In the interior West’s explosive real estate market, the dollar is the broker of conquest, and false narratives the blankets delivering socioeconomic disease.
You have put words to issues I have long known of, and experienced the negative consequences of first hand. Yet, when I tried to inform others or start a discussion, I was repeatedly shut down or outright attacked for sharing my experiences and observations. So thank you, for your honesty. May your writing continue to highlight the issues I know hundreds of thousands of local Coloradans (especially lower income) are facing. I grew up in one small town in Maryland and moved to Colorado not for the mountains, but for college. I fell in love with the community, and the land (not the sports, etc.), and the values of striving to create harmony with the environment and within our neighborhoods. I decided to invest my life and career here and to stay. I am middle income, and I have been a proponent of supporting local community and especially marginalized communities in for 10 years. I have given all of my income (which is very little to begin with) to the local economy and community-basednonprofits such as BCAA and a homelessness job training nonprofit in Boulder. I have given all of my time and energy to support longtime locally owned small businesses, and connect with local (vs transplant) people. I rent, I don’t own. I have very little to my name. I seem to be continuously pushed down and out, despite assimilating in the most caring wayI can think of, and that the community has asked me to in order to support it. I have felt continuously betrayed by these small local communities and businesses, even the nonprofits that seem hellbent on favoring wealthy transplants, tech, monopolization of once-local businesses and big businesses - displacing me, and other marginalized residents, in order to get on the wealth and trendy trains. I have given years to some of these places and communities. I have never felt this level of betrayal in my life. I have tried to support the community from the ground up, Then, I was pushed out. In the last three years I’ve faced homelessness, physical abuse, financial exploitation and further forms of abuse I never thought possible from my community. I’ve been hospitalized multiple times. I have not recovered, and it remains uncertain whether I ever will. The point of my sharing with you is to say thank you. I want to reach out and connect to you and I want to be your acquaintance because it is folks like us who genuinely care for the community at a root level that will restore it to a place of class equality, and environmental preservation (the two can go hand in hand) that it should be. I love my community in Louisville-Boulder-Longmont. I’ve spent nearly half of my life living there. I miss my home every day. Please reach out to me, I would love to be in contact about these ongoing issues with someone as grounded, realistic, and humble as yourself. I know the locals’ voices are being drowned out right now by transients, transplants and the rich in developer, tech and wealthy positions. But there are longtime local community members who genuinely care about what is happening, yet cannot say it. Thank you for giving us a voice, however small.
Wes,
You have put words to issues I have long known of, and experienced the negative consequences of first hand. Yet, when I tried to inform others or start a discussion, I was repeatedly shut down or outright attacked for sharing my experiences and observations. So thank you, for your honesty. May your writing continue to highlight the issues I know hundreds of thousands of local Coloradans (especially lower income) are facing. I grew up in one small town in Maryland and moved to Colorado not for the mountains, but for college. I fell in love with the community, and the land (not the sports, etc.), and the values of striving to create harmony with the environment and within our neighborhoods. I decided to invest my life and career here and to stay. I am middle income, and I have been a proponent of supporting local community and especially marginalized communities in for 10 years. I have given all of my income (which is very little to begin with) to the local economy and community-basednonprofits such as BCAA and a homelessness job training nonprofit in Boulder. I have given all of my time and energy to support longtime locally owned small businesses, and connect with local (vs transplant) people. I rent, I don’t own. I have very little to my name. I seem to be continuously pushed down and out, despite assimilating in the most caring wayI can think of, and that the community has asked me to in order to support it. I have felt continuously betrayed by these small local communities and businesses, even the nonprofits that seem hellbent on favoring wealthy transplants, tech, monopolization of once-local businesses and big businesses - displacing me, and other marginalized residents, in order to get on the wealth and trendy trains. I have given years to some of these places and communities. I have never felt this level of betrayal in my life. I have tried to support the community from the ground up, Then, I was pushed out. In the last three years I’ve faced homelessness, physical abuse, financial exploitation and further forms of abuse I never thought possible from my community. I’ve been hospitalized multiple times. I have not recovered, and it remains uncertain whether I ever will. The point of my sharing with you is to say thank you. I want to reach out and connect to you and I want to be your acquaintance because it is folks like us who genuinely care for the community at a root level that will restore it to a place of class equality, and environmental preservation (the two can go hand in hand) that it should be. I love my community in Louisville-Boulder-Longmont. I’ve spent nearly half of my life living there. I miss my home every day. Please reach out to me, I would love to be in contact about these ongoing issues with someone as grounded, realistic, and humble as yourself. I know the locals’ voices are being drowned out right now by transients, transplants and the rich in developer, tech and wealthy positions. But there are longtime local community members who genuinely care about what is happening, yet cannot say it. Thank you for giving us a voice, however small.