Kathy Turner throws a ball to her dog Stella in a room at the Motel 6 in Elko. Turner has lived at the motel for weeks because the influx of miners to the area overwhelmed the local housing market. During her stay, she slipped in the icy parking lot and broke her leg. Photo by John Locher.

ELKO

Kathy Turner doesn't work at a mine, but she knows all about the impact they have had on the local housing market.

For more than a month, Turner has lived in Room 102 of a Motel 6 just off Interstate 80 while she searches in vain for a house or decent rental property.

She shares the tiny room with Stella and Tuff, two Jack Russell terriers who chase tennis balls and each other amid stacks of boxes.

"Can you imagine five weeks of this?" Turner says as she shows off her cramped quarters. "They're used to an acre and a quarter with a doggy door."

Turner, 49, is a heavy equipment instructor and accident investigator for the Nevada Department of Transportation. After more than five years of commuting to work in Las Vegas from her home in Pahrump, she requested a transfer to Elko in search of a more relaxed lifestyle.

What she found instead was a community overwhelmed by its own prosperity.

As little as two years ago, affordable homes and rental units were plentiful in Elko. Now the waiting lists grow as the prices soar.

Turner says she spent four months searching real estate listings online before she made the move from Pahrump in early December. "The ones I liked sold before I got the job," she says, standing beneath a makeshift clothesline crowded with day-glow orange NDOT shirts.

Once she got to Elko, she hired a real estate agent and resumed her search in person. When that didn't work, she began pestering her co-workers, but they couldn't help her either.

With no other options, Turner is stuck paying $1,024 a month for her motel room, which comes with weekly maid service and plenty of minor frustrations.

"When you go to find stuff, you don't know what box it's in," she says. "I've got two storage units with all my stuff in them."

She rarely gets a good night's sleep because her room is right next to where people park to check in.

If she goes out for any length of time, she has to strap her mini-fridge closed with duct tape to keep the dogs out of it, a lesson she learned after the messy abduction of a steak sandwich she had been saving for dinner.

And just when it seemed like things couldn't get any worse, Turner slipped on the ice and broke her right leg while walking her dogs in the motel parking lot.

Her injury keeps her from working, and her cast keeps her from using the shower in her room, so the motel manager gave her the key to a room with a handicapped accessible bathroom a few doors down.

Turner is trying to take it all in stride. "What are you going to do? I've been through worse," she says.

The only time she really broke down and cried over her situation was a few days ago, when her crutches slipped out from under her and she fell on the ice again.

Since then, the fear of another fall keeps her from going out in the snow unless she absolutely has to.

Stella and Tuff are not amused. "I was taking them to park three times a day," Turner says. "They've about had it. So have I."