This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2005, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
PARK CITY - When Javier arrived in Park City from Mexico seven years ago, affordable housing for him meant cramming into a bedroom with five others in a house that served as a crash pad for two dozen people.
"The first year I was here, I worked shoveling snow for about $5 an hour," he recalled. "Our [combined] rent was $1,480 a month."
Eventually, Javier - who did not provide a last name for fear of repercussions from immigration and housing officials - landed a dishwasher job in one of Park City's trendy restaurants. He worked his way up to prep cook and then line cook. Now 30, Javier is a sous-chef who earns $13 an hour.
With his wife, three small children and several roommates, he lives in one of this resort town's half-dozen rent-restricted apartment complexes. The monthly rent on his three-bedroom apartment is $1,030 - an amount he could not afford without "subletting" two of the bedrooms.
"If those guys leave, I'm not able to pay the rent myself," he said.
Javier's rent exceeds the average $842 he would shell out for a similar unit in Salt Lake County, but it remains within a few dollars of similar open-market rentals in pricey Park City, according to brokerage statistics.
Park City has apartments that are more affordable. But because Javier lacks a green card and a Social Security number, he cannot qualify for a federal program that keeps rents at 30 percent of a tenant's income.
So Javier lives in a subsidized unit - the owners get tax credits - that offers rents just below market rates.
In this one-time silver boomtown, where an old miner's shack near Deer Valley can fetch more than $500,000, real estate prices and rents are fueled not so much by residents as by free-spending tourists and wealthy second-homeowners.
That's why Utah's premier ski town - painfully aware that its service-based economy runs on cheap labor - is toiling to establish a stock of affordable apartments and homes.
A federal lawsuit, which was filed earlier this year against Summit County for allegedly falling short of Fair Housing Act rules, cited Park City as a model for government-encouraged affordable housing.
Still, the task of increasing that supply remains daunting. And in a city where the median annual income is tens of thousands of dollars higher than Utah as a whole, the term "affordable" is relative.
Immigrants continue to crowd into apartments to make ends meet, and even professionals with midrange incomes - teachers, firefighters, police officers - often find housing unattainable in a market in which single-family fixer-uppers go for a cool half million.
Even so, Park City officials say housing, with restricted rents or mortgages, exists for about 10 percent of the town's 7,900 residents.
"One of the things that has always defined Park City as a community is economic diversity," Mayor Dana Williams said. "Unlike Aspen and Vail, there is not the mentality here that the work force should live 30 miles downstream."
Nonetheless, many Park City workers do live elsewhere, including in neighboring Wasatch County.
"I cannot afford housing in this market," said Insa Riepen, executive director of Recycle Utah/Park City, "not in Park City, not out in the [Snyderville] Basin in Summit County. I was afraid I was going to have to move back to Michigan."
But after a 2 1/2 -year wait, Riepen qualified for a mort- gage-restricted house in Park City. She bought a 1,100-square-foot duplex in the Silver Meadows development off Kearns Boulevard for about $160,000.
It's a good deal, because a condo unit of similar size in that area would sell for up to $225,000 on the open market in Park City and about $110,000 in Salt Lake County, according to sales statistics. But it's something the single mom barely can afford.
"I have a mortgage and a loan, and I had to come up with a down payment," Riepen said.
Riepen is one of the lucky ones. More and more people find it too expensive to live in Park City.
"What is going to happen to the businesses in this town when people like me can no longer afford to live here?" she asked. "I'm fearful that this town will die."
For the past decade or more, Park City has relied on the nonprofit Mountainlands Community Housing Trust to develop and track rent-restricted housing.
But now, fearing that skyrocketing real estate prices threaten the expansion of housing for the service-based work force, the city is reviving its own Housing Authority.
"We need to be more directly involved in this," the mayor said. "Our Housing Authority will be more active in the next three or four years than it has been in the last 20. We have to create more options."
Park City is reassessing its affordable-housing stock and will project work-force needs for the next two decades, said Phyllis Robinson, the city's housing analyst.
As the town evolved from a seasonal resort to a year-round venue, the notion of affordable home ownership has taken seed.
"Looking at how we sustain a community, we see the need to have a sustainable work force," she said.
"We have to have adequate housing for folks who make $10,000 a year as well as those who make $80,000."
To that end, Park City loaned $100,000 and gave fee waivers of $115,000 to Mountainlands Housing Trust to build affordable condos at 555 Deer Valley Drive.
The condos - officially called The Line Condos because they sit where a half-dozen bordellos known as "The Line" once entertained miners - will consist of 22 one- and two-bedroom units. They are expected to be finished by year's end and will sell for $87,000 to $165,000.
But don't rush to buy one.
"We've had 22 people on the [waiting] list for two years," said Scott Loomis, the trust's executive director. "They are basically getting them for our cost."
With already-high real estate values leaping again, the future for affordable housing in Park City is going to remain a challenge, he said.
The trust already has turned its sights to nearby Oakley and Kamas, where land, although rising rapidly in cost, remains available.
"We will have to find ways to chip away at it here and there," he said of the resort town's affordable-housing conundrum. "But will this problem ever be solved in Park City? No."