The Housing We’re Not Counting – and The Impact on Lake Tahoe

August 20, 2026

The Housing We’re Not Counting

Some of the most important affordable housing in our region may be quietly slipping away, and once it does, any new housing we build stops adding and starts replacing.

Recently, we dug into property and county records in eastern Placer County, searching for older multi-family housing from duplexes to apartment buildings. We focused on properties held by the same owners for at least 10 years who don’t live on site. We found more than 90 that fit our criteria. Most were built in the 1960s or earlier, sit in the Tahoe Basin, and have not changed hands in decades.

What This Housing Is

These buildings are what we call NOAH, or Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing, meaning housing that is affordable to residents without any public subsidy or deed restriction. It was never built as affordable housing. It simply got old, stayed modest, and kept rents within reach.

Why It Is at Risk

National and state research shows housing like this is often lost when it changes hands, redeveloped or repriced to the market. We are seeing early signs of this trend here, with older buildings listed at prices based on their redevelopment potential rather than the rent they produce. Unlike most places, in the Tahoe Basin we cannot easily build replacements. The Basin holds only a few thousand small multi-family units with little room to add more. Every unit lost here tends to stay lost.

The Lake Tahoe Connection

There is an environmental angle too. Housing people close to where they work is part of what helps keep the region’s commuter traffic in check. Losing this close-to-work housing can potentially add more cars to the road. According to TRPA data, workers who commute into the basin drive almost twice the daily miles of a workers who live here, roughly 24 versus 13 miles. All that additional driving creates sediment that impacts lake clarity. The loss of multi-family rentals has the potential to exacerbate this issue. Every worker housed locally is a worker who does not have to commute, providing environmental benefits like:

Reduced Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) across the region.
Reduced road sediment running into Lake Tahoe.
Easing of traffic and emissions.

Our Solution: Active Preservation

At Housing Trust Tahoe, we are actively pursuing the acquisition of these multi-family units. Our strategy is simple:

Acquire older multi-family properties before they change hands.
Invest in the buildings, bringing them up to current standards.
Place a deed restriction so they stay affordable for residents for decades.

Preserving this housing keeps our community whole. It keeps a real mix of people living in Tahoe, from workers to retirees to families who have been here for generations.

How You Can Help

We cannot do this alone. If you own a home, a vacant lot, or a multi-family property on the North Shore, we want to talk to you.

As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, we can structure property acquisitions in various ways, including outright sales, partial donations, or full donations, that provide significant tax benefits to the seller.

Help us protect Tahoe’s environment and its workforce. Reach out to us today at info@tahoehousinghub.org to explore your options.

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Our First ADU Is Under Construction in Truckee!

July 16, 2026

Two years ago, we launched the ADU Accelerator with a simple idea – help homeowners add housing for our workforce and take the hardest parts off their plate. Now it’s real. The first ADU facilitated through the Tahoe Housing Hub’s ADU Accelerator program is under construction in Truckee and this fall it will become home to a local working family.

Currently under construction in the backyard of an existing home, the unit will be a 3-bedroom, 2-bath ADU, big enough for a family that lives and works right here in our community.

Homeowner with excavator in the background. — ADU Under Construction

Most people build an ADU exactly once. It’s a specialized undertaking that involves design, engineering, financing, permitting, and knowing which experts to bring in at which time. Our client, Leanna, knew she wanted to add a home for a local family. What she needed was a team that had walked this path many times. That’s where we come in. We worked alongside her from the start, weighing manufactured, modular, and stick-built options to find the right fit, then brought in the right professionals at each phase of design, engineering, planning, permitting, and construction. Now that construction is underway, we are still there and will continue with the project through lease-up of the unit.

Leanna has some advice for anyone interested in building an ADU. “Without the Tahoe Housing Hub, this ADU might never have been built. I only wish I’d brought them in sooner. If you’re considering a project like this, my advice is get the Hub involved as early as you can. The earlier they’re at the table, the smoother everything goes.”

Building housing in the North Lake Tahoe-Truckee region is complex and can be expensive. It can mean hiring a team of experts, at significant cost, to plan, permit, and build a project. The ADU Accelerator provides that expertise from project inception to completion, all at no cost to the homeowner, thanks to generous grant funding from the North Tahoe Community Alliance’s TOT-TBID Dollars at Work and The Martis Fund.

Each homeowner enrolled receives up to $30,000 in expert services. That relatively small public investment is designed to unlock something much larger. Homeowners finance and build the units themselves, turning up to $30,000 in grant-funded support into a completed home worth many times that, up to a 25-fold return on every grant dollar, reinvested directly into local housing.

This first unit is just the start. We have projects in the planning stages throughout Truckee and North Lake Tahoe, in a range of unit types, sizes, bedroom counts, and levels of affordability. Every unit facilitated through the program will be allocated exclusively to local workforce housing. We’re also working on projects for church sites and other commercial properties designed for employee housing.

ADUs have a small footprint and offer a lower-cost, creative way to add infill workforce housing to our community. And with the ADU Accelerator, you don’t need to be a developer to build one. You can add value to your property, potentially generate passive income, and provide a much-needed home for a local worker, all at the same time.

If you’ve ever thought about it, reach out. Visit our website or send us an email at info@tahoehousinghub.org. We’re excited to talk with you about your project ideas.

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ADU Accelerator: Lessons Learned

May 20, 2026

ADU Accelerator: Harder than Expected, Better than we’d Hoped

When the Tahoe Housing Hub launched our ADU Accelerator Pilot Program in the fall of 2024, the community response was incredible. We received over 100 inquiries and registered more than 80 interested participants. We were poised to help homeowners build backyard Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) to house our local workforce.

What followed was nearly two years of hard lessons. As individual projects progressed, the realities of building in North Lake Tahoe came into clear focus — and we had to adapt. We found new products, built out our consultant team, and learned what it actually takes to move housing projects across the finish line in this region. It took time. But here we are.

The Reality of the Basin: High Costs and Complexities

Many of our participants quickly ran into a major roadblock: the extreme complexity and high cost of traditional construction in our region. For a significant number of property owners, the math simply didn’t add up, forcing them to put their ADU dreams on hold.

Determined to find a solution, we dove deep into researching alternative construction methods to cut costs and speed up build times. This search led us directly to factory-built housing, including prefabricated, modular, panelized, and Tiny Homes on Wheels (THOWs).

Exploring Factory-Built Solutions

Prefab and modular homes offer distinct advantages over traditional stick-built construction. Because most of the building happens inside a climate-controlled factory, weather delays disappear. Builders do not need to worry about working through our harsh winters; instead, delivery and installation can be scheduled seamlessly during the summer months.

As we worked with participants, it became clear that different situations called for different solutions. For some, factory-built or traditional construction was the right path. For others — particularly organizations with underutilized land who needed something simpler and faster to deploy — Tiny Homes on Wheels turned out to be the answer.

A Growing Portfolio: Stick-Built, Conversions, and Tiny Homes on Wheel

After months of rigorous research, we found a manufacturer capable of producing THOWs that meet our strict local snow load requirements at an affordable price point. With this new tool in hand, we expanded our outreach. We looked beyond individual homeowners to partner with:

Churches
Special districts
Local businesses
Organizations with underutilized land and a vital need for workforce housing

We now have seven organizational clients in the pipeline, on track to add up to 20 THOWs within the next year.

And that’s not all — traditional projects are moving forward too. We currently have two detached ADUs and six conversion units under construction this summer, proving that conventional ADU pathways remain viable in the North Tahoe/Truckee region.

There is No “One Size Fits All” Solution

The biggest lesson we learned from our pilot program is that there is no single way to build an ADU in the North Tahoe/Truckee region.

As the very first units facilitated by the ADU Accelerator Program hit the construction phase, we are incredibly excited for the future. Whether it is a tiny home on wheels, a garage conversion, or a traditional stick-built detached unit, the lessons we have learned have shown us exactly what is possible. We look forward to helping many more property owners become a tangible part of our local housing solution.

To learn more about the free technical services offered through our ADU Accelerator program – please reach out! You can contact us at info@tahoehousinghub.org or by visiting our website HERE.

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Voices for Housing Episode 1: Mary

February 23, 2026

We are thrilled to launch Voices for Housing, a new campaign dedicated to sharing Tahoe Truckee housing stories from our community. Over the next several months, we will introduce you to local residents from diverse personal and professional backgrounds who all have a unique housing story to share.

We start with Mary, a local artist and retiree who explains her deep connection to Kings Beach. Her story is a perfect example of why housing for all matters for the creative heart of our community.

The Voices for Housing campaign is made possible thanks to a generous grant from the North Tahoe Community Alliance’s TOT-TBID Dollars at Work Program.

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Housing 101: 700 on the Waitlist – Tahoe’s Affordable Housing Reality

June 18, 2025

The complexities surrounding affordable housing often lead to confusion. Terms like workforce, achievable, and affordable housing are used interchangeably, yet each describes a critical part of the region’s housing challenges. At its core, affordable housing simply means having enough homes at prices accessible to all community members, regardless of income.

Mountain Housing Council, a program of the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation, has been working since 2017 to identify and define who in our community needs housing, if and what the barriers are to affordability, and how our region can address the problem. Their research consistently reveals significant unmet housing needs. The latest report from 2023 identifies a startling gap—approximately 8,200 housing units are urgently required across various income levels, family sizes, and housing types. These comprehensive reports provided the first real data on the range of unmet housing needs in our region and spurred urgent discussion and action within our communities. The work we do at the Tahoe Housing Hub is a direct result of the groundwork laid by the Mountain Housing Council.

For many residents, these numbers seem abstract. However, a recent Tahoe Daily Tribune article vividly illustrates the depth of this crisis through real-world implications. It reports that nearly 700 people are currently on waitlists for the limited number of available affordable housing units—homes specifically priced for those earning 80% or less of the area median income (AMI). The article further notes infrequent turnover, highlighting how rarely new opportunities become available.

It’s natural to question, “Do we really need more affordable units in Tahoe?” Yet, the waitlist data provides a clear and direct indication that the demand is very real. Addressing this critical housing shortage is fundamental for maintaining the strength and stability of our community.

The Tahoe Housing Hub continues working actively to address these housing needs, advocating for solutions while helping to increase the number of affordable units available to residents through the ADU Accelerator program. This important work is part of a broader collaborative effort across the region involving partners such as Placer County, Town of Truckee, Truckee Tahoe Workforce Housing Agency (TTWHA), and the Mountain Housing Council (MHC), among others. Together, these groups demonstrate a regional commitment to resolving our housing challenges.

*Housing Chart Source: Tahoe Daily Tribune. The City of South Lake Tahoe requires property managers to keep track of turnover and wait lists. The data is not available for many of the properties located in Truckee.

The Housing We’re Not Counting – and The Impact on Lake Tahoe

Our First ADU Is Under Construction in Truckee!

ADU Accelerator: Lessons Learned

Voices for Housing Episode 1: Mary

Housing 101: 700 on the Waitlist – Tahoe’s Affordable Housing Reality

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