$167,000 Yearly Salary Isn't Enough To Live In Steamboat Springs

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colorado – In the cowboy ski town of Steamboat Springs, a $167,000 salary simply isn’t enough to bring in a new head of human resources for the city. The reason, of course, is housing.

According to a report from NBC News, housing has gotten so out of control that even doctors willing to put down over $1 million find themselves outbid, leaving some positions at the local hospital unfilled for years. Even some of the highest paid doctors and administrators are struggling with the cost of housing.

“No income earner is immune. Even your top earners with physician pay ranges are sitting in my office saying, ‘I don’t know if I can afford to live here.’ I think that probably every week there’s someone who comes back and tells me we lost someone because of housing.” – Soniya Fidler, hospital president

A position overseeing the town’s human resources and risk management, offering a salary of $167,000, has been turned down twice by two separate candidates due to the town’s high cost of living. On the resort, employees who can’t find housing have been moved into hotels, and homes once rented to the staff has been majorly turned into short-term housing.

“Houses used to be for employees and hotels for guests. Now houses are for guests and hotels are for employee housing. We have a lot of great staff who are early in their careers or have young families, but they just aren’t able to put down those roots.” – Loryn Duke, director of communications for Steamboat resort

Meanwhile, a plan to build more than 2,200 housing units for those who work locally and meet a certain income threshold on a 534-acre ranch has met opposition from residents. Their concerns have focused mainly on how the units would impact the town’s local infrastructure and traffic.

“It’s an overreach, it’s too big, it’s too much, it’s too expensive, it causes too many problems for the existing city. We’re concerned that the infrastructure won’t be in place in this new, large, separate portion of our city, and it will create a second-class neighborhood. That the people living there will be treated like second-class citizens who don’t have access to public transportation or city parks, and we don’t know how many of them are coming from outside.” – Jim Engelken, Steamboat resident since 1979

Image Credit: City of Steamboat Springs – Government via Facebook