By Alexis Ollar
It’s no surprise to everyone who lives in Truckee and North Lake Tahoe that our region is feeling the crunch of more visitors year-round. This influx comes with real consequences. Most significantly, the related spike in housing costs makes it hard for people who work here to live here. The overwhelming number of visitors also threatens to degrade our natural environment.
The impact of the growth of short-term rentals is causing communities from towns around Yellowstone to Barcelona, Spain, to sound the alarm about how hard it is to keep housing affordable without strong protections for locals in place.
Mountain Area Preservation (MAP) advocates for responsible development in the Truckee/Tahoe region. On July 1, MAP settled a lawsuit with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) after it agreed to improve housing affordability and address other concerns. MAP sued TRPA after it adopted housing codes last December that did not include any guarantees that bonus unit housing would be affordable. TRPA bonus units are a specific commodity for affordable, moderate, or achievable housing. With the growth caps in the Basin, there are only 946 TRPA bonus units left.
Thanks to the settlement, 50% of remaining bonus units must be affordable, and a brand new environmental analysis that uses current conditions as a baseline must be completed for the next phase of housing policies. These details may seem too technical for the average Tahoe resident to care about, but engaging at the policy level is precisely the way to ensure that our communities remain as safe as possible during wildfires, housing remains affordable for workers of all stripes, and water and air quality are protected. As a community, the decisions Tahoe Basin policymakers make now will affect our quality of life for decades to come.
The recent settlement also gives MAP a seat on TRPA’s Tahoe Living Working Group, which will shape the next phase of housing code updates. As part of that group, our commitment to the community is to ensure Tahoe Basin residents know what ideas are being considered and how they can make their voices heard before policies are set in stone.
Affordable workforce housing, better management of traffic and overcrowding, and protection of our number one economic and natural asset — a clean, pristine Lake Tahoe — are all priorities that most Tahoe residents share. Our goal is to make sure these values are at the center of housing policies for the region.
MAP has a long history of advocating for balanced development that protects our natural areas while promoting workforce housing. Our advocacy has led to the protection of more than 7,000 acres in the region in areas ranging from Martis Valley to Donner Summit, Brockway Summit, and Canyon Springs. Our housing advocacy has resulted in the development of more than 700 deed-restricted workforce units. We’ve also seen significant successes in advocating for environmental justice, in part by pushing the Truckee Town Council to adopt sustainable policies in its 2040 General Plan.
With a million more visitors to some parts of Lake Tahoe (e.g., Sand Harbor) than we saw a decade ago, a business-as-usual approach will not be enough to protect the livability and affordability of our area, never mind our natural areas. It is possible to support economic growth while protecting everything that makes this region so special. The way to do that is through good planning. And the path to good planning is through community participation and collaboration.
As TRPA’s Tahoe Living Working Group process gets underway, MAP’s commitment is to let community members know how and when they can add their voices to the process. The more people get involved, the better our shared future will be.
~ Alexis Ollar is the executive director of MAP, a nonprofit land use and conservation organization. She lives and works in Truckee/Tahoe and has been with MAP since 2011. Alexis has served on government and community planning efforts, advocating for the workforce, protection of natural resources, and preservation of character.
