Across the country, especially in rural communities, coronavirus refugees with affluence are swarming to their second homes, otherwise seasonal rental houses and AirBnB’s. They are abusing their affluence at the expense of the people who live in these small communities.
I live in Fleischmanns, New York; a no-stoplight village in eastern Delaware County, nestled among the Catskill Mountains. It boasts around four hundred permanent year-round residents, many of whom work for the seasonal industries here; snowsport and summer recreation work. During shoulder seasons, in between the more popular times, most find a patchwork of jobs until the next season starts. It’s often just enough to fill the gaps, to make rent and car payments, buy groceries. Some scrape by on unemployment insurance, which is rarely enough to scrape by.
But as we schlepped along until summer, something odd, though in hindsight entirely predictable started happening. In mid-March, we started seeing plates from New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and certainly cars from New York City; we don’t own late-model Land Rovers here. Right now, there is nothing to do here. Restaurants, with a lack of visitors here to enjoy the mountains tend to have shortened hours, are even limited to being open just three days a week. Most resorts are shuttered until next winter. And nothing gets going here until the unofficial start of summer season, Memorial Day weekend.
What’s the problem, you ask? Surely the extra money they’re spending is some relief. And doesn’t the added business help with employment? And, as long as they’re adhering to lock-down orders, don’t they have the right to safety?
Sure, but…
The shelves that once displayed cleaning supplies, produce, toilet paper, bottled water, meats, eggs and dairy products were laid bare. Mind you, between neighboring Margaretville and here in Fleischmanns, there are about 900 permanent residents. We share a single supermarket. During slower times, those responsible for making stock purchases do so with that in mind. So, what happens when the population jumps by half in two weeks? What happens when those people come up without having bought provisions for a couple of weeks? Right, they panic-buy in our little town, leaving residents with little or none. What does come available is substandard. We’ve been relegated to prison toilet paper, literally thin enough to read through that leaves moist little balls of paper on your pucker. Or if it’s not substandard, it’s expensive. I went to buy cold cuts, but could only get the premium stuff — twice the price of store brands.
One of the workers at the grocery store tells of a woman who came with a U-Haul truck and spent four large on supplies. Yeah, four thousands of dollars.
They’re certainly not adhering to the stay-at-home orders, either. I see about as many license plates outside my window over Main St from other local states as I do NY plates. Nobody rolls around here in S-class Mercedes, either. I see the same one every day at least twice.
We have a single hospital, little more than a triage clinic. This, from their website, “Margaretville Hospital is a 15-bed critical access hospital located adjacent to Route 28 in the town of Margaretville in Delaware County.” The running macabre joke is, “Don’t get sick here.” But what if one of these refugees do get sick? Again, robbed resources meant for this small community.
Ain’t that America?