Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming • Hacker News Board

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#451

Post by ksdale » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

throwaway316943 wrote: post #390

consensusform wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sentiment isn't unique to small towns either. Residents of Austin, TX have been complaining that the city changed or got too crowded shortly after they moved in, whether that was a year ago or decades ago. People who moved to SF in 2010 complained about the people moving there in 2015. Same thing happens at a neighborhood or district level too. Everybody feels like they were the last person to move in while it w…

It’s almost like it’s progressively getting worse as more people crowd in.

The very, very easy way to fix that is to build enough housing. Places don't suck because a lot of people live there, they suck for lots of reasons that are orthogonal to the population.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#452

Post by gregimba » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

sfeng wrote: post #312

gregimba wrote: post #36

As someone who recently spent a couple days in Kanab, UT the collision course of rural natives with Californian expats has made me accelerate my plans to buy enough land to escape the cities and further enforced my feeling about the cultural divide in America. EDIT: I was born in a small western town and find myself missing certain aspects living in a larger city working in Tech.

What was it like in Kanab?

Talking with the person checking me into the hotel he mentioned he had heard to food was good at a restaurant across the street but mentioned he couldn't afford to eat there.

There was a lovely older couple who were running the tourism center and provided a bunch of great information. The person in front of me repeatedly interrupted this nice old woman and talked over her, after she got the info she needed she got into a 4 runner with California plates.

The surrounding OHV and hiking trails are phenomenal but the town is going to be very boring once the locals are forced out.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#453

Post by zip1234 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #353

mring33621 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm OK with "ideas of socialism," I think. Especially regarding UBI and universal medical care. But, I also think that it's better to be in a growing area than a static or declining area. I'll never understand anti-gentrifiers. As an adult human being, it is your responsiblility to adapt and decide what is best for yourself and your dependents. No one owes you an unchanging landscape.

"I'll never understand anti-gentrifiers." I think the main point is being forced out of your life-long home due to increased costs or taxes. Or the destruction of the local cultures/customs through change in local government policies. If you want an extreme example, you can look at the way that cult in Oregon took over a county/town in the 80s or 90s. Nothing legally wrong with it (the population segment with the hig…

Every place changes regardless of people trying to preserve them in amber. The 'forced out of your lifelong' home thing is tough but I haven't seen any good solutions to it. California absolutely messed up their state with their property tax changes that turned home ownership into feudalism. Good intentions to help the old people stay in their homes but it means that the new people moving in support the people that lived there earlier.

If housing is actually allowed to be built, someone might be able to stay in the area in a new, nicer, place. However, in essentially 0 places in the US that are hot housing markets do they allow as much housing as is demanded. Houston might actually be the closest. Prices in Houston are way lower than many other in-demand major cities.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#454

Post by elthyrior » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

randomopining wrote: post #352

I heard all these places, especially Denver and the area around it, are swarmed with "outdoors bros" etc from Cali and the east coast. Overcrowded. Traffic jams to go out to the mountains every weekend. Cultural homogenization. Is that true, or overblown?

Pretty much true. I-70 into the mountains is a parking lot on Friday and Saturday, and basically the same leaving the mountains on Sunday. Turns what should be a three to four drive to get to the western slope into six to seven some days.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#455

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #284

a3KEaWOcZr wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For decades people from all over the country, many of these small towns moved to places like NY, Chicago, SF etc. and the respective suburbs in search for better jobs, opportunity etc. It didn't seem like it was a big concern then to anyone that the locals in these cities could be negatively affected by higher rents, home prices etc. Why is it different when the reverse happens? If its ok for a young person to leave…

>If its ok for a young person to leave their hometown, move to a city and call it home to make a better life without thinking about the locals, then it must be ok for a person with a small family living in a city to move to a smaller town and call it home to make a better life for his/her family. The reason that theses two scenarios are not equivalent is so obvious I'm wondering whether or not I'm misinterpreting it.

For those of us to whom it is not obvious, would you explain?

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#456

Post by zip1234 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

yifanl wrote: post #140

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seeing negativity because it's getting harder and harder to deny that this "dream" involves the locals getting screwed when tech monopoly money turns their local economy upside down. Sure the guy who had the foresight to start a brewery wins but everyone else loses. You know what the end game of this looks like? It looks like Vail CO, Cape Cod MA, coastal Long Island and CT, the Hamptons, wealthy retirement ar…

I guess the question is, is quality of life zero-sum? I want to say no because I feel like I can improve my QoL in ways that don't harm others, but all these examples are telling me that its really that I don't (or maybe even choose not to) see the negative consequences until its compounded by a large enough group and it ends up being another one of your examples.

Governments should definitely think this through. A good example of the tragedy of the commons and QOL is driving/private automobiles. Once you get enough of them around, QOL goes way down. Who wants to live next to a 5 lane road with speeding cars? They are noisy, polluting, and dangerous, but also so exceptionally convenient for the one that is driving.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#457

Post by pdonis » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

bobthechef wrote: post #176

sobellian wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you lived in any of these places? I grew up in Fairfield County and you seem to greatly exaggerate its dystopian qualities. What's more, industry's flight from the area has nothing to do with folks coming from NYC.

Yeah. Even so, not sure how representative Fairfield County is of CT in general. On the one hand, it's the de facto bedroom for people who work in NYC. On the other, because it's the bedroom, you will see a different spread of economic activity. Go further north and you have manufacturing and pharmaceuticals and engineering as well as insurance. The state probably could do a lot more to promote businesses, but it wil…

> COVID and the resulting remote work might actually be contributing to a better distribution of wealth in the country in general.

I think this is an under-appreciated fact. Remote work has the potential to be a huge equalizer, by uncoupling people's jobs from where they live.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#458

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

DavidAdams wrote: post #376

volkl48 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a more complex problem than it is in many other regions of the country. For the most obvious - Once you're off a municipal water supply (which of course, has to have an adequate source of water in the region), available water resources/aquifers are often very limited and minimum lot sizes have to be large because the land can't support higher density housing. -------- If you build anything even approaching "n…

This kind of thing is solvable. When I built my house in Park City, Utah, I discovered that the growth in the area is projected to overwhelm the municipal sewer system in the coming decade. So I had to pay an impact fee of $3,000 per bathroom in order to get my building permit. I happily paid $15K, knowing that the money will go to the budget of a new treatment plant. There are very few places where there's actually…

[deleted]

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#459

Post by throwaway0a5e » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

twiddling wrote: post #438

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A second home isn't necessarily an investment, especially if it's a vacation home. It can be just a place you go on vacation.

Yeah, the common old "cottage" Up North is yielding to 2nd luxury homes which than have to be VRBOed in order to cover the mortgage. Happened to my in-laws lake. Simple cabins displaced and the crowd being far more transient. Of course they pocketed a seven figure profit, because of the lakefront property, and the 100 year old wood cabin was bulldozed.

>Simple cabins displaced and the crowd being far more transient.

And then the transient occupants party their asses off. And then the Karens pass local ordinances. And then nobody can have any fun.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#460

Post by oh_sigh » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

InTheArena wrote: post #254

blueyes wrote: post #245

I recently returned from a mid-sized town in the Mountain West, and I can confirm that the headline is true. It's a particular kind of boom. A lot of out-of-state money and migrants have poured in to buy houses in places with fewer COVID restrictions and lower prices. That is fundamentally changing the character and politics of those cities. People are buying houses after nothing more than a Zoom tour. The car dealer…

This is also true in Boulder, which has plenty of COVID restrictions. The supply of housing is completely insufficient.

But if someone builds a 5 story apartment building anywhere, including on the eastern edge of town, it would completely ruin my view of the Flatirons!