In whose backyard then?

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-At his home on Cheney Lane recently, Peter Moyer sat in the shade of a patio umbrella looking across the well-watered lawn of the property he bought nearly 30 years ago, where he and his wife, Robin, built a house and raised a family.

Moyer, a Jackson Hole attorney, has made the local newspapers of late for his part in bringing a lawsuit against Teton County, alleging the county and its housing authority acted in a secretive, perhaps illegal way when it moved to buy a 5.2-acre property across from the Moyer home. That deal was finalized this week with a sale price of $2.1 million.

Cheney Lane, a leafy, established neighborhood off of the Moose-Wilson Road on Jackson Hole’s so-called West Bank, is a place where the cottonwoods and aspens planted when many of the houses were built – and in many cases are still occupied by their original owners – have begun to reach over rooftops, offering some relief from July’s intense dry heat.

Moyer has referred to himself and most of his neighbors as “working stiffs.” Seemingly that everyman moniker aims to separate him and his neighbors from the those who inhabit some privileged stratosphere of the wealthiest of Jackson Hole residents and part-time residents. After all, it is the unprecedented amount of private wealth and strong desire for Jackson Hole’s natural endowments and cultural amenities that have driven real estate through the roof, putting the chance for new free-market home ownership out of reach for all except those at the top of the income chain.

Moyer and the loose neighborhood (Cheney Lane and some nearby houses facing the Village Road) that boasts 26 individuals who co-signed as plaintiffs in the suit fear that, with the housing authority’s acquisition of the land, they could one day face a dense, subsidized affordable development where now there is only a pasture and a few rental places. They worry that not only their immediate neighborhood, but the entire Village Road is undergoing urbanization, a term vocal West Bankers sling to convey the changing character of the road leading to Teton Village.

“There’s no limit to [potential for new affordable housing] in the county,” Moyer said. “They can do what they darn well please.”

Down the road from Cheney Lane, the owner of a 5-acre campground is entering into the county application process to develop that property into an 88-lot subdivision, a density that could only be sought under special affordable housing zoning, the likes of which have not to date been approved. Many West Bank residents and other concerned parties mobilized when that proposal went through the county planning commission in recent months. They will likely turn up in numbers when the developers first meet with county commissioners on July 19.

Among their concerns are impacts to wildlife migration corridors and crucial habitat along the Snake River, which runs parallel to the Village Road that becomes the Moose-Wilson Road on its way into Grand Teton National Park. Furthermore, many of area’s residents, especially those likely to turn out at meetings, are well planted in the area, some of them part of the first waves who moved onto what was previously open ranchland. They know their neighbors and consider the setting and current residential zonings in keeping with a rural character that has long typified Jackson Hole.

If not among Teton County’s über-wealthy – though certainly some of them could be – they are what could be called “land rich,” living on properties much more valuable than when they were acquired 20 years ago.

“One of the reasons the county picks on us is we’re not the big guys,” Moyer said. “But the pendulum is swinging, because the neighborhoods like ours are very strong and there’s a cohesiveness.”

“NIMBYism” is a popular concept that often comes up, explicitly or tacitly, in the affordable housing discussion in Jackson Hole. The acronym for “Not In My Backyard” is lobbed about by many parties involved, and though some feel it is a counterproductive term, it does lend nuance to group and individual dynamics at odds with one another. Apart from reports of a few old-fashioned Wyoming-style libertarians who think the free-market should reign free, there is no singular opposition to the county offering affordable, deed-controlled housing for part of Jackson Hole’s “workforce” population.

But people tend to mobilize more when there is talk of a dense affordable housing development in their area. And there is a logic to the idea that affordable housing might just perpetuate the growth-related woes of Teton County, an area where it is often noted in broad discussions that only 3 percent of the county is private land.

County Commissioner Hank Phibbs was one of the three of five electives present when the county gave the housing authority the green light to move on the Cheney Lane property. Phibbs has been active on community boards since the 1970s and says the affordable housing problem has haunted the valley for years, though the intensity of the discussion is heating up.

“My sense is that you have two separate things warring back and forth,” Phibbs said. “One is the sense that we need to preserve community and character. The other is a sense that people are scraping by and need help” establishing themselves in Teton County.

Phibbs adamantly contends the move to buy the Cheney Lane property was done in the interest of land banking, and for the foreseeable future the site does not represent an appropriate spot for a dense residential development in the name of affordable housing. And the commissioner believes county efforts can alleviate but not fully remedy the shortage of accessible, affordable housing.

“People want to preserve, but if you take the posture that everything will stay the way it is, there will never be any resolution to the issue,” he said. “Everyone’s going to have to sacrifice a little.”

Where to put affordable housing in the county is, of course, a large part of the discussion. Invariably, everyone chiming in says it needs to go where there is already infrastructure: sewers, roads, access to public transportation, proximity to jobs and schools to minimize traffic and commutes.

Beyond the Village Road, which, depending on whom you ask, does or does not offer the appropriate amenities based on those criteria, other areas identified for future affordable housing developments include the South Park area, a property near the Aspens, Melody Ranch, Hoback Junction, Wilson (which already has some affordable developments) and, of course, the town of Jackson.

Planners and elected county officials indicate that the pursuit of housing Jackson Hole’s workforce will likely be a many-pronged, pragmatic endeavor employing a site-by-site approach to determine the appropriateness of each location given the larger context of given area at a particular time.

County Commission Chairman Andy Schwartz was also at the hearing when the county gave the nod on the Cheney Lane property.

“In the next 15 years we will determine the character of Teton County,” Schwartz said on Monday. “Will all of the workers have to drive in here everyday” from Star Valley to the south and Teton Valley, Idaho, to the west?

As the county begins to mull the reworking later this summer of a major guiding document, its comprehensive plan, Schwartz said a lot of effort and discussion will into the affordable housing question and its interplay with other socially valued ideals, namely community character and preserving natural resources.

On the one hand, Schwartz said, the prospect of dense residential developments where before there were multi-acre parcels in neighborhood conservation zones could be interpreted as a threat to both community character and, in certain areas, an impact to wildlife.

The converse of that notion is the idea that Jackson Hole would lose and is losing its workers – emergency responders, teachers, nurses, etc. – to more financially habitable areas nearby. Those places peripheral to Teton County that are booming will one day, the theory goes, stand on their own two legs, if they aren’t already, operating with more and more economic autonomy and less as satellite communities that house people who would otherwise work, volunteer and raise families in Jackson Hole. The wealth will have completely driven away not only crucial workers, but an important component of Jackson Hole’s social fabric.

“Either for or against affordable housing, you can spin it either way,” Schwartz said. “The problem is, when the earthquake hits, how do we get those emergency personnel back into the county?”

County Commissioner Ben Ellis, who for years served on the planning commission before he was elected to the county’s governing board, said, “When you see this kind of market failure you see a dying community. We have a real and legitimate affordable housing crisis and there’s no way our agencies or government or businesses can pay such a salary so that people can afford to live here.”

Ellis echoed Phibbs’ belief that that site does not present an appropriate location at this time. “But 20 years from now, who knows?”

Housing Authority Director Christine Walker drew a circle on an pad of paper last week.
“This represents the ideal area for affordable housing,” she said, her pen gesturing within the circle. Then she drew a small mark just outside the circle. “And this is the Cheney Lane property.”

Walker is also a subscriber to the idea of appropriateness of a place given the context and demands of a particular, yet unforeseen time. However, she does not have the pressures of an elected official to keep up with a constituency. She is focused on erecting affordable housing, a charge she clearly approaches not only as job, but a social cause as well.

“Why are we so afraid of people?” she said of the opposition she feels greets most affordable housing proposals. She added that once the neighborhoods are established, long-time residents and those who win the affordable housing lotteries will form new communal bonds.

Walker, who at public meetings has endorsed Osprey Creek, the proposed 5-acre, 88-lot development, said an environmental argument against dense residential clusters can be debunked, if a proposal takes appropriate mitigations into consideration. “We tend to think that higher density is at odds with the environment,” she said, calling sprawling residences “piecemeal protection of the environment.” “But you’re not preserving migration corridors, you’re not protecting anything except one man’s island.”

Darrel Hoffman is a member and former director of Save Historic Jackson Hole, a conservative advocacy group that campaigns against the threats of dramatic change to the community. He said that in previous years, people who spoke out against or even cautioned moderation to affordable housing developments were often demonized.
“It’s not like we shouldn’t have it, it’s how much is enough,” he said. “It needs to be debated seriously and without questioning people opposed to it. If you oppose affordable housing it’s like you get cast out of the community. But that could be changing now.”

Next door to Peter and Robin Moyer’s house, Don Gronberg said he made it his “life’s work to improve the property” he bought in 1980. Gronberg, who owns a landscape company, has helped plant many of the trees along the road leading to his house.
“We thought we could count on the county to keep it rural,” he said. “I can step out into my driveway at night and it’s so peaceful. That kind of density will completely change the neighborhood I’ve worked hard to build.”

Photo by Jonathan Adams
Peter Moyer gets together with neighbors near their home on Cheney Lane.  Moyer and 26 others recently filed a suit against the county over the purchase of a 5-acre property on Cheney Lane.

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In whose backyard then? | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories

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