Hopefully, I didn't lose too much of the context.
First of all, happy Halloween. I hope there's not too much out there that scares you today...although, given the state of our planet these days, I wouldn't blame you if you spent the day cowering under the covers with your bedroom door locked tight.
Really, I wouldn't.
On TV last night I did a bit about something that should scare UP residents, the fact that a whole bunch of housing units are coming off the market and being turned into short term rentals, thereby driving up rent prices for those apartments that remain. However, as usual, the piece came in long, and I had to make a bunch of cuts to it. A lot of what I cut were facts and comparisons, and at one point I was wondering if I cut too many of them, robbing the piece of what could have been vital pieces of context to get my point across.
I think I managed it okay, but you can never tell.
Anyway, I figured I post the original full-length below, just in case anyone ever questions my math or wonders just what kind of point I was trying to make.
Hope it's not TOO scary of a story for this Halloween!
*******
It’s Halloween tomorrow, the one time of the year that people love to dress up in costume. I know most of you have an idea of what you’ll be, or have already gone out. But if you’re still looking I have a few ideas, two that should annoy Yoopers, and one that should really scare them.
The
two that could annoy Yoopers? One would be to take a piece of
cardboard, paint it black, add a white stripe on it, strap it to your
back, and go as Seney Stretch.
Either
that, or just put a sheet over your head. Only, you’re not
going as a ghost.
You’re going as a blizzard. In May.
Now, what about the one idea that should really scare us all? Dress up as an old house that’s for sale. What’s scary about that?
You could be contributing to the UP’s housing shortage.
More
and more these days developers and landlords are buying old houses
that at one time may have had 3 or 4 apartments and turning some of
those units into short term rentals. Now I realize that not
every house sold in the UP is turned into an AirBnB, but in some
communities enough of them are that it’s amplifying the housing
crunch.
Just as an example–
In a city that already has almost 2,000 hotel rooms and is currently adding hundreds more, Marquette has had around 350 apartments turned into Air Bnbs. Thankfully, the city put limits on it; otherwise, I’m sure the number would have been much higher. But those 350 units removed from the market have caused a big squeeze. At 1.9 residents per apartment that means that housing for almost 700 people in Marquette is off the market. 700 people. That’s basically the population of Chatham and Trenary.
Combined.
And it’s not just Marquette. At candidates forums from Escanaba to Houghton the housing crunch is the number one topic being discussed.
Now, I realize that short term rentals aren’t the only factor contributing to a shortage of affordable housing. But they are an issue. What to do about that issue, however, is something else. I realize that when someone buys an old house they can do what they want with it. I get that it’s more profitable for you to charge a tourist $200 a night than it is to charge a local $1,000 a month for a place to live. I get that.
But when do we get to a point of diminishing returns? At what point are locals literally priced out of the city where they live because there are too few places for them to live? That’s one thing that SHOULD scare people in the UP as we’re heading through the spooky season.
I don't know what the solution to all this is; I just know that it'll come from a brain bigger than mine. And hopefully, it'll come soon. Just keep in the back of your mind for now. Otherwise, have a great Halloween. Enjoy dressing up as a zombie, or Barbie, or even the Seney Stretch. But on second thought, maybe don’t dress up as an airbnb.
After all, you don’t want to have TOO big of a scare, do you?
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