The Recession and Bohemians

BTL links to this NYTimes story today about Bohemian neighborhoods being affected by the recession.

The quickie recap being that people moved into this neighborhood in NY or WA or Longmont, CO from places that were unaffordable, like Manhatten, or CA or Boulder, CO. (this part isn’t mentioned actually)

Once there and with more moneyed and cool people behind them, property values shot through the roof and new businesses were born to meet the needs. Flower shops, organic foods, kitchen stores, soap making, crystals…. You get the idea.

But when money is tight who needs more homemade soap?

I linked to this because it made me laugh as it concerns my town of Longmont. I moved here when I was 5. I left at 18 and returned again at 35ish. It’s an agricultural town and as life changes over the years it has managed to become very varied with high tech businesses and medical things interspersed with the pumpkins and sugarbeets.

Then came the moneyed.
These folks, like the ones in the NYTimes article want to see a “vibrant” downtown with shops and folks walking and drinking coffee and listening to live music.
None of it bad.

EXCEPT to get there, they raise the taxes of those downtown and these nice little shops can’t hack it. But pawn shops can! As can thrift stores. So there is shopping downtown, just not acceptable shopping.

This is the latest proposal to revitalize downtown. It’s pretty.

I can’t believe I’m saying this but our city council, presiding over a city with projected debt in the millions needs to read the NYTimes because as BTL says, there is no way this “dream of gentrification can continue”.