“Retainable” housing should be a focus in Park City

For years, the cry around Park City has been for affordable housing. Then, some bright people came up with the idea of attainable housing. Evidently, in Park City, attainable means a wealthy person who is not that wealthy. We then are encouraged to worry about a 1,500-unit development where 100 units are “affordable,” 500 are “attainable,” and the rest are “market value.” So, some units go to the people who work hard jobs in Park City; five hundred units go to people making 120K; the rest cost a million plus.

This is a known issue, and I suppose when Vail, Alterra, Historic Park City Alliance, and The Park City Chamber of Commerce want to solve it, they will.

However, when I received a notice from Summit Water Distribution saying my rates were going up by 31% it gave me pause for another reason. This is on top of the school district raising taxes. This is on top of tax increases that could happen through Summit County. This is on top of tax increases due to valuations that impact certain areas.

What about the people who have lived here for a while? We aren’t really rich, although some would claim we are. We have homes that have somehow appreciated from $250,000 to two million. Yet, we wouldn’t sell because we don’t know where we would move. We wouldn’t want to move, even if we could, because we love Park City. We make the same amount of money –maybe a little bit more–as we always have and remember the two-for-ones when we got them at Butcher’s.

Yet, the cost of living here has risen exponentially. My overall tax rate has risen from $1,800 in 2011 to almost $6,000 in 2023. I get it. Inflation has risen. However, with official inflation data, my taxes should have risen from $1,800 to $2,600.