A ribbon cutting for housing units built for employees of Yellowstone National Park.
WEST YELLOWSTONE – An anonymous donor has given $40 million to the National Park Foundation to build housing units for employees of Yellowstone National Park. The park announced the gift on February 29, 2024.
Rising prices of housing for employees of the National Park Service close to where they work has been hard to find. It is tough to recruit employees because, like everywhere else in the country, property values have turned in to short-term rentals, especially near National Parks.
The rising house prices has made it difficult for the park to recruit employees. The units will be built in West Yellowstone and Gardner Village.
Yellowstone National Park officials are in a hurry to get the units built. They said work on the units would begin later this year and that the extra money will help speed up the process of constructing more employee housing at the nation’s oldest national park, which saw its second-busiest season ever last year.
“This transformational gift will meet a critical need for new housing in Yellowstone, and be a catalyst for more philanthropic investment,” said Will Shafroth, President and CEO of the National Park Foundation. “These skilled, dedicated professionals at the National Park Service who protect our parks and make visitors’ experiences great deserve housing they can be proud to call home.”
National parks across the country are struggling with the challenge of providing quality housing for the people who work in the parks.
Chuck Sams, Director of the National Park Service, said the housing challenges facing each park are unique, and so are the solutions.
“The ability to recruit and retain a talented workforce remains essential to our ability to protect parks and to ensure a world-class visitor experience,” he said. “NPS is committed to innovative solutions that contribute to meeting the demand for employee housing across the National Park System. I am incredibly grateful to the donors to the National Park Foundation whose tremendous generosity will help NPS address this critical need.”
There are a variety of positions at the National Parks employees include rangers, resource specialists, maintenance staff, and many other employees that make parks amazing places to visit, all dedicated to protecting parks and providing world class visitor experience to an increasing number of park visitors – 325.5 million last year alone.
The care of America’s national parks and the quality of visitor experience depend on recruiting and retaining talented and devoted NPS employees and on the availability of affordable housing.
The need is not isolated to Yellowstone.
NPS employs 20,000 people who support operations at 429 parks located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. Territories. In all, there are more than 5,600 housing facilities in over 200 parks, ranging from 100-year-old cabins to modern dormitories and duplexes in urban and rural communities as well as remote areas. More than 15,600 people rely on these homes, including 2,800 permanent and 5,000 seasonal employees, as well as volunteers, and employees of concessionaires and park partner organizations.
The current shortage of employee housing is the result of rising property values and increasing demand for vacation rentals in communities near national parks.
The NPS invests tens of millions of dollars annually to address housing operation, maintenance, repair, and construction, and to offset leased housing in nearby communities when in-park housing is not available. The $40 million donation is significant because it will allow Yellowstone National Park to construct entirely new housing.
A National Park Foundation assessment of NPS housing needs at three other national parks – Acadia, Yosemite, and Grand Teton – found that in total, those parks require more than $115 million in funding to add over 200 new employee housing units.