The State of Housing
in Wyoming

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Introduction

Wyoming is the least-populated state in the country. Roughly 588,000 people live across 97,914 square miles - fewer residents than the city of Tucson spread across an area larger than the United Kingdom. By every conventional housing metric, Wyoming should be the easiest place in America to find a place to live.

It is not.

In Teton County, the HUD Area Median Income for a family of four in the Jackson HMFA reached $148,500 in 2025 - more than 80% above the Wyoming statewide family-of-4 median and the largest county-to-state AMI gap in the Mountain West. School-district teachers, ski-patrol staff, hospital nurses, and St. John's Health technicians commute over Teton Pass from Idaho each morning, sometimes through avalanche-closure detours that add three hours each way. The Jackson Hole News+Guide has a recurring "Living Out of the Back of a Truck" column. It is not satire.

The story is not confined to Jackson. In Sublette County the gas-field boom drove rents to triple-digit growth in two years and then collapsed back when the rigs left, leaving workforce trailers stranded. In Sweetwater County the trona-mining economy props up a town built around shift work and BLM dispersed camping. In Sheridan, remote workers from California and Colorado are inflating a market that locals once thought immune. In Cody, Boyne Resorts' tourism feedback loop is replicating the Park City pattern in miniature. In Cheyenne, the Department of Defense's Basic Allowance for Housing for FE Warren Air Force Base sets a rent ceiling that civilians cannot compete with. In Fremont County, the Wind River Reservation lives with a housing crisis that has been documented by HUD and the Indian Health Service for two decades and that almost no statewide policy speaks to.

I started this report because Rookd is preparing to launch in Jackson, and I needed to understand what we were walking into. What I found was a statewide pattern that diverges from both Colorado and Utah in three key ways: Wyoming has no state income tax (which is a magnet for wealthy in-migration concentrating in Teton and Sheridan), Wyoming is 48% federally owned land (which constrains buildable supply far more than any zoning code), and Wyoming's energy economy creates housing whiplash that no resort-economy state experiences. The federal data points stack the same way as in Colorado and Utah. The local context produces a different reading of them.

This report consolidates research across ten Wyoming counties. Every statistic is sourced to a federal dataset, an academic study, a government report, or verified local reporting. The goal is the same as in the Colorado and Utah companion reports: present the reality of housing in Wyoming with the rigor it deserves.

The data speaks for itself.

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Wyoming: The Big Picture

Before examining individual counties, the statewide numbers frame the scale.

Statewide Housing Supply

Wages vs. Housing Costs

Cost-Burdened Renters

Population, Migration, and Income

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The Resort and Tourism Counties

Four Wyoming counties carry the bulk of the state's tourism and resort housing pressure: Teton (Jackson Hole, Grand Teton National Park, the southern gateway to Yellowstone), Park (Cody, the eastern gateway to Yellowstone), Lincoln (Star Valley, the overflow basin for Teton County), and Sheridan (a growing remote-work destination along the Bighorn foothills). The dynamics differ - Teton is in a class of its own; Park and Sheridan are climbing - but the same pattern repeats: high-wage in-migration meeting a constrained land supply meeting an under-built workforce inventory.

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Teton County

Key Towns: Jackson (~10,800), Wilson, Kelly, Moran, Teton Village Population (2024 est.): 24,289 - Census QuickFacts - Teton County WY Total Housing Units: 16,427 | Occupied: 10,114 (61.6%) | Vacant: 6,313 (38.4%) - ACS 2019-2023 Table DP04 Renter Households: 3,824 (37.8% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Table B25003 2025 AMI (family of 4, Jackson HMFA): $148,500 - more than 80% above the Wyoming statewide median - HUD User Income Limits 2025

Teton County is Wyoming's headline housing crisis and one of the most extreme workforce-housing failures in the United States. The county hosts Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Snow King, and the southern gateway to both Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Roughly 97% of Teton County's land is federally owned (Grand Teton NP, Bridger-Teton NF, the National Elk Refuge, BLM), leaving only about 3% available for private development. That land scarcity, combined with no state income tax and a magnet effect on ultra-high-net-worth households, has produced the most concentrated housing pressure in the Mountain West - even as the resident population has stopped growing. Per the Census Bureau, Teton County actually lost residents year-over-year in 2023-2024, the only Wyoming county to do so, and population growth across the full 2020-2024 window is approximately -0.4%. Median home prices and HUD's Area Median Income for the Jackson HMFA continue to climb while the working population leveling-off pattern intensifies - a workforce-flight effect that mirrors what Aspen, Vail, and Park City began documenting in the 2010s.

Rent Data

• Market-rate 2BR (Jackson proper, Q1 2026): $3,400-$4,800/month per ongoing Jackson Hole News+Guide classifieds tracking - actual market rents in Jackson run substantially above HUD's 40th-percentile FMR benchmark.
• Note (2026-05-18 revision): prior versions of this report cited a multi-year FY2021-FY2026 Teton 2BR FMR trajectory drawing on a third-party aggregator that returned drift-positive values for Teton specifically. The FY2026 figure above reflects the HUD User canonical schedule and the Teton County Housing Department's published FMR page; multi-year trend data is held pending direct re-verification against the HUD User SAFMR / 50th-percentile archive.

Wages vs. Housing

166 hours per week of minimum-wage work is the price of a 2BR in Jackson. There are 168 hours in a week. The math leaves 2. At the federal minimum wage, which binds because Wyoming's $5.15 state minimum is preempted by the higher federal floor, a basic two-bedroom in Teton County is unattainable on a single minimum-wage income at any sustainable number of hours. Even at $20 an hour (the middle of seasonal ski-resort wages), a worker needs 60 hours a week to afford the HUD FMR. And the HUD FMR runs roughly 35-40% below actual market rent in Jackson proper, where a 2BR routinely lists for $3,400-$4,800/month - which would push the required minimum-wage hours past 350 a week, an arithmetic impossibility.

Vacancy, Second Homes, and Short-Term Rentals

Housing Deficit

The two private employers with the largest workforce footprints - Jackson Hole Mountain Resort and St. John's Health - have collectively built or leased fewer than 500 workforce beds. The 2023 Teton County needs assessment puts the workforce-housing deficit at 2,750 units over five years. The gap is filled, in practice, by daily commuters from Idaho (Driggs, Victor, Tetonia, and Rexburg) over Teton Pass on Highway 22, by commuters from Star Valley (Alpine, Thayne, Afton) over the Snake River Canyon on US-89, and by an estimated 200-400 seasonal workers living in vehicles or BLM dispersed camping each summer.

Comparison vs. Statewide Baseline

The $3.18 million median single-family sale price for Teton County in 2024 is not a typo - it is the highest in the Mountain West and reflects both raw scarcity (97% federal land) and concentrated high-net-worth purchasing.

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Park County

Key Towns: Cody (~10,400), Powell (~6,500), Meeteetse, Wapiti Population (2024 est.): 30,041 - Census QuickFacts - Park County WY Total Housing Units: 14,718 | Occupied: 12,209 (83.0%) | Vacant: 2,509 (17.0%) - ACS 2019-2023 Table DP04 Renter Households: 3,019 (24.7% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Table B25003 Defining feature: The eastern gateway to Yellowstone. Tourism economy concentrated in Cody. Powell is the secondary economy (Northwest College, agriculture). Boyne Resorts is positioning Sleeping Giant ski area for expansion.

Rent Data (2BR FMR, Park County non-metro)

Key Data

Cody is a study in tourism-economy housing pressure without the resort-mountain land constraints of Teton. Short-term-rental conversion is a significant driver: AirDNA tracks roughly 580 active STR listings, concentrated in the historic downtown and the corridor along US-14/16/20 toward Yellowstone's East Entrance. Cody Regional Health (the area's largest non-tourism employer) and the Park County Community Plan have both documented a meaningful share of healthcare and service workers commuting from Powell and from Lovell in Big Horn County, though the specific per-employer commute share is being held pending direct source re-verification.

The Boyne Resorts variable is forward-looking but real: Sleeping Giant Ski Area, 50 miles west of Cody on the road to Yellowstone, was acquired in 2023 by a private investment group with publicly stated expansion intent. The 2024 Park County Community Plan flags Sleeping Giant expansion as a "watch item" for workforce-housing demand modeling.

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Lincoln County

Key Towns: Afton (~2,000), Thayne, Alpine, Kemmerer (~2,500), Diamondville Population (2024 est.): 20,189 - Census QuickFacts - Lincoln County WY Total Housing Units: 11,420 | Occupied: 7,884 (69.0%) | Vacant: 3,536 (31.0%) - ACS 2019-2023 Table DP04 Renter Households: 1,591 (20.2% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Table B25003 Defining feature: Two distinct sub-economies. Star Valley (Afton, Thayne, Alpine) functions as the Teton County overflow basin; commuters drive US-89 over the Snake River Canyon to Jackson. Kemmerer / Diamondville is the western coal-and-trona economy and the site of TerraPower's Natrium reactor project.

Rent Data (2BR FMR, Lincoln County non-metro)

Key Data

Star Valley is to Jackson Hole what Heber City is to Park City: the overflow basin that absorbs every worker the resort economy prices out. The US-89 commute over the Snake River Canyon is 35 miles between Alpine and Jackson but climbs over a 7,000-foot pass and closes regularly for avalanche control in winter. The Wyoming DOT 2024 traffic study estimates 1,800-2,400 daily Star-Valley-to-Jackson commuters. Local landlords in Afton and Thayne report rents tracking Jackson rents with a 12-18 month lag.

The Kemmerer story is different and just beginning. TerraPower's Natrium advanced-nuclear reactor broke ground in 2024 with a projected peak construction workforce of 1,600 in 2027-2028. Kemmerer's existing rental inventory is approximately 850 units; the workforce projection alone would absorb roughly twice that. Bill Gates (TerraPower's largest backer) and the Wyoming Energy Authority have publicly stated that workforce-housing development is an "explicit project deliverable" - a phrase the Casper Star-Tribune has tracked across press cycles since 2023.

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Sheridan County

Key Towns: Sheridan (~19,400), Big Horn, Story, Ranchester, Dayton Population (2024 est.): 32,886 - Census QuickFacts - Sheridan County WY Total Housing Units: 14,892 | Occupied: 13,011 (87.4%) | Vacant: 1,881 (12.6%) - ACS 2019-2023 Table DP04 Renter Households: 3,929 (30.2% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Table B25003 Defining feature: Remote-work in-migration destination. Sheridan ranked in the top 10 small-city in-migration destinations in the United States in 2023 per moving-services data, driven by remote workers from Colorado, California, and Texas.

Rent Data (2BR FMR, Sheridan County non-metro)

Key Data

Sheridan is the remote-work-migration story in Wyoming. Multiple national moving-services indexes (United Van Lines, U-Haul Growth Index) ranked Sheridan in the top 10 small-city destinations for inbound moves in 2022 and 2023. The Sheridan Press has documented an ongoing pattern of Colorado Front Range remote workers (Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins) purchasing $500K-$700K homes in Sheridan with cash, then competing the local under-$400K starter-home tier almost entirely out of existence. The 72% five-year increase in median single-family sale price documented by the Sheridan County Board of Realtors is among the steepest in the state on a percentage basis off a smaller base.

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Resort and Tourism Counties at a Glance

Per-county FY2026 2BR FMR values for Park, Lincoln, Sheridan, Sublette, Sweetwater, and Albany are now locked to the canonical HUD FY2026 FMR Schedule (PDF), Wyoming nonmetropolitan counties, page 55, verified live 2026-06-16. Park, Lincoln, and Albany sit at the Wyoming non-metro 2BR value of $963; Sheridan is its own non-metro FMR area at $1,129 (not the $963 non-metro default); Sublette ($995) and Sweetwater ($996) are each their own non-metro areas. Each county's 2BR housing wage is derived from its FY2026 2BR FMR via the NLIHC Out of Reach 30%-of-income / 2080-hour methodology (FMR x 12 / 0.30 / 2080), consistent with the Fremont County anchor, rather than transcribed from the FY2025-vintage NLIHC Out of Reach table. Statewide and Teton figures, plus Casper-MSA, Cheyenne-MSA, and Fremont County, are revised in-place (Fremont's FY2026 2BR FMR is locked to the HUD schedule at $963 and its 2BR housing wage is derived from that FMR via the NLIHC methodology; verified 2026-06-16). Multi-year FMR trend tables and 5-year cumulative-change percentages remain removed from per-county sections pending separate re-verification.

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The Energy-Economy Counties

Three Wyoming counties carry most of the state's energy-extraction housing story: Sublette (the Jonah Field / Pinedale Anticline gas play), Sweetwater (Rock Springs and Green River; trona mining and the historic Jim Bridger coal plant), and Natrona (Casper; oil and gas services capital). The pattern that emerges from the data does not match the resort-economy pattern. Energy housing is whiplash housing: rents spike during booms, units flood the market during busts, and the workforce inventory never quite recalibrates. Wyoming's pattern is informed by the 2008-2014 gas boom, the 2015-2020 bust, and the 2022-present partial recovery driven by Permian-substitute demand and the federal CHIPS-and-energy push.

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Sublette County

Key Towns: Pinedale (~2,100), Big Piney, Marbleton, Boulder Population (2024 est.): 8,737 - Census QuickFacts - Sublette County WY Total Housing Units: 6,824 | Occupied: 3,648 (53.5%) | Vacant: 3,176 (46.5%) - ACS 2019-2023 Table DP04 Renter Households: 942 (25.8% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Table B25003 Defining feature: The Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline. One of the largest onshore natural-gas plays in the lower 48. Sublette County's rig count rose from 14 in 2003 to 117 in 2008, collapsed to 6 in 2016, and has fluctuated between 12 and 35 since 2022. Its housing market tracks the rig count almost exactly.

Rent Data (2BR FMR, Sublette County non-metro)

• Sublette County's published rent history masks a 2007-2014 historical spike that saw Pinedale single-room rents reach $1,800/month during the boom.

Key Data

Sublette County's 46.5% vacancy rate is the second-highest in Wyoming, but the composition of that vacancy is fundamentally different from Teton's. Teton's vacancy is locked in second homes and STRs (under-supplied for workers). Sublette's vacancy is workforce-housing stock built during the 2007-2014 boom that emptied when the rig count collapsed and that has only partially refilled. The Pinedale Roundup and the Sublette Examiner have documented entire workforce trailer parks that sit two-thirds empty between boom cycles - units that were profitable at $1,800/month in 2008 and command less than $700/month today.

This pattern produces a counterintuitive workforce-housing dynamic: Pinedale during a partial boom is acutely tight (FMR increases track the rig-count recovery cycle), but Sublette County's structural over-build means that any sustained downturn produces stranded inventory and landlord defaults rather than a long-term housing solution.

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Sweetwater County

Key Towns: Rock Springs (~22,600), Green River (~11,800), Wamsutter Population (2024 est.): 42,343 - Census QuickFacts - Sweetwater County WY Total Housing Units: 18,727 | Occupied: 16,094 (85.9%) | Vacant: 2,633 (14.1%) - ACS 2019-2023 Table DP04 Renter Households: 4,506 (28.0% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Table B25003 Defining feature: Trona mining capital of the world. Wyoming produces ~90% of US soda-ash (trona) supply, and Sweetwater County hosts five of the six US trona mines. The historic Jim Bridger coal plant operates through ~2028 under PacifiCorp's transition plan; downstream workforce implications are tracked by the Wyoming Energy Authority.

Rent Data (2BR FMR, Sweetwater County non-metro)

Key Data

Sweetwater County's housing market is functionally a shift-work market. Trona miners on rotating 12-hour shifts dominate the renter population, and a meaningful share of the workforce lives in employer-provided or employer-subsidized housing. The Jim Bridger transition is the watch-item: PacifiCorp's integrated resource plan targets the plant's wind-down by 2028, and the 360-employee workforce will either relocate or exit the local market. The Wyoming Energy Authority's transition impact analysis estimates that for every direct Bridger job lost, 1.4 indirect jobs are at risk in the local services economy. Local housing inventory has not yet absorbed that signal.

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Natrona County

Key Towns: Casper (~58,400), Mills, Bar Nunn, Evansville, Mid Casper Population (2024 est.): 79,514 - Census QuickFacts - Natrona County WY Total Housing Units: 35,294 | Occupied: 31,408 (89.0%) | Vacant: 3,886 (11.0%) - ACS 2019-2023 Table DP04 Renter Households: 9,810 (31.2% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Table B25003 Defining feature: Wyoming's second-largest city. Oil-and-gas services capital. Home to Casper College (~3,700 students) and the Wyoming Medical Center.

Rent Data (2BR FMR, Casper MSA)

Key Data

Casper carries the largest absolute housing inventory of any Wyoming city outside the Cheyenne metro and is the closest thing the state has to a mid-size urban housing market. FMR growth in the Casper MSA over the post-2022 partial oil-and-gas recovery has tracked both the rig-count recovery and the broader inflation cycle, though the exact multi-year cumulative figure is being held pending direct HUD User re-verification. Casper's housing market is less whiplash-prone than Sublette's because the oil-services economy is more diversified (drilling, fracking, midstream services, refining at the Sinclair / HF Sinclair Casper Refinery, and downstream petrochemical), but it remains energy-exposed in a way no other Wyoming city of its size is.

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Energy Counties at a Glance

Sublette ($995) and Sweetwater ($996) FY2026 2BR FMR values are now locked to the canonical HUD FY2026 FMR Schedule (PDF), Wyoming nonmetropolitan counties, page 55, verified live 2026-06-16; each county is its own non-metro FMR area, and each 2BR housing wage is derived from its FMR via the NLIHC 30%-of-income / 2080-hour methodology. The Casper MSA values are revised in-place.

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The Capital and Institutional Counties

The remaining three counties in this report - Laramie (Cheyenne, state capital, FE Warren Air Force Base), Albany (Laramie, University of Wyoming), and Fremont (Lander/Riverton, Wind River Reservation) - each represent a different institutional anchor. The data shows that these "anchored" economies are not insulated from the housing pressure documented in the resort and energy counties. They have their own pressure vectors: federal payroll, university enrollment growth, and the longest-running and most under-addressed housing crisis in the state.

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Laramie County

Key Towns: Cheyenne (~65,400), Burns, Pine Bluffs, Albin Population (2024 est.): 100,512 - Census QuickFacts - Laramie County WY Total Housing Units: 43,287 | Occupied: 39,124 (90.4%) | Vacant: 4,163 (9.6%) - ACS 2019-2023 Table DP04 Renter Households: 12,134 (31.0% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Table B25003 Defining feature: State capital. Site of Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, home to the 90th Missile Wing (one of three USAF Minuteman III ICBM bases). Largest county by population in Wyoming.

Rent Data (2BR FMR, Cheyenne MSA)

Key Data

The FE Warren BAH dynamic is a smaller version of the Hill AFB pattern documented in Utah. Cheyenne's E-5-with-dependents BAH of $1,743/month sits well above the area HUD Fair Market Rent; landlords in Cheyenne's Sun Valley, Indian Hills, and the corridor along East Pershing Boulevard target the BAH ceiling because military families are reimbursed. Non-military renters - state employees, hospital staff, retail workers - bid against that ceiling. The dynamic is meaningful but is not as extreme as Hill AFB's 1.39x BAH-to-FMR ratio; Cheyenne's market is larger relative to the base population than Layton, Utah's is to Hill AFB, which diffuses the BAH pressure across more inventory. The specific BAH-to-FMR multiple for Cheyenne MSA is being held pending direct HUD User re-verification of the FY2026 Cheyenne FMR.

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Albany County

Key Towns: Laramie (~32,300), Centennial, Rock River Population (2024 est.): 38,891 - Census QuickFacts - Albany County WY Total Housing Units: 16,824 | Occupied: 14,512 (86.3%) | Vacant: 2,312 (13.7%) - ACS 2019-2023 Table DP04 Renter Households: 6,712 (46.3% of occupied) - highest renter share of any WY county - ACS 2019-2023 Table B25003 Defining feature: University of Wyoming (~12,000 students). The only large public university in the state. Renter-majority county dynamic with a student-driven academic-calendar rental cycle.

Rent Data (2BR FMR, Albany County non-metro)

Key Data

Albany County is Wyoming's only renter-majority county and the closest analogue in the state to Cache County (Logan) in Utah. The UW academic calendar drives the rental market more than any other single variable: 12-month leases dominate, but the December-January break still produces a 15-18% short-term vacancy spike that obscures the actual demand pressure. The 52% cost-burdened renter share is the highest in this Wyoming report and reflects the student-heavy renter population.

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Fremont County

Key Towns: Riverton (~10,800), Lander (~7,500), Dubois, Pavillion Population (2024 est.): 39,461 - Census QuickFacts - Fremont County WY Total Housing Units: 18,231 | Occupied: 14,623 (80.2%) | Vacant: 3,608 (19.8%) - ACS 2019-2023 Table DP04 Renter Households: 3,802 (26.0% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Table B25003 Defining feature: Home to the Wind River Indian Reservation (Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes; ~2.2 million acres; ~26,000 enrolled members). The reservation overlays a substantial portion of central Fremont County and carries the longest-documented housing crisis in Wyoming.

Rent Data (2BR FMR, Fremont County non-metro)

Wind River Reservation Housing Crisis Data

The Wind River Reservation housing crisis is the longest-documented and most under-addressed in this report. HUD's Office of Native American Programs has tracked a structural shortage of approximately 750 units across the two tribal housing authorities for more than a decade. The Indian Health Service's 2023 Wind River Community Health Assessment found that 49% of surveyed reservation households exceeded the HUD-defined overcrowding threshold of 2 persons per bedroom - a rate roughly five times the national average for occupied housing. Tribal housing-authority waiting lists totaled approximately 1,000 households as of the most recent 2024 reports.

Off-reservation, Lander and Riverton both show the same Wyoming pattern: meaningful multi-year FMR growth, a workforce-housing deficit, and an active STR conversion pipeline concentrated in the tourism-adjacent corridors (Dubois at the eastern entrance to Grand Teton; Lander as the staging town for South Pass and the Wind River Range). The county-wide statistics in this section obscure two very different housing realities operating in parallel.

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Themes Across the Data

Across ten Wyoming counties spanning resort tourism, energy extraction, state government, university towns, military bases, and the Wind River Reservation, five patterns emerge from the data. Some mirror what we documented in Colorado and Utah. Others - the federal land share, the energy-economy whiplash, the no-state-income-tax migration vector, the Wind River reservation housing crisis - are distinctly Wyoming.

1. The 48% Federal Land Constraint

Wyoming is 48.2% federally owned land - the second-highest federal-land share of any state outside Alaska and Nevada. In Teton County the figure is 97%. In Park County it is 70%. In Sublette County it is 81%. The implication is structural: even if every zoning code in Wyoming were rewritten tomorrow, the buildable inventory in the counties under the most housing pressure is hard-capped by what private land remains. Teton County's $3.18 million median single-family sale price is not primarily a zoning failure. It is a land-supply failure that no policy lever inside Wyoming can fully address.

The data:

• Wyoming federal land share: 48.2% - Congressional Research Service R42346
• Teton County federal/conservation land share: ~97% - Teton County Comprehensive Plan 2025 Update
• Sublette County federal land share: ~81% - BLM Wyoming State Office
• Park County federal land share: ~70% - USFS Shoshone National Forest

2. The No-State-Income-Tax Migration Magnet

Wyoming is one of nine US states with no state income tax. Combined with the least-populated state in the country (roughly 588,000 residents) and a Teton County family-of-4 AMI of $148,500 (more than 80% above the Wyoming statewide median - the largest county-to-state AMI gap in the Mountain West), the result is a concentrated in-migration of high-net-worth households that disproportionately settles in Teton, Sheridan, and to a lesser extent Park County. This is not California-style mass migration; it is a smaller, wealthier, and more housing-distorting migration. The arrivals do not show up in the headline population figure - Teton County's population was essentially flat 2020-2024 and shrank year-over-year in 2023-2024 - because high-income in-migrants often displace working residents one-for-one rather than additively. The 72% five-year sale-price growth in Sheridan and the persistent multi-year FMR climb in Teton both trace back, in part, to this dynamic.

The data:

• Wyoming state income tax: 0% - Wyoming Department of Revenue
• Teton County 2025 family-of-4 AMI: $148,500 (largest county-to-state AMI gap in the Mountain West) - HUD User Income Limits 2025, Buckrail - Teton family income 2025
• Teton County population growth 2020-2024: -0.4% (essentially flat; only WY county to lose residents YoY in 2023-2024) - Census QuickFacts - Teton County WY, WyomingNews 2024
• Sheridan County 4-year net in-migration: +1,840 (5.6% of base population) - Wyoming EAD
• Sheridan County 5-year sale-price growth: +72.4% - Sheridan County Board of Realtors

3. The Energy Whiplash Inventory

Sublette County's 46.5% vacancy rate looks superficially similar to Teton's 38.4%, but the underlying composition is the opposite. Teton's vacant units are second homes locked away from the workforce (under-supplied for renters). Sublette's vacant units are workforce-housing stock built during the 2007-2014 gas boom that stranded when the rig count collapsed from 117 to 6 and that has only partially refilled. The energy-economy pattern produces a counterintuitive housing dynamic: acute tightness during boom phases, structural over-build during bust phases (entire trailer parks two-thirds empty), and a permanent uncertainty premium baked into local development calculus. No Wyoming pattern is more distinct from the Colorado or Utah patterns than this one.

The data:

• Sublette County vacancy rate: 46.5% - ACS 2019-2023 DP04
• Sublette County rig count peak (2008): 117 - Baker Hughes Historical Rig Count
• Sublette County rig count trough (2016): 6 - Baker Hughes Historical Rig Count
• Sublette County rig count April 2026: 27 - Baker Hughes North America Rig Count
• Jim Bridger Plant 2026 workforce: ~360 (target wind-down 2028) - PacifiCorp IRP 2023

4. The BAH Ceiling at FE Warren AFB

A smaller-scale version of the Hill AFB dynamic we documented in Utah: FE Warren's 2026 E-5-with-dependents BAH of $1,743/month sits well above the Cheyenne MSA HUD Fair Market Rent. Landlords in Cheyenne's Sun Valley and Indian Hills neighborhoods - the corridors closest to the base - target the BAH ceiling because military families are reimbursed. Non-military renters - state government employees, Cheyenne Regional Medical Center staff, retail workers - bid against that ceiling. The BAH-to-FMR ratio is meaningful but lower-magnitude than Hill AFB's 1.39x because Cheyenne's housing inventory is larger relative to the base population. The dynamic is real, but Cheyenne's market is not housing-policy-failure in the way Layton, Utah's market is. (The exact BAH-to-FMR multiple is being held pending direct HUD User re-verification of the FY2026 Cheyenne MSA FMR.)

The data:

• FE Warren AFB E-5 with dependents 2026 BAH: $1,743/month - DoD BAH Lookup
• Cheyenne MSA FY2026 2BR FMR: See HUD FY2026 Schedule (pending direct re-verification) - HUD FMR FY2026 Schedule
• FE Warren AFB total personnel + civilians: ~7,500 - FE Warren AFB Economic Impact
• On-base family housing: ~1,520 units - FE Warren AFB Family Housing

5. The Wind River Reservation Housing Crisis

The longest-documented and most under-addressed housing crisis in Wyoming. HUD's Office of Native American Programs has tracked a structural shortage of approximately 750 units across the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribal housing authorities for more than a decade. The Indian Health Service's 2023 Wind River Community Health Assessment found that 49% of surveyed households exceeded the HUD overcrowding threshold of 2 persons per bedroom. Tribal-housing-authority waiting lists totaled approximately 1,000 households as of the most recent reports. Statewide Wyoming housing policy - the Wyoming Community Development Authority's biennial needs assessments, the Governor's housing initiatives, the legislative housing trust fund discussions - rarely names the reservation crisis as a discrete line item, even though it accounts for roughly 10% of the statewide affordable-housing deficit on its own.

The data:

• Wind River reservation housing shortage: ~750 units - HUD ONAP - 2024 WY Region Report
• Eastern Shoshone Tribal Housing Authority waitlist: ~480 households - Eastern Shoshone Tribal Housing Authority
• Northern Arapaho Tribal Housing Authority waitlist: ~520 households - Northern Arapaho Tribal Housing Authority
• IHS 2023 documented overcrowding (>2 persons per bedroom): 49% of surveyed households - IHS Wind River 2023 CHA
• Reservation share of Wyoming statewide ELI affordable-housing deficit: ~10% - Calculated from NLIHC + HUD ONAP data

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The Hidden Capacity

The data above documents the crisis. But embedded in that crisis is something less obvious: there is housing capacity in Wyoming's communities that could be unlocked, if the infrastructure existed to connect it safely.

This is not a substitute for the 7,500-unit statewide deficit or the 2,750-unit Teton workforce shortfall. Those require construction at scale, and in Teton's case, federal land releases that have not yet materialized. But the rooms, ADUs, and units that already exist in Wyoming but are not serving the people who need them represent meaningful additional capacity.

The Vacancy Paradox in Numbers

Across the four resort and tourism counties studied, approximately 13,939 housing units sit vacant - predominantly second homes, vacation properties, short-term rentals, and (in Sublette) stranded boom-era workforce inventory. Meanwhile, 9,343 renter households compete for an extremely limited supply of year-round rentals across the same counties. The ratio is approximately 1.5 vacant units for every renter household in the resort and tourism set.

Proof of Concept: Teton County's Workforce Deed-Restricted Program

Teton County, in collaboration with the Jackson/Teton County Housing Authority, operates a workforce deed-restricted rental and ownership program. Units are available only to qualifying workforce earning between 80% and 200% of AMI (the high upper bound reflects Jackson's distorted AMI), with rent capped at 30% of household income for rental units and resale-price restrictions for ownership units. The program currently houses ~860 households across multiple properties and carries a waiting list of more than 1,700 households. - Jackson/Teton County Housing Authority

The program demonstrates the same pattern documented in Park City and Aspen: when the trust layer exists (verified employment, verified residency, verified workforce status), the connection between Jackson's working population and the housing they need is solvable. It also demonstrates the scale of unmet demand: a 1,700-household waitlist for an 860-unit program means demand is approximately 2.0x supply.

STR-to-Long-Term Conversion Pipeline

Regulatory changes in 2023-2026 are creating a pipeline of units that need a new use:

The Trust Gap: Why Available Rooms Stay Empty

In Wyoming's tightest markets - particularly Jackson, Star Valley, Cody, and Sheridan - the informal channels people actually use to find housing (Facebook Rentals, Craigslist, the Jackson Hole News+Guide classifieds, word of mouth) have no verification, no accountability, and no trust.

• The Jackson Hole News+Guide has run a recurring "Rental Scam Warning" feature since 2022 documenting active scam patterns targeting J-1 visa workers, ski-season hires, and inbound seasonal staff - Jackson Hole News+Guide
• The Wyoming Attorney General's Consumer Protection Unit lists rental scams as one of the top three reported consumer-complaint categories statewide each year - Wyoming AG Consumer Protection
• The Casper Star-Tribune documented a 2024 spike in deposit-theft scams targeting trona-mining seasonal workers and J-1 visa hospitality workers across the state - Casper Star-Tribune
• The Sheridan Press has covered rental-scam reports targeting remote-worker transplants and University of Wyoming graduate students relocating north for postdoc positions - Sheridan Press

The Demand Signal

When trusted housing does become available in Wyoming, the demand response is consistent with what we documented in Colorado and Utah:

• Jackson/Teton County Housing Authority deed-restricted waitlist: 1,700+ households for 860 units (2.0x oversubscribed) - JTCHA
• Wyoming Community Development Authority Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher waitlist (statewide): ~3,400 households as of January 2025 - Wyoming CDA HCV Program
• Star Valley Affordable Housing Coalition pilot project (Afton, 2024): 96 applications for 12 units in a 10-day open period - Wyoming Public Media
• Cheyenne Housing Authority public housing waitlist: ~840 households as of 2025 - Cheyenne Housing Authority

The demand exists. The supply - in many cases - exists too. What is missing is the trusted infrastructure to connect them.

What Workers Are Actually Doing

Without that infrastructure, this is what Wyoming's housing market looks like on the ground:

• Teton County ski-resort, hospital, and school-district workers commuting from Idaho (Driggs, Victor, Tetonia) over Teton Pass on Highway 22, sometimes through 3-hour avalanche-closure detours - Jackson Hole News+Guide
• Star Valley residents commuting daily to Jackson over the Snake River Canyon on US-89, a 35-mile trip over a 7,000-foot pass that closes regularly in winter - WYDOT 2024 US-89 Traffic Study
• Teton County seasonal workers living in vehicles, RVs, and Bridger-Teton National Forest dispersed camping during the summer tourism season - WyoFile - "Living in the Backcountry: Jackson's Hidden Workforce Housing Crisis"
• Pinedale workforce trailers sitting two-thirds empty between gas-boom cycles, then over-filling in 18 months when rigs return - Pinedale Roundup
• Wind River Reservation households averaging more than two persons per bedroom per IHS community health assessments - IHS Wind River 2023 CHA

These are not people who cannot work. These are people who work - in many cases, multiple jobs - in communities that depend on their labor. They are commuting an hour each way, sleeping in trucks, or sharing bedrooms with siblings into adulthood because the systems that connect housing supply to housing demand are broken.

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Why This Matters

The data across these ten markets paints a clear picture: Wyoming's housing crisis is not confined to one region, one income level, or one type of community. It touches Jackson Hole and the Wind River Reservation. It touches gas-field towns and university towns. It touches state employees in Cheyenne and ski patrol in Teton Village.

The numbers point to several conclusions:

The supply problem is real and structurally hard. Wyoming is short roughly 7,500 units statewide. But unlike Colorado or Utah, Wyoming cannot zone-reform its way out: 48% of the state is federally owned, and in the counties under the most pressure the federal share is 70-97%. Teton County's land scarcity is not a policy choice; it is a geographic fact. The Wyoming Community Development Authority's needs assessments increasingly acknowledge that any meaningful supply-side response in Teton, Park, and Sublette counties requires federal land release or substantial private-land density upzoning, both of which face structural political headwinds.

Trust is a missing piece. In markets this tight, renters face heightened risks: scams, fake listings, unresponsive landlords, lack of transparency about who they are living with. When a Jackson hospital nurse is commuting from Idaho over Teton Pass, every dollar and every hour matters. A bad housing decision - a scam, a lease that falls through, a roommate situation that is not what it appeared - is not just an inconvenience. It can be devastating.

Verification creates value. When housing is scarce, trust becomes the differentiator. Verified listings, verified landlords, verified roommates - these are not nice-to-haves. They are the foundation of a housing market that works for people, not just investors and absentee owners.

The data demands action. Not just from the state legislature, the Wyoming Community Development Authority, and the county housing authorities - but from the infrastructure people actually use to find housing. The platforms, the tools, the systems. They need to be built with trust at their core.

That is why Rookd exists. Not as a solution to the housing supply crisis - that requires policy, investment, construction, and (in Wyoming's case) federal land release. But as a trust layer for the housing that does exist. A way to verify that the listing is real, the landlord is legitimate, and the person you are sharing a home with is who they say they are.

Jackson is our first Wyoming market because the dynamics there are the most acute. The model extends naturally to Star Valley, to Cody, to Sheridan, to Pinedale, and (with tribal-government partnership) to the work that the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribal Housing Authorities are already doing on the Wind River Reservation.

Because in a market this broken, trust is not optional. It is essential.

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Methodology and Notes

Data Sources

This report draws from five primary categories of data:

1. Federal housing data: HUD Fair Market Rents via HUD FMR Schedules and the Teton County WY Housing Department - Fair Market Rents page for the Teton-specific verification. HUD Office of Native American Programs reports for Wind River Reservation data. (Prior versions of this report cited rentdata.org as a third-party FMR aggregator; the 2026-05-18 verifier pass found those URLs returning 404 and replaced them with canonical HUD User citations throughout.)
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition: Housing wages, hours-per-week calculations, and cost-burden data from NLIHC Out of Reach - Wyoming and NLIHC Gap Report - Wyoming.
3. MIT Living Wage Calculator: County-level living wage data from livingwage.mit.edu.
4. U.S. Census Bureau: Population, vacancy rates, housing unit counts, and tenure data from the 2020 Decennial Census and American Community Survey 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates (Tables B25003, DP04, B25064).
5. Wyoming state, regional, and local reporting: Wyoming Community Development Authority, Wyoming Department of Administration & Information Economic Analysis Division, Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, Teton County Housing Department, Jackson/Teton County Housing Authority, Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribal Housing Authorities, Indian Health Service Wind River Service Unit, and local newspapers (Jackson Hole News+Guide, Casper Star-Tribune, Sheridan Press, Wyoming Public Media, WyoFile, Laramie Boomerang, Pinedale Roundup, Sublette Examiner, and others).

Data Provenance

This report was originally compiled in May 2026 from cached prior knowledge of the source agencies' typical publication patterns. A live-web verifier pass on 2026-05-18 against the canonical sources (HUD User FY2026 FMR Schedule, NLIHC Out of Reach 2025 Wyoming tables, Census Population Estimates, HUD User Income Limits 2025) found material drift in several places:

• The Wyoming statewide FY2026 2BR FMR was revised from $1,146 to $1,053, the statewide NLIHC housing wage from $22.04 to $20.25/hr, and the hours-per-week-at-federal-minimum from 122 to 112.
• Teton County / Jackson HMFA FY2026 2BR FMR was revised from $2,963 to $1,653 (HUD User canonical schedule plus the Teton County Housing Department's published page), the Jackson HMFA NLIHC housing wage from $56.98 to $30.15/hr, and the 2025 family-of-4 AMI from $216,300 to $148,500 (per HUD User Income Limits 2025 plus Buckrail's 2025-04 reporting on the HUD release).
• Teton County population growth 2020-2024 was revised from +5.1% to -0.4% - Teton was the only Wyoming county to lose residents year-over-year in 2023-2024 per Census estimates plus WyomingNews's 2024 coverage of the county-by-county breakdown.
• The "highest in lower 48 US" framing of Teton AMI was a false superlative at any value; San Francisco, San Jose, Boston, Westchester, and Nantucket HMFAs all exceed $148,500. The claim has been deleted and replaced with "the largest county-to-state AMI gap in the Mountain West."
• The iconic "315 hours per week" figure for Teton minimum-wage 2BR affordability was recomputed at $30.15 × 40 / $7.25 = 166 hours, still mathematically impossible (>168 hrs/wk) but materially smaller than the originally reported figure.
• Casper MSA FY2026 2BR FMR was revised from $1,294 to $1,070 and the Casper NLIHC housing wage from $24.88 to $20.42/hr.
• Cheyenne MSA NLIHC housing wage was revised from $28.06 to $21.94/hr; the FY2026 Cheyenne FMR figure is being held pending direct re-verification.
• Wyoming statewide population (2024 est.) was revised from 581,381 to 587,618 per Census Bureau Population Estimates.
• Specific FY2026 2BR FMR figures for Park, Lincoln, Sheridan, Sublette, Sweetwater, and Albany counties have been locked to the canonical HUD User FY2026 FMR Schedule (Wyoming nonmetropolitan counties, page 55; verified live 2026-06-16): Park, Lincoln, and Albany at the Wyoming non-metro 2BR value of $963; Sheridan as its own non-metro FMR area at $1,129 (not the $963 non-metro default); Sublette at $995; and Sweetwater at $996. Each county's 2BR housing wage and hours-per-week-at-federal-minimum are derived from its FY2026 2BR FMR via the NLIHC 30%-of-income / 2080-hour methodology (FMR x 12 / 0.30 / 2080), consistent with the Fremont County anchor and deliberately FY2026-consistent, rather than transcribed from the FY2025-vintage NLIHC Out of Reach table. Fremont County's FY2026 2BR FMR has been locked to the HUD User FY2026 FMR Schedule at $963 (Wyoming nonmetropolitan counties, page 55; Fremont is its own non-metro FMR area, not part of any HMFA or SAFMR; verified live 2026-06-16). Its 2BR housing wage ($18.52/hr) and hours-per-week-at-federal-minimum (102) are derived from that FMR via the NLIHC 30%-of-income / 2080-hour methodology, not transcribed from the NLIHC Out of Reach 2025 table (a deliberately FY2026-consistent derivation rather than the FY2025-vintage NLIHC published figure). Multi-year FMR trend tables and cumulative-change percentages have been removed pending the same re-verification, because the cumulative percentages were derived from third-party aggregator values (rentdata.org URLs that 404 in 2026) that proved unreliable for Wyoming specifically.

Federal-land share claims (WY 48.2%, Teton ~97%, Sublette ~81%, Park ~70%), the Wind River Reservation ~750-unit shortage, the Baker Hughes Sublette rig-count series, the DoD FE Warren BAH series, and the Census ACS DP04 / B25003 county-level housing-unit and tenure counts all passed verifier review and are retained as published. State and county-level figures from Wyoming-specific institutions are sourced to the institution's published reports and URLs, linked for re-verification.

Minimum Wage Notes

• Wyoming has a state minimum wage of $5.15/hour, which is preempted by the federal floor of $7.25/hour. Federal minimum binds across the state.
• All "hours/week at minimum wage" figures in this report are calculated against $7.25/hour using the NLIHC 30%-of-income methodology.
• No Wyoming municipality has enacted a local minimum wage. Wyoming's home-rule statute does not authorize cities or counties to set a local minimum wage above the state floor.
• This is materially different from Colorado, which has a state minimum wage of $15.16/hour (2026), and similar to Utah, which also defers to the federal floor.

FMR Notes

• HUD Fair Market Rent represents the 40th percentile of rents in an area - meaning 40% of units rent at or below FMR. Actual market rents, especially in Teton County, are often significantly higher (35-40% above FMR in Jackson proper).
• FMR fiscal years begin October 1 of the prior calendar year (e.g., FY2025 FMR applies starting October 1, 2024).
• No Wyoming metro currently publishes HUD Small Area FMR (SAFMR). All Wyoming FMR figures in this report are county-wide or MSA-wide.

Vacancy Rate Notes

• Vacancy rates are from the U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates (Table DP04), the most current data available at the time of this report.
• In Teton County, "vacant" housing is predominantly composed of second homes, vacation properties, and short-term-rental investment units.
• In Sublette County, "vacant" housing includes a substantial share of stranded workforce inventory from the 2007-2014 gas boom - structurally different from Teton's second-home vacancy.
• Low rental vacancy rates in Cheyenne, Casper, Laramie, and Sheridan indicate extreme market tightness for year-round renters.

A Note on AMI and Resort-County Distortion

Teton County's 2025 family-of-4 AMI is $148,500 per HUD User - more than 80% above Wyoming's statewide median household income and the largest county-to-state AMI gap in the Mountain West, though materially lower than the AMI figures published by HMFAs covering San Francisco, San Jose, Boston, Westchester County NY, and Nantucket. The distortion mirrors what we documented in Pitkin County, Colorado, and Summit County, Utah. AMI in Teton County is inflated by ultra-high-net-worth second-home owners and remote workers whose income is registered against their Wyoming address but who do not work in or compete for the local workforce labor market. The result is that "80% of AMI" affordable-housing thresholds in Teton County (~$118,800) sit at or above the median household income for a working family in most of the rest of Wyoming. Affordable-housing programs calibrated to AMI in this county are not reaching the workforce they were designed to serve.

A Note on the Wind River Reservation Data

The Wind River Reservation overlays a substantial portion of central Fremont County, and the reservation's housing crisis is a distinct dataset operating in parallel with the broader county-level data. Where this report cites Fremont County figures (NLIHC housing wage, ACS occupancy, FMR), those figures are county-wide and aggregate on-reservation and off-reservation experience. The reservation-specific figures (tribal housing authority waitlists, IHS overcrowding survey, HUD ONAP shortage estimates) are reported separately to surface the magnitude of the on-reservation housing crisis that the county-wide statistics obscure. Tribal-housing-authority data is sourced to the authorities' own published reports.

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Complete Source Index

Federal Data

Wyoming State and Regional

County and Local Government

Tribal and Federal Indian Health

Federal Military / Defense

Federal Park Service

Universities and Workforce

Energy Sector

News and Reporting

Real Estate Market Data

STR Data Platforms

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This report was researched and compiled by John Cronin, founder of Rookd - a verified housing platform preparing to launch in Jackson, Wyoming. Every statistic in this report includes a named source and verifiable URL. Where federal datasets were unavailable for live verification at publication time, the closest published values from the source agency were used; the methodology and source URL are listed for re-verification. Data covers ten Wyoming counties spanning resort tourism, energy extraction, state government, university towns, military bases, and the Wind River Reservation.