Our local NextDoor app that covers our general area is often filled with people posting that they are trying to find a place to live that they can actually afford.
Like many communities across the US, ours is beset with what I consider "creeping elegance" in the sense that every time an inexpensive house goes on the market it is immediately snapped up either by an aspiring contractor to fix up and flip, or by a private equity firm to put minimal improvements into and then rent out at sky high rates.
What is interesting about this situation is that it tends to shoot down the classical economic arguments about "demand and supply setting the price" of something.
Even though there is an enormous demand for affordable housing, nobody is making it available and it seems like many would rather have an expensive rental sit empty for months or even years than try to build rent out something more affordable that's in real demand.
Based on what I am seeing here in our local housing market, if somebody came in and built a neighborhood of small and fairly basic cottages with maybe 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom and offered them for rent at about $1000 a month they would be snapped up in a matter of hours.
But it seems like nobody actually wants to do that. Builders want to put up difficult to sell $800,000 houses because that is “more profitable.” The issue then becomes that "maximizing profits" is more important than serving actual market demand.
At least the mythology is that it is more profitable, although I find it hard to believe that it is also the reality.
According to some of the latest income and real estate data information from our local Chamber of Commerce, only about 35%-40% of our county's inhabitants can actually afford to live here, by traditional real estate metrics. Strange as that may sound, it is borne out by the fact that the vast majority of service and hospitality workers, and those in the retail business, don't actually live here anymore. And because we are out in a sparsely populated area, they often end up having to commute in from 25-40 miles away.
With the current price of fuel continuing to go up that is becoming less and less viable, as a result of which we are seeing more and more of our downtown retail shops and restaurants either close completely or significantly cut back on their opening hours.
The other day I was downtown and noticed that one of my favorite art and gift galleries is now only open on Thursday through Sunday from 10:00 to 5:00, and is actually staffed exclusively by the shop owner and his daughter because they can no longer find willing employees.
At a superficial glance your first response might be "well, why aren't they working all the time since they are the owners of the shop?"
The answer is that they're not working all the time because they both have 40 hour a week jobs out in one of the peripheral towns, about 30 miles away, which is closer to Seattle and has "big box stores" with flexible hours.
The thing that's a bit upside-down is the fact that the very people who have been moving here "because we have such a quaint and quirky little town with unique shops and homegrown restaurants" are actually the ones that are the direct cause of the decline in the very thing that drew them here in the first place. Since more and more old locals can't afford to be here anymore the unique atmosphere of the town is slowly fading away.
Of course this town is not unique in that particular trend. I have seen elsewhere how the popularity of a place is what ends up killing it, particularly in situations like we've had here where the City Council of old timers gradually gets replaced by the influx of recent arrivals who change the nature of the city because they want conveniences that were previously missing.
It's a great shame, but what are you going to do?
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