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Springdale • As the gateway to Zion National Park, Springdale welcomes about five million tourists each year, but the small town in southwestern Utah is becoming less welcoming to workers who work in hotels, restaurants and shops.
There simply isn’t room at the Inn or just about anywhere else for many of the employees who work in Springdale. Many have little or no chance of finding or affording a house or even an apartment or a room in town.
Like so many estimated around 1,100 workers which flood the tourist town every day, Sarah Rutz must live elsewhere. The mother-of-two lives in Hurricane, where she pays $2,200 a month to share a house. She travels 22 miles to Springdale, where she divides her time between working as a sales clerk at Switchback Trading, a waiter at Jack’s Sports Grill, a bartender at Black Walnut Catering, and cleaning houses in her spare time.
“I work 70 hours a week,” said Rutz, who moved to southern Utah from Indiana 16 years ago. “I basically live to work instead of working to live. I just work to pay my rent.
Rutz’s situation is not unique.
According to a housing study conducted for the city by Zions Bank Public Finance, there is not enough land to provide more affordable housing, and what little land is available, particularly in the commercial sector of the city, is too expensive – between 400,000 $ and $1 million or more for a lot, business owners attest – to make development homes economically feasible.
“You could come here with a lot of money in your pocket and you would still have a hard time finding a place,” Springdale Mayor Barbara Bruno said. “So it’s really a problem. Our businesses are understaffed and Zion National Park is severely understaffed. They offered jobs to employees, or they had potential employees who accepted a position and then later had to turn it down because they couldn’t find anywhere to live.
Compounding the problem further, many owners of worker housing in Springdale have sold to developers or converted their properties to Airbnbs or overnight rentals, further reducing the supply of available housing for employees. City officials issued a temporary moratorium on further short-term rentals earlier this year, but that ban expired last month.
Holly Holt, manager of Oscar’s Cafe, says 18 of her employees are forced to commute to work from St. George or even more remote communities.
“One of my employees who has lived here for over two decades has to move because the landlord just sold the property he lives in. And he’s rented it out for 21 years straight,” Holt said. “Airbnbs just destroyed our climate here because you can make more money renting your house for three or four days than renting it to someone for a month.”
As difficult as it is to provide more housing for workers, Springdale leaders are determined to give it a shot. They recently formed a housing committee made up of the mayor, councilor Lisa Zumpft, planning commissioners Tom Kenaston and Pat Campbell, director of community development Tom Dansie and city manager Rick Wixom. They also hired an affordable housing coordinator, former Rockville Mayor Tracy Dutson, to help them explore ways to ease the housing crisis.
One possible option would be to create overlapping zoning of workforce housing in residential areas, which would incentivize developers by granting them permission to build housing or rental properties at higher densities. A certain percentage of properties, Bruno explained, would be reserved by deed for employees of Springdale or Zion National Park businesses.
This is where Dutson’s expertise comes in. A long-time expert in managing affordable housing projects, he is familiar with developers who specialize in building low-to-moderate income developments. He said developing a large-scale project is likely to be difficult due to the shortage of available land and the stigma some residents attach to low-income housing.
“People can start to panic, because they’re thinking, ‘Oh, my God, we’re going to have low-income people here,'” Dutson said. “They don’t realize the people who live there would be the police officers, the teachers and the people who work in Springdale and care about the community. It’s always a tough fight to get people to understand that these are people who want to be in the community and who will not cause problems.
Currently, planners are studying the overlap zone proposal. Before proceeding, Bruno said, the housing commission is responsible for ensuring that there are enough people to make such a project viable.
“Anecdotally,” said the mayor, “of course you could say that people want to live and work here. But we only have a primary school here. We don’t have a middle school or high school in Springdale. So some people would probably choose to live in Hurricane Valley where the schools are and commute to Springdale for work.
While the City is studying the matter, some merchants have already taken action. Jonathan Zambella, owner of the Zion Guru outfitter, has bought two houses near Rockville and rents a house in Springdale to house 12 of his employees, who pay him reduced rent.
Stewart Ferber, owner of La Quinta Inn and Suites in Springdale, Marriott Fairfield in nearby Virgin, and other properties provides free housing and utilities to about half of its 90 workers.
“Employees are the most important part of your business,” Ferber said. “Without them, you are sunk. So my philosophy is that if I can provide someone with accommodation and not charge them, that…was going to be important to them, and it worked out that way. I have employees who have worked for me for 27 years.
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