The Local Lens – IVCBA Housing Committee & Placemate
January 22, 2025 | Linda Offerdahl
In addition to being a national crisis, workforce housing hits a small rural mountain community hardest. Employers cannot find employees; snowstorms prevent workers from driving up the hill; businesses have to reduce their hours. It’s a cycle with a detrimental effect on our economy. New businesses are reluctant to open where they may be unable to hire and retain employees, particularly in a cost-effective manner. We all know people who have moved down the hill. Their rent has been raised; their condo insurance is now unaffordable or nonexistent; the property owner has converted the long-term rental into a short-term rental.
The irony is that we are surrounded by vacant vacation homes. Some are long-standing vacation rentals or owned by the “6 month and a day” residents. Others sit empty most of the year except for the summer and holiday weeks. With the influx of Airbnb and other companies enabling short-term rentals, some locals have rented out a room or their entire house to vacationers. However, property managers often point out that a short-term rental is not as good as the long-term rental when taking the whole year into account. How can we unlock housing stock or convert short-term rentals to long-term rentals?
Washoe County and Placemate’s Lease to Locals Program
Under Commissioner Alexis Hill’s leadership in 2023, Washoe County approved a Community Reinvestment Grant to implement a program to give incentives to homeowners and landlords willing to rent their properties to local workers. It is Placemate’s Lease to Locals Program. Read the article submitted by Placemate….
IVCBA Housing Committee
Some of you may remember the formation of the Washoe Tahoe Housing Partnership (WTHP) in 2020. This was composed of agencies, large employers, and interested local organizations and residents concerned about our lack of affordable workforce housing. Washoe County funded two projects through the WTHP that were managed by the Tahoe Prosperity Center. The “Washoe Tahoe Local Employee Housing Needs and Opportunities” study was completed in September 2021. Based on these findings and more community input, the WTHP produced a “Housing Roadmap” in May 2023, a partnership plan to accelerate community housing action in Incline Village/Crystal Bay; it was approved by the Washoe County Board of Commissioners in July 2023. Its initial work was completed, and the WTHP dissolved in November 2023. However, this left a vacuum for actual implementation of the Housing Roadmap.
After researching various ways to carry forward this effort, IVCBA formed a Housing Committee in June 2024. Its goal is to engage community members in building workforce housing solutions by sharing information, connecting, convening, and creating partnerships for action. Our accomplishments in 2024 include a community survey to find out which workforce housing topics Incline Village/Crystal Bay residents, employers, and employees are most interested in learning more about. The outcome was IVCBA’s Workforce Housing Series, which will offer knowledgeable speakers the opportunity to share effective approaches taken by similar mountain communities and local experts presenting on the housing opportunities and challenges in our region. The inaugural program on Placemate’s Lease to Locals Program, soon to be launched in our community, is Thursday, January 23, from 6-7 pm at UNR Tahoe’s Prim Library in Incline Village. Please join this night of information and conversation in person or on Zoom. Click here to register and learn more.
IVCBA has also created a page on our website to serve as a resource for housing topics. Go to IVCBA.org/Programs/Housing to read available articles and link to various groups.
