A "David and Goliath story" ends with residents of the Westside mobile home park in Durango, Colorado, keeping their homes, with a lot of help from their neighbors.

A housing crunch in the West has some looking to public lands as a solution…and a place to live.

The affordable housing crisis is usually understood as a problem in the Mountain West’s cities and resort towns. But it’s also happening in rural areas with booming economies.

Homelessness is a growing problem in Western cities. Some communities are setting up their own encampments.

Building new affordable housing takes time, but knocking it down can happen practically overnight.

Housing costs are rising fast in our region as economic development attracts new residents and supply chain problems cause building delays. But a federal program that helps low-income renters is falling short.

“What we’re starting to see is that affordable housing can no longer be ignored,” says Megan Lawson of Headwaters Economics.

Population growth in the Mountain West has surged during the pandemic, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Real estate prices have reached new heights in many of our region's ski towns. In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, buyers spent a record $2 billion in the first nine months of 2021. Meanwhile, the number of homes on the market is at an all-time low. That's pricing out many long-time residents. The Mountain West News Bureau's Maggie Mullen reports.

Short-term rentals are great for tourists looking for alternative lodging options, but they're also contributing to housing shortages and sky-high real estate prices.