Moab faces growth challenges with housing scarcity

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Moab, a once quiet town, is now grappling with significant growth challenges, particularly a housing scarcity that affects its workforce.
Local business owners, like Jason Taylor of the Moab Adventure Center and Alex Borichevsky of 98 Center, highlight housing as the primary issue for both recruiting and retaining employees.
To address the shortage, some businesses and even the city are investing in housing solutions, yet the problem persists.

MOAB — Once a quiet small town, Moab — surrounded by red rocks and recreation — isn't a secret anymore.

Jason Taylor, owner of the Moab Adventure Center said they love people who love Moab and have a team ready to take anyone on the adventure of a lifetime.

With river guides, off-road guides and canyoneering guides, his team can guide you on just about anything — except for a place to live.

While a lot of Utah faces housing issues, Moab, shown here Thursday, can’t grow its tourism economy without a place to house its workers. (Photo: Alex Cabrero, KSL-TV)

"Housing is probably the No.1 issue for this small town," Taylor said. It's such an issue, the city bought housing so its newest workers — such as police officers — have a place to live. Business owners started doing it too.

"It's becoming the norm, that to start a business, you almost have to take a step back and go, 'OK, I've started this business, now where are these people going to live?'" he said.

Taylor has approximately 60 workers living in company housing but for smaller businesses, even finding workers is a challenge. Alex Borichevsky, the owner of 98 Center, a sushi and Vietnamese fusion restaurant, has the same challenge.

"Even before COVID, workforce was extremely tough," Borichevsky said.

Since Moab has only about 6,000 full-time residents, he knew he would have to look beyond Moab to get workers and, again, housing.

"I've been saying this for probably 20 years now: Two apartment buildings would eliminate a ton of workforce housing situation."

Borichevsky figures with rural loan grants and other incentives, the city or county could build housing and keep rent affordable to help businesses with workers. In turn, the economy that is built on tourism keeps going.

Moab’s Main Street shown here on Thursday. Housing for workers is an issue. (Photo: Alex Cabrero, KSL-TV)

"We wouldn't be able to survive without the tourist economy," he said. "There's no way."

"You hear it all throughout the state," Taylor said. "And I think here in Moab especially, housing is becoming unattainable for the working class, and we're trying to figure out ways to combat that."

Moab continues to be a popular tourist destination, not just in Utah but regionally and internationally as well. As tourism goes, so does the local economy. The trick going forward will be, how much more can it grow with housing for workers continuing to be such a big issue?

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.