Paradise Lost

To the editor: A friend recently sent an article to me about how downtown Charleston, SC, is in a death spiral. The STR platforms have transformed the downtown housing market into a speculative economy because investors can make much more money converting long-term housing into short-term rentals. Because of weak regulations, many people are jumping into this market. Enforcement is spotty, and the money is too good to resist!

The next generation of residents is moving away because only a few can afford to live there, and the businesses reliant on a local workforce struggle to make ends meet. They have been forced to raise prices again and again. Charleston has become a showy product offered to visitors, but it is unfriendly to residents. Rents and prices have reached ridiculous levels that only visitors will pay, while former local tenants and customers go elsewhere or do without. Soon, you will have a town that no longer feels like home, and more businesses will be impacted by the impossible math, including restaurants, coffee shops, galleries, and studios, throwing in the towel. It isn’t a stable economy.

Then, the chain stores and mini boutique brands move in. And, since so many of the STR properties are owned by non-residents, only a small amount of the rent revenue stays in the town. Downtown has become a workforce desert, a tourism shell with no internal economy.

Wait, isn’t this what’s happening to Nantucket?

Enough is enough, show up to Town Meeting and Vote #67 and stop the bleeding.

Sincerely,

John Sylvia