Open Space is Working Land

The framing of Eastern Sierra housing crunch: With all this open land, why are so many workers living in vans? made me scream internally in rage. 

In Mono County "more than 90 percent of the land is owned by conservation-minded government agencies: the U.S. Forest Service, the federal Bureau of Land Management and, most controversially, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power." 

Public open land is usually not developed for a reason. Read the legal definition of Open Space. Most importantly, Open Space has value for ecosystem services (that may indirectly help humans). 

Open space for the preservation of natural resources including, but not limited to, areas required for the preservation of plant and animal life, including habitat for fish and wildlife species; areas required for ecologic and other scientific study purposes; rivers, streams, bays and estuaries; and coastal beaches, lakeshores, banks of rivers and streams, and watershed lands.

One of the reasons for acquiring US Forest Service lands is to protect watersheds for downstream users (farmers and urban users). If you don't see any buildings or roads on it, the land is working as intended. I don't want to get into a debate about whether it is appropriate to divert water from the Eastern Sierras for the City of Los Angeles. But, if this is the headwaters for a water supply (one of many) for 4 Million people, it is correct to protect the upper watershed from housing development & the roads necessary to service the housing. The USFS lands protect watersheds for other downstream users, including wildlife and farmers. 

Mono County is over 2 million acres, 94% of which is publicly-owned.  This leaves 120,000 acres of privately-owned land that could potentially be used for housing. About 7,500 people reside in the Mammoth Lakes region and another 35,000 visit annually. You can easily find enough space to house workers if you build densely enough in already-developed areas. The only thing preventing you is imagination and bad zoning. (You will also have to do some infrastructure work, but it will be much less than if you continued the sprawl development pattern.)

The population density of Mono County is 4 people per square mile. Even if you add in visitors (vacation home owners), the density is still < 20 ppl/sq mi. In contrast, my census tract in suburban Los Angeles County has 18,000/sq mi. If you use only the 6% of private land, that's still only ~500 ppl/sq mi. I know that some of the land is not suitable for housing, but there is still lots of room to build infill housing if the local government were to allow it. 

Not allowing denser housing in town, near the jobs, is causing the homelessness euphemistically called "Van Life". Small towns can build social workforce housing so that workers won't have to compete with vacation home buyers. Salida, CO is doing that. They are building UP--allowing mixed use housing above downtown commercial space. They purchased land downtown to build a 100% affordable workforce housing project. Why don't the Mono and Inyo county towns do something similar? Infill workforce housing of < 100 units is exempt from CEQA (Class 32). 

I was incredulous when I learned that the communities did not have public bathrooms and showers. It would not take that much space and $ to build public bathrooms and showers. Colorado mountain towns often have laundromats that sell showers. (So refreshing after a backpacking trip.) Why don't the CA towns build their own public showers or partner with a laundromat to add showers?

Don't whine about others so you can perpetuate sprawl. Make bathrooms and showers available in the short term. Upzone the small towns and keep everything compact, affordable and sustainable.