Every November Park City residents are asked by city and civic officials to open their homes to international workers needing seasonal housing. If you didn’t hear anyone ask this year, it’s because there are fewer of them looking.
The slow economy combined with a change in the number of visas each resort is allowed (and the places the resorts can recruit from) means they have hired fewer international workers for the season.
Stand outside the Christian Center of Park City in late November or early December and you might mistake it for a Brazilian consulate. That country does not require a student to contract with an employer before obtaining a visa. Students from Brazil typically showed up to fill any jobs the resorts couldn’t fill on their own.
There are no such jobs this year, and the word was apparently spread around South America.
Scott Loomis, executive director of Mountainlands Community Housing Trust, said he’d heard through the grapevine the quota for one type of visa is always filled up by August, but this year only 25 percent were used.
“The resorts have put the word out that if you come here and don’t already have a job they will not hire you,” he said. “It’s very different this year compared to previous years.”
Kim Mayhew, director of human resources for Deer Valley Resort, said the recruiting companies have also made that clear to their clients.
The bright side of that is there is more housing available for the workers who did come this year.
In September, the three Park City resorts reported a much easier time recruiting locals than normal. Mayhew said on Tuesday that the majority of Deer Valley’s seasonal workforce this year is from Salt Lake, Summit and Wasatch counties.
Loomis said he’s heard anecdotally that there aren’t enough jobs for everyone who wants one.
“There are a lot of long-time residents who normally work two jobs in winter now only working 20 hours a week,” he said.
Still, there are some jobs that require a special set of skills such as driving a snow cat or teaching ski lessons for which the resorts recruit the same people year after year.
The Christian Center keeps a book of places for rent to aid international workers and executive director Tim Dahlin said there were more places than people looking prior to last Thursday.
For an unknown reason, they got a rush then and are now waiting for their weekly “roommate roundup” meeting Wednesday evening to determine if additional places are needed.
It wasn’t surprising they got a rush, he said, it was surprising that it came a month late.
Mayhew said a wave of workers always arrives at about this time because it is when their university semester ends.
Loomis said he was surprised to hear of the workers negotiating their rent this year. That has been unheard of in the past.
In the past it was possible for residents to charge $1,000 a month for a single room and feel like they were doing someone a favor. This year the workers have the luxury of looking for affordable rent, Dahlin said.
Park City Council Member Liza Simpson can often be heard this time of year asking for more people to make rooms available. This year, she’s more excited about the city’s efforts to provide housing for its own seasonal workers.
Simpson said if the new public works building is constructed, it will include dormitories for transit bus drivers. Those kinds of perks allow the city to recruit the most qualified candidates, she said in an interview last week.
Deer Valley Resort is continuing to rent cabins at River’s Edge Resort at the base of the Jordanelle Dam this year for its workers, Mayhew said. In fact, there is even excess space there, too.