GLACIER — When John Adams moved here in 1999, he didn’t have much trouble finding housing.
“I went to the real estate office and it was just page after page after page of listings for sale,” Adams, 58, remembers. “It was just ridiculously cheap.”
Times change. Josh Rane, 29, found few housing options when he moved to the town, located about an hour northeast of Bellingham, three years ago with his girlfriend. In his view, the choices are “either buy a home or rent an Airbnb.”
“For the most part, for the people that work here and make this town run, housing is borderline impossible,” said Rane, who works as a server at Chair 9, Glacier’s pizza restaurant.
Hospitality has long driven the economy of the remote Cascade mountain town of about 300 people (though some locals doubt everyone fills out the Census). The nearby Mt. Baker Ski Area draws locals and visitors alike, who stop at restaurants off Glacier’s main street after a day on the mountain.
In recent years, however, residents say they’ve seen a sharp increase in the number of short-term rentals, vacation units that advertise on websites such as Airbnb or VRBO. Some believe the increase has contributed to rising housing costs, upped property values and depleted the number of homes available to rent or buy in the area.
A search of Airbnb for October 2025 showed roughly 290 listings in Glacier’s vicinity. A recent search on real estate website Redfin showed 14 homes for sale in the same map area, with prices ranging from a $150,900 one-bed/one-bath condo to a $849,000 three-bed/2.5-bath home. Searching on Redfin for rentals in or near Glacier showed just one home available, but in Deming.
A state bill that would have allowed counties and cities to tax short-term rentals up to 10% died in committee last year. In the proposed law, municipalities imposing the tax would be required to use the money to promote affordable housing or housing assistance. A similar bill, making way for a 4% tax, passed the Senate this year and is now in the House.
Some cities in Washington, such as Bellingham and Seattle, require short-term rental permits or licenses in addition to a state business license. Glacier, however, is unincorporated and Whatcom County does not track short-term rentals.
In a 2023 ordinance, Whatcom County Council asked county staff to find a vendor to manage a short-term rental registration system. In an email, spokesperson Jed Holmes wrote the county has not yet made progress because of limited budget and staff time.
Few options
Taylor Williams, 31, hoped to relocate from Sumas to Glacier when she started her job manning the front desk at the Snowater Resort condominium complex in town. She found “nothing” that was a viable option.
What there was, she said, was expensive and hard to find. Williams didn’t end up moving and commutes about 35 minutes one way to her job.
Suzanne Schwartz, 71, moved to Glacier during the height of the pandemic. At the time, city people were buying up all the properties in town, she said. Schwartz, who works as a server at the local Graham’s Restaurant, said she and her husband “found a big surprise on the cost of buying a place.”
“Short-term rentals are easy to find,” said Schwartz, who used to clean Airbnbs in town. “Long-term, not so much.”
They ended up buying land where they plan to build a house. In the meantime, they’re renting a mobile home from their son-in-law.
To find housing, “you gotta network out here,” Rane said.
Locals who can’t find a place to rent or buy long-term may turn to the Mt. Baker RV Park and Campground. The recreational vehicle park, just past the town’s main drag, has about 15 year-round residents, said Lisa Kong, the park’s manager.
Some of the park’s residents work at local businesses that cater to the tourism industry or commute to nearby towns, said Charlie Dickinson, the park’s on-site manager. Others are on fixed incomes, such as Social Security.
Rane stayed in the park with his girlfriend when they first came to Glacier, because they couldn’t find anywhere else. They now rent a home that was once an Airbnb, he said.
James Henkle, who takes handyman jobs in Glacier, struck out about 10 years ago when he went looking for property to buy in the town. He found it was out of his price range. He purchased a home in Kendall in 2016 after searching for a few years.
Based on what he’s heard and observed, Henkle said vacation rental owners are “almost never there.” Every day, he said, he sees homes sitting empty in Glacier that he suspects are short-term rentals.
Owners are “only going to do an Airbnb,” he said. “They’re not going to rent to local people.”
Short-term rentals increase
To Rheannon Schoephoester, Glacier has always been a “vacation rental community.” Her family moved to town in 1997 when she was a teenager.
“A lot of people tend to blame things on vacation rentals, like, ‘Oh they’re ruining the economy and they’re ruining housing,’” she said, adding those complaints may have some degree of merit. “But I think the reality is that the vacation rentals have always been here.”
Schoephoester, 40, worked as a house cleaner for years. Eventually, she started noticing management problems in some of the vacation homes she cleaned. The rentals’ owners lived far away, unable to respond to guests’ needs or watch over the property.
Her philosophy is: “If you’re going to pour your heart into it and do it, then do it right.” So she started her own short-term rental property management company, Serene Mountain Escapes, in 2018.
The company now has 10 clients.
Mike Gooch is general manager at Snowater, the condo complex, which has full-share and timeshare units. When he moved to Glacier in 2004, Snowater had only a handful of short-term rentals, Gooch said. Now, about 30% of the full-share owners rent their units out short term.
Mt. Baker Lodging, a local short-term rental company, saw an even more dramatic trend. Owner Dan Graham purchased the company in 1999, when it managed 15 properties. It now has about 100. COVID-19 was partially responsible. Demand “took off like a rocket ship” during the pandemic lockdown, he said.
“Once COVID happened, that short-term rental market in Glacier just exploded,” said Tiffany Braun, a Windermere real estate broker who has specialized in Glacier since around 2019. In just a few years, she said, much of Glacier’s housing market doubled in value.
Schoephoester saw another impact of the pandemic. Many homes in Glacier used to be Canadian-owned vacation homes, she said. When the border shut down travel across the border, “people started getting really uncomfortable.”
Even when the border reopened, anxiety lingered as people had gained a newfound understanding of how international travel could be curtailed. Many Canadians sold their Glacier vacation homes, Schoephoester observed.
Now, affluent Seattlites are the ones buying up homes in Glacier, a shift Schoephoester believes has driven up housing costs “more than anything” — though she clarified she had nothing against those out-of-towners.
The extent to which higher housing prices in Glacier can be chalked up to short-term rentals is difficult to say with certainty. Braun said all of Whatcom County has seen “exponential growth” in the real estate market in the last four years.
If property value increases were just because of short-term rentals, you would expect to see those increases only in Glacier, reasoned Braun, who used to own a short-term rental in town.
Double-edged sword
Longtime locals have mixed feelings about the increase in vacation rentals, noting the influx of people staying in the rentals has stimulated the town’s economy. No big hotel chains have opened in Glacier, so the rentals fill a need.
“Some people say we should get rid of all Airbnbs and ban them and that kind of thing,” Schoephoester said. “But I think that if we did, Glacier would fall apart.”
Joelle Adams, owner of Graham’s Restaurant, agreed the rentals are good for Glacier’s economy, but with a catch: She can’t find enough employees to staff her kitchen. There are just not enough places for them to live.
Adams, 52, has lived in the area for 28 years. She used to own a short-term rental, but switched to renting it out long term because of the affordable housing shortage. Although, she noted, owners can make more money from short-term rentals compared to long term.
Gooch, one of two Snowater employees who live in Glacier, said his neighbors have had to move away because they can no longer afford to live in the area.
“My daughter, when she was growing up, she had lots of friends that she could go play with in the local area, and there’s just less of that,” he said. “It’s a little bit heartbreaking.”
Graham sees the short-term rental increase as a double-edged sword. A longtime Maple Falls resident, he doesn’t have to worry about affording a home in Glacier.
“But for somebody just coming up new, trying to move into the area and trying to buy a property,” he said, “it’s pretty tough.”
Rane is all too familiar. His landlord plans to sell the property he and his girlfriend rent within the next few months, he said in January. Soon, the couple will be back on the housing market.
Sophia Gates covers rural Whatcom and Skagit counties. She is a Washington State Murrow Fellow whose work is underwritten by taxpayers and available outside CDN's paywall. Reach her at sophiagates@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 131.
