We Can’t Keep Building a Town Our Workers Can’t Afford to Live In

Mammoth Lakes runs on the people who wait our tables, teach our kids, patrol our streets, and keep the lifts turning, and more of them are being priced out every year. I’ve watched it happen in real time, growing up here. I’ve also worked on the other side of it, in property management and short-term rentals, so I understand both why this town’s economy depends on visitors and why that same economy is squeezing the people who actually live here.

This isn’t a problem we can wish away, and it isn’t one big fix, it’s a handful of specific, fixable gaps in how the Town treats development, fees, and homeowners who want to help.

A few things I’m digging into:

The fee developers pay to skip building housing. Mammoth Lakes has a mechanism that lets big projects pay a fee instead of building workforce housing on-site. That fee hasn’t kept pace with what it actually costs to house people here, and I want to know why, and what it would take to fix it.

Making it genuinely easy for homeowners to add housing. ADUs, small backyard units, in-law suites. Homeowners want to help, but the fees, permitting, and red tape often get in the way before anyone breaks ground. There’s real opportunity here that isn’t being used.

Corporate accountability. Our biggest local employers benefit enormously from this town’s housing stock, tourism economy, and natural beauty. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask whether they’re contributing their fair share back into the community that makes their business possible.

I’ll be sharing more specifics as my platform comes together, but the short version is this:

workforce housing shouldn’t be an afterthought in this town. It should be the first thing we solve.

— Lakota