A growing Wyoming town faces a housing development crossroads

Pinedale, Wyoming, has long been a ranching and oil and gas town. It has a couple thousand residents, but still no stoplight, Walmart, or fast food chains.

And it is one of the fastest-growing areas in the state.

The pandemic brought in a lot of people from out of state. Plus, 75 miles up the road is Jackson, Wyoming, where the average house is around $7 million. As a local saying tells it: Jackson’s billionaires are pushing the millionaires to Pinedale.

Home costs in Pinedale have increased by about $200,000 in recent years. As more people move in, it becomes trickier to figure out how to control development and build more housing that local workers can afford.

The worker

A few blocks off Pinedale’s main street is a ranch-style three bedroom home. Rachel Daniels just moved in.

“So, a cute little sitting room, little gas fireplace,” she said as she walked through the house.

Daniels is house sitting for a woman who owns multiple homes in the area.

“This is all hers except for that bookcase — my bookcase,” Daniels said. “I brought four pieces of furniture.”

Her rent: pay the utilities and shovel the snow.

The house is for sale, just shy of half a million dollars. Daniels cannot afford to buy it, but house sitting is a way for her to stay in Pinedale, where she can keep hiking in the mountains and swimming in glacial lakes.

To make ends meet, she has patched together several gigs:

“I work at a Napa Auto Parts,” she said. “I host trivia. I’m a gardener in the summer up in Jackson. And what am I missing?”

Bartender.

All together, Daniels covers her bills and saves a little money by living in a camper in the summer. But she doubts she will ever buy her own home here.

“I can afford up to a $175,000 house,” Daniels said.

The mayor

Seven years ago, homes under $200,00 existed here. But now, the average home is about $450,000. Bringing that number down is top of mind for Pinedale’s mayor, Matt Murdock.

Murdock can often be found at his Town Hall office, wearing cowboy boots. He lives here for small town reasons.

“Pinedale is an amazing community — the people are great, you know, we don't lock our doors,” he said. “We have moose and deer walking through our town.”

Murdock said that is what appealed to a lot of people who moved here during the pandemic. Plus, vast public lands and limited government.

“You know, you can take your dog, shoot your gun, and start a fire around here,” he said.

And for a person who is, say, a remote worker moving from California or the East Coast, a half-million dollar house here sounds like a deal. But that is not who Murdock is worried about.

“I'm just doing a survey right now,” he said, shuffling through papers. “And 46% of the public service workers I surveyed are considering leaving because they can't afford to live here. That's fire. That's EMS. That's sheriffs.”

To keep them here, as well as other people who can’t afford the rising prices, Murdock wants the private sector to do something.

“So you have a couple of developers who now want to build houses, which increases inventory,” he said. “Inventory means prices should come down.”

That inventory could end up being hundreds of houses on both ends of town — single family, townhomes, and duplexes.

The neighbors

For now, it is just a few developments and some proposals. But, even that makes long-time locals Greg and Martha Ptasnik uncomfortable.

Their home is tucked down a gravel road on a big lot with a pond in front.

“This is where hockey started in Pinedale,” Martha said.

“It'd be frozen. We’d clean the snow off, and the kids would play hockey,” Greg added.

Across from them is a hayfield — about 75 acres that is a hangout for moose, fox, deer.

A commercial developer bought it, and according to its draft proposal?

“There’d be a house right here,” Greg said. “It would have been a duplex.”

The draft proposes around 200 units, a strip for businesses, a grocery store and paved parking.

The Ptasniks do not love it. But they are not totally opposed to development. They say they just want it done right. They point out the new, bright yellow Dollar General as an example of development that could have been done a little better.

“You have to plant trees around every parking lot — there are ways to do it,” said Martha.

And even some people who need housing in Pinedale, including house sitter Rachel Daniels, are skeptical of commercial developers shaping the town’s future. And it is not just the looks of what they are doing.

“I do not believe I will be able to afford those houses,” she said.

That is because some townhomes already going up on the other end of Pinedale are being advertised as 640 square feet for a little over $300,000.