High cost of housing hard on everyone

We've heard a lot about how hard it is to recruit law enforcement officers in recent weeks.

Law enforcement isn't the only area of employment in Douglas County where people are having difficulty finding housing they can afford.

The fact is, many of the people who protect our homes from crime or fire, serve food, clean homes or even report on stories have had to look for homes outside of the county.

This is one of the reasons that Highway 395 heading south through the Valley is so congested weekday mornings.

It's not true to say few of the people we rely on every day live in the county, but consider the reduction in volunteers to serve on county fire departments.

Fifteen years ago, the East Fork Fire District had four paid employees and volunteers shouldered the burden of firefighting duties in the county.

Now, the numbers of volunteers have dwindled to the point where professionals are having to pick up the slack.

Those professionals will be more and more expensive to hire if we expect them to live here.

And if we don't expect them to live here, we must expect to have them on the roads commuting, which is also a cost to our quality of life.