Amid record numbers of visitors to national parks and an ongoing struggle to hire and retain park employees, Rep. Blake Moore sponsored a bill to increase affordable housing in or near the parks.
In an interview with Deseret News, Moore said the Lodging Options Developed for Government Employees (LODGE) Act mirrors successful public-private partnerships used to complete projects at Hill Air Force Base, which is in Moore’s district. The LODGE Act was recently passed by the House Natural Resources Committee.
“We need to cut the bureaucracy out of letting our private sector engage on housing options (for national park employees),” Moore said, adding that the bill would also reduce costs for taxpayers because it wouldn’t require the government to fully fund the projects.
Instead, Moore said, private contractors would bid for the projects and would likely bear some of the cost themselves because of the reliable supply of tenants they could expect from national park employees.
“This is about providing better housing with a lessened burden on taxpayers and opening up the options to not just do everything so government-run because we know that when you fully run things through the government they just don’t have the competitive nature to make things better,” Moore said.
Though a similar process was already on the books, it was almost never used because of burdensome regulatory steps and a lack of funding, testified Lena McDowall, deputy director of management and administration at the National Park service, before a House Natural Resources Subcommittee last year. The National Park System’s employee housing program currently has 5,513 housing units in 214 parks serving around 13,000 employees, McDowall said.
Though the housing units constructed through the program will not be closed off to the public, the bill states that priority will be given to tenants who are national park employees. The bill also specifies that rent can be subsidized to keep it affordable for the employees.
Moore says his legislation will help Utah’s gateway communities located at the entrance of the national parks that are already pressed by a lack of affordable housing, and will help national parks to hire and retain employees to deal with the unprecedented volume of visitors.
“Utah’s national parks experienced record levels of visitation, with rates up nearly 80% since 2011. While a surge in tourism is beneficial to local economies, it poses major challenges for housing options in national park communities and their neighboring areas,” Moore said in a statement.
The number of visitors to the Moab area has more than doubled in the last decade, according to Madeline Logowitz, director of the Grand County Trails Division.
Zion National Park shattered visitation records in 2021 by exceeding 5 million annual visits for the first time in its history, St. George News reported. Compared with a decade ago, the number of visitors to Zion has nearly doubled. Zion recorded 4,692,417 visits to the park in 2022, which is its second busiest on record.
“It’s not going to be an easy fix to the overcrowding issue just because there’s so much popularity with (Utah’s national parks) but this is a good way to reduce the burden on taxpayers, and enhance the experience for the employee and tenant,” Moore said.
St. George Spectrum has reported that some tourist workers struggle to find anywhere to live, which is likely caused by many of the rental options being listed as nightly rentals to visitors instead of long term leases for local workers.
“The Park Service has lost 14 percent of their staff since 2011. Meanwhile, visitation went up 14 percent,” said John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Association, according to National Parks Traveler, which also reported that some national parks were experiencing up to a to 40% vacancy rate in their workforce.
“Our national park employees, their morale is low, they don’t have great living conditions, and all of a sudden when we enhance their conditions, they’re better at their job, we get more interested people willing to do those jobs,” Moore predicted, saying that a larger and more engaged workforce would lead to better managed national parks. “That’s why I’m hoping we can get this through the finish line.”