff is frozen. And trying to dry ski stuff or anything like that it’s a pain - but once the heaters are goin it gets crankin' in here!"

We all know that old quote, “Go west, young man!” The newspaper editor Horace Greeley supposedly first penned those words way back in 1865, and they galvanized many European settlers to leave everything behind and head out across the American West in search of adventure, open space and, yeah, cheap land. 

That sentiment seemed to return during the COVID-19 pandemic. It sent a new wave of people out west in search of all that same stuff. But all that cheap land is long gone, and the new influx of people has greatly worsened an already serious housing shortage across our region. In fact, seven of the top ten states with the worst housing problems are located in the American West. You can really see the crisis reaching dire extremes in tourist towns and ski resorts. Like Jackson Hole here in Wyoming where I live. Back when I first started as a reporter, I could still afford a hotel there when I was out in the field collecting interviews. Nowadays? No way. I crash at my friends’ homes or I camp out. I can’t imagine what it must be like to try to find a place to live in Jackson long term. 

Well, actually, now I can imagine, thanks to this story brought to you by Jackson Hole Community Radio’s Hanna Merzbach. She discovered that people are getting extremely creative about making a life in Teton County.

Van Life 

Snow and ice cover the ground in Jackson. It’s February and Copeland Laris slides open the door of his 2003 white Dodge Sprinter van. 

“Here she is in all her glory,” Copeland says, opening the door of the van with a flourish. “When I first bought it, it had a bed in here and I slowly kind of threw in some other stuff, all with plywood. When you open the door, right away is the kitchen setup here. You have a little counter top with a cupboard and a stove under there.”

A little disco ball hangs above the sliding door, and over the bed he strung up lights, a purple tapestry and prayer flags. It’s not the fanciest van build-out I’ve ever seen, but it has the basics. He’s covered the walls and ceiling in carpet to help with insulation. 

“The passenger seat swivels, which is nice,” he says. I ask him for a demonstration and he shows me how it can be turned around to face the back. He moved to Jackson four years ago. He’s tall, slender with brown hair and a thick mustache. 

“I came for the mountains, skiing, mountaineering mostly and trail running.”

He’s out in nature every day. Like so many other Jacksonites who moved here, he loves the outdoors, and points to the map hanging above his makeshift couch. 

“I got a map of the Tetons there in case I get lost!” he says with a laugh.

So when he got here and saw the steep price of housing, getting a van to live out of made the most sense. 

“I think it’d just been on my mind,” Copeland says. “I lived out of my Honda Pilot for my senior year of college and was pretty intrigued by the van life idea and not having to pay rent and ideally spend more time outside. It's expensive and I moved here to not work every day.” 

But, he kind of does. About five days a week in the service industry as a waiter and bartender, plus a half day at the Jackson Hole Mountain resort, which pays for his ski pass. He points to the tiny fridge in his van; he says it’s really all he needs.

“I work at restaurants so i get a lot of food from work. So I’m really only making breakfast for the most part.”

The van’s name? Tallulah. He says it just came to him. 

“It was just early in when I got her. I was coming back to it after a long day out and it came to mind like ‘oh thank god, Tallulah!’”

There’s also a dog bed in there so he can share it with Mako, his border collie mix. And he’s managed to make part of the van feel like a sitting room.

“A very fancy situation!” he says.

This is Jackson Hole, where people do whatever they can to try and make it work to live here, a sacrifice to have some of the best outdoor access in the country. But also, it’s so hard that a lot of people call it quits. 

“It’s so transient, people are always leaving, like ‘aww, this is my best friend…OK, you’re leaving in six months? Right on, it’s been good to know you.’”

Copeland says he sees one really close friend leave every year. I moved here a year and a half ago to report for the Jackson Hole Community Radio station and to ski and climb. But in that time, I’ve also seen half my friends throw in the towel and hit the road amid the rampant housing crisis.

But it wasn’t always this way..

The Housing Crisis 

The cowboy town of Jackson is a relatively new international destination. 

The wildness of the area has long drawn explorers with the Teton Mountain Range seemingly exploding out of the near flat valley. Some people call it some of the most gorgeous and wild land in the U.S. One of the richest families in the country helped keep it that way. The Rockefellers helped form Grand Teton National Park, a 20 minute drive from town. And years later, the park got an airport, and it has since become the busiest in Wyoming. It brings people in from all over the world to Teton County where the vast majority of the land is protected as either public or conservation easements. 

Teton County is about 4,000 square miles, nearly the same size as the country of Jamaica.  But  only two percent is developable, or a place where housing can go. And the Covid-19 pandemic brought even more pressures with remote workers and the ultra wealthy flocking to the valley known for its incomparable outdoor access, kind of a perfect spot for social distancing.  Plus, it’s a good place to shelter money since there’s no income tax in Wyoming.

All of these factors have made the value of land here skyrocket into the multi-millions to buy a house and thousands of dollars to even just rent a room in some places. Now, it can feel impossible to find a place to call home in Jackson Hole. 

Shacking Up

This winter, Copeland got to move out of his van and into an apartment, thanks to a connection with  a friend. He’s gone back and forth between random housing situations and van life since arriving here four years ago. But he says winters in the van can be especially tough, finding places to keep it parked legally, and daylight is short lived. 

“It’s cold when you come back,” Copeland says. “And then the issue is like all your water freezes and all your stuff is frozen and trying to dry ski stuff or anything like that it’s a pain. But once the heaters are going it gets cranking in here!”

But even with finding an apartment this winter, there are still challenges. The high rent means a lot of work days. Showing me around his new place, Copeland says he now has the least amount of roommates he's had since moving to town, just one this time.

He opens a door so I can peer in. “This is my roommate Kyle's room, which is a really small kind of closet. Also, it holds the washer and dryer in his room, which is fun when I do my midnight washing cycles.”

“Do you actually do that?” I ask him.

Copeland laughs. “No, I don’t. I try to be cognisant of doing it when he’s not here. I’m doing some drying right now.”

Oh, and the plumbing broke right after he moved in, so there’s been a giant hole in the bathroom for a while. The repairman actually shows up as he’s touring me around the apartment. 

But one of the best things about having this apartment is that his dog Mako and his girlfriend’s dog Barkley have their own little cave beds.

“I shoved a couple of dog beds in the closet because I think they feel safe,” he says. “They are both rescues. They are both from shelters and have different pasts.”

There’s bikes, skis and outdoor equipment everywhere in the small apartment because that’s the life here for many. 

It is for me too. I share an apartment with two other people, and our living room looks more like a garage. There’s about 13 pairs of skis hanging from shelves or stacked up around the room and a wall of so much climbing gear it resembles a mountaineering shop.

Jackson’s Immigrant Community

Housing is a universal struggle for anyone who lives here. And while many people come here for the access to the outdoors, Jackson is also home to a large immigrant population, many from Latin America. That’s because of the availability of work through the U.S.’s J1 Visa program. 30 percent of Teton County’s population is estimated to be Latino.

The wages here are actually pretty high and oftentimes there are more positions than companies can fill. But this can mean long days, often seven days a week doing  construction, or working in the kitchens of the many restaurants in town, or as a nurse, or any of the many jobs necessary to keep a town up and running.

But most of those jobs don’t come with employee housing and people end up squeezing into trailers, full houses and cramped apartments. 

That includes two Peruvian women in their thirties, Susan and Steffany who asked to keep their last names private since they can’t afford to lose their apartment.

I knock on the door and they welcome me in.

“Hi, how are you?” Susan says. 

“Hi, nice to meet you,” I say.

The two women are splitting a bedroom for a few months in an apartment complex on the west side of town, the same one where I also happen to live.

“I live around the corner,” I tell them. “So this gives me good ideas for my apartment.”

I’m anything but unbiased when it comes to where I live. It’s the oldest apartment complex in town. It was built in the early nineties for the local workforce, but it’s seen very few renovations since. Outside investors then bought it and prices have skyrocketed. It’s typically around $3,000 for a two-bedroom like mine and Susan and Steffany’s.

“So, at the entrance, we have one closet,” Susan says, showing me around. “It’s a small closet. And because I'm sharing the room right now with Steffany, I put my stuff here.”

Susan, who first moved to town nine years ago, points to her jackets and shoes stuffed next to the water heater. She says, space is limited so they need to be extra organized.

“Then let's go to the kitchen,” she says. “So the kitchen, it's a little bit small.”

She opens the door to the fridge, and it’s packed to the brim. Another thing I’m familiar with.

“You have to be really conscious, like where you're buying because you don't have enough of a space like to put all this stuff.”

Next, Susan heads over to the bathroom.

“This hot water heater, it works just for like 15 minutes or less. Sometimes, I just end up washing my hair in the sink.” 

And she says laundry machines are in the next building, a trek in the winter. They cost about a buck fifty a load - and often don’t work - or at least that’s my experience.

“So this is a room that we're sharing,” Susan says, opening a door.

Like me, they live in the largest bedroom. There’s a big queen-sized bed and a twin mattress in the corner for Steffany, who moved in about two months ago after a breakup with a long-time partner left her without a home.

“I had the opportunity to move to another place, but my roommate was going to be a male,” Steffany says. “And I mean, I know him. I think he's a really good guy. But at the end of the day, I don't know how he's going to be. Thank God, Susan told me, ‘hey, you can come with me.’”

The two have known each other for about a year. They first met at a Peruvian party in town and became fast friends. Steffany moved here more recently and Susan helped her settle in, telling Steffany about job openings. They started working together at a property management company and soon were also living together.

Susan leans against the doorway of the bedroom. Butterfly decorations dance up the wall next to her.

“It’s hard for you to think that you have to share a room in your 30s,” Susan says. “And yeah, it's not ideal. It's not something that you really want to do, but it's something that sometimes you just have to be forced to do for the economics.”

But her other main motivation for offering up her space? Steffany’s safety.

“It's really hard just to move to a place where she doesn't feel safe,” Susan says. “The risk as an independent and single women is really hard. Not feeling protected by somebody else. And we are not from this country. We're immigrants. So it's really hard for us to trust.” 

Susan also had experienced feeling unsafe with roommates she didn’t know well.

Now, in this apartment there’s another roommate living in the second bedroom. But Susan says it was hard to find someone willing to pay the steep price since she’s watched rent go up about ten percent, year after year.

“It’s too expensive,” she says. “Nobody can pay. I pay like $1600, and people think that probably I'm ripping them off, but it's like that's half of everything. No, I'm not asking more. Just like I'm not taking advantage.”

So she found a random roommate on Facebook. He moved in for a couple weeks, but Susan says she soon learned he had a troubled history with past housemates so she asked him to leave, and says he responded by harassing her.

“I was sleeping in my living room, thinking that he couldn't come back any time and just do something.”

She says she piled up stuff in front of the front door so she would hear if he came in since he still had a key.

“My cell phone was unlocked just in case I need to call 911,” Susan says. “Yeah, it was like really traumatizing. As single women, we're really vulnerable.”

Susan says she ultimately got the key back and says she feels safe living with Steffany now. 

Sitting on the living room’s brown, suede couch, they say they cook Peruvian food together and use the same slang.

“We are coming from the same culture so it's really nice to have Stephanny just close to me and just like, share a lot of things,” says Susan. “And we make almost the same jokes.”

Steffany agrees. “Sometimes, we see something and then I turn to see her and we start laughing because we understand what's going on, you know. So yeah, that's the really fun part to have more Peruvian close to me,” she says.

They both left Peru in search of more job opportunities. Steffany’s former partner somehow discovered Jackson. 

“I was still living with my parents and I was 31,” Steffany recalls. “I was looking for more growth in myself and to do it by myself and do it for me. I think our life in Peru, we're totally different. Totally different. I never worked in the food industry over there because I didn't have the need to do that.”

Now, Steffany works a side gig as a hostess at an Italian restaurant, and since her breakup, she says life has been harder than she expected in Jackson.

“You didn’t just move to the U.S.,” I point out. “You moved to one of the most expensive countries, one of the most expensive counties, the most expensive town, and then one of the most expensive apartments. It's really not the easiest path.” 

“And also, it's really hard because we work in property management,” Susan says. “And you can see the difference between one house is like millions of dollars and you actually go to those houses and see everything and then you just come to your house.”

“Yeah, it's totally like a contrast, huge,” Steffany says.

They say they’re grateful to have a safe place to live but they can’t say what the future holds for them in Jackson. Susan says she’s making it work but doesn’t know much longer she can keep it up.

“How much can you risk just to get housing? It's crazy. It used to be worth it to live in a place where I feel safe, where I feel part of this community. But I don't know if it's worth it anymore. If I have to be worry about all those expenses.”

Steffany was finally able to find a more permanent place to live. She just  moved out. Now Susan shares her room with another friend who just moved back to town.But she is looking for another place and dreaming of a more stable future - with more room to spread.

“Where I could have a small piece of land, where I can have, like, probably chickens and goats and just do my own produce,” she says. “But I don't think Jackson is going to be – Jackson or any place around Jackson – is going to be possible. There is no way. No way.”

Shacks On Racks

Countless Jacksonites suffer through living experiences like Steffany and Susan. One recent community survey paints a dire picture of housing in the region. With over 15 pages of comments, residents share their stories about packing five-person families into studio apartments. Or staying in abusive relationships because there’s nowhere else to go.

“I went through these comments a couple of different times,” says Teton County/Jackson housing director April Norton who’s department led the survey to better inform policy decisions. “I cried, I'll be honest, there's some really tough comments in there. A lot of folks in our town are wearing this backpack of stress and it's the stress of trying to make sure you've got a stable place to live that you can afford on top of everything else that most people worry about.”

April says the report also gives her department important data. She says some of the town’s largest apartment complexes recently stopped sharing their rental rates publicly. Now, the survey shows that people who live in Jackson’s major apartment complexes, like where Susan, Steffany and I live, are typically paying more than residents at other types of free-market rentals. 

The average monthly rent for a two bedroom at those big complexes hovers over $3,000. That’s on top of extra fees for washers and dryers, common areas or HOAs.

And we’ve only been talking about rentals. Say you want to own a house here. The town’s affordable housing department is coming up with some creative solutions with subsidized units. Millions of public dollars are going toward these, but the competition is fierce. Sometimes this means entering a lottery to try and get a house below market value. 

If you don’t win, you better have about $3.5 million, the median going rate for a single family house in Teton County.

Sarah Shervin and her husband Mitch are longtime locals with family ties to the region. Earlier this year, one of my coworkers at the radio station chatted with them about the stress they experienced navigating the housing market. They lost their east Jackson rental last summer and ended up camping and staying on friend’s couches for several weeks while they searched for a solution.

“We had furniture and three dogs and nowhere to live,” Sarah says. “In August we went down to Salt Lake. We looked at houses down there. Went down to the outskirts of Salt Lake. We looked in Las Vegas. We didn't know what to do. We looked at condos in Jackson.”

Sarah and Mitch ultimately bought a house in Star Valley, about a 40-minute commute from Jackson where they work, for about $600,000, pretty much an unheard of price in the region.

“Had we not found this house, I can't say for sure we would have stayed. We probably honestly would have left.”

But this isn’t your typical house in a subdivision. The home used to sit in Jackson and was originally built by descendants of the region’s early settlers. Then it got slated for demolition. Instead,  the local organization Shacks on Racks claimed it. They picked it up off its foundation and moved it 50 miles south of town. The organization also bought the land and renovated the house for a fraction of the typical price of new construction. 

We're chasing this dragon of land ownership in Wyoming,” says the organization’s founder, Esther Judge Lennox, who says her group received the historic structure for free. And by donating the home, the original owners saved thousands of dollars in demolition fees.

Shacks on Racks has moved 26 homes, including the Shervin’s house, since it started nearly a decade ago. Yet another example of people and organizations getting creative to tackle Jackson’s housing crisis.

But many argue that what Jackson needs is more affordable housing developments. which would add density to the town, but some long-time locals are opposed to that. Residents have resisted adding density for years, arguing it would cause traffic problems or change the physical landscape people value so dearly here. So while Shacks on Racks has been able to help some with permanent housing solutions, the need for more homes in Jackson remains high. 

But for Sarah Shervin and her husband, their new/old home in Etna – bright and open with big windows – has allowed them to stay connected to the community. 

“It was good, financially,” Sarah says. “It was nice to buy a piece of Jackson history. It allows us to stay here, continue to work our jobs, and be part of the Teton County workforce.”

More and more of Teton County’s workforce now lives farther away from Jackson. Firefighters, teachers, auto repair workers, they have to commute what can be hours from down south. Or over the steep winding mountain pass to and from Idaho, often a treacherous journey in the wintertime. It’s possible for your car to stall out, slide on ice or get stuck in a crazy whiteout. That’s if the pass isn’t closed down due to bad weather. Big trucks and trailers aren’t supposed to go over it in the winter, but often they do anyway, causing hours of backed-up cars when they jackknife on the road. 

In an effort to help the housing crisis, Teton County recently approved new regulations for the largest housing development in the region’s history, just south of town. More than a thousand homes are planned, many affordable. But this will take years of funding and construction to accomplish. 

And for many, it may be too late to stay here. 

One solution? Leaving 

For some people, the creative solution to Jackson’s housing woes is just  looking elsewhere for a place to live. The upside to this option is that you can find more affordable places that still offer access to the outdoors. 

This includes Bozeman, another mountain town up north in Montana. It’s seen a major boom since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when remote workers flocked to the region known for its outdoor access.

Still, it’s way less expensive than Jackson.

“Yeah, so we pay $1950 here,” says Andrea Ramos-Pyne, a good friend of mine. That’s what she pays for a two-bedroom apartment, about $1,000 less than the Jackson average.

“You can get something cheaper. But we just moved here, and it was the first place we applied to. And they accepted us, so we took it.” 

Andrea recently moved up north with her partner. We catch up over Zoom, her halo of golden brown ringlets bounces around as we chat. She was one of the first people I met when I moved to Jackson. We connected while rock climbing and became fast friends. She’s one of many people I’ve watched move away in my time in Jackson, some to the East Coast, some to travel the world and others to mountain towns like Bozeman where they have a bit more space. 

She carries her laptop around, giving me a virtual tour.

“So this is our bedroom,” she says. “But there's another bathroom that we have in our unit as well. Huge closet space. And then the second bedroom.”

“Then the gear room,” her partner Charlie Jones adds.

“So we have all of our equipment for rock climbing, backcountry skiing, camping,” says Andrea.

“It's so beautiful. I love it,” I tell them.

“Thank you,” Charlie says. “This is also the guest bedroom, whenever you want to visit.”

“Yeah, we have a big, clean, blow-up mattress that we can set up.”

“I’m definitely going to come stay in that room,” I say.

“Oh yeah, there’s plenty of space for people,” Andrea says. “We had a couple of our friends come and visit us from Jackson as well and stay there.”

A big perk considering their guest bedroom in Jackson used to be their living room. Other perks include extra storage space, an in-unit washer and dryer, and a big workspace for Andrea, who’s a private chef.

“This is our kitchen space,” Andrea says. “I think one of the best parts about moving to Bozeman is that it's now our kitchen only. As a chef, I really love that. Yeah, I can put all my ingredients and my equipment and plates and pans that I care a lot about in my own space.”

“Take it over for the whole day and not have to worry about sharing it,” Charlie says.

The biggest reason the couple moved to Bozeman? To finally not have roommates. Even though that meant giving up what’s practically gold in Jackson: a good landlord who wasn’t gouging them for rent. 

“We were like one of the few people that had a really good housing situation in Jackson,” says Andrea.

They paid about $1,300 for the largest bedroom in their home. Like a real adult house with a garage and a patio in a nice location. In Jackson terms, that’s a deal. But they still couldn’t afford the whole place without two other roommates. 

“And that was quite a sticking point,” Charlie says. “We were paying probably some of the cheaper rent in Jackson for what we had, but we really wanted to live alone. To live by yourself, especially if you want to add a guest bed to that situation, would be easily double.”

They spent five years in Jackson, trying to secure their own place. But Andrea says none of her clients that she was a private chef for offered up their extra units. 

And good listings go fast. Like in minutes fast.

“At the time, we only had one car,” says Andrea. “And we're really quiet and we have great references. And we work locally in Jackson, like the whole spiel. And we were always at least second down the list.”

They both work in the seasonal employment community, appeasing the visitors and tourists that keep the flow of cash coming into Jackson. Charlie served as a manager at the local mountaineering shop. 

But these jobs didn’t score them any points when it came to getting affordable housing. The local housing department and nonprofits put critical service workers higher on the list. 

“The reality is that I'm not a doctor. I'm not a teacher. I'm not someone who helps the local community,” Andrea says. “But I'm working in something that's affiliated with providing a luxury service. And so I'm never going to be top of the list for those housing solutions that are currently offered in Jackson.”

“We were never checking enough boxes to bump us up in that list. We'd have to wait. Wait it out,” says Charlie.

“A lot of responses I got was like, you just got to keep being patient and keep making the right decisions and it's all going to work out,” says Andrea. “And I think it got to a point where for me personally, I was tired of waiting for things to work out and I wanted to be more in control of my situation than I felt like I was in Jackson.”

Their lives felt like the roller coaster ride that comes with seasonal work. For the shoulder seasons in November or May, Andrea always said yes whenever I wanted to ski or climb since she didn’t have a lot of clients in town. But I barely saw her during her busy time in the summer. 

“When we were younger, it was kind of part of the excitement of living in Jackson,” she says. “Everything's changing all the time. And then for me, you reach an age where that's no longer fun. And. You do really want to have more stability and kind of like move on with your life too.”

Andrea is 29 and Charlie recently celebrated the big 3-0 landmark. 

“Charlie and I have always had a phrase we’d say: as soon as the tourists are having more fun than us, then it's time to go. And we reached that point,” says Andrea.

“We have to live in basically ski towns for Andrea’s job,” Charlie says. “There has to be wealthy tourists around who want dinner parties. And like, yeah, we want to be in a place with amazing access. Still, we don't want to leave that. We didn't want to think too big. But a little bit bigger than Jackson.” 

A lot of their friends moved to Bozeman, and the university town soon made it to the top of their list, as it did for people across the country. 

During the first year of the pandemic, Bozeman’s population rose by nearly seven percent, topping 50,000, and the average household income saw an almost 13 percent increase. Now, Bozeman is dealing with its own growing pains. 

“Are the policies that are in place, that were put in place decades ago, still relevant for the needs of the 21st century? Sometimes, you're finding that they really aren't,” says Brit Fontenot who leads the Economic Development Department in Bozeman.

“It's a challenge to go from a small rural community to a 50,000-resident small city in a relatively rapid period of time,” he says. “And that creates a lot of financial strain for infrastructure deployment. But it also creates a lot of social strain for the residents in the community.”

Compared to Jackson, Bozeman does have a lot more room to spread. The county stretches a couple thousand square miles, ringed by snow-capped mountains. And, compared to Teton County, there’s much more developable land. Almost half of the county is agricultural, but that sector is shrinking as development creeps in..

“The loss of agricultural land is a loss and that has a cost,” Brit says. “That has a cost to the agricultural tradition and history of the valley. It has a cost in terms of real dollars to production. And I think that's part of the struggle that we're having now in and around the valley is: are these costs worth it?”

If you’ve seen the TV show Yellowstone with Kevin Costner, you know all about how painful this new growth has been for the generations of ranching families that are feeling shoved out of Bozeman. Luckily there aren’t as many shoot outs on Main Street as the show depicts. 

It is true that new developments are going up left and right in Bozeman and in the outskirts of town, but there’s still a growing affordability gap and an increasingly large unhoused population, people who are forced to live in RVs on the side of the street and in shelters and encampments. 

But for Andrea and Charlie, the cost of living feels much lower compared to Jackson.

“Are people surprised when you say you moved there because it's more affordable?” I ask them. 

“Absolutely. They're like, ‘really?’ I'm like, ‘oh yeah.’ Or like sometimes people are like, ‘why did you move here? It's so expensive.’ And it's like, ‘well, we moved here from Jackson Hole,’ and they're like, ‘well, that's like the one place that's more expensive than here.’”

“Now that you're there, do you think you would ever come back?” I ask.

“Do you think you’d go back, Charlie?” Andrea asks her partner.

“I mean, right now I’m leaning towards no. I don't know what miracle would have to happen for us to have a better housing situation arise in Jackson. Something crazy would have to happen. And, yeah, it's fun to have bar and restaurant options. Yeah, the rock gyms right there. That's pretty sweet.”

“Yes, so jealous,” I say.

A rock gym is just now opening in Jackson but we’ve been without one for years.

“I'd say I'm like 30/70,” says Andrea. “I like where we are and I don't think I want to go back. But there will always be that inkling that maybe I should go back. I have gotten some messages from clients, just expressing that they do miss me and is there any way I could possibly come back.”

Andrea and Charlie will be the first to acknowledge that living in Jackson does have its silver linings. They miss their tight-knit community and the access to backcountry skiing in the Tetons.

Some of the reasons that other people are making the decision to stay…at least for now.

The Perks Of Staying

The struggles are real but so is the beauty in Jackson. Everyone we interviewed about housing here shared what a magical place it can be. It’s just…tough. 

Steffany tells me her reason for living in Jackson, even with the high cost of housing. “The mountains, I think, especially the calm that it provides me, and the beautiful landscapes, Like every day I would be able to see different kinds of landscapes. In the summertime, it's really beautiful. I'm glad I'm part of Jackson and I'm able to see everything, all of this nature. It's amazing.

“I love being outside, being in the mountains,” the van man Copeland tells me. “I would like to stay here long term, yes, but can’t really afford it. I’m kind of thinking about going back to school and hopefully trying to find a big boy job or something that would then enable me to live here long term. Because I would love to live here long term.”

“I'm coming from a big city and that is Lima, Peru,” Susan says. “So it's hard to find a small community. And everybody helps each other here, everybody supports each other. And I feel like I could call Jackson my home now.”

For me, yeah, I love Jackson: my job, my community, my access to the outdoors. But I live on a reporter salary and have my own worries about staying here long term. I’m thinking of moving over the pass to Teton Valley, Idaho in the next few years, and have long-term dreams of buying land.

Or maybe another solution will come up.

This story was part of a year-long reporting project from KHOLNews at Jackson Hole Community Radio. It was produced by Hanna Merzbach and Tyler Pratt with additional reporting from KHOL’s Emily Cohen and Sophia Boyd-Fliegel with the Jackson Hole News & Guide. KHOL has a bi-weekly podcast called Jackson Unpacked where they showcase reporting and interviews on news, music and culture in Jackson Hole and around the Mountain West.