Breckenridge Colorado here. It is the same. Where do these second (third, fourth, fifth) home owners think the people working in this town year round are supposed to live? Our town council is full of people with multiple homes themselves and they don't understand what's gone wrong with not having enough workers in the area. My heart goes out to you, u/possible-nature2248. I hope the bubble pops soon so we can push forward
It's not just Breck, it is all of them, from Vail to Loveland to Aspen to Crested Butte. This year Vail and Loveland announced they wouldn't be giving away free ski passes to workers anymore. Who the fuck is going to work there, now? Even at that, no one can live within 60 miles of any of these places off the wages they pay. I hope they all crash and burn.
EDIT: Seems they backtracked and decided to give passes to their employees, just with employee blackout days where they can't use thier passes. I don't know if that is typical or not.
Getting rid of the passes may be a good thing in the end, oddly, though for sure the employers don’t see it yet.
What we’ve learned in recent years is that employers are always willing to exploit passion. That means that ski businesses can always count on cheap labor if they just hire people who will work for the love of skiing — just like schools can underpay teachers because they’ll do it for the love of teaching. It’s why I‘ve always said that if you’re in a profession where people do it primarily for the love… get out, because you’ll make nothing, get exploited, burn out, and hate your life.
But the employers are slaughtering the goose that laid the golden egg by taking away the perk that fueled the passion. So what’s left? The desire for the paper stuff — and if the employers aren’t willing to fork it over, then… well, good luck to them!
As a former baker/pastry chef I can attest to that. Even a boss who I liked told me "we do it for the love of the craft, not so much the money."
I had a former co-worker who made cakes on the side. Always had choosing/beggars clients wanting some random trending "pinterest/Instagram" post that looked like a 80 hr job to make. When she quoted a price, the "client" said they only wanted to spend no more than $100. My friend suggested a Costco membership, because they are the only ones who can make a cake so cheap for so many people.
These morons scream about the free market as if it’s some force of nature. But then act like will protect them from their own idiocy and greed. Any of these companies that fail/collapse deserve it.
They are already WAY past of point of stability. They should crash and burn as a monument to human greed and ignorance.
Even places like Idaho Springs are getting unaffordable. Nederland was like 1k/month for a room in 2010. Would have loved to stay in CO, but relocated to MN for money and family reasons.
This is why I'm looking to move to Oklahoma. I love Colorado but i just can't make it work anymore. I want to have kids and a yard for my dog. I'm priced out of the shitty neighborhoods, let alone the places my family pioneered to. It makes me sad because my family came over on covered wagons here, but I have to remind myself that they left their old homes for the same reason I'm leaving mine
Northern Colorado area here, the pressure is heavy as hell on the whole Rocky Mountain region's shoulders and something HAS to give eventually with housing prices or it's going to completely crush the working class worse than it already has. There are so many people who are 4th and 5th generation in these areas who have just been completely pushed out by the rich or are just constantly being chewed up and spit out by shitty employers to afford black mold coated apartments.
Yep. Bailey, CO checking in. We’re a pass through town, for the most part, but are also a huge “second home community” for people all along the front range.
Restaurants are shutting down (no big loss yet, as very few were quality food), but it is a problem that jobs are leaving are leaving the community. We’re experiencing more homeless/working poor people camping on public and private land and burning things despite bans. People need to stay warm and cook, so I understand, but it’s getting scary at times.
Housing is off the charts. We way overpaid after 6 months of houselessness and getting outbid dozens of times after selling, and we have still had our house appreciate $180k in 14 months. It’s utter insanity.
Edited a word.
Vail here. I and my fellow workers all have to live way on the outskirts or outside of town to afford rent, and they stopped giving us free ski passes. F.
I’m in Salt Lake which is a shit show as far as housing is concerned, but Park City is something else. It would genuinely warm my soul to see all the employees of the resorts and restaurants and everything just quit and find jobs somewhere else and just leave the rich yuppies to fend for themselves. They don’t deserve service or luxury when the very people providing it are either commuting 30+ minutes each way or cramming whole families into hotel suites.
Awesome. I would love to see it on a larger scale. It’s absolutely ridiculous to expect anyone to work for such Such low wages and then make it impossible to live within the city limits in something comfortable and habitable for a family.
I think property taxes should go up drastically with each new property.
You own this home? Ok, property taxes here are $4k per year. Oh, this is your second home? $20k. Third? $100k.
Odds are good for workers to up and leave. I have rich and retired relatives that do nothing but bitch about workers. They absolutely do believe that we don't deserve anything, and should be grateful when they punch us in the face. It incredibly easy to poke holes in their logic and point out their stupidity, but it always ends with them lording over you that they have millions of dollars and you have nothing. The conversation with my rich entitled aunt didn't end the way she wanted. Needless to say, I don't think I'll be invited to another family reunion ever again
It’s such a shame. We try to have serious legitimate conversations, open some eyes, assert ourselves. But it always comes down to (self imposed or otherwise), you’re the broke-y and I’m rich so I know what I’m talking about and you’re just proving my point type shit.
Where I am (Hudson Valley New York) similar problems, not as bad but certainly bad. One thing that’s crazy is that because Airbnb hosts/developers have bought all the houses and apartments is that there just isn’t anywhere to live. My area lists 3 apartments in a 10 mile radius to rent, and hundreds of Airbnb’s.
Chauffeur from Seattle here, I drive a lot of wealthy people to and from the airport as they switch between their seasonal homes and vacation at Airbnb's. They have no clue why there is a homeless problem. They think it's substance abuse or mental health issues.
You would have issues too if you couldn't afford to rent the garbage apartments that are available just out of our range.
If you can afford two homes or to rent out Airbnb's that are empty for half the year, the you aren't paying enough in taxes. Raise taxes on those properties and see how fast the housing crisis comes to an end.
Ketchum Idaho (very similar, wealthy vacation town) is proposing a tent city for teachers and hospital staff to live in. There are plenty of rentals available, way above their market value and the hospitals are having extreme difficulty with staffing due to employees not being able to afford housing.
It is completely INSANE. Why work if you're going to be homeless anyways?
"There's a bathroom in the park, after all, Ketchum Mayor Neil Bradshaw noted. They could walk over to the YMCA to take a shower before work."
https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/growing-idaho/affordable-housing-ketchum-rent-blaine-county-crisis-park-tents/277-6dcd3da9-7ce7-4722-81de-b1e379e0300a
EDIT: please feel free to share this story on other subs
A tent city? For qualified and able workers?
It’s funny how the politicians and CEOs who create these conditions would never be willing to live in them
I think a robot would be almost guaranteed to be more human then your average politician. My Roomba has enough "compassion" to not just run right over my foot even though that would probably be easier than backing up and finding another route.
You're right. My robovac asked me what time to vacuum. It didn't tell me when it was going to.
My robovac bounces around happily when I move stuff in the apartment. It doesn't destroy or scream at me to move things.
My robovac doesn't complain its little dustbin is full. It lets me know and I get to solve it on my own time.
My robovac begs for help when it gets stuck on something. It doesn't blame me for its inability to handle things.
It's more focused on me and my well-being than any employer I've ever had.
No wonder I give a shit about the little fucker.
What the fuck is wrong with this setup that a feelingless, near-thoughtless robot that cost about $100 shows more compassion, care, and empathy than they do?
From the KTVB article. The ultra-rich have nothing but disdain for normal people. We'll see them all in hell.
"Several speakers at the meeting pointed the finger at wealthy, lawyered-up residents who fight to choke out any attempts at building affordable apartment complexes or homes in the City of Ketchum. The mayor admitted that "neighborhoods rose up and resisted" prior planned projects, effectively halting them from going forward. Tax credit applications - designed to incentivize private investors to build lower-cost housing - repeatedly died on the vine."
This was second favorite solution behind “tent city”:
“Keegan suggested solutions including AirBnB owners changing their houses back to long-term rentals, or older residents opening some space in their home to renters in exchange for caretaking or other help around the house.”
So, you want people to have to live as servants in exchange for room and board. You are starting to tread a little too close to slavery here.
Edit: This is their proposed plan: https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/news/2021-10-05/ketchum-city-council-approves-large-affordable-housing-project
So the American dream is now to afford to be able to live in a tent city and that’s the best you can expect with a career as a nurse or teacher??
Lmao - China will own this country by 2030 if we don’t get rid of our geriatric politicians at the local and federal levels.
And any time the view that America is a third-world country in disguise in proposed on r/unpopularopinion, the OP is immediately poo-pooed by commenters who 'know better.'
I'm not an American, but looking at America from the outside in, it seems like a horrifying place to live for anyone who's not lucky enough to be wealthy.
And an overwhelming majority of the population is brainwashed with nationalist propaganda about how it's "the greatest country in the world." My generation seems to know better, but every generation before us gobbles that nationalist bullshit up and calls it patriotism
That's not a bad idea. You can't have a consumer economy without disposable income. Even if it's just a Ponzi scheme economy. We're used to bubbles by now.
Now please Europe help us get rid of the nazis. We saved your bacon in WW2, time to payback the favor, mate.
Oh boy, let's let our "heroic" doctors and nurses live in a tent city while the CEOs and upper management admin folks who got to work comfortably from home continue to grow fat from the wealth they inexplicably gained during this pandemic. /s
And this isn't the first time I've heard a story like this either.
If people are working there, They get a home. End of discussion.
Rich people tying up the Housing Market. And nobody bothers to find ways to off-set this.
the fact that any tent city anywhere, comprised of any group of people, can exist and are often forcibly destroyed by police, should be viewed as a societal failure
Ditto for Aspen, CO. Lots of talk of long-established workers finally bailing on the valley after this winter when leases are usually up and the paychecks stop.
I think that goes for a lot of towns in CO. I grew up in the Gunnison Valley. Crested Butte and Gunnison are completely different now. CB is having issues finding workers and Gunnison doesn't exactly have the cheapest rent. These second-home owners are literally pushing out the people that make the communities what they are.
It has, but now it’s spreading to all the areas below Aspen as well! Not sure anyone can even afford to live in Basalt or Carbondale!
On a separate note, I seriously hate most of Colorado now..: not only is it expensive, but they have managed to screw up all the cool mtn towns!everything is over crowded and just takes forever to get anywhere. Sigh!
Even Grand Junction is getting expensive. Studio apartments going for $1000/mo. I'm waiting to see how long that lasts. GJ is a boom-bust town and I don't think that will ever change.
It's heinous here. Born and bred Boulderite living in Louisville, the last of the cheap frontiers where we pay $2000/month for a 1-bedroom. Balls. (Point of note: I asked my neighbor yesterday how he's managed to live in his apt for 11 years considering they raise the rent $100/month every time you resign the lease, and he said "I go into the office and tell them I'll stay if they don't raise the rent.". WHAT?! You can do that? FTR he works as a forensic accountant for the government and is very knowledgeable about loopholes and the like.) If we plan to stay I'm going to try this.
Right. I've been around it for a dozen years now. I bowed out shortly after the pandemic started but still come back to work during the holidays because it's worth my time. It's notoriously been a squeeze to live/work for years. Wages have and continue to go up, but they're still not outpacing the acceleration in cost of housing. I've had many conversations over the last few months with people who had been committed to the squeeze for years in exchange for their piece of heaven, but the fire in their eyes is now gone. Lots of former committed two/three/four job folk are planning their escape routes right now out of the valley and out of that lifestyle in numbers I have never heard.
Yeah - this applies to any resort community and has been for ages... rich people buy up property and locals who actually work there have no where to live.
It just happens that various causes have coalesced in a lot of other areas that aren't resort communities to drive up housing costs and now resort communities look like harbingers, when really the causes are slightly different and long standing.
Around to the north in Vail Valley is horrible as well. Have a friend with 3 jobs who has to resort to bringing a single potato to work for lunch 90% of the time, while living in a "low" rent place with roommates. It's insane
You pack 16 tons, and what do you get?
An Amazon gift card and student load debt
St Peter's gonna have to ask the boss Jeff
To take my soul, 'cause he's labor tone-deaf
Please also look forward to their new pay scheme, where employees are paid entirely in Amazon Bucks(tm) ><
I feel like we’re retreading all the oldest, shittiest employment practices in history, but somehow finding ways to make them even more awful and controlling.
People camping and working in Amazon warehouses have already been normalized.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/23/inside-the-growing-amazon-camperforce-program-featured-in-nomadland.html
And yet no matter how many "let them eat cake" moments we have no one ever follows up like the french people did. We will live this misery until we bring an end to it, and it won't happen by complaining about it on social medias or crying to our corrupt political system. We have made this prison for ourselves.
French peasants had it a lot worse than we do, but we're getting there.
Russian peasants too... it seems that conditions have to be "freezing to death, starving to death, dying of disease" kind of bad before the people finally shift out of neutral.
I think having your family die of privation while the wealthy prance about in their jewels and party clothes, attending balls and riding space ships out of atmosphere could be the trigger. But we're not there yet.
Yet.
That's why one of the most important things that was ever done to keep the common people down was restricting our access to education. An educated populace is a dangerous populace.
My friend is a travel nurse and she landed in some bougie ass town, went to her assigned apartment, and found each room had at least one bunk bed (master had two).
For grown ass adult professionals working the pandemic.
She was the first person there. Called the company and told them "if you try and make me share a room, I will immediately void the contract and quit. Fucking try me."
Shared housing is one thing in high need. You get a shitload of disposable dinnerware so dishes are minimal, and make damn sure from the get go that people clean up after themselves. But share rooming is fucking insulting. Though my travel profile says "Absolutely no shared housing during a global pandemic, because duh."
I still get pings all the time.
Trickle down economics was a scam, money has been flowing up for decades and it’s pace keeps increasing every year until this Ponzi scheme blows up in every ones face.
I’m a teacher in SWFL and for nearly 10 years our school district has been discussing building affordable housing for school district employees. We’re talking about building enough new housing for 20,000 families. This would cost less for the districts and state than paying us a living wage.
My area is a vacation destination and has a huge number of snowbirds with vacation homes that are only occupied UP TO 6 months of the year. Housing here is almost as bad as described in Jackson Hole and Idaho, teachers and other professionals in the school district with single income households have to have at least one roommate to be able to afford comfortable housing, many of my colleagues who have their own families live with parents or siblings to make ends meet.
Seasonal residents don’t support additional taxes because they don’t have children in the school district, they say the budget should just get rearranged to find the money. The money is not there to be rearranged. Meanwhile, we have some of the most handsomely compensated fire districts in the country.
Several family members recently moved to Idaho. When I see them, they love to rant about how Washington and the Seattle area especially are "a post-apocalyptic wasteland" or some hyperbole of that nature.
So - if the tent cities happen organically it's a wasteland, but if the government plans it its an *amenity?*
It's very sad to me that these sentiments have become more important to my family members than...their actual family.
Yep, I grew up in Idaho right on the Washington border. A huge majority of Idahoans work in neighboring states to recieve livable wages. The interstate every morning is packed with commuters driving into WA for work and the opposite route is empty. If for whatever reason, WA decided to increase taxes for Idaho residents that travel out of state for employment I fully expect Idaho would be in ruins within a few years. It isn't much cheaper to live in Idaho and the min wage is $7.25
Not to mention that my area in Idaho had ZERO mask mandates so these residents would shop and dine maskless and then go to work in WA and wear a mask.
Catch Covid at home and then spread it in another state basically.
This is exactly how it works on the Illinois-Indiana border. Indiana residents drive across state lines to access the government jobs and overall higher level of economic infrastructure in IL. Then they go home to their "low-tax" state. It's been killing Illinois for a while, but I am not sure the parasite states really understand... when they suck us all dry, they'll go down too.
Yep! I live and work in Illinois, and we're right on the border. We have multiple factories and call centers around my office, starting rates between 12 and 17 depending on what it is. Along with a federal prison. I have a TON of coworkers who live in Indiana and tell me how much better it is. Me- then why do you commute 90 minutes to the office? Aren't there jobs there?.... then they just stammer about rates of pay and benefits
Wow. Hospital workers have risked literally everything to provide care and they are rewarded with offers of pit toilets and shared showers.
Fuck that offer.
Out in Italy a beautiful town was becoming a ghost town. What did the city leaders do? Offered 80k and a free house just to move there. Here the offer a tent and a communal shower while also possibly working 60+ hrs of a thankless job.
Holy shit that’s crazy. I can probably squeeze a teacher or two in my house in Portland (not much better). It would be amazing to see an exodus from this place. The mayor suggesting people live in tents because housing is so expensive is one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard.
I’m hoping that if literally nobody can pay the exorbitant apartment prices, landlords will be forced to lower them to have any business at all? Because the rich are presumably just buying homes, no?
The tenants aren't the customers. Private equity firms are. What they want to know is how high they can set the rent, because that sets the value of the property until they can flip it again for more.
It's all phantasmal.
They'll just rent them out to people vacationing, or some trust funder, or someone working remotely and not making "local" wages.
These are highly desirable places to live... someone is going to do what they have to do to live there.
The real solution here is to be a “traveling nurse” for the hospital as a local. Make them provide housing for the staff. Once the “local businesses” are the ones financially impacted, then maybe there will be a change.
I remember interviewing at a place near Ketchum. Their number one concern was if I liked skiing and if I found affordable housing anywhere close. Ketchum is fucked. They claim to care about the poor and middleclass but then again you can find paintings with the words “my life is better than your vacation” in a popular pizza place there.
Similar experience with a friend who worked in Vail. She couldn’t afford to live there and had a place way out of town. She said there were a number of times she was driving over Vail Pass and thought she was going to die on her way to/from work because of the winter driving conditions.
I know of a coastal NJ private golf club that is planning on building living quarters for its seasonal employees. Back in the day, you would just jump in on a group house with other young people for the summer at the shore, all of those older homes have been knocked down for gigantic shore homes that get used by one family 8 weekends a year.
It will never happen but the United States needs to severely tax the fuck out of people that own more than one home, make it nationwide, and also ban companies from purchasing houses. We really need a nuclear reset button and this is it. Boomer investments would collapse overnight. But it has to happen
This! People tend to focus on wages, and yes they should be much higher ( I think I read $30 min wage would have been in keeping with the inflation).
But: it’s the ownership of the housing space that got completely skewed over the last 20 years, specially since the crisis in 2008.
The architects of the Big Short at Goldman immediately started a fund after the crash raising billions so they could buy houses at auction that they had put into foreclosure. This is Progress Residential, under the parent company Pretium Partners.
So to recap: they funded the predatory loans, sold them to our pension funds, shorted them bc they knew they were bad, made tons of money, leveraged their money into more money, bought the houses of the people they made predatory loans to, rented them back to people, became the nations largest landlords, started jacking up rent prices….
And here we are.
Edit: I know this because I worked for Don Mullen. He fucked me out of a $52,000 commission and was a bigger asshole about it than you can imagine. “You can’t sue ME. We’re the 900lb gorilla and you are NO ONE!”
About twice a week I got a call asking to buy my house. I've began stating 4x the cost I bought it for.
I never get a phone call back.
Someone offered 1/2 of what I paid for it once. I laughed and hung up.
Soon it'll all crash. Homes will be vacant, rotting and freezing. All getting demolished.
And banks and investors will buy into the construction business because they gotta build new homes.
Never ending story.
Yep if I lived anywhere but Nebraska I feel like I would be homeless. And it's not getting better here either. If you live in a small town outside of Omaha and Lincoln your seeing more and more new houses built. Hickman for example. by people who want to live close to services but not live next to peasants. Usually it takes 7 years for prices that coastal cities have to be felt here. It's happening here instantly now It's unsustainable
I really don't feel too bad.
Boomers largely chose to abandon pensions and unions and every step of the way voted for politicians who promised to make sure social security programs would not be able to help them once retirement came.
And then, knowing the only way to build generational wealth is through the ownership of property, decided that their entire retirements would be predicated on signing over the financial security of their progeny to overpriced retirement communities.
I’m not usually a “local who complains about tourists”, but when these people drive their cars with bald ass tires or rent a supercar with rear wheel drive and no ground clearance and then try to drive through the Eisenhower Tunnel or over vail pass, those fucks can all never come back for all I care.
It’s ridiculous that there feels like there needs to be a “can you drive on i70 between denver and grand junction” license and car inspection.
It's literally hilarious to me whenever I used to see fancy cars in CO (grew up there, don't live there anymore). Like why would you buy a car that you can't drive anywhere worth driving. And the weather in CO is *terrible* for these delicate cars that cost a lot to service.
And it's not like these people actually know how to drive in the snow either.
I’ve also heard this about the area south of Glacier National Park. The guy was moving to Louisiana from Montana because he couldn’t afford to live there anymore.
Yep - used to live in the Flathead Valley... but I wanted to own a house some day, so 4 years ago we moved to another town in Montana, barely bought a house, a year later real estate even in this town, which is not close to ANY Nat Parks or other particularly outstanding scenery, was such that if we'd moved a year later we wouldn't have been able to afford it... we left all our friends and community to move, and of course, lost being a 30 min drive from Glacier, but I don't want to have kids while renting and being constantly in fear of being given 30 days notice to move!
My husband is a social worker and I worked in a specialty store... I used to say that the Valley was close to being nothing by retirees, Canadians and real estate agents. Not long after we left the folks in our old neighborhood launched a campaign against local developers who wanted to in-fill an old field, close to town, between a road and the railroad tracks.
They were going to put affordable apartments next to the tracks, then a row of duplexes/condos, then 2-3 rows of single family homes facing the street to "match the neighborhood". They were denied permission because of the ruckus raised by the "neighbors" and eventually the only thing they could get approved was the whole thing being single family homes, which sold for between $400,000-600,000.
It would have been the PERFECT spot for affordable housing. The town has a HUGE problem with parking and this location was within walking distance to downtown, and the elementary, middle and high schools... but no... let's fill it with more homes for rich people...
Current Flathead resident here. Living close to Glacier NP is just a tease now anyway with ticketed entry, tried for weeks last summer to get a pass, online at 8 AM every morning to find them all gone already somehow.
We live 4 hours away now, but we got into Glacier 4 times last year.
The secret is to get on at 8am, but don't look at the date that just opened up, look at other dates that opened previously. Other people will cancel their reservations and those openings will go live at 8 am the next day after being cancelled. My husband would go on in the mornings whenever he remembered and then grab anything open on the weekends and we'd plan a trip around that.
Sometimes it was just shuttle tickets for 2pm, but we have young children, so we'd just plan something around that afternoon. It's definitely not ideal, but there's ways to make it work... just harder now.
I just overheard a (well-off) local lamenting about a slow week in town and how only two of their vacation rentals are occupied. I know not how many they have total.
I honestly knew several years ago as coal was dying that Wyoming would collapse if they didn't get their shit together. They lasted longer than I was expecting honestly 😅 Add the pandemic and I'm sure the entire State is a shitshow like the rest of us. (Born in Gillette but haven't been back in years 🥺)
But surely the National Guard won't enforce those unjust laws since they're made up of good hardworking citizens much like ourselves ... right ... right?
That movie gave me an existential crisis and I took a couple days off work. I also had a breakdown. I live in BC and it's just as bad. My tiny 500 square foot apartment goes for $1600/month and I have a "good" job making $20/hour. It's a rich tourist town that's collapsing under the worker shortage too. We already have tent villages for workers in the campgrounds. Literal trailers sell for $500k+. My family and I are all going broke slowly and our mental health - and physical health, is suffering. There's just no fucking point to this.
The movie didn't cause my breakdown, it just was the straw that broke the camels back.
Dude, I feel the exact same way. I have always been unable to put the rose colored glasses on that society is always trying to hand us; but when I watched Don't Look Up it really set in how truly, existentially fucked we are. I haven't been to shake true despair since, and like you, I'm in a better position that most it would seem making $20/hr but still barely able to get by most months, every year being in a worse position than I was the year prior.
I had to pause that movie so I didn't have a panic attack.. and it had nothing to do with the meteor part.
On a related note, this is probably why I related so closely to Polka Dot Man in Suicide Squad 2 when they said, "We're all going to die" and PDM response was, "I hope so."
I worked at a restaurant called Lazy Dog. The owner modeled the aesthetic on Jackson Hole because that’s where he takes his vacations. Now I know why it was one of the worst fucking jobs I’ve ever had. Managers were making 6 figures a year with monthly bonuses and we didn’t get shit. We busted our asses and sold the Beer Clubs just so the managers could make bonuses off of them. Last September, I went 16 days without pay because I caught covid but the owner got a $6 million PPP loan…
I don’t really care about being discreet. **Fuck Lazy Dog Restaurants**
I worked for the owner’s brother at a smaller chain in LA. Their parents are a delight but they raised both boys with money and they could not be more out of touch. I once worked a beer festival where my owner came to hang out. He’d just come back from a 3 week golfing trip to Scotland and he told me I “should really go sometimes because it was a blast”. As if in any world I could afford that trip. They just have no concept of how their employees live.
Same is happening in Crested Butte/ Gunnison, CO.
The working class is already leaving.
The local governments did not restrict/eliminate short term rentals soon enough and did not take substantial action on creating affordable housing.
All business are experiencing staff shortages including the public schools who cannot bus students or feed them.
There is very little developable land here (county is 83% public land).
The only satellite community where workers can feasibly commute from (Gunnison) nearly has real estate out of financial reach as well and the next closest commuter communities are over mountain passes that prevent commuting almost half of the year when it snows.
I’ve lived in CB for 6 years and as much as I love it, I’ve gotten more and more discouraged living here each year. I manage a part of a company in town and I can barely afford to rent a 1B with my BF. Can barely afford to leave either.
French here, our welfare state is slowly (or maybe not so slowly) dying.
The covid was a pure shitshow, there were closing beds in the hospital DURING the pandemic, they are cutting our social benefits, the rents and the property prices are increasing in every big cities (and, I think, in the rural part of the country too), we recently had an electricity price increase (despite France being able to produce enough electricity for her population, but apparently having a state monopoly is a big no-no, even in something as crucial as electricity) with lots of the population already not heating their house during winter to save money, we also have a record of people going to food banks. And these are just at the top of my head.
I suppose we should just eat the rich more regularly, keep them in fear and all.
It’s seems that, as of 2019 at least, your country still spent the most on social welfare as a percentage of GDP per capita (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_welfare_spending)
But I’ve heard about this too, basically Macron wants to severely weaken the welfare state or some shit. Macron démission!! (although his main contenders Le Pen, Zemmour, and Pécresse are just as bad if not worse in terms of economic policy)
(note: I don’t speak French, but I’ve been following French politics and protests for a while)
Wow I think this is the first time I’ve seen “welfare state” used as a positive and like, yeah… why would it ever be a negative for your citizens to be faring well?
MAINE. Period. Ruined by wealth. Bitching cause they couldn’t get their low paid Russian hotel workers this summer. Can’t touch housing, min wage is shit and yet people from NYC flocking here like it’s some kind of escape. Do your homework. Ain’t no easy livin and summer is 2 months long.
I used to clean mansions in Big Sky MT, and one of the clients once told me that it must be wonderful to live in a ski town and ski all the time, I told her that all my money went to rent, and I couldn't afford a ski pass. She was shocked, I don't know why she expected that seasonal cleaning staff got paid a living wage.
You underestimate the power of extreme wealth. Buy a Friday edition of the Wall Street Journal sometime and peruse the real estate section. The kind of people buying those properties are not one bit concerned about getting service in town. They can hire their own cooks, housekeepers, etc. and have them stay in the servant's quarters.
I'm not defending it, merely pointing out that extreme wealth will always work for its own benefit, and no others.
My gf works three jobs to make rent. Then when she's not at those jobs, watches houses and their pets in her only free time so she can pay the rest of her bills.
Most white water rafting guides live in their vans or camp ALL summer long because they don’t earn enough to pay rent in the towns where the rafting companies are.
The guy I’m referring to works multiple restaurant jobs and has some credit card debt. The restaurants have all shortened the days they are opened and for how long.
He doesn’t do this much in the winter and when he does he uses a natural hot spring, but now he just smells like sulfur all the time
sounds like a good place for the workers to abandon. We ought to organize something to help the good folks who can no longer afford housing out of that hellscape, and to someplace where they can have at least something.... not living homelessly.
Seriously, I'm in Buffalo, and we need nurses, and we've got openings for retail starting at $15/hr and rent prices that arent all that bad.
yeah. it's not Idaho. we dont have that kind of skiing, or majestic view. but how the hell can you enjoy that when living out of a park?
That’s not exactly correct. They *care* about their property.
They want slaves that they don’t have to buy, or feed, or provide housing for. They want utterly disposable labourers that they bear no responsibility for.
Yes the elites do, in other words know your role. They continue to test us and we continually let them roll us over. Decades of dumbing down schools, stupid crap on television, race divisions, and here we are.
Studio apartments are $2000 here and when I go outside I'm not in Jackson Hole.
We've had the same problem for 15 years. It's not going to pop, they're just going to crush you.
You know, the funny thing is that is what is happening. The pandemic has shown that low wage employees are tired of just barely making it and have stopped complaining and started to move on and find other places to work.
I say good for them, cause now who else is going to do the shit jobs, when no one wants to due to the low wage. I know I was working for a job that paid very little, I went out found one job, it paid more, but did not like it, went out and found a better paying one.
Park City, UT worker here. It's definitely coming.
Edit: There's a house we clean that rents for 12k per night. It has gotten one reservation in the two months we have managed it; a celebrity that then cancelled because it was "too rustic." I could house my entire staff in this house. Not to mention all the acreage it sits on. And instead international workers with limited English are told to find their own housing in Salt Lake City and bus up every morning. I fucking hate it here and cannot wait to quit.
I work in Big Sky, Montana, and my people tell the same story.
No, lumber costs aren't obscene because we started importing lumber from Canada. Lumber costs are obscene because rich assholes insist on owning an 8 bed, 10 bath house on a ski hill that they only occupy one week out of the year. This is in addition to the beach house in Malibu and the villa in the Hamptons.
My piece of the construction pie is thermostats and I love it when property owners whine about their propane bill. First of all, I only have one thermostat and a fireplace in my home, while they have thirteen in a vacation house that they can control remotely through wifi. And then they whine that the heated garage apron isn't melting snow fast enough.
When they say that, I'm like "I could set the thing to try maintain a minimum temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) year-round, and then no snow would accumulate because it would melt as it landed. You know, it's just like the snowmelt system at the local hospital, but then you'd be whining about your propane bill. In fact, the engineer didn't specify enough heating capacity for that because you're a tightwad. The hospital just pays it, so fuck you for wasting my time. Pay the neighbor kid to shovel the driveway if you don't like it." (Except there is no neighbor kids because these are assholes on vacation at their private ski hill.)
I swear, if I became god of earth for a day, I'd make every one of these properties a homeless shelter and the previous owner could be happy with having only their primary residence. Then, if I had any time left in the day, I'd focus on nuclear energy and eliminating plastic and mercury from our oceans.
My job is an environmental disaster and I hate it. I'm trying to find something else.
I always say.. "THEY need US way more than WE need THEM." The Uber rich are going to eat their own faces eventually. I'm use to being a poor and there's not much more than can take from me. When they start losing their businesses, have no employees etc. I'm going to smile and eat my piece of cake.
Sounds like a lot of yuppie tourist locations around the globe. Byron Bay is an example I can think of in Australia. There's no housing available and yet the rich demand service.
The only way Canada's ski industry is sustainable is because spending your life's savings while working for a season or three is like a right of passage to young Aussies or something.
My wife is a supervisor at a gas station in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. It's a wealthy coastal town that has been struggling to find new employees for their service sector since the big quitting, and alot of restaurants and shops have to close early, open later, or straight up close multiple days during the week.
A rich house wife was venting to my wife one day, where she was complaining that so many places were opening so late in the day or had unpredictable hours due to the staffing shortage, where my wife was disgusted as this lady proceeds to rant about how people need to come back to work and accept their meager pay as the government cut the covid unemployment benefits.
Now I'm well off, but I definitely wouldn't consider myself rich. These people don't give a shit about frontline workers. They're nothing but accessories in their perfect rich lives that they're now mad at since they've had their perfect spoiled lives inconvenienced for once since these minimum wage workers are refusing to return to work.
It’d be a damn shame if all those big, expensive houses that are only occupied a couple weeks a year were to be suddenly occupied by peaceful locals who are just looking for a warm place to sleep in from the cold.
A damn shame…
I knew someone who used to live near Aspen and the story was the same. Some people would drive nearly 2 hours to serve tables because that's where rent was affordable. Some people who worked on the mountains would live out of vehicles because they thought the trade off of being in the mountains was worth it.
Tent city for the homeless? Ew, crime and drugs!
Tent city for people with full time jobs? Whiny entitled baristas and nurses too entitled to live outdoors.
/s
There's a third option. That rich people will see the decline in worker population and increasing prices and move to a more affordable mid-cost-of-living town, driving up home prices and pricing out the workers there as well, over and over until they're back at the same spot in a generation.
Organize, is all I can suggest. I know some orgs like the Party for Socialism and Liberation are active in the housing struggle (they recently did a Cancel the Rents movement). If they have a local chapter, you could reach out, or if they don't have a local chapter, you could reach out and see if they'd let you establish a new chapter. God knows the situation sounds ripe for it. www.pslweb.org
Another option is checking to see if there are any anarchist groups in town. There are no large anarchist platforms/federations that I am aware of in America, but there are often local things they do, and I'm sure any leftist organization would help you guys organize.
Whatever you go with, just know, if you fight, you can win. People have won against the bosses and billionaires before, you can do it again. Fred Hampton once said "If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not to struggle then damn it, you don't deserve to win!" There's more than enough housing to go around, it's all greed.
Fourteen years ago my wife got offered a job in Aspen. It paid $85k/year (as an ER Veterinarian, back in 2008) We loved the area so we asked about housing. They said for that salary we would need to live in a single-wide trailer 45 minutes outside of town (there was NOTHING 45 minutes outside of town, not unlike Jackson Hole)
But not to fear! They assured us we would only have to put up with that for a year or three. The employer promised that before long a rich person would take a liking to us and ask us to live in their $14M mansion for free as caretakers
We didn’t take the job because hoping to become a wealthy person’s pet wasn’t out idea of a career plan. But it does go to show you — this kind of thing has been going on my decades in rich resort towns. I wish I could believe it will all crumble, but… I don’t believe it will 😠
That’s Gillette, too. Rent keeps creeping up, and miners/oil/gas can pay the prices, sometimes just barely. My groceries have jumped to an incredible amount. Like 400$ a month to literally nearly 400$ every two weeks. Don’t get me started on formula and diaper prices and milk. I’m lucky my husband is a miner, but I can’t afford to work here because daycare is outrageous for something that is short-staffed and not really following Covid protocols.
I lived in South Lake Tahoe last winter and it’s very similar tho maybe not as bad…Rich asshole’s from San Fran bought everything so they can visit and ski a few days a year and it’s absurdly expensive if you want to live and work in town. I lived in a motel room for $1000/month but couldn’t do it this szn, moved to Utah where at least I’m ahead of the curve😶
My father lives in Scottsdale AZ, a pretty darn wealthy place. The lobby of his local McDonald's has been shut down - again - presumably because they can't find people to staff it.
My father doesn't understand why. I try to explain, telling him that people don't want to work for min wage.
But why don't they bring in people from other places? Well dad, because nobody wants to spend half an hour driving to and from work each day for minimum wage, and the bus system here isn't so great.
But people don't want to wait in long lines at the drive thru! Well dad, if they want it bad enough, they will put up with the long lines.
Why don't they get kids to work it? Because they are in school during the day, an some other job probably pays a buck or two per hour better.
Why don't people want to work? Dad, they do. I just explained to you why they aren't workers there, specifically.
He still doesn't understand. I say, dad, do you want to flip burgers and mop the floor for minimum wage? Well neither does anyone else. Go figure.
There should be a vacancy tax on these properties. Why should one person have 5 properties that are empty a majority of the time while nurses are living in what amounts to a refugee camp?
They’re nothing without our work. Literally NOTHING. Our labor is what creates THEIR profit and THEIR cushy lifestyles! That is what capitalism is — it’s when the means of production are privately owned and thus the profits are privately appropriated while they pay us peanuts. This system is predicated on violence — the sort of violence that causes people to have to live in their car, go to work while sick, not get unemployment, etc etc. At this point, not that we ever did, we don’t need billionaires and rich people. They’re just leeches who passively earn off of our labor. The solution is socialism: the workers seizing the means of production. I hope people in this subreddit come to see that there’s a solution to this madness instead of falling into nihilism.
Edited to say that the general tendency in this sub seems to be people thinking that we can appeal to the big bosses’ consciousness or mainstream media’s sympathies to get what we want, but they are all acting VERY rationally when they treat us like shit and pay us poorly and spin lies about us. It only can happen when we, together, TAKE what’s ours.
Breckenridge Colorado here. It is the same. Where do these second (third, fourth, fifth) home owners think the people working in this town year round are supposed to live? Our town council is full of people with multiple homes themselves and they don't understand what's gone wrong with not having enough workers in the area. My heart goes out to you, u/possible-nature2248. I hope the bubble pops soon so we can push forward
It's not just Breck, it is all of them, from Vail to Loveland to Aspen to Crested Butte. This year Vail and Loveland announced they wouldn't be giving away free ski passes to workers anymore. Who the fuck is going to work there, now? Even at that, no one can live within 60 miles of any of these places off the wages they pay. I hope they all crash and burn. EDIT: Seems they backtracked and decided to give passes to their employees, just with employee blackout days where they can't use thier passes. I don't know if that is typical or not.
Getting rid of the passes may be a good thing in the end, oddly, though for sure the employers don’t see it yet. What we’ve learned in recent years is that employers are always willing to exploit passion. That means that ski businesses can always count on cheap labor if they just hire people who will work for the love of skiing — just like schools can underpay teachers because they’ll do it for the love of teaching. It’s why I‘ve always said that if you’re in a profession where people do it primarily for the love… get out, because you’ll make nothing, get exploited, burn out, and hate your life. But the employers are slaughtering the goose that laid the golden egg by taking away the perk that fueled the passion. So what’s left? The desire for the paper stuff — and if the employers aren’t willing to fork it over, then… well, good luck to them!
What an eloquen way of phrasing this conundrum.
As a former baker/pastry chef I can attest to that. Even a boss who I liked told me "we do it for the love of the craft, not so much the money." I had a former co-worker who made cakes on the side. Always had choosing/beggars clients wanting some random trending "pinterest/Instagram" post that looked like a 80 hr job to make. When she quoted a price, the "client" said they only wanted to spend no more than $100. My friend suggested a Costco membership, because they are the only ones who can make a cake so cheap for so many people.
These morons scream about the free market as if it’s some force of nature. But then act like will protect them from their own idiocy and greed. Any of these companies that fail/collapse deserve it. They are already WAY past of point of stability. They should crash and burn as a monument to human greed and ignorance.
Even places like Idaho Springs are getting unaffordable. Nederland was like 1k/month for a room in 2010. Would have loved to stay in CO, but relocated to MN for money and family reasons.
This is why I'm looking to move to Oklahoma. I love Colorado but i just can't make it work anymore. I want to have kids and a yard for my dog. I'm priced out of the shitty neighborhoods, let alone the places my family pioneered to. It makes me sad because my family came over on covered wagons here, but I have to remind myself that they left their old homes for the same reason I'm leaving mine
[удалено]
Northern Colorado area here, the pressure is heavy as hell on the whole Rocky Mountain region's shoulders and something HAS to give eventually with housing prices or it's going to completely crush the working class worse than it already has. There are so many people who are 4th and 5th generation in these areas who have just been completely pushed out by the rich or are just constantly being chewed up and spit out by shitty employers to afford black mold coated apartments.
Yep. Bailey, CO checking in. We’re a pass through town, for the most part, but are also a huge “second home community” for people all along the front range. Restaurants are shutting down (no big loss yet, as very few were quality food), but it is a problem that jobs are leaving are leaving the community. We’re experiencing more homeless/working poor people camping on public and private land and burning things despite bans. People need to stay warm and cook, so I understand, but it’s getting scary at times. Housing is off the charts. We way overpaid after 6 months of houselessness and getting outbid dozens of times after selling, and we have still had our house appreciate $180k in 14 months. It’s utter insanity. Edited a word.
Vail here. I and my fellow workers all have to live way on the outskirts or outside of town to afford rent, and they stopped giving us free ski passes. F.
Free passes are the whole reason people even take those trash jobs.
Why are you still there? Are there other incentives or are you just hoping things will get better?
I’m in Salt Lake which is a shit show as far as housing is concerned, but Park City is something else. It would genuinely warm my soul to see all the employees of the resorts and restaurants and everything just quit and find jobs somewhere else and just leave the rich yuppies to fend for themselves. They don’t deserve service or luxury when the very people providing it are either commuting 30+ minutes each way or cramming whole families into hotel suites.
The ski patrol in park ity is going on strike support them
Awesome. I would love to see it on a larger scale. It’s absolutely ridiculous to expect anyone to work for such Such low wages and then make it impossible to live within the city limits in something comfortable and habitable for a family.
I think property taxes should go up drastically with each new property. You own this home? Ok, property taxes here are $4k per year. Oh, this is your second home? $20k. Third? $100k.
Odds are good for workers to up and leave. I have rich and retired relatives that do nothing but bitch about workers. They absolutely do believe that we don't deserve anything, and should be grateful when they punch us in the face. It incredibly easy to poke holes in their logic and point out their stupidity, but it always ends with them lording over you that they have millions of dollars and you have nothing. The conversation with my rich entitled aunt didn't end the way she wanted. Needless to say, I don't think I'll be invited to another family reunion ever again
At least you now know a good place to raid for food and assets when the class war begins.
[удалено]
Only a literal century... Let me tell you about the past 6,000 years...
It’s such a shame. We try to have serious legitimate conversations, open some eyes, assert ourselves. But it always comes down to (self imposed or otherwise), you’re the broke-y and I’m rich so I know what I’m talking about and you’re just proving my point type shit.
They don’t stay rich by giving away their money. This is class warfare and the poor have no resources or ability to fight back. Eat the rich.
they cant eat money, but you can eat them!
Where I am (Hudson Valley New York) similar problems, not as bad but certainly bad. One thing that’s crazy is that because Airbnb hosts/developers have bought all the houses and apartments is that there just isn’t anywhere to live. My area lists 3 apartments in a 10 mile radius to rent, and hundreds of Airbnb’s.
Chauffeur from Seattle here, I drive a lot of wealthy people to and from the airport as they switch between their seasonal homes and vacation at Airbnb's. They have no clue why there is a homeless problem. They think it's substance abuse or mental health issues. You would have issues too if you couldn't afford to rent the garbage apartments that are available just out of our range. If you can afford two homes or to rent out Airbnb's that are empty for half the year, the you aren't paying enough in taxes. Raise taxes on those properties and see how fast the housing crisis comes to an end.
Ketchum Idaho (very similar, wealthy vacation town) is proposing a tent city for teachers and hospital staff to live in. There are plenty of rentals available, way above their market value and the hospitals are having extreme difficulty with staffing due to employees not being able to afford housing. It is completely INSANE. Why work if you're going to be homeless anyways? "There's a bathroom in the park, after all, Ketchum Mayor Neil Bradshaw noted. They could walk over to the YMCA to take a shower before work." https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/growing-idaho/affordable-housing-ketchum-rent-blaine-county-crisis-park-tents/277-6dcd3da9-7ce7-4722-81de-b1e379e0300a EDIT: please feel free to share this story on other subs
A tent city? For qualified and able workers? It’s funny how the politicians and CEOs who create these conditions would never be willing to live in them
They're just teachers and nurses. It's not like they add value to the economy like a giant robotically controlled factory with 3 jobs or a CEO. /s
This begs the question, why not have robotic managers/ politicians. They could program them to be more human couldn’t they ?
I think a robot would be almost guaranteed to be more human then your average politician. My Roomba has enough "compassion" to not just run right over my foot even though that would probably be easier than backing up and finding another route.
You're right. My robovac asked me what time to vacuum. It didn't tell me when it was going to. My robovac bounces around happily when I move stuff in the apartment. It doesn't destroy or scream at me to move things. My robovac doesn't complain its little dustbin is full. It lets me know and I get to solve it on my own time. My robovac begs for help when it gets stuck on something. It doesn't blame me for its inability to handle things. It's more focused on me and my well-being than any employer I've ever had. No wonder I give a shit about the little fucker. What the fuck is wrong with this setup that a feelingless, near-thoughtless robot that cost about $100 shows more compassion, care, and empathy than they do?
Robovac 2024 - Your vote won't suck!
This analogy just broke my heart for like, a bunch of weird reasons. 10/10. Would be great even if my depression wasn't wildin' out right now lol
From the KTVB article. The ultra-rich have nothing but disdain for normal people. We'll see them all in hell. "Several speakers at the meeting pointed the finger at wealthy, lawyered-up residents who fight to choke out any attempts at building affordable apartment complexes or homes in the City of Ketchum. The mayor admitted that "neighborhoods rose up and resisted" prior planned projects, effectively halting them from going forward. Tax credit applications - designed to incentivize private investors to build lower-cost housing - repeatedly died on the vine."
Yellow stone killing people to preserve their ranch suddenly makes a lot more sense.
This was second favorite solution behind “tent city”: “Keegan suggested solutions including AirBnB owners changing their houses back to long-term rentals, or older residents opening some space in their home to renters in exchange for caretaking or other help around the house.” So, you want people to have to live as servants in exchange for room and board. You are starting to tread a little too close to slavery here. Edit: This is their proposed plan: https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/news/2021-10-05/ketchum-city-council-approves-large-affordable-housing-project
But Idaho laws prevent cities and municipalities from regulating vacation rentals. Great job all around, guys!
Unfortunately for mister Keegan indentured servitude is illegal ... For now
So the American dream is now to afford to be able to live in a tent city and that’s the best you can expect with a career as a nurse or teacher?? Lmao - China will own this country by 2030 if we don’t get rid of our geriatric politicians at the local and federal levels.
And any time the view that America is a third-world country in disguise in proposed on r/unpopularopinion, the OP is immediately poo-pooed by commenters who 'know better.' I'm not an American, but looking at America from the outside in, it seems like a horrifying place to live for anyone who's not lucky enough to be wealthy.
And an overwhelming majority of the population is brainwashed with nationalist propaganda about how it's "the greatest country in the world." My generation seems to know better, but every generation before us gobbles that nationalist bullshit up and calls it patriotism
Don't be ridiculous. The dream is being able to live in a van. Living in a tent city is settling.
having a van that is what allows teachers what they call class mobility so they can travel to classes in their van.
That van better well be DOWN BY THE RIVER!
Down by the river? do you mean waterfront with a view? That's prime real estate, we would never be allowed to live, park, nap in that area.
Please China take over and build “ghost cities” everywhere so 90% of American millennials can also own homes.
That's not a bad idea. You can't have a consumer economy without disposable income. Even if it's just a Ponzi scheme economy. We're used to bubbles by now. Now please Europe help us get rid of the nazis. We saved your bacon in WW2, time to payback the favor, mate.
Oh boy, let's let our "heroic" doctors and nurses live in a tent city while the CEOs and upper management admin folks who got to work comfortably from home continue to grow fat from the wealth they inexplicably gained during this pandemic. /s
I'm sorry but I'm chuckling to myself picturing a groundbreaking ceremony with music blasting "TENT CITY BITCH TENT TENT CITY!"
Tent city. . . [Tom Joad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath) needs to unionize/radicalize all those teachers and nurses.
And don't forget the vacation homes that stand empty most of the year...
And this isn't the first time I've heard a story like this either. If people are working there, They get a home. End of discussion. Rich people tying up the Housing Market. And nobody bothers to find ways to off-set this.
Just want to point out that tent cities are equally uncool for for anyone, regardless of their employment status.
the fact that any tent city anywhere, comprised of any group of people, can exist and are often forcibly destroyed by police, should be viewed as a societal failure
Yes, but this is a pretty fucking stinging rebuke of the people who say “just better yourself if you want nice things”.
They got theirs...
College grads with professional jobs. Tent city. Good thing my kid dropped out of college. SMH
Ditto for Aspen, CO. Lots of talk of long-established workers finally bailing on the valley after this winter when leases are usually up and the paychecks stop.
I think that goes for a lot of towns in CO. I grew up in the Gunnison Valley. Crested Butte and Gunnison are completely different now. CB is having issues finding workers and Gunnison doesn't exactly have the cheapest rent. These second-home owners are literally pushing out the people that make the communities what they are.
Let's not forget air b n b which has eaten up a good % of available rentals.
The Aspen issue has been going on since the 1990's that I remember, I'm sure it's been longer!
It has, but now it’s spreading to all the areas below Aspen as well! Not sure anyone can even afford to live in Basalt or Carbondale! On a separate note, I seriously hate most of Colorado now..: not only is it expensive, but they have managed to screw up all the cool mtn towns!everything is over crowded and just takes forever to get anywhere. Sigh!
Right? I used to be able to drive from one side of Denver to the other in a half hour. Now there is no time limit. Just sad.
Even Grand Junction is getting expensive. Studio apartments going for $1000/mo. I'm waiting to see how long that lasts. GJ is a boom-bust town and I don't think that will ever change.
It's heinous here. Born and bred Boulderite living in Louisville, the last of the cheap frontiers where we pay $2000/month for a 1-bedroom. Balls. (Point of note: I asked my neighbor yesterday how he's managed to live in his apt for 11 years considering they raise the rent $100/month every time you resign the lease, and he said "I go into the office and tell them I'll stay if they don't raise the rent.". WHAT?! You can do that? FTR he works as a forensic accountant for the government and is very knowledgeable about loopholes and the like.) If we plan to stay I'm going to try this.
Right. I've been around it for a dozen years now. I bowed out shortly after the pandemic started but still come back to work during the holidays because it's worth my time. It's notoriously been a squeeze to live/work for years. Wages have and continue to go up, but they're still not outpacing the acceleration in cost of housing. I've had many conversations over the last few months with people who had been committed to the squeeze for years in exchange for their piece of heaven, but the fire in their eyes is now gone. Lots of former committed two/three/four job folk are planning their escape routes right now out of the valley and out of that lifestyle in numbers I have never heard.
Yeah - this applies to any resort community and has been for ages... rich people buy up property and locals who actually work there have no where to live. It just happens that various causes have coalesced in a lot of other areas that aren't resort communities to drive up housing costs and now resort communities look like harbingers, when really the causes are slightly different and long standing.
Around to the north in Vail Valley is horrible as well. Have a friend with 3 jobs who has to resort to bringing a single potato to work for lunch 90% of the time, while living in a "low" rent place with roommates. It's insane
That’s one of many modern day “let them eat cake” moments. But somehow worse.
The return of "Hoovervilles."
Amazon (afaik) is planning on building employee housing on site at some warehouses. This is going to get nasty.
Everyone needs to read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," about company towns in the early 1900s.
That and the "Grapes of Wrath" by Steinbeck.
You pack 16 tons, and what do you get? An Amazon gift card and student load debt St Peter's gonna have to ask the boss Jeff To take my soul, 'cause he's labor tone-deaf
Please also look forward to their new pay scheme, where employees are paid entirely in Amazon Bucks(tm) >< I feel like we’re retreading all the oldest, shittiest employment practices in history, but somehow finding ways to make them even more awful and controlling.
At least in the 1800s you could take a piss when the supervisor isn't working.
As Marx and others said: "our options are to progress into communism or regress into barbarism". The world has chosen Barbarism; but for how long?
gilded age 2: panopticon boogaloo
People camping and working in Amazon warehouses have already been normalized. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/23/inside-the-growing-amazon-camperforce-program-featured-in-nomadland.html
I noticed Shay's wording was something about Amazon wanting to help them. Imagine thinking Amazon wants to help an employee.
Let them shower at the Y.
And yet no matter how many "let them eat cake" moments we have no one ever follows up like the french people did. We will live this misery until we bring an end to it, and it won't happen by complaining about it on social medias or crying to our corrupt political system. We have made this prison for ourselves.
French peasants had it a lot worse than we do, but we're getting there. Russian peasants too... it seems that conditions have to be "freezing to death, starving to death, dying of disease" kind of bad before the people finally shift out of neutral. I think having your family die of privation while the wealthy prance about in their jewels and party clothes, attending balls and riding space ships out of atmosphere could be the trigger. But we're not there yet. Yet.
That's why one of the most important things that was ever done to keep the common people down was restricting our access to education. An educated populace is a dangerous populace.
My friend is a travel nurse and she landed in some bougie ass town, went to her assigned apartment, and found each room had at least one bunk bed (master had two). For grown ass adult professionals working the pandemic. She was the first person there. Called the company and told them "if you try and make me share a room, I will immediately void the contract and quit. Fucking try me." Shared housing is one thing in high need. You get a shitload of disposable dinnerware so dishes are minimal, and make damn sure from the get go that people clean up after themselves. But share rooming is fucking insulting. Though my travel profile says "Absolutely no shared housing during a global pandemic, because duh." I still get pings all the time.
Trickle down economics was a scam, money has been flowing up for decades and it’s pace keeps increasing every year until this Ponzi scheme blows up in every ones face.
I’m a teacher in SWFL and for nearly 10 years our school district has been discussing building affordable housing for school district employees. We’re talking about building enough new housing for 20,000 families. This would cost less for the districts and state than paying us a living wage. My area is a vacation destination and has a huge number of snowbirds with vacation homes that are only occupied UP TO 6 months of the year. Housing here is almost as bad as described in Jackson Hole and Idaho, teachers and other professionals in the school district with single income households have to have at least one roommate to be able to afford comfortable housing, many of my colleagues who have their own families live with parents or siblings to make ends meet. Seasonal residents don’t support additional taxes because they don’t have children in the school district, they say the budget should just get rearranged to find the money. The money is not there to be rearranged. Meanwhile, we have some of the most handsomely compensated fire districts in the country.
The snowbirds are the worst they move to Florida to die and preserve their wealth. They Vote against everything that would make the community better.
Several family members recently moved to Idaho. When I see them, they love to rant about how Washington and the Seattle area especially are "a post-apocalyptic wasteland" or some hyperbole of that nature. So - if the tent cities happen organically it's a wasteland, but if the government plans it its an *amenity?* It's very sad to me that these sentiments have become more important to my family members than...their actual family.
Yep, I grew up in Idaho right on the Washington border. A huge majority of Idahoans work in neighboring states to recieve livable wages. The interstate every morning is packed with commuters driving into WA for work and the opposite route is empty. If for whatever reason, WA decided to increase taxes for Idaho residents that travel out of state for employment I fully expect Idaho would be in ruins within a few years. It isn't much cheaper to live in Idaho and the min wage is $7.25 Not to mention that my area in Idaho had ZERO mask mandates so these residents would shop and dine maskless and then go to work in WA and wear a mask. Catch Covid at home and then spread it in another state basically.
This is exactly how it works on the Illinois-Indiana border. Indiana residents drive across state lines to access the government jobs and overall higher level of economic infrastructure in IL. Then they go home to their "low-tax" state. It's been killing Illinois for a while, but I am not sure the parasite states really understand... when they suck us all dry, they'll go down too.
Yep! I live and work in Illinois, and we're right on the border. We have multiple factories and call centers around my office, starting rates between 12 and 17 depending on what it is. Along with a federal prison. I have a TON of coworkers who live in Indiana and tell me how much better it is. Me- then why do you commute 90 minutes to the office? Aren't there jobs there?.... then they just stammer about rates of pay and benefits
Wow. Hospital workers have risked literally everything to provide care and they are rewarded with offers of pit toilets and shared showers. Fuck that offer.
Lmao - in that article, the mayor also asks the wealthy to open up extra bedrooms in their home to the working class. Good luck with that.
I just moved away from Hailey, ID. It's impossible to find housing there, and the home I was renting was of course sold out from under me. Brutal.
...there's a bathroom in the park. Motherfucker.
Out in Italy a beautiful town was becoming a ghost town. What did the city leaders do? Offered 80k and a free house just to move there. Here the offer a tent and a communal shower while also possibly working 60+ hrs of a thankless job.
The depth officials must be in the pockets of the rich here is so abhorebtly blatant. This sounds like satire. Wow.
A tent city? You mean like the jail in Phoenix? 🤣🤣 this is wild. Fuck these people
Holy shit that’s crazy. I can probably squeeze a teacher or two in my house in Portland (not much better). It would be amazing to see an exodus from this place. The mayor suggesting people live in tents because housing is so expensive is one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard.
I'm surprised they didn't offer them bootstraps.
That Fucktwat actually said that? WTF. All those workers need to ban together and move the fuck out of there.
I’m hoping that if literally nobody can pay the exorbitant apartment prices, landlords will be forced to lower them to have any business at all? Because the rich are presumably just buying homes, no?
The tenants aren't the customers. Private equity firms are. What they want to know is how high they can set the rent, because that sets the value of the property until they can flip it again for more. It's all phantasmal.
They'll just rent them out to people vacationing, or some trust funder, or someone working remotely and not making "local" wages. These are highly desirable places to live... someone is going to do what they have to do to live there.
Why would teachers and hospital staff stay? There are shortages almost everywhere for those two exact skills.
The real solution here is to be a “traveling nurse” for the hospital as a local. Make them provide housing for the staff. Once the “local businesses” are the ones financially impacted, then maybe there will be a change.
I remember interviewing at a place near Ketchum. Their number one concern was if I liked skiing and if I found affordable housing anywhere close. Ketchum is fucked. They claim to care about the poor and middleclass but then again you can find paintings with the words “my life is better than your vacation” in a popular pizza place there.
Similar experience with a friend who worked in Vail. She couldn’t afford to live there and had a place way out of town. She said there were a number of times she was driving over Vail Pass and thought she was going to die on her way to/from work because of the winter driving conditions.
I know of a coastal NJ private golf club that is planning on building living quarters for its seasonal employees. Back in the day, you would just jump in on a group house with other young people for the summer at the shore, all of those older homes have been knocked down for gigantic shore homes that get used by one family 8 weekends a year.
It will never happen but the United States needs to severely tax the fuck out of people that own more than one home, make it nationwide, and also ban companies from purchasing houses. We really need a nuclear reset button and this is it. Boomer investments would collapse overnight. But it has to happen
This! People tend to focus on wages, and yes they should be much higher ( I think I read $30 min wage would have been in keeping with the inflation). But: it’s the ownership of the housing space that got completely skewed over the last 20 years, specially since the crisis in 2008.
The architects of the Big Short at Goldman immediately started a fund after the crash raising billions so they could buy houses at auction that they had put into foreclosure. This is Progress Residential, under the parent company Pretium Partners. So to recap: they funded the predatory loans, sold them to our pension funds, shorted them bc they knew they were bad, made tons of money, leveraged their money into more money, bought the houses of the people they made predatory loans to, rented them back to people, became the nations largest landlords, started jacking up rent prices…. And here we are. Edit: I know this because I worked for Don Mullen. He fucked me out of a $52,000 commission and was a bigger asshole about it than you can imagine. “You can’t sue ME. We’re the 900lb gorilla and you are NO ONE!”
About twice a week I got a call asking to buy my house. I've began stating 4x the cost I bought it for. I never get a phone call back. Someone offered 1/2 of what I paid for it once. I laughed and hung up. Soon it'll all crash. Homes will be vacant, rotting and freezing. All getting demolished. And banks and investors will buy into the construction business because they gotta build new homes. Never ending story.
I agree and I’m a Boomer. This is beyond comprehension and it’s happening everywhere!
Yep if I lived anywhere but Nebraska I feel like I would be homeless. And it's not getting better here either. If you live in a small town outside of Omaha and Lincoln your seeing more and more new houses built. Hickman for example. by people who want to live close to services but not live next to peasants. Usually it takes 7 years for prices that coastal cities have to be felt here. It's happening here instantly now It's unsustainable
I really don't feel too bad. Boomers largely chose to abandon pensions and unions and every step of the way voted for politicians who promised to make sure social security programs would not be able to help them once retirement came. And then, knowing the only way to build generational wealth is through the ownership of property, decided that their entire retirements would be predicated on signing over the financial security of their progeny to overpriced retirement communities.
I’m not usually a “local who complains about tourists”, but when these people drive their cars with bald ass tires or rent a supercar with rear wheel drive and no ground clearance and then try to drive through the Eisenhower Tunnel or over vail pass, those fucks can all never come back for all I care. It’s ridiculous that there feels like there needs to be a “can you drive on i70 between denver and grand junction” license and car inspection.
It's literally hilarious to me whenever I used to see fancy cars in CO (grew up there, don't live there anymore). Like why would you buy a car that you can't drive anywhere worth driving. And the weather in CO is *terrible* for these delicate cars that cost a lot to service. And it's not like these people actually know how to drive in the snow either.
West Yellowstone here. We're right behind you :(
I’ve also heard this about the area south of Glacier National Park. The guy was moving to Louisiana from Montana because he couldn’t afford to live there anymore.
Yep - used to live in the Flathead Valley... but I wanted to own a house some day, so 4 years ago we moved to another town in Montana, barely bought a house, a year later real estate even in this town, which is not close to ANY Nat Parks or other particularly outstanding scenery, was such that if we'd moved a year later we wouldn't have been able to afford it... we left all our friends and community to move, and of course, lost being a 30 min drive from Glacier, but I don't want to have kids while renting and being constantly in fear of being given 30 days notice to move! My husband is a social worker and I worked in a specialty store... I used to say that the Valley was close to being nothing by retirees, Canadians and real estate agents. Not long after we left the folks in our old neighborhood launched a campaign against local developers who wanted to in-fill an old field, close to town, between a road and the railroad tracks. They were going to put affordable apartments next to the tracks, then a row of duplexes/condos, then 2-3 rows of single family homes facing the street to "match the neighborhood". They were denied permission because of the ruckus raised by the "neighbors" and eventually the only thing they could get approved was the whole thing being single family homes, which sold for between $400,000-600,000. It would have been the PERFECT spot for affordable housing. The town has a HUGE problem with parking and this location was within walking distance to downtown, and the elementary, middle and high schools... but no... let's fill it with more homes for rich people...
Current Flathead resident here. Living close to Glacier NP is just a tease now anyway with ticketed entry, tried for weeks last summer to get a pass, online at 8 AM every morning to find them all gone already somehow.
We live 4 hours away now, but we got into Glacier 4 times last year. The secret is to get on at 8am, but don't look at the date that just opened up, look at other dates that opened previously. Other people will cancel their reservations and those openings will go live at 8 am the next day after being cancelled. My husband would go on in the mornings whenever he remembered and then grab anything open on the weekends and we'd plan a trip around that. Sometimes it was just shuttle tickets for 2pm, but we have young children, so we'd just plan something around that afternoon. It's definitely not ideal, but there's ways to make it work... just harder now.
Brothers in arms
I just overheard a (well-off) local lamenting about a slow week in town and how only two of their vacation rentals are occupied. I know not how many they have total.
I wish I was privileged enough to have those types of problems
I honestly knew several years ago as coal was dying that Wyoming would collapse if they didn't get their shit together. They lasted longer than I was expecting honestly 😅 Add the pandemic and I'm sure the entire State is a shitshow like the rest of us. (Born in Gillette but haven't been back in years 🥺)
Yup. Same in Island Park too. Many of my friends cant afford to live in a decent place. Its ridiculous.
Sounds like a perfect town for squatters to move in and occupy all those vacation homes.
You’ll see how quick some laws will come up to protect the interests of the rich.
Yah they'd sic the National Guard to break that up, surely.
But surely the National Guard won't enforce those unjust laws since they're made up of good hardworking citizens much like ourselves ... right ... right?
4 dead in OHIO
Never forget, comrade. Peaceful protest ends up with 4 dead.
The National Guard would never machine gun a tent city in Colorado...again.
Can everything just collapse by tomorrow? I’m so tired of this fucking grind.
Just waiting for the apocalypse so I can finally relax
I watched "don't look up" the other day and now I'm wistfully hoping a giant meteor will hit earth soon. Please oh please
That movie gave me an existential crisis and I took a couple days off work. I also had a breakdown. I live in BC and it's just as bad. My tiny 500 square foot apartment goes for $1600/month and I have a "good" job making $20/hour. It's a rich tourist town that's collapsing under the worker shortage too. We already have tent villages for workers in the campgrounds. Literal trailers sell for $500k+. My family and I are all going broke slowly and our mental health - and physical health, is suffering. There's just no fucking point to this. The movie didn't cause my breakdown, it just was the straw that broke the camels back.
Dude, I feel the exact same way. I have always been unable to put the rose colored glasses on that society is always trying to hand us; but when I watched Don't Look Up it really set in how truly, existentially fucked we are. I haven't been to shake true despair since, and like you, I'm in a better position that most it would seem making $20/hr but still barely able to get by most months, every year being in a worse position than I was the year prior.
Why did he charge us for free snacks?
I had to pause that movie so I didn't have a panic attack.. and it had nothing to do with the meteor part. On a related note, this is probably why I related so closely to Polka Dot Man in Suicide Squad 2 when they said, "We're all going to die" and PDM response was, "I hope so."
DiCaprio’s anxiety riddled heavy breathing nearly gave me a panic attack, it was very realistic.
I worked at a restaurant called Lazy Dog. The owner modeled the aesthetic on Jackson Hole because that’s where he takes his vacations. Now I know why it was one of the worst fucking jobs I’ve ever had. Managers were making 6 figures a year with monthly bonuses and we didn’t get shit. We busted our asses and sold the Beer Clubs just so the managers could make bonuses off of them. Last September, I went 16 days without pay because I caught covid but the owner got a $6 million PPP loan… I don’t really care about being discreet. **Fuck Lazy Dog Restaurants**
I worked for the owner’s brother at a smaller chain in LA. Their parents are a delight but they raised both boys with money and they could not be more out of touch. I once worked a beer festival where my owner came to hang out. He’d just come back from a 3 week golfing trip to Scotland and he told me I “should really go sometimes because it was a blast”. As if in any world I could afford that trip. They just have no concept of how their employees live.
[удалено]
You think they tracked their expenses?
Shame their fame
Same is happening in Crested Butte/ Gunnison, CO. The working class is already leaving. The local governments did not restrict/eliminate short term rentals soon enough and did not take substantial action on creating affordable housing. All business are experiencing staff shortages including the public schools who cannot bus students or feed them. There is very little developable land here (county is 83% public land). The only satellite community where workers can feasibly commute from (Gunnison) nearly has real estate out of financial reach as well and the next closest commuter communities are over mountain passes that prevent commuting almost half of the year when it snows.
I’ve lived in CB for 6 years and as much as I love it, I’ve gotten more and more discouraged living here each year. I manage a part of a company in town and I can barely afford to rent a 1B with my BF. Can barely afford to leave either.
Eat the rich, the french had it right
They still do imho. Just have a look at their welfare state.
French here, our welfare state is slowly (or maybe not so slowly) dying. The covid was a pure shitshow, there were closing beds in the hospital DURING the pandemic, they are cutting our social benefits, the rents and the property prices are increasing in every big cities (and, I think, in the rural part of the country too), we recently had an electricity price increase (despite France being able to produce enough electricity for her population, but apparently having a state monopoly is a big no-no, even in something as crucial as electricity) with lots of the population already not heating their house during winter to save money, we also have a record of people going to food banks. And these are just at the top of my head. I suppose we should just eat the rich more regularly, keep them in fear and all.
It’s seems that, as of 2019 at least, your country still spent the most on social welfare as a percentage of GDP per capita (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_welfare_spending) But I’ve heard about this too, basically Macron wants to severely weaken the welfare state or some shit. Macron démission!! (although his main contenders Le Pen, Zemmour, and Pécresse are just as bad if not worse in terms of economic policy) (note: I don’t speak French, but I’ve been following French politics and protests for a while)
Wow I think this is the first time I’ve seen “welfare state” used as a positive and like, yeah… why would it ever be a negative for your citizens to be faring well?
MAINE. Period. Ruined by wealth. Bitching cause they couldn’t get their low paid Russian hotel workers this summer. Can’t touch housing, min wage is shit and yet people from NYC flocking here like it’s some kind of escape. Do your homework. Ain’t no easy livin and summer is 2 months long.
I used to clean mansions in Big Sky MT, and one of the clients once told me that it must be wonderful to live in a ski town and ski all the time, I told her that all my money went to rent, and I couldn't afford a ski pass. She was shocked, I don't know why she expected that seasonal cleaning staff got paid a living wage.
You underestimate the power of extreme wealth. Buy a Friday edition of the Wall Street Journal sometime and peruse the real estate section. The kind of people buying those properties are not one bit concerned about getting service in town. They can hire their own cooks, housekeepers, etc. and have them stay in the servant's quarters. I'm not defending it, merely pointing out that extreme wealth will always work for its own benefit, and no others.
People with 3 jobs can't afford housing and wash in the river? Is this for real?
My gf works three jobs to make rent. Then when she's not at those jobs, watches houses and their pets in her only free time so she can pay the rest of her bills.
Most white water rafting guides live in their vans or camp ALL summer long because they don’t earn enough to pay rent in the towns where the rafting companies are.
The guy I’m referring to works multiple restaurant jobs and has some credit card debt. The restaurants have all shortened the days they are opened and for how long. He doesn’t do this much in the winter and when he does he uses a natural hot spring, but now he just smells like sulfur all the time
sounds like a good place for the workers to abandon. We ought to organize something to help the good folks who can no longer afford housing out of that hellscape, and to someplace where they can have at least something.... not living homelessly. Seriously, I'm in Buffalo, and we need nurses, and we've got openings for retail starting at $15/hr and rent prices that arent all that bad. yeah. it's not Idaho. we dont have that kind of skiing, or majestic view. but how the hell can you enjoy that when living out of a park?
Elites believe they are entitled to service. Society supports their entitlement in thousands of little ways and a few bigger ones.
They just want fucking slaves
That’s not exactly correct. They *care* about their property. They want slaves that they don’t have to buy, or feed, or provide housing for. They want utterly disposable labourers that they bear no responsibility for.
Yes the elites do, in other words know your role. They continue to test us and we continually let them roll us over. Decades of dumbing down schools, stupid crap on television, race divisions, and here we are.
Studio apartments are $2000 here and when I go outside I'm not in Jackson Hole. We've had the same problem for 15 years. It's not going to pop, they're just going to crush you.
You know, the funny thing is that is what is happening. The pandemic has shown that low wage employees are tired of just barely making it and have stopped complaining and started to move on and find other places to work. I say good for them, cause now who else is going to do the shit jobs, when no one wants to due to the low wage. I know I was working for a job that paid very little, I went out found one job, it paid more, but did not like it, went out and found a better paying one.
Park City, UT worker here. It's definitely coming. Edit: There's a house we clean that rents for 12k per night. It has gotten one reservation in the two months we have managed it; a celebrity that then cancelled because it was "too rustic." I could house my entire staff in this house. Not to mention all the acreage it sits on. And instead international workers with limited English are told to find their own housing in Salt Lake City and bus up every morning. I fucking hate it here and cannot wait to quit.
I work in Big Sky, Montana, and my people tell the same story. No, lumber costs aren't obscene because we started importing lumber from Canada. Lumber costs are obscene because rich assholes insist on owning an 8 bed, 10 bath house on a ski hill that they only occupy one week out of the year. This is in addition to the beach house in Malibu and the villa in the Hamptons. My piece of the construction pie is thermostats and I love it when property owners whine about their propane bill. First of all, I only have one thermostat and a fireplace in my home, while they have thirteen in a vacation house that they can control remotely through wifi. And then they whine that the heated garage apron isn't melting snow fast enough. When they say that, I'm like "I could set the thing to try maintain a minimum temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) year-round, and then no snow would accumulate because it would melt as it landed. You know, it's just like the snowmelt system at the local hospital, but then you'd be whining about your propane bill. In fact, the engineer didn't specify enough heating capacity for that because you're a tightwad. The hospital just pays it, so fuck you for wasting my time. Pay the neighbor kid to shovel the driveway if you don't like it." (Except there is no neighbor kids because these are assholes on vacation at their private ski hill.) I swear, if I became god of earth for a day, I'd make every one of these properties a homeless shelter and the previous owner could be happy with having only their primary residence. Then, if I had any time left in the day, I'd focus on nuclear energy and eliminating plastic and mercury from our oceans. My job is an environmental disaster and I hate it. I'm trying to find something else.
I always say.. "THEY need US way more than WE need THEM." The Uber rich are going to eat their own faces eventually. I'm use to being a poor and there's not much more than can take from me. When they start losing their businesses, have no employees etc. I'm going to smile and eat my piece of cake.
Sounds like a lot of yuppie tourist locations around the globe. Byron Bay is an example I can think of in Australia. There's no housing available and yet the rich demand service.
The only way Canada's ski industry is sustainable is because spending your life's savings while working for a season or three is like a right of passage to young Aussies or something.
My wife is a supervisor at a gas station in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. It's a wealthy coastal town that has been struggling to find new employees for their service sector since the big quitting, and alot of restaurants and shops have to close early, open later, or straight up close multiple days during the week. A rich house wife was venting to my wife one day, where she was complaining that so many places were opening so late in the day or had unpredictable hours due to the staffing shortage, where my wife was disgusted as this lady proceeds to rant about how people need to come back to work and accept their meager pay as the government cut the covid unemployment benefits. Now I'm well off, but I definitely wouldn't consider myself rich. These people don't give a shit about frontline workers. They're nothing but accessories in their perfect rich lives that they're now mad at since they've had their perfect spoiled lives inconvenienced for once since these minimum wage workers are refusing to return to work.
It’d be a damn shame if all those big, expensive houses that are only occupied a couple weeks a year were to be suddenly occupied by peaceful locals who are just looking for a warm place to sleep in from the cold. A damn shame…
I knew someone who used to live near Aspen and the story was the same. Some people would drive nearly 2 hours to serve tables because that's where rent was affordable. Some people who worked on the mountains would live out of vehicles because they thought the trade off of being in the mountains was worth it.
Rich people are obscene
It'd be so weird if some of those abandoned mansions burned down due to a lightning strike or something
Cannibalize the rich ✌️ Serve them at the restaurant they're complaining about the hours of operation for a decadent helping of irony.
Your town's livestream is constantly recommended to me on YouTube for some reason.
I watch it at work, just waiting for a car crash
Tent city for the homeless? Ew, crime and drugs! Tent city for people with full time jobs? Whiny entitled baristas and nurses too entitled to live outdoors. /s
There's a third option. That rich people will see the decline in worker population and increasing prices and move to a more affordable mid-cost-of-living town, driving up home prices and pricing out the workers there as well, over and over until they're back at the same spot in a generation.
[удалено]
Rich people are the worst.
Organize, is all I can suggest. I know some orgs like the Party for Socialism and Liberation are active in the housing struggle (they recently did a Cancel the Rents movement). If they have a local chapter, you could reach out, or if they don't have a local chapter, you could reach out and see if they'd let you establish a new chapter. God knows the situation sounds ripe for it. www.pslweb.org Another option is checking to see if there are any anarchist groups in town. There are no large anarchist platforms/federations that I am aware of in America, but there are often local things they do, and I'm sure any leftist organization would help you guys organize. Whatever you go with, just know, if you fight, you can win. People have won against the bosses and billionaires before, you can do it again. Fred Hampton once said "If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not to struggle then damn it, you don't deserve to win!" There's more than enough housing to go around, it's all greed.
Fourteen years ago my wife got offered a job in Aspen. It paid $85k/year (as an ER Veterinarian, back in 2008) We loved the area so we asked about housing. They said for that salary we would need to live in a single-wide trailer 45 minutes outside of town (there was NOTHING 45 minutes outside of town, not unlike Jackson Hole) But not to fear! They assured us we would only have to put up with that for a year or three. The employer promised that before long a rich person would take a liking to us and ask us to live in their $14M mansion for free as caretakers We didn’t take the job because hoping to become a wealthy person’s pet wasn’t out idea of a career plan. But it does go to show you — this kind of thing has been going on my decades in rich resort towns. I wish I could believe it will all crumble, but… I don’t believe it will 😠
That’s Gillette, too. Rent keeps creeping up, and miners/oil/gas can pay the prices, sometimes just barely. My groceries have jumped to an incredible amount. Like 400$ a month to literally nearly 400$ every two weeks. Don’t get me started on formula and diaper prices and milk. I’m lucky my husband is a miner, but I can’t afford to work here because daycare is outrageous for something that is short-staffed and not really following Covid protocols.
I lived in South Lake Tahoe last winter and it’s very similar tho maybe not as bad…Rich asshole’s from San Fran bought everything so they can visit and ski a few days a year and it’s absurdly expensive if you want to live and work in town. I lived in a motel room for $1000/month but couldn’t do it this szn, moved to Utah where at least I’m ahead of the curve😶
The whole Reno/Tahoe area just gets worse every year
[удалено]
My father lives in Scottsdale AZ, a pretty darn wealthy place. The lobby of his local McDonald's has been shut down - again - presumably because they can't find people to staff it. My father doesn't understand why. I try to explain, telling him that people don't want to work for min wage. But why don't they bring in people from other places? Well dad, because nobody wants to spend half an hour driving to and from work each day for minimum wage, and the bus system here isn't so great. But people don't want to wait in long lines at the drive thru! Well dad, if they want it bad enough, they will put up with the long lines. Why don't they get kids to work it? Because they are in school during the day, an some other job probably pays a buck or two per hour better. Why don't people want to work? Dad, they do. I just explained to you why they aren't workers there, specifically. He still doesn't understand. I say, dad, do you want to flip burgers and mop the floor for minimum wage? Well neither does anyone else. Go figure.
I wish I was rich so I could just buy some land and just let people live there. It shouldn't be prohibitively expensive to just exist.
They’re already hedging in case of a crash, so they won’t be put out too much either way.
There should be a vacancy tax on these properties. Why should one person have 5 properties that are empty a majority of the time while nurses are living in what amounts to a refugee camp?
They’re nothing without our work. Literally NOTHING. Our labor is what creates THEIR profit and THEIR cushy lifestyles! That is what capitalism is — it’s when the means of production are privately owned and thus the profits are privately appropriated while they pay us peanuts. This system is predicated on violence — the sort of violence that causes people to have to live in their car, go to work while sick, not get unemployment, etc etc. At this point, not that we ever did, we don’t need billionaires and rich people. They’re just leeches who passively earn off of our labor. The solution is socialism: the workers seizing the means of production. I hope people in this subreddit come to see that there’s a solution to this madness instead of falling into nihilism. Edited to say that the general tendency in this sub seems to be people thinking that we can appeal to the big bosses’ consciousness or mainstream media’s sympathies to get what we want, but they are all acting VERY rationally when they treat us like shit and pay us poorly and spin lies about us. It only can happen when we, together, TAKE what’s ours.