Yellowstone is undertaking multi-million-dollar upgrades of their employee housing.
50% of Yellowstone’s National Park Service employees live in park housing. This is a mixture of historic homes and trailers built between 1960 and 1983, some of which can be quite remote. These housing units have not seen any significant upgrades in decades. With Yellowstone’s visitation increasing every year and the growing need for staff to deal with the increased traffic, this is one portion of the almost $500 million dollars in deferred maintenance that will be addressed this summer.
There are four main goals:
- Replacing 64 dilapidated trailers throughout the park between 2020 and 2021
- Improve the condition of 150 non-trailer and non-historic housing units between 2020 and 2023.
- Rehabilitate deteriorating historic homes, some dating back to the original Fort Yellowstone from the 1890s.
- Add increased housing capacity for additional park staff.
Improvements include roofing and siding replacements, upgrading aging utility lines to major interior work including new flooring, better insulation, and improved heating systems. 50 of these will begin this year.
