Lake Tahoe Development Creates “Poverty with a View”

Regionalism: Development and Displacement

By Gabriel R. Valle

s the snow piles up around Lake Tahoe and tourists flock to the resorts, it makes for happy hotel and restaurant man - Aagers, casino and shop owners, but rising snow levels also means higher heating bills, more traffic, and a greater cost of living. For a tourist, the higher prices and traffic congestion are a temporary inconvenience—the price of visiting one of the most beautiful places in the world. For the low-income local community, the consequences are far more serious as the increase in wealth around the Tahoe basin has led to a flurry of developments and redevelopments, each pricier than the other.

Vail Resorts, owners of Heavenly Mountain Ski the agency was to enhance the natural beauty of South Resort in South Lake Tahoe and Vail Ski Resort in Lake Tahoe while centering development on an Eagle County, Colorado, see the development of ski vil - improved transportation network. The development was lages as a means to increase business from skiers and organized for mixed use and TOD, and the STRA snowboarders. The ski villages—patterned after old claimed that their plan was informed by discussions with 68 European resorts—try to recreate a certain alien moun - local community members and community workshops. tain culture where visitors can stay, eat, play, and spend The City of South Lake Tahoe and the Tahoe Region - their money. More than a mere tourist trap, a ski village al Planning Agency claim that since the completion of like Heavenly Mountain Village is fitted for an affluent Heavenly Village in 2001, the Stateline area has seen a tourist with its art galleries, chic coffee shop chains, “20 percent reduction in vehicle traffic at the Park brand-name ski stores, realty offices, and the occasional Avenue and U.S. Highway 50 intersection...” ( Restoration local high-end boutique or restaurant. in Progress: Environmental Improvement Program Progress While the ski villages may have Report. Tahoe Regional Planning destroyed local Tahoe culture, they Agency, 2007 ). This means that there offer an opportunity to correct some is less sediment runoff into the lake of the mistakes made by earlier devel - and fewer CO 2 emissions. As far as opment. Heavenly Village, for the STRA was concerned, they had example, has better water manage - accomplished their goal of creating a ment, more energy efficient buildings, more walkable environment around a more centralized location for the Heavenly Ski Resort where visi - tourism, and offers an opportunity for tors could spend their money shop - transit oriented development (TOD). ping and dining. Regardless, the n city’s romantic view of sustainable “Heavenly”South Lake Tahoe development neglected to address

Photo: The South Tahoe Redevelopment social equity. Agency (STRA) was created in 1988 by With increased wealth, often Heavenly Village, Lake Tahoe, the City of South Lake Tahoe to give comes increased poverty. As Heav - California. the dying Stateline area a boost, and enly Village gained notoriety as a the area’s first TOD was enacted in four-season resort, low-income resi - ©2011 Gabe Valle June of the same year. The purpose of dents were forced to compete with

Race, Poverty & the Environment | Vol. 18 No. 1 — 2011 Bay Area wealth. Their economic vulnerability margin - Ski Towns, and the Environment (Sierra Club, 2003), alized them and forced them out to the back roads of points out in his book: “A ski town worker’s life South Lake Tahoe. In attempting to create a ‘high end’ increasingly is a commuter’s life, defined by the con - playground for the elite, the once renowned local stant struggle to get by in a world of below average pay ‘mountaintown’ characteristics were lost and the decay - and above average costs... The haves-versus-the-have- ing infrastructure of the local low-income community nots reality has bitterly split ski towns and... deeply hidden behind the second homes of the wealthy. Or as faulted the socioeconomic and political landscape in Delicia, a South Shore resident commented sardonical - many mountain communities.” ly: “This is poverty with a view.” Finding a Voice for the Disenfranchised Being a Have-Not in a World Made for Haves Clifford also pointed out that as long as the people The Heavenly Mountain Shuttle bus offers free rides who live in small mountain towns do not control the to anywhere on the South Shore—anywhere that is, levers of power, the towns will end up being what they tourists or skiers or weekenders might want to go. Resi - don’t want to be. Now it appears that there is an dents have to take the local BlueGO bus—as infre - attempt being made by the Latino communities quent as it is—to get to the free shuttle to the ski around the lake to create their own political power and 69 resort. What’s more, increased ridership on the free in this, they are being helped by the Family Resource Heavenly Mountain Shuttle has caused the fares on the Center in the nearby town of Truckee. local BlueGo to go up to three dollars one way. “We are improving people’s health and creating “As with all aspects of the city, transportation deci - community leaders who will become stakeholders and sions must be made on informed citizenry,” said Joan gatekeepers in changing the system,” explained Execu - Roelofs in her book, Greening Cities: Building Just and tive Director Adela Gonzalez del Valle. “[We are] Sustainable Communities (Bootstrap Press, 1996). working with Latino community members to help “Public participation should include those who are [them] find a voice... to challeng[e] the existing system affected by transportation systems, including the in the town.” elderly, disabled, poor, and children. Too often, it is the It was Julian Agyeman, who in his book Sustainable commercial sector and those promoting ‘economic Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice growth’ that dominate in this area.” This is exactly what (NYU Press, 2005) asked the question: “Can we many South Shore locals fear has happened. achieve sustainable development and sustainable com - In the nearby community of Bijou, where the major - munities by tweaking existing policies, which we are n ity of South Shore’s low-income Latinos live, the rental doing at present, or do we need a rethink, a paradigm Photos: properties are primarily converted old hotels left over shift?” For the communities and environment around Lake Tahoe, from the 1960s Winter Olympics building boom. Now Lake Tahoe, this paradigm shift may be their best California the spike in land prices caused by the creation of Heav - chance for a just and sustainable community. (Left)The Grid enly Village has essentially assured low-income residents And not a moment too soon as the TRPA is now that they will continue to live in run-down and dilapi - eyeing Kings Beach, Lake Tahoe’s poorest area with the (Right) Heavely Village dated apartments. As Hal Clifford, author of Downhill largest Latino community, for its next transit oriented Slide: Why the Corporate Ski Industry is Bad for Skiing, redevelopment. n ©2011 Gabe Valle

Gabriel Valle is a graduate of San Jose State University where he wrote his Masters thesis on “Sustainable Tahoe: Bridging the Economic Gap” in 2009. He will join the Sociocultural Anthropology doctorate program at the University of Washington Fall 2011. Race, Poverty & the Environment | Vol. 18 No. 1 — 2011