Max Whittaker/Special to The Chronicle. Img: Cris Alarcon

PLACERVILLE, CALIFORNIA, June 13, 2022 — The pandemic sent remote workers and streams of tourists to the mountains, adding new pressure to Tahoe’s lean infrastructure and sparking conversations about how communities there will manage going forward. Workforce housing is in short supply, the affordability gap is growing, roads and trails are jam-packed, and tensions between newcomers and established locals routinely make headlines.

Compounding the challenges, Tahoe residents have struggled with wildfires, smoke and periodic pandemic lockdowns that drove tourists away at key times.

The problems were collated in a recent, extensive community survey in which a majority of respondents said they believed that Tahoe “is on the wrong track.”

Following that survey is a new white paper, published Wednesday, that outlines proposals for “economic resilience, investment and community inclusion” across the sprawling region of 57,000 residents. Called the Prosperity Playbook, the 80-page document insists that Tahoe must grow beyond its reliance on tourism and cultivate a more robust community capable of supporting seasonal workers, high-earning residents and everyone in between.

“Tahoe is more than a place to come visit,” said Bill Mueller, lead author on the playbook and a partner with Integrated Communications Strategies, an economic development firm in Sacramento. “It’s also a place to raise a family, to start a business, to have a great quality of life. That other part of the story doesn’t always break through.”

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The playbook was prepared by the Tahoe Prosperity Center, an economic development nonprofit in Incline Village, Nev., which also produced the recent community survey. It is cosigned by Placer County Supervisor Cindy Gustafson and South Lake business owner Chris McNamara.

Below is a breakdown of four key objectives outlined in the playbook, designed to improve Tahoe’s future outlook.

Diversifying Tahoe’s economic base

While Tahoe has been a resort destination for 70 years, community leaders worry that the region has become dependent on tourism. In 2020, the tourism industry was responsible for 62% of Tahoe’s economic output, according to the center.

But wildfire, smoke and pandemic lockdown protocols all cratered visitation to Tahoe for extended periods in the past few years, and more climate-fueled setbacks are expected in the future. To guard against such unpredictable events, the playbook recommends growing local businesses outside of the tourism sector. But that “requires a change in mindset, in strategy, and in choice-making,” it reads.

A strategy the playbook lays out involves supporting “anchor institutions” in the healthcare sector — a key industry behind tourism — by promoting Tahoe as a destination for medical procedures, recovery, therapy and healing.

“Health and wellness has one of the highest potentials for economic expansion with its high-wage jobs,” said Heidi Hill Drum, Tahoe Prosperity Center CEO.

Creating affordable workforce housing

Tahoe’s housing affordability woes, particularly for thousands of seasonal workers in the basin, have been well documented. But a real estate boom that has sent home prices soaring upwards of 200% since the onset of the pandemic has placed the issue front and center.

Some believe the popularization of vacation-rental platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo are a primary culprit — in that they may provide incentives to homeowners to pull properties off the long-term rental market and rent them to weekend visitors instead.

The playbook, however, emphasizes a need for “inclusionary zoning” to mix affordable housing units with new commercial developments and allow accessory dwelling units on single-family lots — a foundational concept behind California’s SB9, a controversial housing bill that Gov. Newsom signed last fall.

“That’s probably the easiest and quickest way we can access local workforce housing,” Drum said. “We in Tahoe have incentivized large, luxury second homes and vacation rentals. But if we really want smaller, more affordable workforce housing units, our governments need to prioritize them.”

Cultivating startup culture

As scores of Silicon Valley tech workers relocate to Tahoe, community leaders hope to channel that influx of brainpower to create new, lasting job opportunities for locals.

“There’s a growing base of talent here, but it’s disconnected,” Mueller said. “We want to be able to create a place that allows new businesses to grow and scale.”

Without a large stock of available office space for rent, many remote workers have turned to shared workspaces, which have flourished around the Tahoe-Truckee area in the past few years, Mueller said. He believes those places can serve as a launchpad for a network of digital entrepreneurs, who might then attract capital and talent to the basin.

Part of that equation also means leaning into the trend and promoting Tahoe as a desirable base of operation for startups.

Fostering accountability

Tahoe is not short of improvement plans. But Gustafson, the Placer County supervisor who oversees Tahoe’s West Shore, believes the new playbook offers a fresh perspective and flexibility to address the region’s needs — in part, by fostering a widespread sense of accountability.

“Obviously, local government has to be held accountable,” Gustafson said. “But our business community, our retirees, our second homeowners all have to be accountable to keep Tahoe special.”

One way the playbook suggests is by tracking key progress indicators like per capita income, income levels above the cost of living, growth in non-tourism sectors, changing demographics and more. The Tahoe Prosperity Center is committed to creating a new website that monitors those by quarter in an effort to bring transparency to the changes occurring in Tahoe.

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Gregory Thomas is The Chronicle’s editor of lifestyle & outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @GregRThomas