Lake Tahoe Town Pays Landlords to Rent to Workforce

Landlords in a town near Lake Tahoe, who rent homes to local workers for at least three years, will be able to receive up to $26,000 in public subsidies.

The $1.25M program, known as “Rooted Renters,” is designed to make more efficient use of the housing stock in Truckee, CA—much of which consists of vacation homes that are vacant for off-season portions of the year—while providing affordable housing to local workers who are priced out of the resort community.

The program locks in rents for three years while the landlords receive between $9K and $26K, depending on the size of the home. To qualify for the subsidies, landlords must rent to households earning less than 150% of the area’s median income, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

That translates into $135K for a two-person household and $168K for a four-person household in Truckee.

Truckee’s housing stock tends to be large homes of three bedrooms or more. The median home price in the town is $1.2M. Workers who staff the town’s restaurants and essential services including schools and utilities often commute from as far away as Reno or Carson City across the state border in Nevada, the report said.

Rooted Renters is a follow-up in Truckee to a program called Lease to Locals, which targets homeowners who have not previously rented out their units, offering up to $10K to property owners willing to lease out their homes to qualified local workers.

Both programs, which are funded by taxes generated by Truckee’s tax on short-term rentals, have a $3,500 cap on rents, although most of the rents in the area are lower than that.

The programs were started by Placemate, a local company that helps tourism centers “unlock” little-used vacation homes. Placemate, which started in Truckee in 2020, now is operating in several ski resort towns in Colorado and Idaho, as well as Provincetown and Nantucket in Massachusetts.

Truckee has already spent $1.5M thus far on Lease to Locals, which is closing on its 200th lease. The success of that program, which rewards new landlords, spurred existing landlords to clamor for Rooted Renters, the report said.

“We recognize that we cannot simply build our way out of the housing crisis. Unlocking existing housing stock for the local workforce is essential,” Truckee Mayor David Polivy said.

According to Placemate CEO Colin Frolich, resort communities tend to have limited land on which to build, a short building season, a shortage of labor, and high-wage earners from metropolitan areas driving up housing prices.

Regarding the use of taxes on short-term rentals to fund the Rooted Renters program, Frolich told the Chronicle. “it’s cool because tourism is funding the solution to over-tourism.”