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You're seeing negativity because it's getting harder and harder to deny that this "dream" involves the locals getting screwed when tech monopoly money turns the
by throwaway0a5e 6y ago
You're seeing negativity because it's getting harder and harder to deny that this "dream" involves the locals getting screwed when tech monopoly money turns their local economy upside down. Sure the guy who had the foresight to start a brewery wins but everyone else loses.
You know what the end game of this looks like? It looks like Vail CO, Cape Cod MA, coastal Long Island and CT, the Hamptons, wealthy retirement areas of FL, etc. What industry is there? What opportunity is there? Well unless you want to sell your soul to the tourism industry or run some business that entertains richer people in exchange for their money (best leave your moral compass at the door if you want to succeed in those endeavors) or work in the supporting industries thereof there is exactly squat. Everyone who doesn't stand to inherit a business either gets out or gets addicted to something.
It's not unreasonably negative to not want that for ones' community or want to inflict that on some other community.
- throwaway6734 6y agoLocals wouldn't get screwed if they advocated for better zoning policy and allowed more housing to be built. This doesn't happen because those same locals that are homeowners love the value of their house exploding upwards
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoIt has little to do with zoning and everything to do with economic incentives that drive out anyone high achieving or with a conscience and retain/reward swindlers and those who can't escape.
- Spooky23 6y agoHonestly, no. Just because you have a hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail. Complete zoning and policy failure is a uniquely California problem. Nobody has a structural, and likely unconstitutional inequity in taxation that California does. Some rando Bay Area suburb being more expensive than Manhattan is not the same problem.
- sjg007 6y agoThe issue is that red states don't tax enough.
- throwaway6734 6y agoZoning failures are widespread throughout the country. If more people want to live somewhere, those regions should make it as easy as possible to develop housing and incentivize it
- supernovae 6y agoAnd then what happens when the reason to live there is now gone? You seem to frame it as an exclusivity problem - they're trying to exclude people from affordable housing... while the people who live there look at it as preserving what makes it livable neither are right or wrong on their own, but surely build at all cost isn't a solution to mountain town charm
- throwaway6734 6y agoIt will reach an equilibrium >while the people who live there look at it as preserving what makes it livable And they're free to buy up all the land and choose what they want to do with it
- Spooky23 6y agoOr, as a democratic form of government allows, they petition for laws that protect their interests from their representatives.
- deepakhj 6y agoSingle family homes is exclusive. You’re choosing to build a mega mansion on a big plot of land vs letting 100 people enjoy that land. The latter will be more affordable.
- nitrogen 6y ago
- vailprogrammer 6y agoI agree with this sentiment in cities, however, I believe that this approach in the mountains would result in skyscrapers being built in areas of natural beauty, and be harmful to all of the wildlife that live there. The Eagle (Vail) Valley is relatively small to begin with.
- throwaway6734 6y agoBased.
- vailprogrammer 6y agoNot sure what you mean.
- throwaway6734 6y agoSkyscrapers in the mountains are fantastic. Density is beautiful
- davidw 6y agoNo, it might look something like Innsbruck, Austria, which is a beautiful city. It may come as a shock to Americans raised in suburbia, but there are housing types between single family units and skyscrapers that are very human-scale and attractive. Look at pretty much any mountain town in Europe.
- vailprogrammer 6y agoAs an American with an EU passport, thanks for the idea. I had been leaning towards moving/retiring to Grenoble, France for the engineering university nestled in the Alps, but I will look further afield.
- davidw 6y agoTrento and Bolzano in Italy are nice too. Probably depends on what languages you speak and what mix of amenities you care most about.
- adamcstephens 6y agoIt only takes a handful of non locals to move in and start showing up at council meetings. Don’t of this blame solely on locals.
- throwaway6734 6y agoThat's a fair point
- volkl48 6y agoThis is a more complex problem than it is in many other regions of the country. For the most obvious - Once you're off a municipal water supply (which of course, has to have an adequate source of water in the region), available water resources/aquifers are often very limited and minimum lot sizes have to be large because the land can't support higher density housing. -------- If you build anything even approaching "normal" suburban SFH housing, you're just going to have all the wells you'll have to sink run dry in a few months and the properties will be uninhabitable. Seeing a 2 acre minimum lot size isn't necessarily a "keep the poor people out" thing. To be clear, I am mostly not referring to the cities mentioned in this article, but housing development in smaller mountain towns and the rural/semi-rural areas up in the mountains.
- throwaway6734 6y agoThis is a great point.
- DavidAdams 6y agoThis kind of thing is solvable. When I built my house in Park City, Utah, I discovered that the growth in the area is projected to overwhelm the municipal sewer system in the coming decade. So I had to pay an impact fee of $3,000 per bathroom in order to get my building permit. I happily paid $15K, knowing that the money will go to the budget of a new treatment plant. There are very few places where there's actually no water. It's mostly a question of the infrastructure being available (enough storage, for example).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 6y agoThe Western US population / urban centre geographical distribution far more resembles an archipeligo than a continental population distribution. Part of this is due to transportation and historical settlement and development. Much though is due to water, or its lack. This becomes especially clear when you realise that Los Angeles's watershed extends 1,500 miles eastward (about 2,400 km), to the Colorado River and the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains. Los Angeles has (under western-US water law) senior rights to water, over those of users far upstream of it. Water supplies, and the rights to them, are based in large part on the economic (and hence legal and legislative/political power) of metropolitan areas. Since a large city with large rights effectively sucks dry land from 100s or 1,000s of miles away, population concentrates into a few centres, rather than being distributed across the land. This contrast shows up most especially in the "Earthlights" images of the US mainland at night, where east of the Mississippi river settlements are dotted evenly through the landscape, but thin rapidly as one heads further west, dissolving into a few mega-concentrations: the Colorado front, Salt Lake - Provo, Albequerque, Phoenix, Las Vegas, LA-San Dieto, the Bay Area, Portland, Seattle. A few more-populated regions exist (the Sacramento-San Joaquine valley, the Willammette valley), but these are sparse compared with the Eastern US. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Earthlights_dmsp_US.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Earthlights_d...
- poilcn 6y agoOr because they don't want to live in a giant anthill? They are not obliged give any piece of their land to the people who want to live there. It's in their interest to fight to preserve local communities and local businesses, putting obstacles to the "nomads" and corporations.
- throwaway6734 6y agoI agree if they own the land. Telling other people they can't build duplexes/apartments on their own land is illiberal and authoritarian
- supernovae 6y agoSo the answer to beautiful mountain towns, is to destroy the beauty so we can build on it and remove the reason people come to visit/escape? mmmkay
- seattle_spring 6y agoThis argument has always bothered me too. I'd rather a place be relatively inaccessible but great, rather than accessible but shitty.
- supernovae 6y agoafter i wrote it, it occurred to me that the problem is we should build more cities/towns that allow people to live HAPPY lives - so that traveling isn't an escape from reality - but a recognition of the charm/character as something to experience for what it is. I hope we don't lose those mountain town charms to sky scrapers and apartment complexes... I think if we can address what makes cities livable for EVERYONE who lives in them, then travel is for experiencing foreign ideas, concepts and cultures and not "escaping the reality of cities and using my wealth to get what i want" kinda thing
- throwaway6734 6y agoHow do you decide who gets to live in the great places?
- seattle_spring 6y agoUnfortunately I don't have a good answer, but no matter the answer I believe strongly that if it's good for some but not for others, it's still better than "bad for all." This extends beyond housing.
- dahfizz 6y agoI think the whole point is that the locals don't want their town to turn into another urban hellhole.
- nitrogen 6y agoMost people who are trying to live somewhere don't want their house price exploding, because then they get forced out by rising taxes and insurance.
- ghaff 6y agoThe opinions here are probably influenced by Prop 13 in California and by the fact that many younger people in the tech field capable of buying property probably assume that they'll be selling and moving somewhere else sooner rather than later. But, as you say, someone who plans to remain in their house indefinitely would probably just as soon not have their property taxes double (and may not even be able to afford them in they're retired on a fixed income).
- throwaway6734 6y agoThis is absurd. You could just as easily refinance or take out a heloc to take advantage of the rise in price that would greatly offset the rise in tax/insurance
- nitrogen 6y agoIf your income hasn't increased, that HELOC is just another mechanism that will force you out of your property if you spend it and can't repay it.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoBut what good does it do a local if the price of their house explodes? Less than none (less because their property tax goes up), until they sell. But once they sell, if they keep the gains, then they can't buy another house locally. So the only way the increase in price helps locals is when they quit being a local. If this is happening to your town, the town has a choice: The newcomers are coming. Are they going to live alongside the long term locals, or are they going to replace them? Are the locals going to get rich and leave, or are they going to remain poor and stay? "Get rich and stay" is not an option.
- yifanl 6y agoI guess the question is, is quality of life zero-sum? I want to say no because I feel like I can improve my QoL in ways that don't harm others, but all these examples are telling me that its really that I don't (or maybe even choose not to) see the negative consequences until its compounded by a large enough group and it ends up being another one of your examples.
- antisthenes 6y agoThe quality of life is not zero-sum, bot on a local level and a short timeframe, many things are indeed zero sum. The best example is land & desirable real estate. It only takes a few people with "outside" money to drive up prices in the market or to purchase land and sit on it in perpetuity, driving up prices by taking it out of the local supply.
- bobthechef 6y agoFrom [0]: "Aquinas believed that it was specifically immoral to raise prices because a particular buyer had an urgent need for what was being sold [...] Aquinas would therefore condemn practices such as raising the price of building supplies in the wake of a natural disaster. Increased demand caused by the destruction of existing buildings does not add to a seller's costs, so to take advantage of buyers' increased willingness to pay constituted a species of fraud in Aquinas's view." "Aquinas believed all gains made in trade must relate to the labour exerted by the merchant, not to the need of the buyer. Hence, he condoned moderate gain as payment even for unnecessary trade, provided the price were regulated and kept within certain bounds" So if this is true (and I'm sure certain tacit assumptions are not mentioned in this Wiki page), then it seems that crazy market price fluctuations have to do with the divorce of market value from labor which was "replaced by the microeconomic concept of supply and demand from Locke, Steuart, Ricardo, Ibn Taymiyyah, and especially Adam Smith". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_price
- lotsofpulp 6y agoThe purpose of increased prices is to incentivize more supply to come into the market. If prices do not rise with demand (and static supply), then you’re left with a market where certain buyers are lucky (or connected) and some don’t get anything.
- sobellian 6y agoHave you lived in any of these places? I grew up in Fairfield County and you seem to greatly exaggerate its dystopian qualities. What's more, industry's flight from the area has nothing to do with folks coming from NYC.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoI grew up in one of those places. How else would I have developed such disdain for that economic model? Replacement of whatever (necessarily small, otherwise the big city money wouldn't be a problem) industry there is/was with entertainment and tourism isn't the issue. The reality of an economy that is dependent on a specific image or perception (many would say facade) of quaintness is the problem. You get all sorts of terrible "crab-bucket-esque" feedback loops that quash people's desire to do anything different, innovative or ambitious for fear of harming the golden goose. A large fraction of the people who actually want to do things (boring old normal business endavours that underpin a sustainable economy) leave because whatever their trade is doing it elsewhere and not putting up with all the extra overhead crap of doing it in a tourism/entertainment economy. The fact that a much larg(er than in a "normal economy) portion of the customers any given business sees will only ever transact with them ones creates a bunch of perverse incentives to do dishonest business. It's like everything that's wrong with a college town combined with everything that's wrong with a wealthy retirement community. Edit: strike CT from that list of examples, I was going for a "Cape cod but in the NYC economic region" and that part of CT is more like NYC's wealthy NJ suburbs.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sobellian 6y agoNaturally Vail, Cape Cod, or whathaveyou may be a different story, but Fairfield County really isn't driven by tourism or entertainment. Finance, real estate, and industry each generate more value per year. I'm not fixated on defending the place's honor so much as providing a counterexample of how dealing with other regions is not necessarily negative.
- 6y ago
- drdeadringer 6y ago> Cape Cod MA I used to vacation there. As one of those clueless people who can't buy marijuana in a legal state, I am equally clueless on the signs of terrible addiction if I drove through Cape Cod, MA today. I'm not sure what makes me more sad -- the existence, or my incapability to notice the existence.
- airhead969 6y agoMy late paternal grandmother (1 of 9 from a rare single mother) was from there. Cranberry bogs. You can increase your "street-smarts" by getting out of your comfort zone, by choice or circumstances, and with life experiences. I locale and talk to the saner homeless people, especially the older who are just there by personal circumstances: I met a former teacher and elevator repairman who makes money today as a tutor; a former hippie, Navy radar and aircraft electronics technician, and Apple II rework technician; and a law school dropout, former hippie, merchant marine, and writer for the Village Voice and the NY Daily News.
- jtlisi 6y agoCheck out this excellent HBO documentary on the topic. https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/heroin-cape-cod-usa https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/heroin-cape-cod-usa
- mistrial9 6y agocant upvote this true and tragic comment due to sadness
- bedhead 6y agoLast year I moved from a top 3 city to a small mountain town in Colorado. In my experience, your hostility is extremely common in small towns that have big seasonal influxes. I continue to be amazed by the overt disdain long-time locals have for second home owners and relatively newer full-time residents. The one constant is: "Everything was great until shortly after I relocated here and you people moved in." A week doesn't go by here where a long-time resident doesn't write an op-ed for our tiny newspaper with this exact message, and delusional descriptions of how their once-great town is now a hellscape.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- foobiter 6y agoit’s not that weird to be upset about part time residents that drive up property values and taxes and contribute nothing else to a community
- consensusform 6y agoThat sentiment isn't unique to small towns either. Residents of Austin, TX have been complaining that the city changed or got too crowded shortly after they moved in, whether that was a year ago or decades ago. People who moved to SF in 2010 complained about the people moving there in 2015. Same thing happens at a neighborhood or district level too. Everybody feels like they were the last person to move in while it was still good and everything after them is unwelcome.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- LordFast 6y ago"Everyone who came before me is a sucker; everyone who came after me is a cheat."
- technofiend 6y ago>Residents of Austin, TX have been complaining that the city changed or got too crowded shortly after they moved in I've been told Austin's city council mulishly refused to see the growth trend and didn't annex the hills around the city when they had the chance. Austin waterways like Bull Creek went from summertime swimming holes to unsafe to enter due to septic tank runoff and high levels of coliform bacteria because city services - sewerage in particular - weren't extended to those areas. People who lived there really hoped the usual waxing and waning of population in cadence with student university attendance would go on forever. But according to an aunt who lived there from the 1960s until property taxes priced her out a few years ago, too many people loved it and moved back after school or just never left and it sort of snowballed from there. Her anecdotal evidence was the cashiers at her Half Price Books stores she managed often had Masters degrees but chose to work there rather than move and find a better job elsewhere. These days people running a cash register while holding an advanced degree is more of a cliche than remarkable evidence that some place is so special you'd rather be underpaid there than be paid better somewhere else. But yeah to hear her tell it, in her forty years there every decade that passed brought some unwelcome change to Austin.
- dogman144 6y agoI guess the counterpoint is what does someone, who is uncomfortable about this, think the urban centers they lived in prior to the moves used to be like? Urban poor or rural poor, techies/finance/etc displace them all the same. The missing link here is, IMO, community involvement. Don’t become a ghost resident jacking up rents. Do join a community board, PTA, etc. Become an active stakeholder and learn about and contribute to wherever you live. Locals, urban or rural, aren’t pissed only about rising rents or home prices, but also millennial wealth moving in and not giving a f about what’s already there. Empathy and demonstrating community interest towards the locals goes so far but that seems so low on the problem population’s radar as an easy solution.
- mring33621 6y agoThere is no such thing as "locals getting screwed" in this scenario. We live in a free country, where people sometimes choose to move. In fact, when the demand for housing in an area goes up, often locals profit handsomely. Unfortunately, "I was here first" sounds a lot like "fuck you, I got mine". And it's not gonna fly.
- RC_ITR 6y agoListen, nearly everyone largely agrees that wealth inequality at the current US level is bad. Wealthy people moving to low-cost areas (and thus raising cost of living) accelerates inequality for a few reasons. 1) Unlike you scenario, many working-class people in places like Sedona can only afford to rent their homes (25% of total, give or take in Sedona). These people incur huge monetary costs in being forced to move / switch jobs / etc. 2) Moving causes people to lose social capital. Laugh all you want, but going from a tight-knit neighborhood of peers to a new town of strangers creates costs, at least in the short term. No one to watch your kids, no one to give you a ride if your car breaks down, etc. 3) Even for those who stay, they lose power, since their new wealthy residents likely have better lobbying sway (e.g., the new bus to the airport causes service to decrease to job centers, etc.) I don't disagree that certain locals benefit from gentrification (parent comment made the same point), but your capitalism-enabled lack of empathy for those who don't benefit is why people are warming to the ideas of socialism. So if you don't want that, I'd tread carefully & try to be a bit more empathetic.
- dcow 6y agoSo if simply moving creates inequality, then what do people do? Stay in their hometown their entire life? Sounds like you need to revise the game, not hate the player.
- bumby 6y ago“Revising the game” is exactly what the GP commentator was warning about. Push the inequality far enough and the social contract will likely get changed. So you asked what can you do? I’m not saying don’t move to the area you want, but make conscious choices that help reduce the inequalities that may drive those inequalities. Maybe don’t be riled up about high density housing bringing down your property values. Maybe support local businesses even though it costs more. Maybe vote for higher taxes that provide better schools even if you don’t have kids. Love how much father your income goes in that new town? Maybe donate just a portion of it to help provide a safety net for “locals” who may otherwise be negatively impacted by the “out-of-towners”. And maybe you do all those types of things already. But the tone of your comment comes across as, “Welp, what choice do I have but to myopically try to get the most out of this hustle??”
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kingsuper20 6y agoTo be fair, it's not just the monopoly money that changes things but also long term changes in economics. I'm old enough that I remember my home town (which has been inundated by California retirees) as having 100% family-owned grocery stores, drug/general/hardware stores, distributorships, all of which started shifting heavily to chain and corporate dominance by sometime in the late 1970's. Since the modern concept of retiree and tourism based economies hadn't taken hold, towns of that type had to be mostly independent in terms of income for money inflow....small factories, mining, farming and ranching, etc. I'd say that this movement of people who can afford it just another side effect of something bigger. The irony that a lifestyle of living in a nicer small town with a Powerwall and a Model 3 is both less sustainable and less diverse is not lost on me.
- vailprogrammer 6y ago> towns of that type had to be mostly independent in terms of income for money inflow....small factories, mining, farming and ranching, etc. > I'd say that this movement of people who can afford it just another side effect of something bigger. It sort of sounds like you answer your own question (/hypothesis): consolidation of industry. Which also seems to be a pretty big driver in wealth inequality. I've no idea what the correct response is here -- greater regulation to increase competition, so that there are more smaller players across any given industry? Who knows.
- kingsuper20 6y agoIt was definitely more hypothesis than question. There's always the chance that the past is viewed with the optimism of youth of course. There's certainly a difference in social glue in a world where everyone is either self-employed or has a single layer of management above them. Plus, truly local companies are better local citizens (sports teams sponsors, money for charities, build decent and long-lasting buildings). Dunno what the answer is besides accumulate a financial warchest, live where you like, watch the battle at a distance.
- pettusftw 6y agoDo you believe the alternative is the town dying? I come from a place that is the furthest from a tourist destination you can imagine, and it was booming with local businesses in the 70's and 80's and they died all the same, they just weren't replaced by anything.
- scythe 6y agoDoes your intervention have a control group? Did the residents of Vail, CO circa 1950 wish they could trade their fate for that of nearby Minturn, with similar geography and no ski resort? Regardless, the geographical narrative is not quite the same. Silver City or Prescott Valley aren't going to run out of space like an alpine creek junction or barrier island/moraine. Water is a different story. The question is ultimately whether newcomers will participate in the town's development or in its decline, via interactions with the local community, politics, schools et cetera. Just because we built segregated communities over the last century doesn't mean we have to do it for the next one.
- 1123581321 6y agoYou're not accounting for the benefit (from your view) due to the reduction in real estate prices in the cities losing population.
- prostoalex 6y agoAny small town has two problems: * influx of tourism and remote owners -> rising prices * lack of tourism or property interest -> slow death I am not sure what would be the right public policy to balance the two extremes. Maybe Hawaii has the right idea with tiered property taxation - the longer you reside there, the lower your property tax becomes?
- asdff 6y agoPrices shouldn't rise if you are allowed to build enough supply to meet demand. A lack of property interest isn't necessarily a bad thing for a place. Land isn't for speculation, it's for use.
- diveandfight 6y agoTiered property taxation hasn't solved the the problems OP has described for Oahu; or Hawaii as a whole for that matter. For example, Local NIMBYist restrictions, mostly those individuals that have resided there for a long time (and have the lower property tax rate you describe), have resulted in areas immediately adjacent to 40-story downtown developments being zoned exclusively for single-family homes; see Kaimuki, Upper Tantalus, Manoa, Punchbowl (to an extent), etc. Consequently, even homes built over 80 yrs ago with only ~1,300 sqft sell for about $1.1 million; https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1001-Belser-St-Honolulu-HI-96816/601638_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1001-Belser-St-Honolulu-H.... The majority of people employed in hospitality and trades that support the local tourist economy (electricians, masons, carpenters, etc.) are increasingly driven to the west side; where commutes to the city can easily be 1-2 hours normally (pre-COVID). This eventually becomes such a stressor that many of the people working these skilled trades leave for the mainland.
- qshaman 6y agoLived in South Florida for a while, this is exactly how it is. Also those "small mountain towns" are deeply conservative and intolerant, if you are white you are in luck, but I don't think they are thrilled to see an influx of non-white folks coming to their town, same with LGBTQ+ people. Those places fit a certain type of people but definitely not everybody that have the money to move there.
- lizknope 6y agoI couldn't agree more. I was born in the US to Asian Indian parents. We lived in a small town in the southern US and dealt with a lot of racist crap. I went to college in a big city and while racism still exists the majority do not have racist views and are more accepting of people that do not look like them. I've travelled to 47 states and I am most scared when I am in a small town in the mountain west. Burns, Oregon. Moscow, Idaho. Everyone was staring at me in the grocery store. I got some intimidating comments like "Are you new in town?" "No, just passing through." "Good." Not welcoming in the slightest.
- seattle_spring 6y agoI live in a pretty backwoods part of Washington and even as a white but liberal looking person I get that to a much lesser extent. I can't imagine what you've had to deal with.
- lizknope 6y agoAfter my trip through Burns, Oregon where I got some of those comments at the grocery store I went to John Day, Oregon. I mainly went to see the fossil beds national monument but I also stopped at this small museum which was a Chinese run store and apothecary in the late 1800's and early 1900's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kam_Wah_Chung_%26_Co._Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kam_Wah_Chung_%26_Co._Museum The tour guide mentioned how welcoming the people were to their Chinese immigrants. She went on to say that when the Aryan Nation tried to set up their headquarters there the people organized to tell them to go away. Unfortunately they keep trying to come back. This story is from last year. It's great that the people of John Day are fighting against racism but I got the feeling on my trip that the Aryan Nation would be welcome an hour south in Burns. https://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/john-day-to-aryans-we-just-want-you-out-of/article_834b21d9-684a-5ad8-837c-5cb2ebc6d895.html https://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/john-day-to-aryans-w...
- bsanr2 6y agoAdd "gentrification" to the list of things that are visiting the American mainstream after decades incubating in America's marginalized communities, alongside things like addiction and broken social service processes (hello, unemployment and insurance exchange websites). If we'd been better about crack/cocaine, opioids wouldn't have hit so hard. If UI benefits weren't designed to be difficult to acquire, the ongoing problems states are having distributing them in this crisis wouldn't have happened. Right now, people living in small towns that are being effected by an influx of monied transplants have a roadmap of how this process works. If they so wish, they can disrupt it, and insist that, as new wealth pours into their area, a substantial portion of it is put towards improving the area for current residents, and towards securing their socioeconomic right to remain there. Sometimes that means telling rich people no and foregoing a short-term pretty penny, and being ready when they come after you for denying them. But that's much easier than watching your community disperse to parts unknown while yuppies live it up in your childhood home-cum-gutted minimalist smart bohemabode. Will they heed the warning?
- thorwasdfasdf 6y agoso, why can't they simply build more housing in those areas? And the locals who already bought houses/land aren't getting screwed. they're beneficiaries of all that appreciation. just think of the couple who bought a house for 150K in boise, ID and it's now worth 500k+.
- randcraw 6y agoIt's understandable that locals see no upside to this trend. These remote-work or second-home urban expats don't add new jobs locally except perhaps wait staff at restaurants or boutique shops. Real estate costs rise. Rents go up. Property taxes climb as do the costs of basic services. People like them exit (as do the budget-based businesses that served them) as the cost of living rises. For locals who aren't well-heeled, gentrification of this kind is strictly a lose-lose deal.
- 908B64B197 6y ago> Sure the guy who had the foresight to start a brewery wins but everyone else loses. This is HN, the owner of the brewery probably cashed his stocks a few years earlier and saw the opportunity. A lot of folks on this website are entrepreneurs and are completely detached from the folks that don't want an influx of money in their town.