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When I run into people from other mountain towns, the conversation often turns to rural gentrification and its dismal effects: ferns and smoke-free environments in what had been comfortable saloons, hardware stores turning into boutiques, workers priced out of the housing market, self-esteem instead of multiplication tables in school, etc.
Apparently, the best way to ruin a community is to have it discovered by people with taste and money, who like the town so much that they move in and change everything that they liked about it.
How to preserve traditional mountain culture? An informal seminar at the Cattlemen's Inn in Gunnison recently came up with some innovative public-policy proposals:
· Destructive Covenants. Upscale folks put restrictive covenants in their deeds to enhance property values by forbidding wind chimes, artificial flowers, porch swings, children, etc.
The same legal technique could also keep property values low, so that people can afford to live near their work. Members of a neighborhood association could adjust their deeds to require that all yards contain a clothesline, privy, woodpile, four mongrels, two porch appliances and a minimum of three unlicensed vehicles.
· Appalachia Zoning. To extend and formalize the new covenants, the state legislature should require counties to create an Appalachia Ring Zone around every municipality. Along with the lawn-free downscale estates (25-year-old mobile homes would get special tax incentives, and flower beds and fresh paint are strictly forbidden), the Appalachia Zone would also contain scrap yards, slag heaps, goat farms, wood lots, road houses, shooting ranges, gravel pits and other enterprises which will offend the sensitivities of the politically, environmentally and economically correct.
They'll be disgusted every time they come into town, and if they try to build above town, their deck panorama will always include jarring reminders of reality.
· Vacancy Tax. An Aspenite assured us that his town was a real community before the big money arrived in the '80s and built immense palaces that are occupied perhaps four weeks a year.
Meanwhile, the town suffers a severe shortage of employee housing. To finance the Appalachia Zone for affordable shelter, local government will levy a vacancy tax. The rate would need some fine-tuning, but for starters, let's say you'd pay $500 for every night that you didn't stay in your $500,000 house, or $750 for a $750,000 house.
And if that didn't work, there's always the possibility of Squatter Rights -- if you don't use your 17 bedroom suites and 24 gold-plated baths, somebody else will.
Fairness requires that I make it clear that these concepts are not all mine. However, my colleagues at the seminar assured me that they would not be distressed if my name, rather than theirs, were associated with the public presentation of this innovative policy proposal.
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