
St. John's Health owns the Hitching Post property and will utilize the 1.65 acres to meet the health, safety, and welfare needs of the community by building workforce rental units for employees, staff on-call rooms, and short-term lodging for out-of-town patients and families.
The Hitching Post Workforce Housing Redevelopment Project directly supports the health and safety needs of Teton County. It ensures the hospital can continue to respond 24/7/365 to the community's medical emergencies and other health needs. The project will increase up to five-fold the number of essential workforce we can house at the Hitching Post, property adjacent to St. John’s that has been owned and used by SJH for housing for many years. The redevelopment will also expand the number of overnight on-call rooms while continuing to provide short-term lodging for out-of-area patients and families. SJH has more than 20 years of experience managing SPET construction projects and has brought in all our projects on-time and on-budget. In addition, we have been running our own Lodging Department since 2001 and will soon be launching an innovative new income-based employee rental program. This will help ensure our housing is affordable to employees across the entire organization.
56% of our staff lives in the Jackson area. This has declined by 6 percentage points in the past year alone as staff leave for more affordable options. This has contributed to a nearly 10% job vacancy rate among all jobs at St. John's. Read more facts about housing at St. John's.
St. John’s will bring significant resources to the project. The project is a 3-way partnership between the community, through SPET, and St. John’s Health and the St. John’s Health Foundation. With the Foundation, St. John’s will fund a minimum of 2/3 of the project cost. Ongoing maintenance and operations costs, as well as any construction overages, will be the financial responsibility of St. John’s, not the Town of Jackson or Teton County. Learn more from our Housing Project FAQ.
SPET Ballot Initiative #6 was passed by Teton County voters in the November 2022 election.