How to Select a Town the Rich Won’t Gentrify and Ruin

September 14, 2023

by Charles Hugh Smith Of Two Minds

Let’s review how to select a town that the rich won’t ruin via gentrification / swarming in en masse and driving out locals who have to work for a living.

Yesterday I discussed how those enriched by two decades of Federal Reserve-inflated bubbles make housing unaffordable for the bottom 90% by gentrifying previously affordable neighborhoods and towns. Once the truly wealthy have snapped up all the most desirable properties in the most desirable enclaves, the merely millionaires start snapping up nearby properties, fueling a bidding war that soon pushes valuations out of reach of the working populace.

As I discussed in STVR/Airbnb Has Destroyed America’s Resort Towns (8/30/23), the net result is the workforce of the gentrified town can no longer afford to buy or rent shelter near their work place. This forces them to commute long distances or give up and move away, leaving the town short of people to actually do the work of keeping the town operating.