You can’t go home again
Growth, greed are ruining the valley...has the Hole already lost its soul?
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — One of the great pitfalls facing Jackson Hole is not the lack of housing or the incessant traffic or the escalating cost of living. These are all manifestations of what many communities across America are struggling with as big city folk flood their small towns, fleeing their own lack of housing, traffic, and high cost of living.
The true danger, the real issue is the delicate fabric that holds a community together. And Jackson Hole has lost its soul.
Sold out
It used to be a common mantra back in the day: “Don’t Let the Hole Lose its Soul.” Kin to the hollow pledge from real estate agents, housing advocates, and anyone else squeezing a buck out of the valley’s supernova economy: “We are a community first, resort second.”
A lot of big talk, but no action behind the words. We build up and out, and run over any wildlife that dares get in the way of progress. We widen highways, pull up trees, build lot line to lot line and then wonder stupefied how every creek running through the county became polluted.
The reformation of Jackson includes trailer park-to-condo conversions, motor inns to 4-star posh lodges, cattle ranches to McMansions. It’s always been going on. Folks from the 1960s Jackson claim they don’t recognize the 1980s Jackson, and so on.
Evasion invasion: fleeing taxes and vaxes
But in recent years, COVID, crypto, cyber commerce, and a global explosion of prosperity has infiltrated Jackson Hole creating a disparity of wealth unequaled anywhere in the U.S.
“If it feels like things are not just crazy, but spinning-out-of-control crazy, there’s a good reason for it,” says local economist Jonathan Schechter.
Schechter crunched numbers in his latest CoThrive newsletter—a project publication of Charture Institute. They were eye-popping.
According to data recently released by the IRS, Teton County’s mean per-return Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) was $312,442 in 2019. This not only led the nation, but marked the first time in U.S. history that a county’s mean per-return AGI exceeded $300,000.
“To put Teton County’s figure in perspective, in 2019 New York County, New York (aka the island of Manhattan) had the nation’s second-highest mean per-return income. It was $212,534, a full $100,000 lower per return than Teton County’s,” Schechter states.
Perhaps more striking still, 75% of Teton County’s income comes from investments and other, non-wage income (the U.S. average is 31%). In 2019, Teton County’s mean per-return non-wage income alone was $235,186, 11% higher than New York’s total income figure.
So, when restaurants, dry cleaners, and convenience stores claim they can’t find anyone to work in Teton County, they’re right. Practically no one is working in Teton County.
“These are insane numbers,” Schechter assures. “Yet what’s really nuts is that these figures are from 2019—the year before COVID migrants started flocking to Jackson Hole. As a result, 2020’s numbers should be much higher, and 2021’s numbers nuttier still.”
Eat the rich
How did we kill our golden goose? How did we let a pristine valley with a slow-paced quality of life become this rat race, citified shit show? It’s the ‘frog being slowly boiled alive’ syndrome. A sorites paradox where each grain of sand is a dead elk, a rental apartment, a diesel mechanic.
If you’ve been here 20 or 30 years, maybe you’ve barely noticed the changes until recently. If you arrived last month, last year…this place still looks like paradise compared to the Bay Area or Brooklyn. And they keep coming.
It’s an endless cycle of ‘turn your place into crap then get out of Dodge for a new Eden to turn into crap.’
Small towns look great from the outside. They’re quaint and unspoiled. Men hold doors for women. People smile and say hello. Everyone stops their lives to attend a spaghetti dinner at the Elks Lodge to raise money for that family with a cancer diagnosis.
Now we have gala fundraisers for colossal nonprofits sporting 20 employees and an executive director who pulls down a six-figure salary.
Living here is not easy. It never was. Jackson Hole was built on a brand of hardiness it took to survive harsh winters—the cold, the lack of economy, the vastness. That resolve, that can-do western spirit, remains in Wyoming, but not in Jackson Hole since Shane.
Today, a platinum card and Wi-Fi makes any problem go away, and turns the valley into Anywhere, USA.
Paradise lost
Who’s the bad guy in this tale? The hedge fund investor from New York who snatches up a 5-acre property on the west bank that was formally prime moose habitat? The crypto junkie who splits time between San Francisco and east Jackson, VRBOing his condo here for the 10 months he’s elsewhere?
Or the well-meaning local electeds who let it all happen, reasoning away every variance, every exception to the Comp Plan with “it’s just this one time” decision-making?
It all adds up to a loss of quality of life, loss of wildlife and its habitat, and a diminishing of all the reasons why we once all thought this was the best place on earth to live.
It still is, but it was so much better in the before time. And you can never go home again.
Can you do a related article on how this is effecting the surrounding counties? Are they having similar rise in AGI? We know property values are skyrocketing and there is an increase in remote work.
Good idea. Will do. Already anecdotal evidence northern Lincoln County affected with move-ins throughout Star Valley (Alpine, Thayne, et al). Northern Sublette County also experiencing the beginnings of people buying in Bondurant, Hoback Ranches, even Daniel.
Tax havens with beautiful settings are getting ruined everywhere. Wyoming needs money. Start with a small graduated income tax and maybe Jackson might stop growing in way that is so unfriendly to the natives both two and four legged. E
The greed is endless. And goes all the way through. It was too hard for the local fishing guide/ski patroller to say no to selling their shack for $1M. I tried to interest the powers that be in more housing for Pioneer Homestead and permanent affordable rentals on the last big parcel in East Jackson in 2008. No one cared so I left. The writing was on the wall.
Someone needs to shout from the rooftops, “hey assholes, quit ruining this place.” If you don’t know who you are then it’s time to open your eyes.
Well said!
Born and raised here. It’s not the same for sure, but I still love it. We will be forced out eventually because of property taxes.
Shame on the “electeds” mentioned in the *article. They CAN control this, as has been done in other communities. But I fear it’s too late.
*Or the well-meaning local electeds who let it all happen, reasoning away every variance, every exception to the Comp Plan with “it’s just this one time” decision-making?
It’s because the elected people are a part of the problem. They show up, want to change things, and get elected by others who’ve come in too. It’s not just JH, it’s rural America.