Sun Valley Housing Official Can’t Afford a House

The man the city of Ketchum, Idaho, hired to lead it out of the Sun Valley resort area’s affordable housing crisis knows exactly what the problem is. Even he needs help with the rent.

“The situation is fine, but the only solution was to get roommates,” Karl Fulmer said. “That was not something I intended to do after graduate school.”

The situation was obvious when the 30-year-old community housing planner moved to the scenic Wood River Valley to take the $37,000-a-year job with the Ketchum Planning and Zoning Department 15 months ago.

“I don’t think any of us in the Planning and Zoning office could afford to buy a home in Ketchum,” Fulmer said. “That kind of speaks for itself.”

In fact, most city employees do not live in Ketchum, in large part because the cost of living is so high. Fulmer rents a place six miles south of town.

Most workers at the Sun Valley resort and other resort businesses in the narrow valley are living even farther away from the high-priced real estate of the ski area.

A typical house in the shadow of Sun Valley’s Bald Mountain is well over $300,000, and there is no shortage of multimillion-dollar homes.

The communities of Hailey and Bellevue to the south have been home to many resort workers unable to afford Ketchum’s high rents. But that is changing as expensive homes pop up farther and farther south.

Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and Arnold Schwarzenegger are among the new neighbors.

Now some workers commute from the agricultural towns that dot southern Idaho’s Magic Valley more than 70 miles away.

One project for 36 moderately priced apartments in Ketchum fell through a year ago. But Fulmer said the city remains committed to solving the problem. As a start, it is making it easier for existing homeowners to add rental apartments by reducing the minimum lot size needed for those additions by nearly two-thirds.

And he thinks the Sun Valley Co. is taking a more active role in finding suitable employee housing. Earlier this year, a consultant estimated that more than 200 jobs were unfilled because there was no affordable housing for workers.

“I believe the writing is on the wall . . . if nothing is done,” Fulmer said. “Vail in Colorado has a shortage of workers. They’re advertising on our radio stations to pull workers to Vail.”

In other states, he said, communities with housing problems have enough autonomy to deal with them. In Idaho, those rules come from the state and most legislators have not felt the impact of high living costs.

“The state is telling working people here, ‘You don’t matter, you don’t count,’ ” he said.

But that may be changing. Communities like McCall in western Idaho, Coeur d’Alene and Sandpoint in the Panhandle and even Driggs beneath the Grand Tetons in eastern Idaho are seeing well-to-do outsiders clamoring for their recreational real estate, driving up land prices.