I know this all too well personally , and it is very sad.. I saw this happening in my birth home area, then the small town I grew up in and then the area I lived in my marriage.
My move here 14 years ago has seen runs on farms and homes twice and rentals go sky high , while marketing this area and a migration that eclipses many locals ability to go from renter to homeowner .
This is a rambling love letter – a heartbroken breakup note to a lost love named Asheville, as well as for all who continue to love her, no matter how painful this love may sting.
The crush is on and it is very real. Just a few months shy of 20 years ago, our young family moved to our dream town of Asheville, North Carolina. This Appalachian mountain treasure of a community was absolutely to be our lifetime home. For years and years, we continued to drive and walk in concentric circles around our beloved artsy village, almost pinching ourselves to help us realize that this had really happened. Asheville was really our home.
We knew this was the place where we would rest our heads after our final breaths on this earth. Other people who finish the sentence we started. We always ran into beloved friends, no matter the time of day or location around our little mini-city. We felt a love and pride for our area that we had never felt in our lives.
But then about 7 or 8 years ago, things began to change. We started to see the rabid hordes of tourists and opportunist out-of-state investors swarming into our area. They were simply responding to the maniacal, if not cavalier over-marketing of our incredible secret gem. No matter where on Earth I traveled to speak, people were suddenly huddling around me asking if Asheville was REALLY as amazing as all of those magazine and TV stories claimed it to be. My wife and I were receiving 5 to 10 texts, emails and messages every single week from friends, friends of friends, and total strangers, asking us for advice on how to move here to what I have long called my beautiful “Appalachian City of Light”.
My family and community of friends stood in horror as we watched out precious “forever home” begin to dwindle away under the strains of gentrification and America’s ever- expanding divisions between classes. The orphans of wealth began filling out streets and homeless shelters. Many are beautiful souls who once had good jobs and many had owned once-thriving businesses in the Asheville area. Now they were sleeping in doorways and forced to beg for change or scraps of food from total strangers – often with their spouse and children by their side.
We were forced to watch the slow and prolonged strangling and ultimate asphyxiation of the goose that laid the golden egg. The incredible street performers, musicians, artists, hippies and visionaries that we are and adore so much – the freaky souls who made this town so magical in the first place – could no longer live anywhere near town. They made it the cool place to be, yet now they all had to leave and make way for “progress”. Rents went up 20%, then 30%, then 40%. Home prices doubled and TRIPLED.
Yes, this hell on wheels headed straight for the cliff is happening all over the world. I understand that. But for OUR family, friends and loved ones here in Asheville, our hearts feel truly broken. It literally feels as if we are laying a beloved, inspiring elder of a family member to rest. She has been choked within an inch of her life, very often by people who once vowed to “have her back” in those moments when we saw the impending winds of change on the horizon.
Our “property management” guy is constantly reminding us whenever we put in a maintenance request that he could easily rent the home we are in for another $600 more on top of the $500 that they have already added in the three years that we have been in this house. He always makes sure to keep us in our place and remind us that this house (as dilapidated as it is) has more than DOUBLED IN “VALUE” since we moved into it just over three years ago. This is while my family is literally stewing in the boiling explosion of costs associated with living in, or even near, our dream town.
I am not faulting anyone in particular. We just feel sad. Very sad. And we know it is past time to let go of our Asheville dreams and move on. But where???? That is the million dollar question, isn’t it? Oh wait……. I’m not the guy with the millions of dollars who actually gets to ask the questions.
GreatCosmicMothersUnite 