Post by balzaccom on Jun 15, 2021 8:07:18 GMT -8
I live in Napa---where this all happened 25 years ago. It is still continuing, for the same reasons.
On my little two block street in a historic district in Napa, we now have six B&Bs, a "senior living condo," "Summer houses" for absentee owners who show up about four times a year for a week, and now they are trying to talk the locals into Pacaso as a way of getting equity out of their homes. That's out of a total of 25 houses on our street.
If you take 25-30% of the houses out of circulation by using them for tourism, you are going to have some serious affordability problems. Our housing costs are such that schoolteachers, mailmen, police officers and nurses can no longer afford to live here, so they commute in.
It's pretty hard to generate any sense of community in that situation.
Meanwhile, on the next street over they just approved a project to take one of the older and larger houses in the neighborhood and turn it into a luxury mini hotel and conference center.
In Vancouver, BC, they have talked about (and maybe implemented?) a luxury tax on properties that are not inhabited at least six month a year...something like that. To encourage those out-of-towners who buy property to get them back on the rental market...
Ain't no easy solutions to this one.
On my little two block street in a historic district in Napa, we now have six B&Bs, a "senior living condo," "Summer houses" for absentee owners who show up about four times a year for a week, and now they are trying to talk the locals into Pacaso as a way of getting equity out of their homes. That's out of a total of 25 houses on our street.
If you take 25-30% of the houses out of circulation by using them for tourism, you are going to have some serious affordability problems. Our housing costs are such that schoolteachers, mailmen, police officers and nurses can no longer afford to live here, so they commute in.
It's pretty hard to generate any sense of community in that situation.
Meanwhile, on the next street over they just approved a project to take one of the older and larger houses in the neighborhood and turn it into a luxury mini hotel and conference center.
In Vancouver, BC, they have talked about (and maybe implemented?) a luxury tax on properties that are not inhabited at least six month a year...something like that. To encourage those out-of-towners who buy property to get them back on the rental market...
Ain't no easy solutions to this one.
