An equitable community is one in which all who work here, can afford the opportunity to live here. The minimum wage should therefore be sufficient for all who work full-time to afford safe, quality housing – in the community where they work. Today, in the City of South Lake Tahoe, this is not true, and the City Council bears the responsibility to fix it.

Tahoe’s skyrocketing housing costs have wildly outpaced wages. TRPA’s recently published Destination Stewardship Plan – with data approved by both the Tahoe Chamber of Commerce, and the South Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority – shows that between 2018 and 2022 (the last year for which data is available), accounting for inflation, regional tourism industry real profits are up by 10%, but average tourism wages are down by 15%. All the while housing costs have very nearly doubled.

The results have been acute. Our workforce and families have fled as jobs no longer pay living wages. Since 2000, South Tahoe (all of zip code 96150) has lost 25% of all working aged adults – some 4,000 adults aged 20-50 have left town. Their children have left with them; in that same time South Tahoe has lost 35% of its youth population – some 2,500 kids no longer live here – this is not just school enrollment, but population, enrolled or not. This is unsustainable.

Many have asserted that those making minimum wage are merely high-school students living at home and working summer jobs, or servers who, with tips, can make a living wage. These arguments paint a convenient picture of who makes below-living wages, but it’s mostly not true. The real engine of Tahoe’s tourism economy is a small army of mostly unseen, unconsidered, and often non-English speaking “back of house” workers in jobs ranging from dishwashers to hotel housekeepers. School-aged teenagers are not washing dishes or folding linens on Tuesday mornings in April – nor should they be.

Yet, a coalition of the Tahoe’s special interests, consisting of the Chambers of Commerce, the Hotel Lodging Association, the Realtors Association, and the Tahoe Keys Homeowners Association (calling themselves, absurdly, “Keep Community First”), who have already opposed every effort to increase funding for affordable housing, are now opposing even a discussion on increasing wages. Without affordable housing or living wages, the alternative now on the table is bussing low wage workers up from the Carson valley to work in service during the day and sending them back at night. This is elitism, bordering on bigotry. We should expect better from our local institutions.

All who work to support our economy, deserve a living wage, nothing less. We need to raise the minimum wage, here, in South Lake Tahoe.

Cities that have raised their minimum wages above the state minimum have wide flexibility, and those wages can be adjusted for job categories that make significant tips, as well as youth employees who live with their parents, or jobs that provide health benefits. Cities can and have adjusted local minimum wages by business size and revenue as well. A few examples cannot be an excuse for paying non-living wages so many in our workforce.

No fewer than 44 cities in California have higher-than-state minimum wages. Including tourist destinations such as Sonoma. Indeed, a number of local businesses, large and small, including local restaurants, already pay living wages to their non-tipped workers. Just recently, the state began to require that large fast-food chains in California pay a living wage minimum of $20/hr, as does Vail Resorts. Clearly, paying living wages is possible, including here.

The core intent of the minimum wage is, and always has been, to provide a living wage for all who work. Nothing less. On his signing of the first federal minimum wage in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was explicit, writing:

“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level – I mean the wages of decent living.”

Wages are, of course, one half of the problem. The cost of housing is the other, and locals are being squeezed from both ends. Affordable housing costs money, either to build, renovate, or incentivize. More is badly needed and fast. Which is why it was so disappointing that despite an incredible 70% public support, the Council voted down, 4-1, a small increase in the tourist tax. The proposed 2% hotel room tax increase would have made a $200/night hotel room cost all of $204 but could have provided $3M/year in long-term, recurring funding for critical needs – particularly affordable housing and local public transit.

A healthy community is one that respects its workforce, and which ensures that all who work here are both welcome and able to live here. Currently, we are racing in the opposite direction, and we must change.

Raise the minimum wage in South Lake Tahoe to a living wage – a wage to live here.