How Corporate Consolidation is Killing Ski Towns

Great overview of the ski industry.

As someone who lives half the year in Steamboat, Co I'm intensely interested in this. Sadly, for the town to create affordable housing for folks working in support jobs they need to overcome two rough obstacles:

• Higher interest rates. The current run-up makes owning or renting housing infinitely more expensive.

• Overcoming the shortage of construction labor. The 2008 recession wiped out almost 10 million folks in the construction industry who had to find work elsewhere. Our nation's never recovered.

• History as a guide? Guess who had a similar problem over 100 years ago? Pullman (who makes passenger railroad cars) & Ford both created their own company towns so workers could afford to join their teams. Can mountain towns do the same thing? Perhaps if they can solve the above two problems.

Oh, did I mention that Vail is screwing their own Ski Patrol