Teton County's Housing Mitigation Requirement

A 1995 program that has only gotten more aggressive

Jackson and Teton County adopted inclusionary-zoning housing requirements in 1995, originally requiring that 15% of new residential development be set aside as affordable or workforce housing. That rate has since risen to 25%: current Jackson/Teton County Land Development Regulations (LDRs) require that 25% of all new residential units in qualifying developments be affordable or workforce-restricted, and that new employers house roughly 33% of their seasonal workforce. The requirement attaches to a Housing Mitigation Plan that must be submitted with essentially every development application under the LDRs -- it isn't a discretionary add-on the county sometimes asks for, it's a required part of the application itself.

The mitigation rates have been revised more than once since 1995 (notably in 2018, 2019, and 2020), and the county has continued adjusting exemption thresholds and calculation methods since then -- most recently in 2026. Treat any specific percentage or threshold, including the ones on this page, as accurate as of this writing and confirm the current figure with the Jackson/Teton County Housing Department before budgeting a project.

How the fee gets calculated: the Nexus Study and the Calculator

The dollar figure behind a given project's mitigation obligation isn't arbitrary -- it traces back to the county's Employee Generation by Land Use Study (a "nexus study," most recently updated in 2022 and again in August 2023), which models how many low- and moderate-income employees a given type and size of development is expected to generate, and what it would cost to house them. The study expresses this as full-time employees generated per 10,000 square feet by industry or use, and that per-square-foot employee-generation rate feeds directly into the county's Affordable Housing Mitigation Requirement Calculator -- a downloadable Excel workbook available on the county's Developer Resources page. Because the county updates the calculator periodically, download a fresh copy each time you use it rather than reusing an older version.

For projects that don't fit the standard model well, the LDRs also allow an Independent Calculation in place of the standard calculator -- some development types are required to use one, others may elect to. Either way, the Housing Department (307-732-0867, housing@tetoncountywy.gov) reviews and confirms the final mitigation figure before an application can move forward.

The single-family exemption: recently raised to 3,000 square feet

A single buyer building one home on an existing lot is the case least likely to trigger a meaningful mitigation obligation, because Teton County exempts smaller homes outright. As of June 2026, a home under 3,000 square feet of floor area does not owe a mitigation fee -- up from a 2,500-square-foot threshold that applied previously. Commissioners specifically chose 3,000 square feet to match the threshold used in Wyoming's own "Fast Track Permits Act," a state law meant to speed up home-building approvals, so the two thresholds now line up rather than requiring separate calculations.

This threshold is measured against a project's total floor area, and how existing structures on a lot factor into that calculation is exactly where the program's most public failure occurred -- see below. If a project is anywhere near the 3,000-square-foot line, get the county's own floor-area calculation in writing before assuming which side of the exemption a house falls on.

The Scharp case: a real $24,325 miscalculation, a lawsuit, and a policy response

In May 2025, Trey and Shelby Scharp sued Teton County after being charged a $24,325 affordable-housing mitigation fee to build a home on land they already owned. The county's own review later found the fee had been miscalculated: a credit for an existing historic structure on the site had been applied incorrectly, and once corrected, the project's floor area dropped below the exemption threshold, which meant no mitigation fee should have been owed at all. The county settled in March 2026, refunding the Scharps $29,909 (the original fee plus interest) and separately paying $25,000 toward their attorneys' fees at the Pacific Legal Foundation.

The case did two things worth knowing about if you're planning a project here. First, it's concrete proof that mitigation-fee calculations -- particularly credits for existing structures -- are not mechanical and can be gotten wrong even by the county itself; get any fee calculation reviewed and get it in writing rather than assuming a first estimate is final. Second, it triggered a broader commissioner debate: in the aftermath, some commissioners discussed exempting larger new homes from mitigation fees while simultaneously trying to cap how big a home can be built at all -- current LDRs allow homes up to 10,000 square feet in some rural zones, and at least one commissioner (Len Carlman) has proposed cutting that cap roughly in half. Neither the exemption expansion nor the size-cap proposal was finalized as of this writing; both are worth checking on directly if a project's size is anywhere near either threshold.

What this means before you buy or build

If your plan is a single home well under 3,000 square feet, the mitigation program is unlikely to cost you anything directly -- but confirm the floor-area calculation in writing if there's any existing structure on the parcel, since that's exactly where the Scharp miscalculation happened. If your plan involves platting a subdivision, adding multiple units, building anywhere near or above the exemption threshold, or operating a business that will add employees, budget real time and money for the Housing Mitigation Plan: pull a fresh copy of the Affordable Housing Mitigation Requirement Calculator (or confirm whether your project requires an Independent Calculation instead), and get the Housing Department to review your numbers before you finalize a project budget or purchase contingent on a specific build size. Given how recently the exemption threshold moved and how actively commissioners are still debating both fee exemptions and home-size caps, a phone call to the Housing Department is worth more than relying on any published summary, including this one.