Vail’s International Student Workers Feel Left Out in the Cold Over High Housing Costs

Adrian Castro was excited to work his first ski season on Vail Mountain when he arrived in Colorado in early December 2022. He had traveled more than 3,200 miles from his hometown of San Ramón, Costa Rica, about an hour and a half outside of the country’s capital of San José. But that excitement quickly faded once he began looking for a place he could afford to rent in the Vail Valley.

Castro, 22, says that since he arrived in Colorado, he has lived in nine different homes, sometimes with up to fourteen roommates. Some of the places he’s lived in were on a week-to-week basis in towns like Edwards, which is about a forty-minute bus ride to the resort. At the same time, he says, private landlords on apps like Airbnb, Vacasa and Vrbo have charged him and his roommates as much as…