Comment on one of my posts tonight- I kind of can’t believe this is real, but I’m going to address it, because it’s important, and also I fancy a bit of a rant.
First and foremost, I live in an area where lots of people and families live in insecure housing. This is driven, in large part, by second homes. To have a home standing empty whilst people locally are homeless is obscene.
Second homes drive house prices up to the point where people cannot afford to live in the communities where they grew up. And they create communities with shortages of really important workers- people like firefighters, nurses, teachers, carers, the people you really want in your community- just can’t afford to live there.
And it rips the heart out of a lot of these communities. I know people who grew up in areas which now have a lot of second homes. Some of these people used to play on local sports teams, volunteer in the local area, or were just generally community minded citizens. A village that’s empty half the year can’t manage a rugby team, or run an RNLI station.
And small businesses- local shops, local pubs, etc, often get pushed out in favour of those who cater specifically to tourists. And so the local community becomes a worse place to live (often, especially, times like now, when not many people use their second home).
Second home owners don’t bring business into an area when compared with every day footfall of people e.g. using a local shop. Often, they’ll do a big shop at an out of town supermarket anyway. They won’t necessarily go to the local pub.
There are villages near where I live, if you drove round them tonight, more than half the houses would have dark windows because no-one’s there. And meanwhile, there are people not so far away sleeping in tents. If you can’t see what’s wrong with that...