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I live in a small mountain town. You could swap many towns (usually tourist destinations) in place of Ketchum in this article, it's the same story. These towns
by bedhead 5y ago
I live in a small mountain town. You could swap many towns (usually tourist destinations) in place of Ketchum in this article, it's the same story. These towns tend to be fiercely anti-development, and many people demonize anyone who would like to see growth in housing, and make hyperbolic claims that their quaint little town will look like a Houston suburb at the first sign of a new house being built.
Anyway, places like Ketchum got what they wanted, which was generally to preserve the character of the town. Unfortunately they flunked Econ 101, as they're now discovering that the trade off they made (there's always a trade off) was a cost of living that goes vertical. In my town, the problem has surpassed affordability and it's now availability - there is nowhere to live regardless of money. A recent hiring sign in a shop window advertised they will overpay and you can slack off...but they can't fill it because there's nowhere to live.
The most frustrating part is that the anti-development crowd who architected all this - whether you agree with it or not - simply won't accept the reality that this was their choice. You can't even talk to them, they blame everything and everyone else. Over the years I've noticed that failure to understand/accept incentives has been the root cause of many problems.
- HideousKojima 5y agoThe anti-growth crowd is often those who already own homes, so they're gaining from the cost of housing exploding.
- whatshisface 5y agoThe people who live in an area, it seems, should rightfully decide the rules of that area. It's in their interest to stop competition with their existing property so they will vote against it. At the same time, everyone lives somewhere, and if everyone votes for anti-development policies there will not be enough houses to go around. I guess the policy hurts the up-and-coming to help the established. Still, people should have a right to determine the future of their own communities. I would be interested to hear if any philosophers have untangled this one, because I can clearly see the conflict of two good principles.
- mcculley 5y agoIt is a mess in a lot of places. I have lived in Florida for 49 years. Retirees basically work against the interests of people who need to work and raise children. I don’t see any solution other than limiting the voting franchise to those with skin in the game.
- iso1631 5y agoOr move elsewhere. Retirees will struggle when there's nobody to wipe their ass because they can't afford to live there.
- mcculley 5y agoThey won’t move again. They have the political power. There will be an ever growing service economy with an ever decreasing standard of living. The system is working as designed.
- iso1631 5y agoIf the service workers vote with their feet and leave Florida, retirees'll be stuffed.
- slt2021 5y agothats why you have holes in the southern border, to keep bringing fresh meat willing to work for peanuts and without entitlements to the social safety net
- mcculley 5y agoThere is a related problem in that the businesses profiting from illegal labor are rarely punished when there is a round of deportations. It is not an accident that those who complain loudly about illegal immigrants are often not checking the I-9s.
- 5y ago
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoRight. People seem to think that if the cost of hotdogs goes up, that home owners who's $1M house appreciated an extra 10% are getting screwed. They're not. Unless they're spending an absurd amount of money on local services.
- whatshisface 5y agoThe people who made $100k on paper will end up without it if they hold on to their house until the market gives up on moving people in to their housing-constrained locale. They'd have to sell it during the rush to benefit, otherwise they pay the higher living costs for a while only to see their equity return to its original valuation.
- jonfw 5y agoHousing prices are much stickier up than you give them credit for
- bluGill 5y agoNo they are not. I've lost a ton of money on houses in the past. However it is clearly a matter of how much housing is built, when you are not allowed to build as much housing as the market wants prices go up and prices remain sticky. So long as the market is allowed to build, the cost of materials/labor is the factor. (Land is less a factor than you think because someone will get the idea of building up if allowed thus amortizing over less area)
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoIn what part of the US are you that houses cost $1M, AND you're allowed to build houses? There are few places in the country where houses are expensive, AND you can actually build housing.
- bluGill 5y agoThat isn't housing prices being sticky, that is house prices following supply and demand.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoNo, they aren't gaining - not yet. They only gain when they sell. In the meantime, their property taxes probably go up, and their cost of services goes up because businesses have higher costs.
- jonfw 5y agoFor anybody who earns more than their expenses- additional cash flow and increases in net worth are interchangeable. Meaning that if you gave me 10k in cash I'd just invest it in an asset that appreciates, so if you give me 10k in home equity, which is an asset that appreciates, it's almost just as good.
- lumost 5y agoIf housing hadn't exploded in the US over the last 30 years the US would have needed to confront the fact that wages would never allow anyone to retire or build any wealth.
- RC_ITR 5y agoWait, so the Boomers collectively cashed a 'one-time lotto ticket' to benefit themselves without fixing any problems for future generations? Weird, so unlike them.
- thechao 5y agoThere seem to be four 'big' models for quitting-work-when-you're-old: kids; socialized safety nets; pensions; and, home-wealth. One of these things is not like the others.
- swiley 5y agoIf housing hadn't exploded over the last 30 years I don't think stagnant wage growth would have been an issue. I've always felt like housing is the biggest indicator of inflation.
- 15charlimitdumb 5y agoAnd housing is not included in official inflation statistics... :facepalm:
- closeparen 5y agoHousing prices will find whatever level is necessary to price out the excess housing seekers relative to available homes. Higher wages simply mean a bigger number.
- jjk166 5y agoAvailable homes is not a constant. New structures can be built, inefficiently utilized land can be rezoned, and transportation infrastructure can be improved to increase the effective size of an area. You might seriously run out of living space in an area like Manhattan, but in 99.9% of cases increased demand should lead to increased supply in a functioning market.
- motioncuty 5y agoAnd home owners tend to vote in elections, especially local ones.
- lawnchair_larry 5y agoSpeaking as an anti-growther who has been in this situation, this almost never the case. Inflated housing doesn’t help them at all, it just drives up all ancillary costs of living and causes property taxes to rise. They are anti-growth because they bought a specific location for a specific reason. If you go through all that to find and invest in your ideal community, you don’t want it to be bulldozed and changed into high density shit with bad traffic, long lines, crowded attractions, higher crime, more noise, etc.
- mc32 5y agoThat seems like a policy the newcomers coming in setting up winter homes would do and not the locals who are slowly driven out through rent/price increases brought by market restrictions.
- Arrath 5y agoAffluent people coming into the town later and buying up homes for vacation properties and/or AirBNB style rentals will suck up any remaining capacity in the housing supply, as well as further driving prices up. But it was residents and locals who set the stage, by being against development, voting for restrictive zoning, and so on.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y agoIs this even a problem? It's a problem for the no-dev people, but they brought it on themselves. As long as they're the only people who "get hurt", seems like the problem will take care of itself? Unless they start allowing shanty-towns, which seems like where this is going.
- legerdemain 5y ago> Is this even a problem? It's a problem It's not a problem. People like that don't really care for the town either, only their bottom line. If small businesses go bust, tax revenue craters, and municipal services are gutted, they're still making money on their investment.
- polishdude20 5y agoIt's as if you rely on the younger generation to fulfill your quaint small town vibe at the coffee shops, farmers markets etc but you don't give them a place to live.
- antognini 5y ago* Housing that workers can afford * Close to amenities * Detached homes with yards Communities can pick two.
- bedhead 5y agoYeah, like I said, these people all failed Econ 101. It's really bizarre, they never accept that they can't have things both ways. So we've ended up with a town that's shockingly beautiful and unique, but it's becoming more dysfunctional by the day because of the development ethos, and instead of doing something everyone just complains. It's great if you've got tons of money, and then it just gets harder and harder for those who don't. I mean, that's the most ironic part, is that the same hyper liberal people who are so against development have directly caused such wild living disparities across income brackets.
- mywittyname 5y ago> is that the same hyper liberal people who are so against development Kind of a weird statement. Having grown up in a small town, there's wasn't a "hyper liberal" person in sight. The elitist, anti-growth, outsiders-are-destroying-this-place attitude is pervasive everywhere. It's absolutely not a party thing. It just so happens that California has a lot of outsiders wanting to move there, and is left-leaning. That's it. You see the same exact attitudes in towns in Wyoming, Texas, and Florida too.
- bedhead 5y agoPerhaps injecting partisan into it was dumb of me, however, in my experience it was the very liberal people who were the ones who spearheaded some of our largest long-term planning blunders. But you're right, the pervasive attitude in most smaller communities is generally "Everything was great until a shortly after I moved here" which really drives me crazy. I suppose it's just more acute in a town of 3,000.
- RC_ITR 5y agoTHIS dynamic is the most frustrating part of 'nobody wants to work anymore!'
- swiley 5y agoI grew up in a town like this and left. The only thing I miss is being close to my parents.
- kolbe 5y agoI would like to “flunk Econ 101” if the end result is a 40% return on my home price over the past 2 years.
- kensai 5y agoAmazingly we can say a similar thing about small, advanced, usually university towns in Germany like Freiburg, Heidelberg or Tübingen (among many others). It‘s like a new version of town vs gown. Cost of living of course skyrockets…
- lawnchair_larry 5y agoIt’s not a zoning issue, it’s a WFH issue. If they build more housing, more tech workers will just buy it. The pool of people who earn more than local service industry folks and have location flexibility is extremely deep now, and it will only continue to grow. Pre-COVID had a proximity requirement to the high paying jobs that prevented this sort of arbitrage. It happens in every market where the wealth is generated outside of the local economy. That’s the Econ 101 that zoning activists misunderstand. For a more prominent example, see New Zealand.