Dear HCN,
Not long ago, I was
eating pancakes in a small diner/grocery in Clark, Colo., just 25
miles north of Steamboat Springs. My waitress was 60-something, and
I soon found that she and her husband owned a farm outside of
Clark. “It’s been part of the family since the Homestead Act,” she
explained.
By the time I had finished my fourth
pancake, I found out that the farm couldn’t pay for itself anymore.
Her elderly husband had had to give up farming for construction,
while she was serving pancakes to the likes of me. Real estate
prices had skyrocketed, forcing them to pay unbelievable taxes to
live where they had always lived. Pressure on them to sell and
subdivide were great, she said.
Her husband,
leathery and worn, just laughed. “I’m worth more dead than I am
alive,” he joked. This isn’t so funny, I was thinking, because it’s
true, and he knows it.
Now consider your own
small town in the New West and ponder for a minute what it means to
be a part of it. In that community, the people live, work, play, go
to school, shop, pay taxes, receive from – and more importantly
give back to – the community. Moreover, these folks have a deep
understanding of the natural community as well. They can sense the
changes in the seasons, they know where their water and power come
from, and can typically identify most of the players in the local
bio-community. It’s people like this that make a
community.
Now enter Bill Gates and friends.
Soon, real estate prices soar, development ensues and most folks
can’t afford to live in the community anymore. Farms go under,
replaced by cookie-cutter condos, sprouting like noxious
weeds.
Fortunately, I have a solution: no second
homes. If folks want to move in, great; otherwise, stay in a bed
and breakfast or hotel.
Let’s take this one step
further: Let’s say that to live in that sacred place, we replace
the almighty dollar as the entrance ticket with something called a
“commitment to the community.” That is, one must pass some sort of
test or contract on what they will give back to the community, what
they plan to contribute, and what they will strive to learn about
its human and natural history. (Now look at who’s calling who an
elitist.)
“Look here,” they whine, “you want to
take away my rights as an American citizen. I wanna own that trophy
home in Jackson Hole to entertain my friends once a year.” But I
maintain that those rights end when they force others to move and
negatively impact the community.
To be sure, the
Homestead Act had its faults. But its heart was in the right place.
Yes, it said, you can have this land, this 160 acres, but only if
you live here and work the land – if your hands are stained with
its dirt and you’ve sown your heart into it. Drew
Hardesty
Sundance, Utah
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Let’s ban second homes.
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