After we drove up to Bartlett Reservoir yesterday, we sat in the car in the parking lot of the boat ramp, perched on the bluff above the large lake below us, nestled in the high barren mountains around us. I remarked that we were only a few miles from the highway that we had often taken to drive up towards Colorado, but that to reach it would entail a fifty mile detour, as the mountains were so rugged that only a sturdy off-road vehicle might even attempt it.
With the windows down, a cool spring breeze came through the car. It was enough just to sit there and feel the coolness. Already the stirrings of the hot summer were arriving down in the valley. In another month, the days would be intolerably hot. Here in the mountains it was at least ten degrees cooler, even more so, because of the altitude.
People are pouring into the valley. Everyone knows this. Over the past year home prices have skyrocketed. Rentals have grown scarce and pricey. Demand is far outstripping supply. When we came here five years ago it seemed cheap. Housing was plentiful.
Everything has changed and it will not change back soon. This is the new normal here. We experienced the last gasp of the relaxed version of the valley.
People are coming here because of the reason we came here---because it felt like one of the last refuges to which one could escape and start a new life in America. California is over. Everyone knows it. It is far too expensive for most people to move there unless they already have a lot of money, or a high-paying job lined up. The era when California could welcome the masses is don. This does not count immigrants, who are far more willing and likely to live in conditions that most Americans would not tolerate, including a dozen people living in a small house. Barring some catastrophe or natural disaster, California will never be cheap again for the masses.
Colorado was a refuge for a while, where people could go start anew. But it too is priced beyond most people's means.
Arizona is as far west as you can go now without going to California. And we are also getting the refugees fleeing eastward from the Golden State. Why hassle with L.A. when Phoenix is relaxed and cheap.
The housing cannot be built fast enough here to accommodate them.
Our apartment complex is as far outside of the metro area as you can go and rent a decent new construction unit. Last year during the shutdown, when no one could anything, it felt oddly quiet. It was deceptive. It felt like half our building was empty. It was serene in a way.
But when things started moving again in the fall, people started pouring in. The newcomers in our complex, who had also reached the edge of the rental market in the metro area, were much younger. Many were right out of college. Our complex went from the serenity of a refuge from the city to feeling like a college dorm. We used to have families and old folks around us. Now on all sides of our unit we are surrounded by pods of young people living together. The sounds of their music and video game playing booms on the walls. On some nights I have to wear ear plugs.
Traffic on Pima Road has grown atrocious. The volume has increased dramatically as people move into North Scottsdale. Insanely wealthy people drag race in their sports cars and cause accidents on a regular basis.
I am glad we came here. This was the perfect place to ride out the pandemic. Arizona was and still is a refuge of sanity. But what brought us here is now bringing in people on an unprecedented scale of growth. Phoenix has boomed before, but in those cases, construction could keep up with demand. People came here because they could get cheap housing. Now they come despite the lack of cheap housing, as they did for a while in California before it became out of reach for most people to relocate there.
"We gotta get out of this town," I said a couple weeks ago, while muttering about the changes to the complex and the neighborhood. Cities hold no interest for me. They repulse me. But where will we go? We think about this quite frequently. We have possibilities, but long-hanging fruit of places like Flagstaff are not as appealing as they could be, because they are in the process of suffering from the same constraints of people pouring in, seeking the last refuge in America, while the construction cannot possibility keep up in the era of land use restrictions.
Fortunately we both agree that when the time comes to relocate again, there will be an obvious answer to where we will go.
But it can't be somewhere hot. Ginger hates the heat. She needs the cool breeze, like the one in the mountains yesterday. And I like pine trees. I enjoyed having my undeveloped desert, but they have taken that from me and I detest walking on the suburban sidewalks and paths, and smiling at the joggers and thin women in yoga pants with jackets tied around their waists, who walk briskly and sometimes make eye contact. God bless them, but it not my eye of a nice stroll.
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