"I never saw snow before - until last night," she muses. "But now I load ski lifts."
Like hundreds of other lift operators, snow shovelers, maids and busboys, Halliday is scrambling to find an affordable bunk in the rarefied real estate that permeates Utah's premier tourist town.
Park City Mountain Resort, Deer Valley and The Canyons depend on hundreds of seasonal workers to keep ski lifts and lodges humming. But with each passing year, those $8-an-hour employees find it increasingly difficult to locate housing.
"The resorts really need the workers and tell them to come on out," says Stephanie Perkins of the nonprofit Mountainlands Community Housing Trust. "But the resorts don't supply the housing."
Deer Valley hires about 1,500 seasonal workers for the winter. The Canyons takes on some 800 and Park City Mountain Resort employs about 850, according to the ski resorts. Deer Valley provides 177 beds but Park City Mountain Resort and The Canyons have no accommodations for workers such as Halliday.
The only thing standing in the way of a perfect winter for the adventurous Aussie, who hopes to take up snowboarding, is a place to live. But her wages - about $1,000 take home per month - will make scoring a Park City crib tougher than a half-pipe backside 360.
The Canyons "told me it would be quite hard," she says of finding lodging. "But they said they would help me."
And help her they did. The resort's employment office pointed her to the Roommate Roundup, sponsored by Mountainlands Housing Community Trust and hosted by Michel Broff, who opens her Park Avenue Bad Ass Coffee house for the Wednesday night gatherings.
At the roundup, Mountainlands pairs would-be renters with property owners who have a condo or bedroom to let.
"We have a lot of international kids come to work at the resorts in the winter, and housing is always a challenge," Broff says. "We're in dire need of some dormitories, like we had in Salt Lake for the Olympics."
But the ever-soaring real estate market in Park City is making this season more difficult than ever. Older condos that once served as seasonal housing have been sold as year-round homes.
For 20-year-old Brazilian Alvaro Costa and his two buddies, that means renting beds in condos for $400 a month each.
It's summer in South America and the college students from Rio de Janeiro are spending theirs in Park City hoping to make a lot of turns in Utah's famous powder.
"We just want to get something close to the bus line," Costa says. "We found one place, but it was too expensive."
An entire bedroom would rent for $500 to $700 a month, explains Mountainlands housing coordinator Nicole Butolph.
"That's usually the shocker," she says. "You have to break it to them slowly. It's difficult because their rent could be half of what they'll earn."
Kevin and Tara Roberts, a brother-sister team from Knoxville, Md., recently finished college and came to Utah to spend a winter skiing.
Tara lucked into a job shooting photos of visiting skiers at Deer Valley. And Kevin had no trouble qualifying for a job as a ski instructor at Park City Mountain Resort.
That was the easy part. After an intense house hunt, they rented a Powderwood condo at Kimball Junction. At the coffeehouse meet-up, the Roberts were hoping to hook up with someone to share rent.
"We finally found a place to live, but it's too expensive," says Tara of the $1,400-a-month rent that doesn't include utilities. "So we need to find another roommate."
The housing problem has not gone unnoticed at City Hall.
"We have to have a civic dialogue to determine what to do," says Park City Mayor Dana Williams. "A lot of the older condo projects are being filled with primary residents. The housing stock for seasonal employees is just about gone."
Fortunately for Park City's resort economy, young workers such as 19-year-old Agustina Basbus from Cordoba, Argentina, just keep coming.
"Some friends told us it was a great place with nice people, and the snow was good," she says. "And there were a lot of young people coming here from all over the world."
csmart@sltrib.com
