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Allemaengel t1_j8a85jx wrote

I live in Monroe County and I read somewhere that approximately 45% of all the housing units in the county are owned by out-of-staters typically as vacation homes.

In the last few years more out-of-state investors are also coming in to buy and eventually flip while running crappy absentee landlord party house Airbnb's in the meantime that make life noisier and more trashy for their full-time resident neighbors with long commutes who just want to get some sleep.

Plus the traffic. Every third or fourth car I pass is a front-plater and it gets old fast dealing with rude ignorant tourists on the road when we already have enough locals like that.

The Poconos Mountains Visitors Bureau keeps promoting the area in more and more places to jam even more tourists in but the service sector tourism jobs are crap and the infrastructure here can't handle any more resorts and now we're getting warehousing too.

I'd like to get out of the Poconos and eastern PA in general after living here for 50+ years but everywhere else seems to be having problems too. There's no 'there' there to escape to anymore.

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flaaaacid t1_j8dpm0r wrote

An area marketed as a vacation destination contains vacation housing? This is my shocked face.

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Allemaengel t1_j8ebweh wrote

You entirely missed my point.

It's not that there's vacation housing. Duh, I know that. It's the sheer amount of it bought by relatively high-income out-of-staters as a percentage of all housing stock that doesn't leave much for lower-paid locals, especially those in the service sector jobs that support the tourism.

Housing insecurity represents a real issue here and in tourist areas throughout the country.

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flaaaacid t1_j8end3d wrote

But what is the solution? Forbid people from buying houses? It wasn’t so long ago that people were complaining that the area was disinvested and nobody could sell or leave. Now industry is being added and there’s interest in housing and that’s a problem too. It just reads to me as bitter nimbyism.

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Allemaengel t1_j8f1jcm wrote

A severe distortion of the local housing market for low and middle-income Pennsylvanians by wealthy out-of-staters for vacation homes and investment Airbnb's represents a serious problem for local working class folks.

It's not the "bitter nimbyism" you're trying to make it out to be.

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flaaaacid t1_j8f37cf wrote

Oh I agree about Airbnb. It’s a scourge. But what I’m seeing in this thread is that anyone not from here is the enemy. New Yorkers daring to relocate to NEPA and so on.

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