Letter: More South Lake Tahoe residents seek jobs elsewhere while staying here

Mr. Messina (in his Letter to the Editor on 3/19/24) believes that he has discovered "the cause of the current increase in complaints about housing availability" in South Lake Tahoe. What he has discovered is, that, lacking well-paying jobs in California, more and more South Lake Tahoe residents have sought work elsewhere while maintaining their residence here.

As our population has remained at about 21,500 for the past few years, there
cannot have been "an influx of Nevada workers in the past five years." Instead, more and more SLT residents have found better-paying employment in Nevada and chosen to commute to those jobs from here.

Mr. Mesina is correct, however, in saying, as Councilmember Scott Robbins has argued, that we have an "income problem" caused by low wages in the tourism industry.

-Jerome Evans
South Lake Tahoe