A&E

Can Las Vegas’ apartment boom keep up with its population growth—and stay affordable?

Image
Green Leaf Lotus luxury apartments on Spring Mountain
Photo: Christopher DeVargas

You have to look at the amenities. All of these properties have pools and fitness centers, but that’s standard stuff. Some boast quartz countertops and stainless steel appliances. Others offer remote coworking spaces and built-in smart home compatibility. Nearly all are within walking distance of popular restaurants and nightlife spots. These aren’t luxury condos; they’re luxury apartments. They’re beginning to pop up in places where you wouldn’t have previously expected to see luxury digs: in Chinatown (Green Leaf Lotus), at Sands Avenue and Paradise Road (Elysian at Hughes Center), even behind the Rio (Jade). And these aren’t the low-rise, sprawling, gated apartment complexes that have been built in Vegas up to now, but midrise apartment blocks, five stories tall on average, containing hundreds of units. And if you’ve spotted one, you’ve probably asked yourself: How did that end up here?

A living room inside a two-bedroom model at Showboat Park Apartments

“You are noticing a lot more infill than you have in the past, because land is at a premium,” says Susy Vasquez, executive director of the Nevada State Apartment Association. “We’re looking at parcels that we may not have looked at in the past.”

Developers are motivated to look for those plots because they have to. Approximately 2.5 million people now live in the Las Vegas Valley, and more are coming daily. Our supply of preowned single-family residences is very low—about one month’s worth, far away from the preferred six. And aside from some areas in the southwest and in North Las Vegas, there’s relatively little open land left in the Valley. All those people have got to live somewhere, and since we can’t spread out as easily as we’d like, apartments are trending upward, both physically and market-wise.

According to Vasquez, the tenants seeking out these apartments include frequent international visitors (“They’re cheaper than the Strip mega-suite where they typically stay”); retirees who don’t want to keep up a home anymore, but still want amenities like a pool and gym for their visiting kids and grandkids (“They like not having to entertain as much when they come over”); and new residents dropping into Vegas from other metros where they’re accustomed to multistory living. “That’s what they’ve lived in their whole life, so they don’t really understand how people can live in a two-story apartment complex,” Vasquez says.

There are a number of those two-story apartment complexes lining E. Twain Avenue, between Paradise and Maryland Parkway. Many of those apartments aren’t in the best shape— “weathered” is the kindest way to put it—but lots of low-income folks live in them, and the arrival of luxury apartments practically at their doorstep raises concerns over what could happen when the owners of those depressed properties begin to entertain the idea of selling.

Quentin Savwoir, deputy director of Make It Work Nevada—an organization dedicated to taking on the racial, economic and reproductive challenges faced by Black women and women of color—has a “consistent concern” over the possible ripple effects from this midrise boom, one that’s only exacerbated by what’s happening along that Twain corridor.

“In that part of town, we’re too far from the airport for me to see tourists lugging baggage down [the street], so that lets me know that this is what folks have,” Savwoir says. “These are their belongings—in suitcases, in crates, in shopping carts.”

Savwoir recognizes trends forming here that he’s seen before. “What’s happening in Vegas feels like what’s happened in Atlanta,” he says. “My brother lived in Atlanta in the 1990s, as it was booming, and was priced out. In 10 years. I don’t doubt that a chunk of the population will have to live in Pahrump, in Mesquite or in Ely and then commute into Las Vegas to go to work, because no one’s putting any cap on rent. … We have very lopsided power dynamics between tenants and landlords in Nevada, and we’re not doing enough to make sure there’s more parity there.”

Affordable housing is vital to the Valley’s economic growth, and it’s much harder to come by than luxury flats. There are recent exceptions—the newly-opened Showboat Park Apartments on Boulder Highway and the planned Cine Apartments in North Las Vegas, both of which intend to maintain rents below current market value, deserve recognition—but as for blocks of affordable midrise flats in the center of the city, where most of us work, Vegas is still lacking.

And creating those affordable blocks in dense areas will not be easy. “The main problem is land,” Vasquez says. “It’s not that we don’t want to [build affordable blocks]; it’s because the land is limited, and you have to already have the land in order to apply for the tax credit. … There are a lot of long-standing parcel owners that are just not letting go of their land because they think it’s going to continue to go up in price, and they’re not wrong. But what’s your magic number?”

Still, she’s hopeful that Las Vegas will eventually find the land we need, both for upscale and affordable apartments.

“There’s still plenty of room left on the runway for development here in Clark County,” Vasquez says. “I think that you’ll see some more parts of town transform into denser communities.”

As the Las Vegas Valley continues its transition from a small collection of desert towns to a contiguous, sprawling metropolis, that’s only one of the questions we’ll need to answer. The arrival of midrise apartments near the Strip and in the heart of already-bustling neighborhoods like Downtown, the UNLV District and Chinatown feels like an inflection point, and rightfully so; it’s exciting that people can now live practically atop the places where they dine and shop. But unless Vegas balances its luxe apartment rush with blocks of apartments where the people who actually work in those shops and restaurants can afford to live and thrive, it might be headed in the same direction as Atlanta, LA, Seattle and other metros that are pricing their workforce out of town.

“Families deserve to be in a home. Kids deserve to be in a home, not unhoused or priced out,” Savwoir says. “Housing is not a commodity.”

Click HERE to subscribe for free to the Weekly Fix, the digital edition of Las Vegas Weekly! Stay up to date with the latest on Las Vegas concerts, shows, restaurants, bars and more, sent directly to your inbox!

Tags: News
Share
Photo of Amber Sampson

Amber Sampson

Amber Sampson is a Staff Writer for Las Vegas Weekly. She got her start in journalism as an intern at ...

Get more Amber Sampson
Top of Story