Wyoming family fights government’s $25,000 “pay-to-build” shakedown

Born-and-raised Wyomingites are a dying breed in Jackson Hole. Trey Scharp is one of the few. But when he and his wife, Shelby, set out to build the home they’d planned for decades, the government threw up roadblocks at every turn and demanded a $25,000 “workforce housing fee” for permission to build.

“It’s a forced donation,” Shelby says. “If you want to donate to local housing along with your building permit, great. But blackmailing you into it? That’s not the American Dream.”

Unlike the wealthy outsiders building luxury second homes and favored by Teton County’s ruling class, the Scharps aren’t newcomers. They met at the University of Wyoming, married, and returned to Trey’s hometown where he worked as a fishing guide and Shelby juggled multiple jobs—the so-called Jackson Hole shuffle—to cover sky-high living costs.

They’ve since built their lives around the outdoors man-aging a dude ranch, running an outfitting business, guiding hunts and fishing trips, and working at a Chilean lodge during Wyoming’s harsh winters.

“It’s hard to make a living here,” Shelby says. “But the people who stay do it because they love this place.”

In 2021, after years of renting and then living in Trey’s modest childhood home, they bought five acres and moved with their young daughter into its tiny two-bedroom cabin, planning to build a larger home.

The county’s stonewalling started almost immediately. The Scharps wanted to rent the cabin to local workers—something Jackson desperately needs. But the county said it was too big to rent under zoning rules and suggested they fill the basement’s usable space with gravel.

Filling in perfectly good space made no sense, so they found a historic preservation work-around and the county grudgingly allowed the rental.

The roadblocks kept coming. The county handed Trey 600 pages of ordinances—“like a book of bad IKEA directions,” says Shelby—and he spent countless hours navigating each regulatory hurdle.

When building codes required a 10-foot foundation, they added a basement apartment to the extra space. The county and its zoning rules crushed that plan too. After all, it could create too much affordable housing.

It took multiple revisions to produce a plan the county would accept—minus the rental space and 1,000 square feet more than they wanted, but the only remaining need was a permit. That’s when Teton County dropped the final hammer: pay $25,000…or no permit.

The staggering fee wasn’t for a road they’d need, traffic they’d create, or a view they’d block. It funds subsidized housing programs for households in the nation’s wealthiest county earning up to $160,000 a year.

“But don’t get a raise,” warns Trey, “Or you’ll lose your house.” “Said no American Dream ever!” Shelby adds.

The insult was worse knowing they’d been on the county’s affordable housing list for years as renters and were never chosen. Now, they couldn’t build without paying into the same program that passed them over.

“This isn’t our second home or a luxury house,” Trey says. “This is something Shelby and I drew on graph paper when we were 22 years old. Here we are trying to fulfill our dream. But the county doesn’t want you to build a house or anything else. To be spat in the eye by the very county that you live in, pay taxes to, and support in every way you can is really difficult.”

Shelby sees an even bigger pattern. “Locals are already a minority here, and we’re getting beaten down and run out by our own government. People who’ve lived here for generations are leaving and not coming back.”

The county justifies its demands with a consultant-concocted formula that blames new homeowners for the entire housing market, then uses that fiction to demand cash, land, or control over their property. Never mind that adding housing actually helps stabilize prices, or that the Constitution forbids such shakedowns.

“The government can’t hold your building permit or property rights hostage to fund pet projects like ‘workforce housing,’” explains PLF attorney Austin Waisanen. “Forcing you to pay for other people’s housing before you can build your own is an unconstitutional quid pro quo. It’s extortion.”

Most people would likely grit their teeth, write the check, and try to forget it. Not the Scharps. They paid the fee under protest and began building, but they’re determined to make sure no one else faces the same struggle.

“This isn’t about our $25,000,” says Trey. “It’s about the principle that a property owner has the right to do what they’d like with their property.”

Represented free of charge by Pacific Legal Foundation, the Scharps are suing Teton County in federal court to end its unjust “pay-to-build” scheme.

Their case builds on PLF’s Supreme Court victories in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, and Sheetz. v. El Dorado County, along with Dolan v. City of Tigard. These precedents repeatedly affirm that using the permit process to shake down property owners for anything unrelated to their projects is unconstitutional. The Scharps’ fight is also part of PLF’s effort to protect the right to build much-needed housing nationwide.

“This is our line in the sand. If the county can do this to us, they can do it to anyone,” declares Trey. “That’s not the Wyoming I grew up in.”