Kill me now, I am trying to find housing in a ski town.
I am up against some pretty stiff competition. I know because I read the local Facebook forums filled with other people looking for a gutter and a duvet to call home.
“We are 10 people from Brazil looking for one bedroom apartment for $600 for the ski season” says one post.
“I have a sleep in closet available for rent in a share house fifty kilometres from the ski hill, no buses but there’s an Amish horse and cart that plods by every Monday that may give you a lift. $3212 pcm no utilities, 24 month lease, first, last and all months deposit” says another.
Clearly I have Buckley’s of getting a condo for one person in a responsible age and income bracket.
The 12 month leases available are strictly for 12 months only or longer, the winter leases want your arm, your leg, your first born and the second mortgage on your grandma’s home just to live there. Landlords and ladies clearly think they are renting out Buckingham Palace, not a half furnished flat pack hovel last washed in 1983.
I know this because I viewed a potential one bedroom condo today and I have been showering ever since.
The condo was on the bus route, a short walk to the chairlift, close to the supermarket and on the bike trail. It was also inhabited by four J Visa hospitality workers who eat their meals off the walls, sleep on blow up mattresses with no bedding and bathe in a tub filled with grime you could write your phone number in, should you be so lucky to find yourself in their abode in the early hours of the morning. A thousand bottles of bleach will never remove the image of the once white, now black, bathtub I witnessed.
The J Visa tenants stood there grinning at me and their landlord as if living in poverty was an actual choice and trashing someone’s property was, well, de rigour. Am sure their daddies who put them through the Swiss Hotel school they went to would be appalled and so would their five star hotel employees. Yes, yes, now I’m just showing my age.
I don’t know who I loathed more. The tenants for making it harder for people like me to get a roof over my head in a ski town or the landlord who asked me without a hint of irony if I was interested in the condo after viewing it. Do I look like a university student in a developing country? Maybe the Botox is working.
The housing crisis in ski towns has been written about over and over, even by the New York Times (worth a read), but it just doesn’t seem to be getting better on the ground. I have been lucky to ‘fall into’ places in both Aspen and Telluride. Though I kept my reasonably priced downtown Telluride one bedroom condo quiet lest the cars filled with sleeping Telluride employees should shoot me for my story of good fortune.
The saying in Telluride goes “you can have the job if you can find a place to live.” The job rarely gets taken.
Now it’s me considering sleeping in my car in Park City. Oh, that’s right, I don’t have one and sleeping on my fat tyre cruiser is not really an option. Or is it?
What’s even more frustrating are the two bedroom condos that have been advertising for a year lease week after week for the past month without anyone taking them. They sit there empty because the owners don’t want to take a winter lease, even from me (you know, age and income bracket and no room mates).
The landlord that thought nothing of showing me the post Cyclone J Visa property regaled me with stories of folks taking a 12 month lease on one of his four properties and then just leaving after the winter, rent unpaid, lease unfinished. Well, thanks for that, again. I pretty much have to get a hundred references from the Supreme Court in order to secure a lease now.
Not that it has helped because I am still begging, sorry, looking for a decent place for winter. And before you go on, yes, I have Trulia, Zillow, Craigslist, Park Record and KSL in my bookmarks. I have taken to introducing myself to locals as “Hi I’m Rachael, soon to be homeless, do you have a place for me?” and wonder why they don’t take the seat I then offer them at the bar.
The trouble is landlords can make a season’s worth of mullah in the 10 days of Sundance Film Festival alone so why would they open their condos for a seasonal rent, especially if those people are going to trash it. Not me, of course, just ‘those people’.
I may have to hand over that $15 million trust fund and purchase a 12 bedroom ski in ski out home, there sure seems to be plenty of those around.
In the meantime, here’s my ad for, well, me.
Who doesn’t want to spend the winter in Park City?
No, really, that’s a genuine question. Because I want your place.
My budget is US$2000 per month or thereabouts either side, unless I win Lotto or meet some silent benefactor willing to fund my forever travels and we all know how that ends (usually in a body bag on CNN).
Looking for a furnished (or partly) one or two bedroom – or a six bedroom ski in ski out mansion when I meet that benefactor (until he/she snaps) or the town decides to crowd fund my winter.
Downtown close to town lift is preferable but then so are thin thighs and never ending soft serve frozen yoghurt.
I have secured an old town condo until November 30 and am looking for digs from December 1 until March 30. Though of course if the right place is available I could move in earlier and stay later. My friends will tell you I am the first to arrive and always the last to leave the party. Their party. I don’t have parties at home. Never.
I live alone, come with excellent references and am gainfully self employed as a full time writer. Who does that? Yep, I do at Snowsbest.com Yes I am open to contra.
My mother would tell you I have good manners, god rest her soul. My father would tell you to ask me to call home.
So please, do get in touch if you fancy striking up a landlord/tenant relationship in Park City with moi (I spent this summer in France which makes me super cultured).
PS. Benefactors will undergo strict security screening. Because. Body bag and CNN.
PPS. I am Australian. For some that will put me at the top of the list. For others, well, just be kind
NB. The answer to the headline is – they are all fantasies.
