Trey and Shelby Scharp built a life in Trey’s hometown of Jackson, Wyoming, where they’ve managed a dude ranch and guided hunting and fishing trips since 2004. Recently, the couple was finally able to build a new home while helping address the severe housing shortage plaguing Jackson Hole—one of America’s most expensive housing markets.
The Scharps got their building permit, but only after navigating a sea of land-use regulations and a mountain of fees so steep they’re making a federal case out of it.
In 2021, the Scharps bought five acres of land with a modest cabin in rural Teton County. The couple and their daughter moved into the cabin with plans to build a new family home, then turn the cabin into a rental unit.
Their vision quickly collided with Teton County’s labyrinthine regulations. First, officials declared their roughly 1,000-square-foot cabin too large for use as an accessory dwelling unit (ADU)—because it included an unfinished and windowless basement of the same size. Instead of filling the basement with gravel as one County official suggested, the Scharps registered their cabin as historically significant, which allows an exemption from ADU size limits.
Second, County building codes required a 10-foot-deep foundation on their sloped property for the new house. Rather than waste this space under their home, the Scharps opted to add windows and a kitchenette, creating a second rental unit in the basement. Officials rejected this, claiming the additional space would violate single-family zoning rules. After several more redesigns that abandoned the rental space altogether, they finally created a building plan that satisfied all County rules.
Then came the final blow: Teton County demanded a $25,000 “workforce housing” fee. Tired of hitting one brick wall after another and eager to start building, the Scharps reluctantly paid.
The so-called workforce housing fee was imposed to fund the County’s subsidized housing programs because—according to a County-commissioned study—the Scharps’ new home would create jobs, and some of those jobs would not pay enough to live in Teton County. In other words, individual property owners who don’t control market wages or housing costs are forced to pay for broader economic issues they didn’t create.
County officials justify their excessive fees by claiming that building new housing somehow intensifies housing affordability problems—a notion that defies basic economics. Increasing housing supply naturally helps stabilize or even reduce housing costs.
Beyond this flawed logic lie huge legal problems. Well-established Supreme Court precedents in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, Dolan v. City of Tigard, and Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, and now Sheetz. v. El Dorado County (2024) clearly limit what governments can demand from property owners. Permit conditions must directly address impacts caused by the specific project—anything beyond is an unconstitutional taking.
Teton County cannot hold building permits hostage until property owners pay excessive fees unrelated to their projects. Such requirements unfairly burden families like the Scharps who simply want to build a home and help solve local housing problems.
With Pacific Legal Foundation’s free representation, the Scharps are fighting back with a federal lawsuit to vindicate their own property rights and protect all Americans from similar governmental overreach when making reasonable, productive use of their own land.
This case is the latest in PLF’s work protecting the right to build, so that property owners can create much-needed housing across the country.
What’s At Stake?
- Increasing the stock of available housing is a solution to the housing affordability problem, not an issue to be mitigated. Government actions that increase the cost of housing make it more difficult for property owners to build more.
- Governments cannot force homebuilders to foot the bill for problems they do not create. Nor can they hold the right to use your property hostage to extract exorbitant fees. Fees for new construction must closely relate to the development’s impact.
