Too expensive to live, or can't live if I stay

Beyond rural decay and rural gentrification

Have you ever seen a Ferrari in a rural town of 5,000? Or a modest three-bedroom house going for $1.1 million in a town of 9,000? Or a small city where the average home price is nearly one million dollars? And that’s not just for the big houses, the fancy ones, that’s the average house for sale — that’s how inaccessible it is to buy a house in Bozeman, Montana. And the phenomenon of rural gentrification, as we call it, isn’t limited to one state; it’s no longer even limited to a handful of towns frequented by the rich and famous. It’s spreading across the West, across rural America. That is, in places that haven’t been left to rot.

Home for sale in Whitefish, Montana for $1.4 million. Image by Heather Redding.

Not too long ago we (using we for simplicity with two authors) were in Denver. We had started the day in Junction City, Kansas, and as we sat down to eat after a long day of driving our server came over. Their name was Dallas. We got to chatting, and when we mentioned Junction City, Dallas immediately replied, “I hate that place. My Mom lives there, so I can say that.” And safe to say we didn’t expect our server at a Denver vegetarian restaurant to know a small Kansas city eight hours away. We also didn’t expect our server to be named Dallas, to be fair.

The interstate between Junction City and Denver was the least interesting part of a recent cross-country road trip, by a long shot. We saw fields, mostly. Towns seemed to be hundreds of miles apart, and the few we did see were so small that there wasn’t much to be seen. We did stop in one, for lunch, and it was called Quinter. It had once been called Familton, but apparently the postal service kept confusing it with Hamilton, so that had to change.

As we arrived in Quinter we pulled up to a drug store. It had an old-school lunch counter, and we hopped out of the car, thrilled to not be driving for a bit, and to grab some food. But there was none to be had. They had soda, and not much else. Thankfully a worker was more than happy to tell us what food they had in town. She said, “Our Dairy Queen has food, aaand oh there’s the brewery down the street. They have sandwiches.” That was that. We went over to the brewery and got some of the most unequivocally mediocre sandwiches of our lives.

The next four hours to Denver we talked a lot about small towns, rural decay, and rural gentrification. One of us grew up in Montana, and the other grew up in the Midwest and on the East Coast, and we’ve both spent time in a few different places. It’s easy to think of rural America as the land that’s been passed over, the land that time (and capitalism) have forgotten where there aren’t many good solutions to folks’ economic problems, and they instead turn to MAGA and old prejudices and just dig the hole deeper. And in some places the tide of decay has swept through, devastating communities. Driving through Iowa and Missouri you see town after town where the awnings of the handful of stores open on Main Street are so weather worn that the letters have faded almost to illegibility, because nothing has been updated since 1977.

Photo by Josh Berendes on Unsplash

There’s a whole lot of small towns and rural areas that look like this. And a lot of people have written off giant swathes of the country, not spending much time thinking about the gerrymandering or corporate malpractice or extractive economies that got us here. Neither party really wants to get into the way our economic system sees people and land as disposable, resources to be chewed up and pumped out and forgotten about. But as you drive across the country you’ll see it. You’ll get out West and see ghost towns, old mining towns abandoned by corporations whose people were then forced to leave, in a rush or in a trickle. And yet in other places you’ll see something totally different. You’ll see medium sized three-bedroom houses going for a million dollars. You’ll see expensive cars and celebrity gated communities and fancy ski towns – all in rural America. There’s a rural gentrification epidemic that’s not getting much attention in major media. And it points to underlying, structural problems that this country needs to address. The same problems that create ghost towns, in fact.

There’s not just one factor behind ghost towns. Capitalism is of course the driver in many ways, but settler-colonialism and the willingness to ravage the land, before then abandoning it, and multiple other systemic factors play their parts. As was recently written in

Spirit of Solidarity

, the ongoing farm crisis and the consolidation of agriculture, devastating small, family farms and ranches is fundamental to the decay of large swathes of rural America. That piece continues:

"The shuttering of much of American manufacturing, with jobs sent overseas; the devastating environmental impact that industry has had on many small towns, including the boom and bust cycle of resource extraction that makes work unpredictable; all of the same factors of technology that are making everyone more lonely and disconnected from each other have devastated rural life and communities; and many other factors are also responsible."

Montana as a case study 

As you drive from east to west across the country, you see the impact of Big Agriculture on the Midwest and much of the Plains. You see hollowed out towns, with nowhere to eat but a Dairy Queen. Then, if you happen to get to Montana, you see something strange. Montana is a state that has examples of both phenomena. Driving across the state from east to west is the experience of transitioning from what many people consider flyover country to some of the most coveted small, Western cities and towns. Eastern Montana is prairie country that borders the Dakotas and Wyoming. Prairies are incredible, beautiful ecosystems – but that’s not how most of America sees them when compared to the towering Rocky Mountains you start to glimpse as you drive west across Montana. 

Eastern Montana prairie and ranch land

In western Montana’s Rocky Mountains, small cities like Bozeman and Missoula, and towns like Whitefish and Kalispell are anything but decaying. These are the parts of Montana that have been the most popular and populated for a good long while, largely because they boast the kind of picturesque beauty that most people value. They also offer quick access to all types of recreating, including the activities that people pay a lot of money for – like downhill skiing and fly fishing trips on clear, trout-filled rivers – as well as recreating that is more available to the common man, such as hiking, biking, and inner-tubing down the river. 

As eastern Montana’s population has dwindled, western Montana has boomed, including a very noticeable influx during the pandemic. This boom has basically led to gentrification throughout western Montana, with massive housing shortages in places that, for the most part, never built up in the 20th century to support larger populations like much of the East and Midwest did. There’s no such thing in most of western Montana as an affordable old fixer-upper from the first half of the 20th century. There is such a thing as a mid-2000s drywall duplex for 500k. 

The Bridger Range comes into view as you drive west from eastern Montana along I-90

This trend is not unique to Montana. Similar reports have been coming out across the West, particularly from areas that people want a slice of – beautiful areas where they can move to work remote and have a better quality of life, or where they can purchase their second home (or third, or fourth). Some places out West have been havens for the wealthy for a while, such as Jackson Hole, Wyoming (here and here and here are realtors’ blog posts about why you should buy your second home there), or Sun Valley, Idaho where Disney CEO Bob Iger complained about the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes from a yearly billionaire camp he attends.

Even Montana has Big Sky, a now strange little place south of Bozeman, home to the Yellowstone Club, where the ultra-rich have homes and memberships. The list of members and past members includes Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Lopez, Tom Brady, the CEOs of major tech and finance companies, and more.

Of course, these areas like Jackson Hole, Sun Valley, and Big Sky are weird – when a place becomes a playground for the ultra-wealthy, it’s kind of lost to everyone else. But there are lots of places, not just in the West, but across the country, that have been undergoing big changes, very quickly. And a lot of these changes look like people moving in who aren’t the ultra-wealthy or celebrities, but generally have more money than the people living there; may have access to work outside of the area; and bring their tastes and norms with them – and have the buying power to change the landscape of the businesses, real estate, and culture of an area quite quickly. 

It’s important to note that change is inevitable. Places and landscapes are always changing, and people have been griping about it for as long as people have been living in built-up societies. Especially in North America where colonial settlement made over the land and place in the image of settlers at the expense of the people already here, we’ve been set up for cycles of displacement and drastic change from the beginning. It’s also true that gentrification is not a new thing – it’s something that many people of color and poor people, especially in more populated areas have been experiencing for decades.

However, it’s a big mistake to downplay what’s happening in the West and around the country right now. The supercharged, mass displacement and precarity of working people that we’re seeing tells us a lot about the stage of capitalism that we’re living in. It ties in so many factors: what kinds of labor different classes of people are doing, and will do in the future; how the continued siphoning of wealth upward is going to affect the many below; how important land, property, and space are, and will continue to be in the coming decades; how people react to control and surveillance, and search for places to try to escape; and how climate change, driven by our economy, is going to affect where people live, and how we live.

Living in places rich in land and space that are experiencing these types of changes pretty quickly is kind of a scary harbinger for the future. At the same time, I’d rather be in Missoula, Montana where the place doesn’t feel hollowed-out, than in downtown St. Louis or in Quinter, Kansas. The thing is, though, what Missoula and Bozeman and St. Louis and Quinter all have in common is that the ghosts of the past and the displaced are there – they’re just easier to ignore when life is bumping all around you. 

We will never be living without the ghosts of people and life that have been sacrificed to make this country, but we certainly could be living in communities and towns and cities where we don’t have to choose gentrification or decay. There are no perfect examples, but between the places we’ve lived and the places we’ve been, two come to mind: Laramie, Wyoming and Iowa City. 

Photo by Seth Dewey on Unsplash

The rare in-between

In Laramie, home of the University of Wyoming, home prices are a little below the national average. The mean is about $350,000, which we can all agree is telling us the national average is too high, but for a college town out West they’re actually doing pretty well. In Iowa City, costs are lower, although they’ve increased a bit recently. The average home costs around $280,000, and the median rent is roughtly $1,150. Overall, it’s a more affordable place to live than most of this country, and as the home of the massive University of Iowa it’s fortunate that prices haven’t gone up further. But here’s the thing – it’s not just that these two towns haven’t gotten exceedingly expensive – it’s also that they haven’t decayed.

Both Laramie and Iowa City sit in the middle of areas where the landscape is dotted with fading towns, towns where a few too many storefronts are empty, where a lot of folks might get their groceries at the gas station if they don’t want to drive another 20 miles. And yet these two small cities are healthy, vibrant, and still not overly expensive. They’re not perfect, that’s for sure, but they’re two examples in rural America that both haven’t decayed and also haven’t become immensely gentrified; they’re Goldilocks towns.

The major common thread between both Laramie and Iowa City is that they house flagship state universities. Granted, in Wyoming the University of Wyoming in Laramie is the only state university campus, but you get the idea. Each town is infused with public funding and young people, which in turn brings economic prosperity and cultural energy. And each has certain innovative elements that cannot be found in surrounding towns. In Laramie you get nifty stuff like a huge old school converted into a community civic center, with a coffee shop, art studio space, event venue and more. In Iowa City the center of town is the pedestrian mall, a small square of city blocks where cars cannot go, so you get foot traffic and occasional performers in the heart of town, not traffic. The little zone also happens to have numerous bars, stores, restaurants, and the library. Now, why aren’t Laramie and Iowa City experiencing the kind of gentrification that Bozeman or Missoula, Montana are? Probably because they’re not located in the picturesque mountains, and aren’t such a lure for scenic-seekers and recreaters. Laramie in particular has windy and harsh winters, which also makes it less desirable, despite the town’s other features.

Photo by Matthew Lancaster on Unsplash

Now, again, these towns are a little unusual. The big college campuses offer something special, and are made possible by investment from the state. But, this shouldn’t be so special, so unusual. Our cities being less prone to decay, less prone to the ups and down of markets out shouldn’t be unique. And our towns being more immune to immense gentrification due to the flow of people and capital shouldn’t be unique either. Public investment, public money helping to stabilize our communities should and could be the norm. In this country we preach public control, we preach that this is all for the people and by the people, but the way we let real estate interests run roughshod over our neighborhoods, let mass displacement and eviction be normal, let it become more expensive for most of us to live so that a few people can profit immensely has nothing to do with “the people” and everything to do with big business. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

Bozeman, the Montana city where the average home price is reaching a million dollars, is fighting back. It’s also a college town, home to Montana State, which has protected the city from decay. But at the same time it’s seen an uncontrollable flood of wealthy people from across the country drawn to the beautiful landscapes and opportunities to ski and fish and hike. The Tiger Woods and Bill Gates of the world own mansions nearby, and gobble up ranches. The town doesn’t have control of the land, the real estate, or the skyrocketing home prices. That is, until now. Bozeman residents have recently started taking back control by organizing a powerful tenants union. They’ve gotten one of their founders elected mayor, banned most Airbnbs, and are just getting started. They’re showing us a way forward.

We can have public investment. We can have public ownership and control of housing and businesses. A tenants union is just one tool we can use to reclaim power in our communities. There’s also community land trusts, unions, worker owned businesses, and much more. The roofs over our heads and the jobs that sustain us don’t need to just be subject to the whims of markets and capitalists. Public universities, and how they benefit the towns around them, are just one example of this phenomenon, of the consistency and reliability we can provide for one another with public investment in our own communities and with collective control of our own communities. We shouldn’t have small towns where people are forced to move out because they can’t afford to live on the block where their parents lived. And, at the same time, we shouldn’t have towns where people have to leave because they simply can’t find a job. We can have security and stability in our homes, and in our lives – if we build it.