Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

If you want to see a ghost town - Tahoe City Ca is decimated by AirBnB+Money.

I grew up there, and I was there last weekend for my Dad's memorial service.... I hadnt been back to Tahoe City for some time - and man, its freaking depressingly bad.

The "mall" -- the Boat Works, has basically 4 shops any longer, the retail spaces near Tahoe City Golf is boarded up and has weeds - many retail spaces are empty, the freaking BANK had to close, restaurants arent doing well according to several people I know who have worked in them for ~35 years (at SunnySide, for example)....

and all my Dad's freinds/contemporaries blame SV Money + AirBnB -- in that there are no places for anyone to live. Houses arent being rented to people who would want to live there - both seasonally or long-term.

All the cheaper houses were bought up over the last decades and rebuilt with $1MM++ homes in their place (This happened to one area which was the "ghetto" in the 80s when I was a kid - where all the houses were replaced with >$1MM homes and became one of the most expensive zipcodes in the country - whereas it was where all the "poor" kids lived in the 80s)

I think a lot of economic models severely underrate the extent to which overheated real-estate markets eat economic vitality alive. It's because most of the costs they impose (initially) aren't that easy to quantify, but you're basically grinding your seed corn by making it impossible for working people to be able to afford to live and making it impossible for small businesses that aren't bars or restaurants to have a viable business model. Where's your next generation of innovation going to come from when you've done that? What happens to the community that lives in a place when the people with all the land and political power have no stake in the community itself?

It's sad to see long term residents getting priced out of a community, and the city/neighborhood turning into playground/home of mostly rich.

Same thing is happening near Silicon Beach in southern California, that is coastal cities near where Youtube/Google/snapchat have HQ or satellite offices.

Santa Monica housing price has long ago gone Manhattan, NY like. Just use google map and realty websites, and check house price history in cities adjacent to Santa Monica.

It's gone up 100% or more in last 5 years or so. It is not uncommon to see a 50+ year old house with little land get sold for nearly a million dollars, and be razed/remodeled into an easily 2 million or more house.

Some retiree who sold the old small house certainly made bank.

But who has 2 - 3 million dollars or the ability to take on a debt of that magnitude?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com