The Summit Alliance of Vacation Rental Managers is working directly with Town Councils in Breckenridge and Frisco to resolve the tourism challenges we face. But, many locals are wondering what SAVRM is doing to work for them.
The answer to that question has multiple points, because after all – SAVRM is a locally based group made up of homeowners and small businesses managed by people that live and work right here, alongside you. Here, you’ll find an FAQ-style overview of the key topics SAVRM is promoting and advocating for in the interest of our community. We invite our locals to engage in the discussion with us and offer creative solutions that will benefit the entire community. If you have an interest in one of these topics and think you might be able to help SAVRM fight the good fight, contact us!
SAVRM has been built by local business owners who operate in Breckenridge, Frisco, Silverthorne, and Dillon. One thing has been made abundantly clear in all our communities: the wages being offered across the board are not enough. As a local, you shouldn’t have to hold two or three jobs to put food on the table or keep a roof over your head. And we recognize that. By increasing wages throughout the county, we’ll help our locals be able to find more of that coveted work-life balance that we all talk about daily in meetings and in water cooler chats. We know that for you to be able to enjoy the life you moved here to live, wages need to be higher.
To advocate for higher wages, we are seeking the support of Town Council members and the Board of County Commissioners. While many of our locally owned businesses try to pay as much as they possibly can, real change for all local employees will have to take affect at a political level. We are in constant communications with our local officials and are seeking pro-local candidates for upcoming elections, too.
Certain parts of our community need to be preserved, and that starts with the neighborhood you call home. We understand that short term rentals have invaded some of your streets, and we know that you’d rather have “real” neighbors. Other families with kids and dogs, or people you work with and enjoy hanging out with on the weekends.
So as part of our efforts to work with the Town Councils and the County Commissioners, we are presenting recommendations that include a Tourism Core – a section of town that was originally designed to be a place for tourists to hang out. The Tourism Core, in Breckenridge for example, would include condos and townhouses and properties that are right in the middle of downtown Breck or those that are ski-in/ski-out. Most of these places were built to be rental properties for tourists.
Then, outside of that Tourism Core, we have our “regular” neighborhoods. Places like Wellington, The Highlands, Boreas Pass and so on. Those neighborhoods would be protected and would have under our recommendations, a limited number of short-term rental properties. These neighborhoods are ones that make most sense to be residential, long term local neighborhoods. Typical tourists don’t really have a place there, and while some visitors would like to experience the local way of life – most of them would rather be in those Tourism Core areas, anyway, so they can walk to shops and restaurants or take a short shuttle ride to the mountain.
The visitors who would then be staying in the reduced number of rentals outside of the Core would be the kind of folks you’d rather see and get to know… The ones who might end up moving here one day because they enjoyed their experience as your temporary neighbor. People with kids, or young professionals who would like to see what it’s really like to live here.
The goal here is simple. Offer visitors a true destination experience by encouraging them to stay downtown or close to the mountain. They’ll have more fun there, anyway – and you’ll get your neighborhood back.
There have been countless conversations surrounding workforce housing, and while the topic continues to be discussed there is much more we can do. There are vacant lots and swaths of unused property owned by the County and the Towns that could be purposed as affordable workforce housing developments. Apartments and townhouses for year-round employees, and even dorm style housing for the seasonal crews who are only here for a few months are all possibilities.
Where SAVRM comes to play here is that we are talking with local officials about workforce housing options and trying to help steer the conversation in a way that makes sense for all of us. These workforce-designed properties should be livable, a place you want to call home. And they need to be affordable – not this crazy $1500 per bedroom stuff we’re all seeing out there for rent.
By offering affordable housing for our local workers and front-line staff, we will be able to preserve that sense of community. To give you a neighborhood that is truly local. And to help you find that work-life balance by offering affordable housing AND that livable wage we talked about in topic #1.
It all comes down to work-life balance. At SAVRM we want our teammates – YOU – to be able to live a life that makes you happy here in Summit. We want to you get out on a powder day. Go for a hike in the summer. And do it all while not feeling like you’re being overrun by visitors. Making simple changes to the way we do things across the board will help mitigate that.
You work hard, and you deserve to have fun on your days off. And for that matter, you deserve to HAVE DAYS OFF! And we will continue these discussions surrounding affordable housing and livable wages until it becomes a reality.
Many of us here at SAVRM have kids, many of us grew up in the mountains, and we built our businesses here because we love it, too. We want that same future for you and for our community. That’s why we’re here, and that’s why we’re fighting the good fight.
A balance between tourism and our community is going to take more than just restricting vacation rentals. It’s going to involve addressing the supply and demand curve by looking at what we offer here and the value of the product. It’s going to take working together, community wide, to help our locals find a healthy balance between work and life. And it’s going to involve all of us.
So, neighbor: how can we help you? Find us on Facebook or send us a message. Let’s keep the dialogue open and constructive. Because at the end of the day, we’re all locals too.
