Tahoe housing costs blamed for student enrollment dip

Monday, Sept. 11, 2000 | 9:46 a.m.

The Tahoe Truckee Unified School District's enrollment last week stood at 4,751, down 162 or about 3 percent from last year. The figure is 60 below projections for the current school year.

Monty Folsom, district director of business services, attributed the decline to soaring housing prices in the Sierra resort area.

"We're thinking people are taking their money and running," he told the Sierra Sun newspaper of Truckee, Calif. "They are finding they can live cheaper somewhere else.

"That's concerning us a little bit because this could be a long-term trend."

Home prices in the Tahoe-Truckee area are soaring as San Francisco Bay area professionals are snapping up property there like never before.

Many Truckee residents fear their town is turning into another Aspen, Colo., where home prices average $3.7 million and working families can no longer afford to live.

Folsom said students and their families are moving to areas such as Reno, Nev., Grass Valley, Nevada City, Loyalton or Sierraville where home prices are lower.

"We anticipated a drop from last year, but not quite this big," he said. "Normally, we get kids moving in to offset the kids moving out," but that's no longer happening.

Almost every school in the district was down in enrollment from last year, with the largest declines occurring in Truckee schools. Schools on Lake Tahoe's north shore reported smaller declines.

Marilyn Check, a Realtor with First Realty of Tahoe Truckee, said the average home price in the Truckee-North Lake Tahoe area is about $600,000 and climbing.

"There's no housing in the area for service workers and it's getting worse all the time," she said. "A lot of people are moving out of the area because of it.

"It's all being fueled by Bay area dot-comers who have a lot of money to spend" on housing.

Homes going for $1 million or more are becoming more common all the time, Check added.

For the first time, the school district has begun tracking where students are moving when they leave the area.

"We didn't have a way of tracking it last year," Folsom said. "We think this is a trend that has been happening and we didn't realize it before."