This hit home. Not in a home. But in my heart. Coming from Crested Butte, Colorado, I gave up on having a home long ago. Too
Many billionaires bought everything up in their sad search for meaning. They liked what they saw in us when they came to ski. They thought they could buy it. But community cannot be bought. It must be earned. It must grow from you, slowly.
Yes, we didn't even touch on Colorado in this piece, but it really got a lot of this influx before other areas did. I really feel your grief, my hometown has been going through it especially in the last few years. Hoping more and more of us start banding together to push back in an organized way.
This is happening in Oregon as well. About 3 or more hours east and south of Portland. There are many small towns where resident families, 4 generations deep, can no longer afford the very modest (in some cases, positively run down) houses in their hometowns.
I've spent the last 3 years remotely working with the population in one such town, providing mental health services they could not otherwise access, and housing is by far the greatest stressor for so many of the families I know there.
I had a woman recently tell me how, when she finally made it into a tiny apartment, she sobbed about letting go of the broken down truck that had been her home for 2 years. She had been working full time for the duration, and it took that long for her to save up for the security deposit.
Another told me how the only residents who don't have to deal with the mobile RV meth labs that rotate park on local residential streets, are the folks in the brand new gated community. The roads to and from that oasis are being re- routed to give those residents quicker access to the shopping areas.
Of course, the folks in cheaper in town residences have to rely on over priced food from gas stations, while they wait for the weekly food bank to open for 6 hours.
Local and state entities are attempting to address the housing crisis, and the new rent controlled apartment building that opened downtown in January was full, with a remaining 100+ out of luck applicants, within 30 days.
The warming station, drop in center, and other local social services agencies are very busy, struggling to keep enough volunteers to stay open, but they are doing amazing work helping the large houseless population bide their time until their luck changes. Some reluctantly leave for larger cities, but many have family in the area ( in uncomfortably over crowded homes) and don't want to leave.
I love the idea of tenant associations and other organized efforts for residents to fight to 'stay home'. Your article has inspired me to start this conversation with local agencies and residents.
As always, I so appreciate your perspective and reporting, especially for the forgotten!
Wow, thanks so much for commenting. These situations you're sharing echo what I've seen and heard in Missoula, MT, where I went to college and have spent a lot of time. I think if more people heard the individual stories that you're talking about it might sink in more what life is like for more and more people in these places. I co-wrote this piece with another substacker - we did something wrong and just ended up publishing two separate versions of this piece, so you might enjoy seeing some of the comments over on the other version. People are sharing similar experiences from around the country:
VT is having a giant housing crisis and many of our homes are 2nd homes… trying to figure out how to have these homes go to locals first, esp when out of state folks make more money. Also don’t want to contribute to exclusionary state pride. People can come here as long as they contribute to the community. I keep seeing wealthy people crap on rural communities but come here for vacation- use and leave behind. Thank you very much for this piece, I really appreciate both of your work.
"Use and leave behind" is a good way to put it. It often feels like that or like people have to have all the amenities and conveniences that they're comfortable with in order to live in rural areas - so in come the boutiques, bougie restaurants and bars, etc. that cater to their tastes instead of people respecting or appreciating what is already there. And the exclusionary state pride thing is really easy to get caught up in, too. I definitely have a bias about people being born/raised in Montana, even though it goes against how i think people should be treated, and the reality of how recently a lot of our ancestors/families got here.
In Upstate NY, where I've lived for more than half of my life, the cost of living has sky rocketed. Many folks from the city moved up during the pandemic, bought houses site unseen (paid for in cash), and kept their homes in BK, going to and fro as they please. The jobs/wealth they hold are insane and unimaginable to average folk- think music video producer, private jet plane pilot, daughter of a famous painter... you get the gist. The general approach was to buy up a house for part time living and another one to turn into an airbnb. But what's worse is they make sure their money stays in their own circles: they get their massages at the new luxury hotel, see live music at the members-only cannabis club that one of the above-mentioned airbnb's gets transformed into a few times a month, get their breakfast at the BK chic coffee shop where a bacon egg and cheese croissant with a coffee is $25... you get the gist. There's even a private WhatsApp group where these exclusive sites are listed, to further make known where it's permitted to spend money locally (re: a members-only resource list of bougie spaces). It's all made living as I have been used to downright impossible. It's been infuriating to watch and experience. It helps to know we're not a singular pocket of oddity, but this is a mass issue across the country. Something's gotta break.
Dang, we thought about including Upstate NY in this piece - I've seen a little bit of that, but hearing your description is pretty sickening, how much more intense the gentrification is than you see even on the surface there. Upstate NY is such an intense example, like you're saying so many people coming from NYC where the wealth is off the charts. I kind of wish we'd included it now, as an extreme example that nonetheless shows the reality of the spectrum of gentrification we're talking about. And possibly what some of us have to look forward to as it gets worse. Something does have to break, and not just shitty cheap apartment buildings thrown up on the edge of town in the name of affordable housing...
Oh man, I can't imagine the tension - where I live in Montana people are also suspicious of newcomers because of this same kind of bullshit. But like Elizabeth said, the Hudson Valley just seems so much more intense. Thanks so much for sharing, hope you're able to find some down to earth community there.
Iowa City is one of the most underrated places to live in the US, in my opinion. Excellent medical care, a thriving literary culture, two-ish hours to Chicago, and very affordable housing. I don’t consider the university massive, but I live in Texas where UT is truly massive at 60,000+ students compared to Iowa’s 35k.
This is happening all over western Washington as the tech-families sell off their homes in affluent neighborhoods in Seattle and convert to remote jobs.
Specifically, the town of Vashon, which is in the worst housing crisis it’s ever seen. The town has a population of roughly 10,000 people, the average home price is leading closer to 1 million each day. People cannot afford to work here, as they cannot afford to live here. The average rent is around $2700 a month for one bedroom spaces, and many rely on home sharing. Some bedrooms rent out for $900-1200 a month.
We have seen the decay of Seattle, and now our small towns are rapidly gentrifying. It’s happening at an alarmingly fast rate.
Eastern Montana is getting hit hard, too, it’s just not as insane as Bozeman and the Flathead area.
Thank you so much for writing about this. I am terrified that younger millennials and gen z are going to live through a plunge in home-ownership rates, dependent on rentals largely owned by enormous corporations who keep rents as high as possible while they break people with junk fees.
A few more factors to look at if you are interested: Many of the purchases that have driven up prices everywhere are second homes or investments. Private equity is responsible for a lot of it, but so are people flush with cash who understandably see real estate as a great investment. Unless we change tax incentives around property hoarding, we are screwed. Apparently some Texas MAGA politicians are proposing some limits on huge corporations owning more than 150 homes (overall? In the state? Per county? Not sure.). I never thought I’d say it, but good (if not far enough) for them.
Excellent! Excellent article. I so appreciate you taking a deeper look at the why behind the cultural/geographical and other forces shaping economic shifts:
“And a lot of people have written off giant swathes of the country, not spending much time thinking about the gerrymandering or corporate malpractice or extractive economies that got us here. Neither party really wants to get into the way our economic system sees people and land as disposable, resources to be chewed up and pumped out and forgotten about. But as you drive across the country you’ll see it.”
I‘ve been thinking, for over a decade, about how the capitalist system of world trade should have died in the 1990s and was put on life support by China’s ability to mass mobilize cheap labour. And how the post-war expectations of Boomers — that Americans will be able to grotesquely overconsume indefinitely — have or will hit an inevitable wall. Capitalism has overtaken democracy and the pendulum needs to swing hard in the other direction.
This hit home. Not in a home. But in my heart. Coming from Crested Butte, Colorado, I gave up on having a home long ago. Too
Many billionaires bought everything up in their sad search for meaning. They liked what they saw in us when they came to ski. They thought they could buy it. But community cannot be bought. It must be earned. It must grow from you, slowly.
Yes, we didn't even touch on Colorado in this piece, but it really got a lot of this influx before other areas did. I really feel your grief, my hometown has been going through it especially in the last few years. Hoping more and more of us start banding together to push back in an organized way.
This is happening in Oregon as well. About 3 or more hours east and south of Portland. There are many small towns where resident families, 4 generations deep, can no longer afford the very modest (in some cases, positively run down) houses in their hometowns.
I've spent the last 3 years remotely working with the population in one such town, providing mental health services they could not otherwise access, and housing is by far the greatest stressor for so many of the families I know there.
I had a woman recently tell me how, when she finally made it into a tiny apartment, she sobbed about letting go of the broken down truck that had been her home for 2 years. She had been working full time for the duration, and it took that long for her to save up for the security deposit.
Another told me how the only residents who don't have to deal with the mobile RV meth labs that rotate park on local residential streets, are the folks in the brand new gated community. The roads to and from that oasis are being re- routed to give those residents quicker access to the shopping areas.
Of course, the folks in cheaper in town residences have to rely on over priced food from gas stations, while they wait for the weekly food bank to open for 6 hours.
Local and state entities are attempting to address the housing crisis, and the new rent controlled apartment building that opened downtown in January was full, with a remaining 100+ out of luck applicants, within 30 days.
The warming station, drop in center, and other local social services agencies are very busy, struggling to keep enough volunteers to stay open, but they are doing amazing work helping the large houseless population bide their time until their luck changes. Some reluctantly leave for larger cities, but many have family in the area ( in uncomfortably over crowded homes) and don't want to leave.
I love the idea of tenant associations and other organized efforts for residents to fight to 'stay home'. Your article has inspired me to start this conversation with local agencies and residents.
As always, I so appreciate your perspective and reporting, especially for the forgotten!
Wow, thanks so much for commenting. These situations you're sharing echo what I've seen and heard in Missoula, MT, where I went to college and have spent a lot of time. I think if more people heard the individual stories that you're talking about it might sink in more what life is like for more and more people in these places. I co-wrote this piece with another substacker - we did something wrong and just ended up publishing two separate versions of this piece, so you might enjoy seeing some of the comments over on the other version. People are sharing similar experiences from around the country:
https://www.jphilll.com/p/too-expensive-to-live-but-cant-live/comments
Your comment really warmed my heart, thanks so much for reading and engaging, it makes me so hopeful that it's actually reaching someone!
VT is having a giant housing crisis and many of our homes are 2nd homes… trying to figure out how to have these homes go to locals first, esp when out of state folks make more money. Also don’t want to contribute to exclusionary state pride. People can come here as long as they contribute to the community. I keep seeing wealthy people crap on rural communities but come here for vacation- use and leave behind. Thank you very much for this piece, I really appreciate both of your work.
"Use and leave behind" is a good way to put it. It often feels like that or like people have to have all the amenities and conveniences that they're comfortable with in order to live in rural areas - so in come the boutiques, bougie restaurants and bars, etc. that cater to their tastes instead of people respecting or appreciating what is already there. And the exclusionary state pride thing is really easy to get caught up in, too. I definitely have a bias about people being born/raised in Montana, even though it goes against how i think people should be treated, and the reality of how recently a lot of our ancestors/families got here.
Yes! Even the university has a housing problem there
In Upstate NY, where I've lived for more than half of my life, the cost of living has sky rocketed. Many folks from the city moved up during the pandemic, bought houses site unseen (paid for in cash), and kept their homes in BK, going to and fro as they please. The jobs/wealth they hold are insane and unimaginable to average folk- think music video producer, private jet plane pilot, daughter of a famous painter... you get the gist. The general approach was to buy up a house for part time living and another one to turn into an airbnb. But what's worse is they make sure their money stays in their own circles: they get their massages at the new luxury hotel, see live music at the members-only cannabis club that one of the above-mentioned airbnb's gets transformed into a few times a month, get their breakfast at the BK chic coffee shop where a bacon egg and cheese croissant with a coffee is $25... you get the gist. There's even a private WhatsApp group where these exclusive sites are listed, to further make known where it's permitted to spend money locally (re: a members-only resource list of bougie spaces). It's all made living as I have been used to downright impossible. It's been infuriating to watch and experience. It helps to know we're not a singular pocket of oddity, but this is a mass issue across the country. Something's gotta break.
Dang, we thought about including Upstate NY in this piece - I've seen a little bit of that, but hearing your description is pretty sickening, how much more intense the gentrification is than you see even on the surface there. Upstate NY is such an intense example, like you're saying so many people coming from NYC where the wealth is off the charts. I kind of wish we'd included it now, as an extreme example that nonetheless shows the reality of the spectrum of gentrification we're talking about. And possibly what some of us have to look forward to as it gets worse. Something does have to break, and not just shitty cheap apartment buildings thrown up on the edge of town in the name of affordable housing...
Oh man, I can't imagine the tension - where I live in Montana people are also suspicious of newcomers because of this same kind of bullshit. But like Elizabeth said, the Hudson Valley just seems so much more intense. Thanks so much for sharing, hope you're able to find some down to earth community there.
Iowa City is one of the most underrated places to live in the US, in my opinion. Excellent medical care, a thriving literary culture, two-ish hours to Chicago, and very affordable housing. I don’t consider the university massive, but I live in Texas where UT is truly massive at 60,000+ students compared to Iowa’s 35k.
This is happening all over western Washington as the tech-families sell off their homes in affluent neighborhoods in Seattle and convert to remote jobs.
Specifically, the town of Vashon, which is in the worst housing crisis it’s ever seen. The town has a population of roughly 10,000 people, the average home price is leading closer to 1 million each day. People cannot afford to work here, as they cannot afford to live here. The average rent is around $2700 a month for one bedroom spaces, and many rely on home sharing. Some bedrooms rent out for $900-1200 a month.
We have seen the decay of Seattle, and now our small towns are rapidly gentrifying. It’s happening at an alarmingly fast rate.
Eastern Montana is getting hit hard, too, it’s just not as insane as Bozeman and the Flathead area.
Thank you so much for writing about this. I am terrified that younger millennials and gen z are going to live through a plunge in home-ownership rates, dependent on rentals largely owned by enormous corporations who keep rents as high as possible while they break people with junk fees.
A few more factors to look at if you are interested: Many of the purchases that have driven up prices everywhere are second homes or investments. Private equity is responsible for a lot of it, but so are people flush with cash who understandably see real estate as a great investment. Unless we change tax incentives around property hoarding, we are screwed. Apparently some Texas MAGA politicians are proposing some limits on huge corporations owning more than 150 homes (overall? In the state? Per county? Not sure.). I never thought I’d say it, but good (if not far enough) for them.
This out today in HCN
https://www.hcn.org/issues/56-5/bozemans-boom-depends-on-immigrants-but-struggles-to-support-them/
This out today: https://www.hcn.org/issues/56-5/bozemans-boom-depends-on-immigrants-but-struggles-to-support-them/
Oh thanks for passing that along!
Excellent! Excellent article. I so appreciate you taking a deeper look at the why behind the cultural/geographical and other forces shaping economic shifts:
“And a lot of people have written off giant swathes of the country, not spending much time thinking about the gerrymandering or corporate malpractice or extractive economies that got us here. Neither party really wants to get into the way our economic system sees people and land as disposable, resources to be chewed up and pumped out and forgotten about. But as you drive across the country you’ll see it.”
I‘ve been thinking, for over a decade, about how the capitalist system of world trade should have died in the 1990s and was put on life support by China’s ability to mass mobilize cheap labour. And how the post-war expectations of Boomers — that Americans will be able to grotesquely overconsume indefinitely — have or will hit an inevitable wall. Capitalism has overtaken democracy and the pendulum needs to swing hard in the other direction.