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Last 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 seas

Last 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 5y ago
[deleted]
foobiter 5y ago
it’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 5y ago
That 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 5y ago
  [deleted]
- LordFast 5y ago
  "Everyone who came before me is a sucker; everyone who came after me is a cheat."
- technofiend 5y 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.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  It’s almost like it’s progressively getting worse as more people crowd in.
  - ihyfhgyfhth 5y ago
    This is the correct identification of cause that people don't want to accept.
  - ksdale 5y ago
    The very, very easy way to fix that is to build enough housing. Places don't suck because a lot of people live there, they suck for lots of reasons that are orthogonal to the population.
    - throwaway316943 5y ago
      That’s very subjective, my definition of suckiness definitely factors in population density.
      - ksdale 5y ago
        I don't think it's subjective at all. There are cities that are clean and safe and well run, and you might not want to live there because they have a lot of people, but that doesn't make the city bad. I think your preference to live away from people is subjective, and that's fine, but the rule can't be that you get to live right where you want and no one else can move. Either people can move or they can't. I presume you don't live in the neighborhood you grew up in?
        throwaway316943 5y ago
        I’m not saying the solution is for people to not move, I’m in favour of people living where they want. I don’t have the solution to the problems caused by rapid growth, it’s probably some combination of allowing mixed zoning so that there is enough housing and supporting businesses for the new residents along with better planning of or restrictions on municipal expansion to avoid sprawl and encourage better use of the land within the existing municipality. There’s probably a bunch of other reforms necessary to prevent the bad parts of gentrification and provide more of a safety net for people who get displaced. It’sa big hairy problem for sure.
- shoemakersteve 5y ago
  There's this song I like called "Austin, TX Blues" by Netherfriends and judging by the lyrics I'm guessing this is a common sentiment. I mean is anybody from here? Have you ever met anybody from here? Have you ever seen so many condos in your whole damn life That were built here in one year? Everyone I know that was born here is dope as fuck And everybody else sucks I'm pretty sure the song is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but still.
- vram22 5y ago
  "Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded." - Yogi Berra https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra
- kpierce 5y ago
  Reminds me of the George Carlin joke. "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"
labcomputer 5y ago
> 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. Twist of twists: Isn't this almost exactly what people have been saying about the Bay Area?
grecy 5y ago
> I continue to be amazed by the overt disdain long-time locals have for second home owners Housing can not be both affordable and a good investment. Given second homes are an investment, by definition having one means you're helping make homes unaffordable.
- xpe 5y ago
  Yes, 'on the margin' (in economic terms). This is a collective action problem. If one person decides to not move to Undiscovered Gem, Wild West then there is a large number of others that will.
- thomaslangston 5y ago
  I always saw second homes as a recreational expense first. Your first rental property would be an investment.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  A second home isn't necessarily an investment, especially if it's a vacation home. It can be just a place you go on vacation.
  - twiddling 5y ago
    Yeah, the common old "cottage" Up North is yielding to 2nd luxury homes which than have to be VRBOed in order to cover the mortgage. Happened to my in-laws lake. Simple cabins displaced and the crowd being far more transient. Of course they pocketed a seven figure profit, because of the lakefront property, and the 100 year old wood cabin was bulldozed.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      >Simple cabins displaced and the crowd being far more transient. And then the transient occupants party their asses off. And then the Karens pass local ordinances. And then nobody can have any fun.
  - grecy 5y ago
cafard 5y ago
Hah. About forty-five years ago in Denver, I listened to a conversation between two women, natives of Colorado. One thought that all non-natives should be given short notice to vacate or else, the other thought that was impractical. (Hey, she'd lived in Virginia for a while.)
throwaway316943 5y ago
I’ve lived in a small city for the past 20 years that went from being a very sleepy, homogenous, and cheap to crowded, busy, and expensive. Both conditions have their pros and cons. Restaurants and night life used to be dull and limited, office jobs were fairly scarce and there was a culture of aggressive ignorance. Those things have improved but now lower income people can’t afford to live in an apartment without sharing with multiple roommates, crime, drug abuse and homelessness are exploding where they were at practically 0 before, home ownership is out of reach for a lot of people and many of the unique local businesses and institutions have collapsed due to rent increases. As far as I can tell, most people are on average worse off than they were before, there’s less of a sense of community, people are more rushed and have less time to relax and socialize, there isn’t the same level of trust between strangers and a hundred other little things. Maybe people were a bit poorer and more intolerant of outsiders before but a lot has been lost for only a little improvement.
nitrogen 5y ago
It's a recurring theme. People spend decades taming and beautifying a place. Then people with no respect or appreciation come and love all the "nature" and turn the place into exactly what they were trying to leave behind. It's incredibly narcissistic and selfish to believe that "the locals" are only there as a hindrance to you. Would you roll up to a random village in Thailand and just start changing things, and expect the people who live there to worship and serve you?
- ihyfhgyfhth 5y ago
  The western united states maintained its wilderness areas through a culture of conservationism that isn't remotely respected by the new arrivals. I've spent the last two decades watching paradise be paved for a parking lot.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The wilderness areas were maintained by not having a lot of people. US added 100M people in the last 40 years, and a lot of them seem to like the Western states' scenery, terrain, and weather. 1980 census shows just over 40M in the west: https://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1981-02.pdf https://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1981-02.pdf page 6 2019 figures show nearly 80M in the west: https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=growth https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=gr... https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/05/27/many-northeast-midwest-states-face-shrinking-workforce https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
    - ihyfhgyfhth 5y ago
      I suggest without proof that the west could accommodate more people without adverse effects on the environment if construction preferences were different. The new construction methods, building types, and communal land management strategies that are preferred by implants have an outsized effect on the environment. Compare the new construction in Vail to the older buildings, which can still be seen in smaller towns. I would prefer building preferences to become more harmonious with the natural environment instead of less.
munificent 5y ago
I recall with some relish a comment I read on the Seattle subreddit a while back. The commenter was furious at how all of the recent transplants were screwing up their previously wonderful city. Eventually, they happened to mention that they themselves had moved to Seattle from California less than a year prior. There is a real thing going on in the US today, a sort of inchoate rage felt at all of the poorly defined "others". My hunch is that much of it stems from the rising anxieties of climate change, economic inequality, corporate political control, and even more recently the pandemic. Everyone needs to feel they have a certain level of agency and control in the world. It's hard to sleep at night if you don't even feel certain that your bed will still be there when you wake up. The world today often feels like we are ants surrounded by lumbering billionaire and corporate giants, hoping not to get stepped on while we watch climate change slowly dissolve the ground beneath us. People naturally cling to any remaining pieces of agency they can find, and lash out when even that tiny inch is taken from them. So when I see people screaming at a waitress for insisting they put on a mask, or sneering at someone visiting their beloved hiking trail, I wonder if it's only because there is no convenient face they can yell at for all of the larger forces that have actually marginalized them.
- dcow 5y ago
  And this is what frustrates me so much about recent attempts at social justice activism. It’s like we find the only thing we can see on the surface and start screaming at it while the rot in the core goes unaddressed. I resist the screaming because I want to fix problems in the core. But the screaming, while not entirely unjustified, often just serves to further obfuscate and conceal the rot within. It’s hard not to feel hopeless when you see so much human capital spent fighting the symptoms.
  - randcraw 5y ago
    Part of the mismatch between your interests and the others mentioned here is that your interests are long term and flexible and theirs are short and inflexible. They need to pay this months bills, and at the same time, I suspect they see their current lifestyle and job security at risk. Long term climate change isn't where they focus. This is why all solutions to climate change also have to address shorter term worries if the political tide has any chance of getting buy-in from those with global AND those with local concerns. Problem is, both the voters and our political leaders have ignored BOTH kinds of problems (and at least one perspective) for far too long. Now both interests have become entrenched into dissonant encampments that, stupidly, are unwilling to talk about how we could take steps to address both purposes at the same time. This sounds a lot like the US's recent social war over unshared political priorities, and I think it is. The 1%, the middle class, and the dispossessed all have different needs and interests that can't be met if we all feel free to overlook the perspective of those who don't share our priorities. Those experiencing local displacement due to the arrival of well-heeled haves aren't wrong. Nor will today's haves be wrong one day should they find their world turned upside down and then express their unhappiness when others show them no pity, which is likely if they live long enough. The solution, I think, is to not dismiss dispossession. It's to acknowledge it and start an earnest discussion about what can be done about it.
eszed 5y ago
You're right that a lot of the entitled screaming is ridiculous, but I think you're missing some of the very real problems that come with an influx of new money and (especially) second homes. I grew up in a tourist area, and though I'm one of the ones who left for the Big City I keep in touch. I'll give you a few examples that I think are illustrative. Immediately after college, a buddy and I shared an apartment in a nice building on a nice street. We both made decent money working in touristy restaurants, as did the three girls our age who lived next door (and, I think, the inhabitants of the other two units in the building, though we didn't have much to do with them: they were older, and had kids, so not much in common with us at the time). During the two years that we lived there, the family home directly next door sold. It was kind of sad, because a nice older couple lived there -- we watered their plants for them once, and the wife baked us an ENORMOUS batch of cookies to say thanks -- but the husband died, and the old lady moved away to live with one of her daughters somewhere else. Anyway, the house was bought by someone as a second home / investment property; during the next year it was used for exactly three days (for a really loud and obnoxious party, but whatever). We snuck in through the backyard to use the Jacuzzi a few times, but even then I can remember thinking that this place turning into an effectively vacant property was a bad sign. Fast forward twenty-something years, and even more of the "family" homes on that street have become second home / investment properties. The four-unit apartment that we lived in is now exclusively rented out on AirBnB, displacing the service-industry families and twenty-somethings that lived there before. Just about everyone who actually works in that town now commutes from miles and miles away, and rush-hour traffic -- on rural roads -- is terrible. The displacement goes much further up the income scale that you'd think, too. I've kept my dentist there, partly out of sentiment: the dentist who previously owned the practice had looked after my teeth since I was, like, eight years old; my regular hygienist has been cleaning my teeth since I was about fifteen. I cleaned their office for them when I was in high school, and they still give me an "employee discount" on fluoride treatments or whatever, so going there gives me all kinds of good small-town feelings. A decade or so ago someone I went to school with partnered with the original dentist, and then bought out the practice when the old dentist retired. We've talked a few times, and I don't think it's gone quite as well as she hoped. For one thing, she has to pay her hygienists and dental assistants a premium, to keep them willing to make the fifty+ mile commutes most of them have to make, since local housing is out of reach. She expected that, though. What I think she didn't quite expect is that she'd have so many fewer patients than the practice used to have. Partly that may be churn that comes with the old dentist retiring and someone new taking over, but also it's because the year-round population has declined, and second-homers and AirBnB-ers aren't looking for dentists in their vacation town. My friend had expected to pay off the loan for the practice and then buy a home in town before her kids got to school age. It's now 8-ish years since we talked about that, and she's still making a ~70 mile commute each way. Build more homes? Yeah: that does need to happen (I vote the straight YIMBY ticket in the city I live in, so I totally get that argument), but ... rural small-town charm drives the tourist industry around there. Build too much and you kill the goose that lays the golden egg. It's a really multi-layered problem, that I don't think has a simple solution. That said, there are a few relatively easy things that I think would help a great deal: 1) Raise property taxes (how much? I don't know: double, triple, quintuple, octuple? What's a bigger adjective than that? It should be by whatever multiple it takes) on any property that's not a primary residence for someone. At some level it becomes worth it to rent out your investment or AirBnB property to someone who'll actually live in it. 2) Restore the train line into town (and probably electrify it, too), then run regular commuter trains throughout the day. The right-of-way still exists, and is currently used for touristy sight-seeing and dining trains. Those can still run, but they're terribly inefficient as the only users of the rails. The goal should be to get workers cheaply to work, and tourists off the roads. 3) Charge a congestion fee to anyone who still chooses to drive. I'd make it $300 for a permit that's good for a year: that hits the tourists really hard (and helps subsidize the train), but should be relatively affordable for anyone who works or lives in town. I dunno. I'm not really arguing with you, but I do want to make the point that the economics of tourist towns are weird, and at least some of the locals' resentment is driven less by entitlement than by economic forces, and enforced changes, that really are hurting them.
themeiguoren 5y ago
I don’t think there’s a convincing argument to be made for complaining about new full-time residents. For second homes and Airbnb’s however, I see a lot of potential for degradation that comes from having transient community members of that aren’t fully vested in the well-being of the local social & economic landscape. I think that measures such as additional taxation on secondary homes or blocking municipal voting rights of people who don’t live their for at least half the year, would do a lot to blunt the downsides of outside interest. But afaik I haven’t seen such things being put forward.
YeBanKo 5y ago
Every time I go to Hawaii I try to start a conversation with a “local” and pretend to be a Californian exploring the island looking to move and buy a house. It’s really weird to me how not self aware people are. Last example few years ago was a guy from Kentucky who had moved in 2000s and started bitching about me relocating.

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foobiter 5y ago

it’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 5y ago

That 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 5y ago
[deleted]
LordFast 5y ago
"Everyone who came before me is a sucker; everyone who came after me is a cheat."
technofiend 5y 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.
throwaway316943 5y ago
It’s almost like it’s progressively getting worse as more people crowd in.
- ihyfhgyfhth 5y ago
  This is the correct identification of cause that people don't want to accept.
- ksdale 5y ago
  The very, very easy way to fix that is to build enough housing. Places don't suck because a lot of people live there, they suck for lots of reasons that are orthogonal to the population.
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    That’s very subjective, my definition of suckiness definitely factors in population density.
    - ksdale 5y ago
      I don't think it's subjective at all. There are cities that are clean and safe and well run, and you might not want to live there because they have a lot of people, but that doesn't make the city bad. I think your preference to live away from people is subjective, and that's fine, but the rule can't be that you get to live right where you want and no one else can move. Either people can move or they can't. I presume you don't live in the neighborhood you grew up in?
      - throwaway316943 5y ago
        I’m not saying the solution is for people to not move, I’m in favour of people living where they want. I don’t have the solution to the problems caused by rapid growth, it’s probably some combination of allowing mixed zoning so that there is enough housing and supporting businesses for the new residents along with better planning of or restrictions on municipal expansion to avoid sprawl and encourage better use of the land within the existing municipality. There’s probably a bunch of other reforms necessary to prevent the bad parts of gentrification and provide more of a safety net for people who get displaced. It’sa big hairy problem for sure.
shoemakersteve 5y ago
There's this song I like called "Austin, TX Blues" by Netherfriends and judging by the lyrics I'm guessing this is a common sentiment. I mean is anybody from here? Have you ever met anybody from here? Have you ever seen so many condos in your whole damn life That were built here in one year? Everyone I know that was born here is dope as fuck And everybody else sucks I'm pretty sure the song is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but still.
vram22 5y ago
"Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded." - Yogi Berra https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra
kpierce 5y ago
Reminds me of the George Carlin joke. "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"

labcomputer 5y ago

> 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. Twist of twists: Isn't this almost exactly what people have been saying about the Bay Area?

grecy 5y ago

> I continue to be amazed by the overt disdain long-time locals have for second home owners Housing can not be both affordable and a good investment. Given second homes are an investment, by definition having one means you're helping make homes unaffordable.

xpe 5y ago
Yes, 'on the margin' (in economic terms). This is a collective action problem. If one person decides to not move to Undiscovered Gem, Wild West then there is a large number of others that will.
thomaslangston 5y ago
I always saw second homes as a recreational expense first. Your first rental property would be an investment.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
A second home isn't necessarily an investment, especially if it's a vacation home. It can be just a place you go on vacation.
- twiddling 5y ago
  Yeah, the common old "cottage" Up North is yielding to 2nd luxury homes which than have to be VRBOed in order to cover the mortgage. Happened to my in-laws lake. Simple cabins displaced and the crowd being far more transient. Of course they pocketed a seven figure profit, because of the lakefront property, and the 100 year old wood cabin was bulldozed.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >Simple cabins displaced and the crowd being far more transient. And then the transient occupants party their asses off. And then the Karens pass local ordinances. And then nobody can have any fun.
- grecy 5y ago

cafard 5y ago

Hah. About forty-five years ago in Denver, I listened to a conversation between two women, natives of Colorado. One thought that all non-natives should be given short notice to vacate or else, the other thought that was impractical. (Hey, she'd lived in Virginia for a while.)

throwaway316943 5y ago

I’ve lived in a small city for the past 20 years that went from being a very sleepy, homogenous, and cheap to crowded, busy, and expensive. Both conditions have their pros and cons. Restaurants and night life used to be dull and limited, office jobs were fairly scarce and there was a culture of aggressive ignorance. Those things have improved but now lower income people can’t afford to live in an apartment without sharing with multiple roommates, crime, drug abuse and homelessness are exploding where they were at practically 0 before, home ownership is out of reach for a lot of people and many of the unique local businesses and institutions have collapsed due to rent increases. As far as I can tell, most people are on average worse off than they were before, there’s less of a sense of community, people are more rushed and have less time to relax and socialize, there isn’t the same level of trust between strangers and a hundred other little things. Maybe people were a bit poorer and more intolerant of outsiders before but a lot has been lost for only a little improvement.

nitrogen 5y ago

It's a recurring theme. People spend decades taming and beautifying a place. Then people with no respect or appreciation come and love all the "nature" and turn the place into exactly what they were trying to leave behind. It's incredibly narcissistic and selfish to believe that "the locals" are only there as a hindrance to you. Would you roll up to a random village in Thailand and just start changing things, and expect the people who live there to worship and serve you?

ihyfhgyfhth 5y ago
The western united states maintained its wilderness areas through a culture of conservationism that isn't remotely respected by the new arrivals. I've spent the last two decades watching paradise be paved for a parking lot.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The wilderness areas were maintained by not having a lot of people. US added 100M people in the last 40 years, and a lot of them seem to like the Western states' scenery, terrain, and weather. 1980 census shows just over 40M in the west: https://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1981-02.pdf https://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1981-02.pdf page 6 2019 figures show nearly 80M in the west: https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=growth https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=gr... https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/05/27/many-northeast-midwest-states-face-shrinking-workforce https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
  - ihyfhgyfhth 5y ago
    I suggest without proof that the west could accommodate more people without adverse effects on the environment if construction preferences were different. The new construction methods, building types, and communal land management strategies that are preferred by implants have an outsized effect on the environment. Compare the new construction in Vail to the older buildings, which can still be seen in smaller towns. I would prefer building preferences to become more harmonious with the natural environment instead of less.

munificent 5y ago

I recall with some relish a comment I read on the Seattle subreddit a while back. The commenter was furious at how all of the recent transplants were screwing up their previously wonderful city. Eventually, they happened to mention that they themselves had moved to Seattle from California less than a year prior. There is a real thing going on in the US today, a sort of inchoate rage felt at all of the poorly defined "others". My hunch is that much of it stems from the rising anxieties of climate change, economic inequality, corporate political control, and even more recently the pandemic. Everyone needs to feel they have a certain level of agency and control in the world. It's hard to sleep at night if you don't even feel certain that your bed will still be there when you wake up. The world today often feels like we are ants surrounded by lumbering billionaire and corporate giants, hoping not to get stepped on while we watch climate change slowly dissolve the ground beneath us. People naturally cling to any remaining pieces of agency they can find, and lash out when even that tiny inch is taken from them. So when I see people screaming at a waitress for insisting they put on a mask, or sneering at someone visiting their beloved hiking trail, I wonder if it's only because there is no convenient face they can yell at for all of the larger forces that have actually marginalized them.

dcow 5y ago
And this is what frustrates me so much about recent attempts at social justice activism. It’s like we find the only thing we can see on the surface and start screaming at it while the rot in the core goes unaddressed. I resist the screaming because I want to fix problems in the core. But the screaming, while not entirely unjustified, often just serves to further obfuscate and conceal the rot within. It’s hard not to feel hopeless when you see so much human capital spent fighting the symptoms.
- randcraw 5y ago
  Part of the mismatch between your interests and the others mentioned here is that your interests are long term and flexible and theirs are short and inflexible. They need to pay this months bills, and at the same time, I suspect they see their current lifestyle and job security at risk. Long term climate change isn't where they focus. This is why all solutions to climate change also have to address shorter term worries if the political tide has any chance of getting buy-in from those with global AND those with local concerns. Problem is, both the voters and our political leaders have ignored BOTH kinds of problems (and at least one perspective) for far too long. Now both interests have become entrenched into dissonant encampments that, stupidly, are unwilling to talk about how we could take steps to address both purposes at the same time. This sounds a lot like the US's recent social war over unshared political priorities, and I think it is. The 1%, the middle class, and the dispossessed all have different needs and interests that can't be met if we all feel free to overlook the perspective of those who don't share our priorities. Those experiencing local displacement due to the arrival of well-heeled haves aren't wrong. Nor will today's haves be wrong one day should they find their world turned upside down and then express their unhappiness when others show them no pity, which is likely if they live long enough. The solution, I think, is to not dismiss dispossession. It's to acknowledge it and start an earnest discussion about what can be done about it.

eszed 5y ago

You're right that a lot of the entitled screaming is ridiculous, but I think you're missing some of the very real problems that come with an influx of new money and (especially) second homes. I grew up in a tourist area, and though I'm one of the ones who left for the Big City I keep in touch. I'll give you a few examples that I think are illustrative. Immediately after college, a buddy and I shared an apartment in a nice building on a nice street. We both made decent money working in touristy restaurants, as did the three girls our age who lived next door (and, I think, the inhabitants of the other two units in the building, though we didn't have much to do with them: they were older, and had kids, so not much in common with us at the time). During the two years that we lived there, the family home directly next door sold. It was kind of sad, because a nice older couple lived there -- we watered their plants for them once, and the wife baked us an ENORMOUS batch of cookies to say thanks -- but the husband died, and the old lady moved away to live with one of her daughters somewhere else. Anyway, the house was bought by someone as a second home / investment property; during the next year it was used for exactly three days (for a really loud and obnoxious party, but whatever). We snuck in through the backyard to use the Jacuzzi a few times, but even then I can remember thinking that this place turning into an effectively vacant property was a bad sign. Fast forward twenty-something years, and even more of the "family" homes on that street have become second home / investment properties. The four-unit apartment that we lived in is now exclusively rented out on AirBnB, displacing the service-industry families and twenty-somethings that lived there before. Just about everyone who actually works in that town now commutes from miles and miles away, and rush-hour traffic -- on rural roads -- is terrible. The displacement goes much further up the income scale that you'd think, too. I've kept my dentist there, partly out of sentiment: the dentist who previously owned the practice had looked after my teeth since I was, like, eight years old; my regular hygienist has been cleaning my teeth since I was about fifteen. I cleaned their office for them when I was in high school, and they still give me an "employee discount" on fluoride treatments or whatever, so going there gives me all kinds of good small-town feelings. A decade or so ago someone I went to school with partnered with the original dentist, and then bought out the practice when the old dentist retired. We've talked a few times, and I don't think it's gone quite as well as she hoped. For one thing, she has to pay her hygienists and dental assistants a premium, to keep them willing to make the fifty+ mile commutes most of them have to make, since local housing is out of reach. She expected that, though. What I think she didn't quite expect is that she'd have so many fewer patients than the practice used to have. Partly that may be churn that comes with the old dentist retiring and someone new taking over, but also it's because the year-round population has declined, and second-homers and AirBnB-ers aren't looking for dentists in their vacation town. My friend had expected to pay off the loan for the practice and then buy a home in town before her kids got to school age. It's now 8-ish years since we talked about that, and she's still making a ~70 mile commute each way. Build more homes? Yeah: that does need to happen (I vote the straight YIMBY ticket in the city I live in, so I totally get that argument), but ... rural small-town charm drives the tourist industry around there. Build too much and you kill the goose that lays the golden egg. It's a really multi-layered problem, that I don't think has a simple solution. That said, there are a few relatively easy things that I think would help a great deal: 1) Raise property taxes (how much? I don't know: double, triple, quintuple, octuple? What's a bigger adjective than that? It should be by whatever multiple it takes) on any property that's not a primary residence for someone. At some level it becomes worth it to rent out your investment or AirBnB property to someone who'll actually live in it. 2) Restore the train line into town (and probably electrify it, too), then run regular commuter trains throughout the day. The right-of-way still exists, and is currently used for touristy sight-seeing and dining trains. Those can still run, but they're terribly inefficient as the only users of the rails. The goal should be to get workers cheaply to work, and tourists off the roads. 3) Charge a congestion fee to anyone who still chooses to drive. I'd make it $300 for a permit that's good for a year: that hits the tourists really hard (and helps subsidize the train), but should be relatively affordable for anyone who works or lives in town. I dunno. I'm not really arguing with you, but I do want to make the point that the economics of tourist towns are weird, and at least some of the locals' resentment is driven less by entitlement than by economic forces, and enforced changes, that really are hurting them.

themeiguoren 5y ago

I don’t think there’s a convincing argument to be made for complaining about new full-time residents. For second homes and Airbnb’s however, I see a lot of potential for degradation that comes from having transient community members of that aren’t fully vested in the well-being of the local social & economic landscape. I think that measures such as additional taxation on secondary homes or blocking municipal voting rights of people who don’t live their for at least half the year, would do a lot to blunt the downsides of outside interest. But afaik I haven’t seen such things being put forward.

YeBanKo 5y ago

Every time I go to Hawaii I try to start a conversation with a “local” and pretend to be a Californian exploring the island looking to move and buy a house. It’s really weird to me how not self aware people are. Last example few years ago was a guy from Kentucky who had moved in 2000s and started bitching about me relocating.