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> nobody will be here to serve them Has this ever happened? I have heard this prediction about everything from Toronto to New York to Los Angeles to Hong Kong
by MattGaiser 4y ago
> nobody will be here to serve them
Has this ever happened? I have heard this prediction about everything from Toronto to New York to Los Angeles to Hong Kong for years and it has never seemed to come true.
There are people willing to make extreme sacrifices to live in certain places. People will live 5 to a room in cockroach infested 100 year old apartments to stay in certain places.
In Toronto, labour is no more expensive to purchase than the rest of Canada (minimum wage laws aside). Toronto is worth it to enough people to have a bunk in a bunk bed over a room to oneself while working in fast food.
People can also commute. Vancouver is notorious for having teachers commute from Abbotsford. In Toronto, people will commute 2.5 hours each way from Barrie or London.
A lot just may be that the older people get replaced with less resource intensive young people who don't have kids, need less medical care, and are happier in less space.
- solarmist 4y agoNot yet to my knowledge. This is new territory which is why you have theses claims being unfulfilled. I expect we’ll see it in a smallish community like key west first where bussing in service people will become impossible. But maybe they’ll start building employee dorms and bus people in for their shifts (x days on, y days off). Who knows. No one knows where the breaking point is, only that there is one.
- klipt 4y ago> employee dorms If you look at feudal England this is basically what happened - the rich landowner class provided servants' quarters for their employees. Of course that crushes job mobility, because you can't leave your job without losing your housing...
- solarmist 4y agoYeah. I was thinking of this when I wrote it, but I don’t know any of the detail, just the impression that feudalism is like that.
- treespace8 4y agoEmployee dorms are a real thing here in North America. After college I had a friend working at in the town of Lake Louise Alberta. This is located in a national park and the number of homes are extremely limited and very expensive. Visiting my friend they game me the tour of the house. It was a three bedroom 2 bath townhouse with 15 people living in it. 4 beds per room upstairs, and 3 people in the basement. All the people worked at various retail shops in the village. (Not at the chateau) Making minimum wage.
- solarmist 4y agoSure, but they’re rare and very niche right now.
- jnwatson 4y agoYou can't purchase a home in Banff National Park (which includes the towns of Banff and Lake Louise) without having an active or planned business set to open in the town, having some other blood relation to someone living in the town, or having lived in the park since 1981. This is a special situation. They are specifically trying to limit the supply of housing in Banff to limit the environmental impact.
- johnny_canuck 4y agoAnother example that comes to mind is in Prince Edward county where affordable housing is so limited that some businesses are building places for (seasonal) employees to live: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/prince-edward-county-tourism-workers-affordable-housing-1.6015205 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/prince-edward-county-...
- vijucat 4y agoThe downvotes on this comment are odious and don't help : downvote comments that are not well-written, not merely because you disagree with the content.
- renewiltord 4y agoI don't understand why this is downvoted. I, too, have heard this and what happens is wages rise and people make do. It doesn't actually end up that folks are no longer there. I would expect to easily find occupation data at census tract level but no luck. Should help easily verify if this is happening.