Housing

From Idaho to Montana to Nebraska to Utah to Colorado, efforts to confront a lack of affordable housing are ongoing in basically all of Wyoming’s neighbors. Even though our own state has done basically nothing to confront the problem, we have plenty of models to look toward if lawmakers ever get the gumption to act.

Wyoming’s housing crisis came on fast, but solutions to it from political leaders are either incremental or nonexistent. In some towns, local officials have updated zoning regulations to allow for more construction. Federal rent assistant programs are backlogged, and the Legislature has done essentially nothing.

In the second part of our housing series, Better Wyoming looks at the secondary problems caused by our housing crisis: intensified brain drain, lack of critical services, harm to the economy, and an overall impact on our communities’ well-being.

In the first part of a new series, Better Wyoming looks at the causes of our state’s housing crisis—including wealthy out-of-staters paying cash and driving up prices, short-term rentals depleting housing stocks, restrictive zoning, high construction materials costs, and more.