There is a knock at the door. You answer it and see someone you do not know. They are not in a uniform to deliver a package. They don’t appear with a basket of anything to sell. They look cold and weary.
They say they are sorry to bother you (and they are very sincere) and then they ask — if by any chance — you might have a room to rent.
You don’t have room — your home is full with your family. But you have just taken an emotional body slam. How is it “we” have lured these folks here for jobs with no housing available.
What do you/we do next?
I often send money to causes with well-written pleas and I honestly never know exactly how it is spent. But I send that help in an emotionally safe, distant way. I feel good enough about making my small gift with all good intent — to places outside my city, state, sometimes country. Gifts, where the cause is so compelling. And … to be honest, I don’t actually have to interact with real humans and their very real life situations.
In the news this week, we heard on KPCW a story about folks who are here to work in the winter and have been finding no room at any inns. Included in that story are details — there are homes here where folks are living seven people to a room. Last year maybe 1,200 of these local essential workers from out of this country known as J-1s showed up to work. To work in restaurants and ski resorts and hotels. This year more than 2,200 workers — about double from last winter — are expected.
Rob Harter, the executive director of the Christian Center of Park City, was included in the interview and stated it was very real and a huge problem. His organization, among other services, tries to help match up folks who have space with folks who need space. But the truth is there are hundreds and hundreds of people who are here with no space and no current possibility of finding safe space for the winter. In the past year many of the properties that once were available were sold and have been converted to private residences, not nightly or even monthly rentals. The inventory simply does not exist to house the people we invited here to help us keep this resort economy machine running.
Consider it our own situational tornado.
And now we need to move in — with fierce speed — and do housing triage. What can we do to fix this short term, in real time for this winter? And yes, there are stories that some large businesses here have gone to Salt Lake City, and underwritten space in rental places there, where a different housing crisis already existed. We have tried to move the problem, our problem, down valley and we have created a secondary crisis in Salt Lake with our workers. Which honestly doesn’t feel clever at all. It feels shameful.
So what can we do? Here. If we use the idea of this crisis hitting us like a natural disaster it allows us to shift how we respond. We create a kind of FEMA task force and we do anything we can to find safe shelter and clean water and food for those affected.
Maybe, as a community with new leadership, we could do radical things. How about we work with the folks at the film studio and create temporary housing there for this winter? Stay with me. Inside that building are three sound stages. Could they be created into a men’s dorm and a women’s dorm and a couple’s space? Could we bring in portable showers? There are already restrooms inside the underused building. The plan for this land has now shifted and it is to create affordable housing and soon. But none of that actual work can start until the spring. For right now, can we create a worker’s camp — not unlike our historical beginnings, a kinda miners boarding house? Can we try to keep folks safe and warm and dry there?
We could suspend some of our own rules for this winter and allow food trucks to exist there. Since that end of town has no food service. Could Anaya’s Market create a kind of pop-up convenience store? And since there is no reliable transportation, adjust our buses or add some — just like we do during Sundance and other special events — and make certain all those living there have safe predictable transportation?
The resorts will need to kick in. Ditto the county and city services but are there state/federal funds that could help? Can a few new someones be hired to make this their only job?
We have the most extraordinary resource in our town of less than 8,000 full-time residents in the aforementioned Christian Center. It has been serving as air traffic control for folks in need, all kinds of need, for 20-plus years. And once a week — for decades — they have hosted free dinners for those folks who are working here from other countries. But this year with DOUBLE the number of service workers here they will be overwhelmed. What if we add to the nights when those free meals are available? What if service clubs and churches take a regular night also? Neighborhoods, friend’s groups, maybe even for this winter the book group puts down the book and lives the story.
Like those freak Kentucky tornadoes we are spinning faster and more fierce than any pattern we have witnessed before. Our moving from disaster to disaster while trying to hold onto a blade of bluegrass to stay grounded is foolish, relying on systems not deeply-rooted. If we continue to ignore human needs in favor of short-term economic wants, we will be unable to stop the gravitational pull. We will be sending this whole fragile resort economy flying … somehow all akimbo … into the universe.
We need to authentically welcome the stranger this very Sunday in the Park…
Teri Orr is a former editor of The Park Record. She is the founder of the Park City Institute, which provides programming for the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Center for the Performing Arts. She has been a member of the TED community since 2007 and founded TEDxParkCity in 2009.