{"id":2451813,"date":"2019-12-03T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=317026"},"modified":"2019-12-03T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T05:00:00","slug":"sean-beckwith-gauging-your-aspen-expiration-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/sean-beckwith-gauging-your-aspen-expiration-date\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Beckwith: Gauging your Aspen expiration date"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You know what they say, \u201cCome for the winter, stay for as long as the soul-sucking real estate prices will allow.\u201d Wait, that\u2019s not how the saying goes? Well maybe someone should update the clich\u00e9d unofficial official mantra of Aspen.<\/p>\n

The affordable housing hamster wheel continues to spin in place as new units are scheduled to come online after ski season but expiring deed restrictions are taking old housing complexes off. However, affordable housing is not the ire-inducing subject today. It\u2019s expiration dates, specifically as they apply to the younger lower\/middle class\u2019 timeline in Aspen.<\/p>\n

When I moved to town about a decade ago, the prospects of establishing a home and a rewarding professional life were awful. Today, those chances are f\u2014ing depressing. Aspen has become either a place to kill some time in your 20s or a spring board\/training ground for people who can\u2019t or don\u2019t worship at the altar of capitalism.<\/p>\n

If you work in hospitality or the restaurant business, you\u2019ll likely need significant help\/luck to comfortably live anywhere near the core. And considering the amount of retiring workforce, you might be waiting for people to literally die off because I know if I had a retirement home already paid for in Aspen, I wouldn\u2019t be going anywhere.<\/p>\n

After a few seasons, the joy of recreating in the mountains can get outweighed by the area\u2019s financial landscape. The life of a ski bum is great if you\u2019re single and don\u2019t have to worry about supporting a family. It\u2019s amazing how easily stress fades with a few gondola laps and a playlist. That said, as late 20s turn into early 30s and more offseasons are spent figuring out which weddings you can attend than islands to visit, people want more than powder days and apres.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s starting a family, buying property or just wanting one job instead of three, the options outside of Aspen begin to look a lot more appealing because they don\u2019t involve winning the lottery \u2014 be it housing or Powerball. I personally know several people who moved away for those exact reasons. The more difficult it becomes to live a semi-normal life \u2014 living in a mountain town will never be 100% normal \u2014 the less likely it is people will stay, which sucks.<\/p>\n

I left for grad school, hated it and moved back. Have you ever spent hours trying to beat a video game only to have the file get erased? That\u2019s how it felt moving back. All progress is lost and now I have to start over at level 1 jumping over these damn Goombas.<\/p>\n

Not everyone moves back, though. At this point I think I have more friends who have moved away than still live here. It\u2019s like the closing scene from \u201cSandlot\u201d where they go through a disappearing montage.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnzo moved back to the Northeast to work closer to family. Trevor does construction in Wisconsin. Arturo and Casey explored new paths in Denver. Big Dan, well he stopped off for barbecue in Kansas City and we never heard from him again. Nick went to Houston and went bankrupt building mini malls. Carlton headed West for the vineyards of Sonoma.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diversity doesn\u2019t apply to just race and gender, it also applies to socio-economic classes. Community reflects population. If you have a town full of rich people, do you think they\u2019re going to care about affordable housing or the size of their third home? Their viewplane or the trees impeding it? A bar and grill or another outlet that serve $30 crudo?<\/p>\n

Aspen isn\u2019t in jeopardy of losing its culture because it already has. The notion of keeping Aspen weird is as outdated as the saying \u201cCome for the winter, stay for the summer.\u201d Too bad the Historical Preservation Commission couldn\u2019t slap a \u201cCan not redevelop\u201d designation on the town\u2019s personality.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to understand why a season turns into a decade and a decade turns into a lifetime in Aspen. It\u2019s one of the most beautiful places on Earth and also has enough big city-related amenities to keep residents entertained and comfortable. But we\u2019re approaching a point where there are more amenities than infrastructure.<\/p>\n

With everyone holding onto affordable housing and\/or desirable jobs like Aspen Skiing Co. grasping at the idea of inclusion, you have to wonder when people will swap their downvalley commutes for trips from the Front Range. Even if you score that well-paying executive chef job, you could end up washing dishes because staffing is as hard as trying to find a property manager who doesn\u2019t view pets as the Antichrist.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m not announcing my departure from the valley \u2014 that would be ungodly self-serving and I\u2019m not that important \u2014 but what I am saying is it\u2019s not a surprise when anyone of my ilk drops that sad Facebook post announcing a fire sale of their gear and a departure date.<\/p>\n

Shout out to the friends I left off the \u201cSandlot\u201d joke and best of luck, Will. Sean Beckwith is a copy editor at The Aspen Times. Reach him at sbeckwith@aspentimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know what they say, \u201cCome for the winter, stay for as long as the soul-sucking real estate prices will allow.\u201d Wait, that\u2019s not how the saying goes? Well maybe someone should update the clich\u00e9d unofficial official mantra of Aspen. The affordable housing hamster wheel continues to spin in place as new units are scheduled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2451813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 03:56:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2451813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2451813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2451813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2451813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}