Incredibly, my iPhone died while walking in NYC, but was still able to use the transit card at a gate. It goes into a low power mode that still has the payment/transit card powered.
I use a lithium booster battery pack for an old car I use, and have used the battery pack to jump-start my car multiple times on a freezing-cold day (sub 10f) while trying to locate a store with a new car-battery in stock.
You sound like a big city person (i used to be one - 5 years ago before moving here). I live in Truckee. town of 16,000 people.
> If the local residents are wealthy enough to live in the area, perhaps businesses have to bite the bullet, raise prices locally, and pay more for essential services like bartenders, wait staff, retail, etc
I love your definition of "essential services" are bartenders and wait staff. You sound like a real great person to be planning for critical events, such as wildfires which occur in our area.
Also "If the local residents are wealthy enough to live in the area" - lol, do you realize in our Town of 16,000 people, there are more than 50% of our houses that are NOT locals. On a busy weekend we expand to about 55,000 people. The problem is not the full time locals, but the temporary residents who exacerbate this problem. Their houses remain off the market for local residents to rent because they want to (rightfully so) njoy their second home for a few weeks a year - which precludes a long-term leaser. It doesn't matter how much wages rise, locally - there are CFO's of local businesses who have had to move because they cannot find housing.
Yes, we live in a national forest, so simply building more housing is slowed down by natural beauty and environmental assessments, and the usual NIMBYism too. But the town is quite aligned behind trying to solve this problem somehow.
You sound exactly like the people who moved up to Lake Arrowhead and ruined it, I ended up leaving when I got told by a flatlander to leave “their” mountain, where they’d lived for a lot shorter time than I had. I realized then it was losing its appeal and wouldn’t be a place I’d continue to enjoy with those sorts increasingly moving up there. For a resort area the people who work the service jobs are essential. Those businesses are the backbone of the community most of the time. Without them it would lose the traits that make it desirable to live.
> For a resort area the people who work the service jobs are essential.
I am the OP the commenter was referring to. I wasn't going to bother responding to a nitpick on my use of the word "essential" but you summed up my meaning perfectly.
If all the bars, restaurants, cafes, dry cleaners, etc. go unstaffed (as they are right now), headlines start being made. We don't need to lump people into brush-fire fighters and bartenders in terms of who is essential.
To top it off I'm not a city person and I used to live in Truckee, CA, where this poster is living.
If it's the vacationers causing problems, isn't it quite easy to enact local laws to deal with those problems? Those vacationers aren't there to oppose the solutions.
Well....the article does mention that business owners are becoming property owners and landlords so they can make more money in their business... seems like your wish is coming true.
I live in Truckee, it's a town of 16,000 people. We'd see deaths on facebook, etc. but that deaths weren't nearly high enough to cause a problem with finding any sort of staff. The prblem, as the article states - there IS NO HOUSING.
In Truckee - this is the problem: Sure, you can live in Reno 40 minutes away and make $15-20 an hour there(but rents are rising - I know someone paying $3200 for a place now), but then why would you commute to a small town 45 minutes away for the same $17 if you can't live there and enjoy the mountains?
Not naive, you just didn't read the article fully?
It doesn't matter how much you're paying people - they can't find a place to live here. The CFO of company here has had to move to Arizona recently and works remotely now. I live in Truckee and this isn't just affecting temporary workers or low-paid workers. This isn't even the "well it's gonna be $3500 for a one bedroom like SF, so I'll pay up". people simply can't find places in a reasonable pricing band. Then, when they find it - the owners sell it next year and the search begins again.
Anybody without a house is in a vulnerable state in this economy IMO.
