As tourism continues to boom, the lack of housing is leaving the community with fewer and fewer options.

Tiffany Hopkins is struggling to stay in the desert as short-term rentals swallow the housing market.

I've lived here for 33 years.

I work at a cafe in Joshua Tree called Crossroads.

My son's 13.

He's autistic.

He's semi-verbal, not non-verbal, but semi-verbal.

After his father passed, it got worse.

Trying to deal with it without his father around and trying to learn how to raise a teenage boy has been very challenging for me.

The overrun of the Airbnb's has just pushed people out, bought people out.

The cost of living is outrageous.

It's city prices in a very small town.

There are over a thousand Airbnb's.

That means over a thousand people don't have housing.

Tiff is a rock star, first and foremost.

She's a really tough, tenacious, practical person.

Survival is tricky for everybody, but she does it with such style and grace.

I know that she's had a tremendously difficult time maintaining a steady living situation out here.

She's had to move out of the basin at least twice that I know of because her house was sold to be an investor property as an Airbnb or a short-term vacation rental.

When I got kicked out, my landlord knew what was going to happen, and she had this property.

She was like, "Tiffany, it's going to be a lot more, but I have this property if you want it."

She knew about my son.

She was very sympathetic to my situation.

I was very lucky.

It was like that.

It was 30 days.

I had no money.

I had $600 in my bank account.

It's crossed my mind a lot that I might have to move out of here because if the landlord sells this property, there's no way I'm going to find another place that I can afford.

There's no way.

It's out of control.

People can't find housing, and I'm not going to be homeless with my child.

If I have to move, I will.

I don't want to because this is my home.

I talk about my community a lot with my customers because people ask me questions about, "What should I do this?

What do you guys do here?"

This and that, and whatever.

I talk about the community a lot.

I'm very boisterous about how the locals feel about what's happening within the Airbnb's and I don't hide it at all.

I also don't want to take it away from anybody.

I love that people come here to enjoy the beauty of the desert.

I really do because it is beautiful, but it's almost a pandemic in itself.

If there's no awareness, then there's no solution.