The issue is on the radar for the new NPS director, Charles вЂњChuckвЂќ Sams III, who took over in November. вЂњI definitely empathize with people that are still looking,вЂќ said Robertson, who moved to Acadia in 2020 from Zion National Park in Utah, where she encountered similar difficulties finding housing. With NPS employees facing a housing shortage at many parks, Hannah Robertson, a 28-year-old ranger at Acadia National Park in Maine, was happy to find an apartment last month. Robertson said she found the place after losing out on an apartment that 30 people responded to within 30 minutes after it was advertised on Facebook. SheвЂ™s sharing a two-bedroom unit that costs her $600 a month after assuring her roommate that living with two cats would not be a problem. These workers include 28-year-old Hannah Robertson, a park ranger at Acadia who earns roughly $40,000 a year and who considered herself lucky to find a new apartment in Bar Harbor that she moved into in January. вЂњEvery year we have declinations because we canвЂ™t provide housing, and we wind up having holes in our operations because we canвЂ™t get the people,вЂќ he said.Д¬aught in the middle are employees who find themselves faced with increasingly long commutes to live in affordable housing or who make sacrifices to live closer to their work sites. Schneider said his park needs 150 seasonal workers to help manage Acadia in an average year but that the positions have become much harder to fill. Park officials say the situation has become particularly dire for younger employees, along with transferring workers and other newcomers, especially the thousands of seasonal workers NPS hires each year to help run its 423 park sites. вЂ¦ You canвЂ™t have a snowplow operator living an hour away.вЂќ вЂњBut thereвЂ™s people who donвЂ™t have a choice and have to be in the park to work. вЂњItвЂ™s a buyerвЂ™s market jobwise right now,вЂќ he said. Sholly said park officials at Yellowstone have tried to be more flexible by allowing more employees to work remotely and to live farther away, but he said thatвЂ™s not always possible. вЂњOur top candidates, when they learned about the cost of living, they turned down the job.вЂќ вЂњWe have three project manager jobs that are open,вЂќ said Jenkins, whoвЂ™s readvertising the Grand Teton positions after striking out the first time. They say the hot real estate markets in many communities near parks mean a key focus for NPS must be boosting housing, whether at the sites or in surrounding communities. The park chiefs have tuned in to home prices for a simple reason: They fear the worsening housing crunch will take a growing toll on operations throughout the National Park Service in 2022. And at Acadia National Park in Maine, Superintendent Kevin Schneider said it has become nearly impossible to find a home for less than $400,000 on Mount Desert Island or for employees to even find affordable rentals.

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