Change is difficult for most people. Watching my humble hometown turn into an unrecognizable place is a hard pill to swallow. 

As the labor shortage at Harrah’s Cherokee Casinos continues to worsen, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is considering dormitory-style employee housing that would allow it to bring in foreign workers on temporary H2B visas to support its cash cow.

Unaffordable housing, a lack of broadband infrastructure, a staggeringly low unemployment rate and a relatively high number of job openings have changed the economic development landscape in Haywood County to the point that its chief economic development arm, the Haywood Economic Development Council, must also change.

In response to a deepening housing crisis  and a growing  casino enterprise in need of workers, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the LLCs it owns are moving forward with a slate of residential development projects that will result in more than 1,000 new housing units over the next decade — in both the Qualla Boundary and the surrounding region.

“Both the median sales price ($325,000) and the average sales price ($379,003) rose 26.5 percent and 20.3 percent year-over-year respectively [in Haywood County], while the average list price rose 21.4 percent compared to last year, to $429,042.”

The housing crisis gripping the entire region hasn’t spared Sylva, and the town board hopes to partner with Jackson County to alleviate it. 

A slew of zoning decisions in the Town of Maggie Valley have revealed deeper concerns about development and the future of Haywood County’s tourist hotspot. 

A Trump-era policy designed to protect renters impacted by the Coronavirus Pandemic was allowed to expire on the last day of July by the administration of President Joe Biden, but was then quickly reinstated — with a big caveat. 

The Coronavirus Pandemic appears to be winding down and with it, protections designed to ameliorate the ensuing economic devastation that would have wreaked further havoc on vulnerable low-income populations. 

When the Coronavirus Pandemic broke out in the United States in March 2020, Congress passed that CARES Act. Part of that legislation included a federal moratorium on evictions. The idea was the United States should keep people sheltered during a global pandemic, regardless of whether they could pay their rent in an economy that was quickly screeching to a halt.