Tahoe Housing Vacancy Map: Where is all the housing?
According to census data around 50% of houses in the Truckee-Tahoe region sit vacant for much of the year. But in early February, the Placemate Lease to Locals program launched in Incline Village and Crystal Bay. It aims to unlock these vacant homes as housing for the local workforce.
The Placemate general manager for the Lake Tahoe region, Chase Janvrin, said the program provides homeowners with monetary incentives to lease to local workers.
“The concept has really resonated with these communities that, again, have a high percentage of their homes that are either vacant second homes or Airbnbs,” Janvrin said.
According to their website, the program provides one time cash incentives to qualifying homeowners when they convert their property into a new long-term rental. For a 5-11 month lease the incentive is $2,000 per qualifying tenant. And for a 12-plus month lease the amount is $4,500 per qualifying tenant.
For a tenant to qualify they must work at least 30 hours per week within the Incline Village Crystal Bay Planning Boundary. The combined income of all adult tenants must not exceed 200% of the area median income of $141,750.
The program is designed to help get people who may be considering renting their homes off the fence. This incentive is meant to help give homeowners peace of mind in case something was to go wrong, but once they find good tenants, they often continue renting to locals, Janvrin said
“On average, about 75% of participating property owners actually renew the lease and continue to rent long term to locals, even though there's no additional incentive past year one,” Janvrin said.
Placemates launched the pilot lease program with funding from Washoe County. The program has been operating in South Lake Tahoe and Truckee since 2020.
According to their website, Placemate has helped 649 locals in the Truckee-Tahoe region find housing.
Amelia Lara and her family benefitted from the program. She has lived in the Truckee area for 20 years, and said in the past more than 50% of her income went to rent.
“It's really hard to find housing that's reasonably priced, especially when you have a family. I worked in the service industry, I was a pastry chef for a long time…you don't make that much, but I was working more than full time,” Lara said.
Lara recently changed jobs, and her fiance was slated to work at Homewood this season as a lift mechanic, but when the resort didn’t open his job disappeared. When her rent was raised at her apartment in August, she could no longer afford it.
They were concerned as to where to find affordable housing for themselves and Lara’s 14-year-old daughter. That is when they used the lease to locals program to find a three-bedroom home in Truckee.
“We were super excited when we first moved in, especially after living in an apartment. My daughter had only really ever had memories of living in the apartment. And it was so sweet when she came and was like, ‘This is our whole house?! Like, who else lives here?’” Lara said.
But Lara is not alone in her struggle to find affordable housing.
Heidi Hill Drum, CEO of the Tahoe Prosperity Center, a regional community and economic development organization said the rental vacancy rate of the region hovers around 1%. This means that only 1% of existing rentals in the region are vacant or available.
This housing climate has forced much of the local workforce to move outside the Basin.
“About half our workforce does commute in, and about half of those folks would move here full time if they could find an affordable place to live,” Hill Drum said.
Hill Drum said that local businesses are having difficulty finding workers, and even essential workers like firefighters and hospital staff struggle to find housing. She said this not only contributes to more traffic on the roads, but also affects the makeup of the local community.
She said as a local mom, she thinks back to the little league and soccer leagues her kids were a part of, that now families won’t be able to participate in if they live outside of where they work.
“I think a negative impact of our workforce not living where they work here in the region, is that the fabric of our community is becoming more threadbare,” Hill Drum said.
Although Tahoe is facing a housing crisis, she said there are a lot of housing initiatives to help locals find and keep housing in the region.
Jim Kooler, is taking part in the lease to locals program for the first time. The soon-to-be-retired homeowner has listed his Northstar condo on the site.
“[I] thought it would be an interesting way to try and give somebody a chance to live in a nice place and help us out by having it rented for a longer period of time. So it seemed like the opportunity for a win, win,” Kooler said.
In the past, he rented his condo out as a short term rental on sites like VRBO, but decided to give a longer term lease a shot.
He said without the lease to locals program, he wouldn’t have considered it and would have stuck with short term rentals. But now, his condo is one of the 375 homes in the Truckee Tahoe region that Placemate has helped open up for the local community.
“It is always a little riskier having someone in your home for a longer period of time, but our hope is that we can find someone that's been as gracious and kind as the people that we've been renting to through short term rentals, people who love the area and appreciate a nice place to stay,” Kooler said.
