Aspen Offering Locals Free Season Passes to House Resort Employees
Aspen One's Tenants for Turns program, which provides homeowners in the Roaring Fork Valley with ski tickets or season passes if they house an Aspen Snowmass, Aspen Hospitality, or ASPENX employee, is back for the fourth year in a row.
Photo: Jakob Helbig/Getty Images
Tenants for Turns has a simple premise. If you own property in the Roaring Fork Valley and lease your guest house, ADU, mother-in-law unit, or spare bedroom to someone working for Aspen One, you will receive your pick of an Aspen Snowmass Premier Pass, ten transferable single-day lift tickets, or a $1,500 gift certificate to Aspen Snowmass.
"The dual advantages of this program are spectacular. Landlords benefit from ski incentives and rental income while contributing to the community's housing solution," said Heather Henry, Aspen One's Vice President of Housing and Childcare. "In turn, our employee tenants enjoy stable housing, a true way to feel welcomed into the local community."
Aspen, Colorado is home to luxurious shops, chairlifts, and, like several other ski towns throughout the American West, a distinct lack of affordable housing. The current median home price in Aspen is well above one million dollars, while the usual starting wage for a front-line Aspen One employee is $21 an hour.
"It's all anybody talks about," said Matthew Gillen, the executive director of the Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Authority (APCHA), of Aspen's difficult housing situation. "It still remains a very high area of concern, and not just for middle-class or working-class people, but you know, we have doctors and lawyers and mortgage bankers in our affordable housing."
Courtesy: Aspen Snowmass
With Tenants for Turns, Aspen One is focused on cheaper housing options near Aspen Snowmass. Landlord applicants with units that are expensive—or located too far from Aspen Snowmass—might be denied. Recommended pricing of Tenants for Turns housing is between $500 and $900 per month per individual per bedroom or lower.
Last winter, Tenants for Turns housed 193 Aspen One employees. It's a small fraction of Aspen One's total workforce which is over a thousand employees, but the resort also relies on additional affordable housing measures, like a solar-powered housing project that opened in 2021.
Photo: Jim Mallouk/Getty Images
In total, Aspen One's workforce housing encompasses around 1200 beds, a tally that doesn't include the additional Tenants for Turns units. While the program has expanded rapidly since its inception—what started with 34 landlords in the first winter grew to 165 landlords by 2023—an official Tenants for Turns landlord count for this coming season isn't available yet as the application process is still open.
"We're really trying to come up with anything we can think of to squeeze more out of [the housing] we've got, and I think Tenants for Turns is a good example of that," Gillen said. While he works separately from Aspen One for the most part, they're both tangling with the same affordability crisis.
Related: Black Hawk Helicopter Installs New Lift Towers at Red River Ski Area, New Mexico
Be the first to read breaking ski news with POWDER. Subscribe to our newsletter and stay connected with the latest happenings in the world of skiing. From ski resort news to profiles of the world’s best skiers, we are committed to keeping you informed.
Submit your best clips for a chance to be featured on POWDER. Tune in and watch handpicked, high-quality ski videos streaming all day long on POWDER TV, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
