Guest Editorial by Adrian Kuzminski

Housing: Time to Take Control

Ahealthy community depends upon the year-round residents who live and work in it. The more tourists flock to an area, the more the streets, shops, restaurants and public spaces are filled with perhaps friendly but still anonymous visitors crowding out the locals. Cooperstown sees this every summer. In extreme cases (Venice, Barcelona, the Hamptons, etc.) property values rapidly escalate and local residents are almost entirely driven out, wholly replaced by mass tourism and the businesses and services which cater to it. In the end, a bloated tourist community turns into something like a theme park. Cooperstown hasn’t reached that point, obviously, but it’s getting closer. Tourist overdevelopment of the type we sadly see elsewhere has been increasingly evident in our area for some years. The time to take action is now, before it gets too bad and we lose control.