Comment by briHass
2 years ago
When the wealthy vacation home owners actually take an interest in local politics and change the types of businesses (and pricing structure) through their upscale tastes and discretionary income, the residents are still unhappy. This is the classic $20 cheeseburger and martini bar problem in what used to be a blue collar town.
I don't think this is quite right
Restaurants are a tough business, so towns with a high vacancy rate end up being unable to support very many restaurants. Forget the quality of the restaurant, lots of these places barely have any restaurants (or they're very seasonal)
Honestly, I wonder if one could do a "benefit local business tax" where they tax the non primary residents and then just subsidize the types of local businesses they want to keep open (it's hard to design good systems for this though!)
You're presenting a false dichotomy here: "Either the rich people from elsewhere own the houses and don't live in them actively, or the rich people from elsewhere own the houses and do live in them actively."
There's a third option you're ignoring: The rich people from elsewhere don't own those houses. They're priced more affordably and owned by locals who genuinely care about the area.