Local Voices
Opinion: East End Inflation Destroying Non Land Owning Locals
As their wages stagnate, rents, food prices, fees and fuel are sending the "help" elsewhere ! The "Help needed" signs only proves the point.
Slowly yet suddenly the once reliable east end work force has evaporated. Yes there is a healthy amount of happy real estate agents supervising the sale of record amount of homes at record prices yet at the same time every day the western evening trade parade of cars on Route 27 has carloads of former east end employees leaving the east end to relocate where they can find a balance of affordable rents and respectable wages.
East end business owners are shortening hours and closing down full days this year even in the high summer season due to the shortage of labor.
The trend most likely will only get worse in the upcoming offseason. Too many businesses are trying to maximize profitability to offset the devastating Covid effect of 2020 on their bottom lines. Substantially increasing workers pay in most cases is not part of their plan. Now with east end year round rents being effected by everyone feeling the need to make more money now on their increased valued property the manpower that makes the east end work is eroding.
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You can’t pay folks less than $800 a week and except them to pay $2500+ a month rent. Thus wealthy business owners may soon see their wealthier hands washing pots and pans or unloading trucks, or cutting lawns or banging nails. Waiting times for window replacements, roof repairs etc. are now at the point where the wealthy are helicoptering in help to get things done this week. Unfortunately not many folks can afford this.
The east end is now a tale of two cities being the best of times for some and the worst of times for others. It is only a matter of time when this most recent surge will cause a real estate bubble of the highest prices to a 2008-2009 situation. The ever increasing Citizen Preservation Fund numbers that are based on a real estate tax on new sold homes indicates that’s not happening soon. Neither are the needed workers returning. It really is the working class that makes up the workforce that does the actual work that makes a society function. Kill that or force it to go elsewhere creates “closed Wednesday” and “help needed” signs at places people used to wait an hour to be seated, seven days a week in the summer.
