Reporting From The Left: The AP Finds The Dark Side Of The Boom

[bitterlyclingin]

(Just too horrible! Grandma forced to move to Arizona with the kiddies and grandkids and miss all those severe winters. There is an element of nobility in a ninety year old woman out on her roof shoveling the winter's snow off by herself. Do they make adult reporter sized kid's Huggies? Where's Barack, anyway? He promised us to take the boom and the bust out of Capitalism. This just shouldn't be happening.)

"Posted on November 14, 2011 by John Hinderaker in Economy, Media Bias

The AP Finds the Dark Side of the Boom

As we have often noted, North Dakota is booming. This is what happens when you have a great business climate and develop your energy resources. Currently, there are more jobs than people in North Dakota, and workers from around the country are pouring into that little-populated state to earn six-figure incomes in the oil fields and supporting industries. Like every boom, this has consequences; among them, a housing shortage and rising house prices and rents. This is great if you own a home, not so great if you are a renter.

One might think that if the Associated Press were to write about North Dakota, it would focus on the state’s explosive growth and the lessons that other states might learn from North Dakota’s example. But no! The AP finds the dark side of the boom: “N.D. oil boom pushes seniors out.

After living all of her 82 years in the same community, Lois Sinness left her hometown this month, crying and towing a U-Haul packed with her every possession.

She didn’t want to go, but the rent on her $700-a-month apartment was going up almost threefold because of heightened demand for housing generated by North Dakota’s oil bonanza. Other seniors in her complex and across the western part of the state are in the same predicament.

“Our rents were raised, and we did not have a choice,” Sinness said. “We’re all on fixed incomes, living mostly on Social Security, so it’s been a terrible shock.”

Poor Mrs. Sinness had to move from Williston to Bismarck, where her daughter lives. Some would consider this a step up. But not the Associated Press. And, of course, Grandmas who own their own homes–a large majority, no doubt–are experiencing a windfall as home prices skyrocket."


The AP Finds the Dark Side of the Boom | Power Line

 

[likeabird03]

Housing shortages, labor shortages - I would trade those problems any day for the economic problems being experienced by the rest of the nation. I've talked to a lot of people from North Dakota and there's a sense of optimism and positivity among the people that the rest of the country has seemed to give up in the past few years.

It's a great example of what happens when a place is actually able to utilize its natural resources. They can always build more homes, unfortunately the problems in the rest of the nation such as California won't be fixed that easily.

 

[midcan5]

If the OP were honest it would outline the fact this happens whenever 'gold is found in them thar hills.' Many things happen then, growth, destruction, greed, waste, profit, and exploitation all combine to throw 'grandma' out and eventually things settle, die, or move to China. Cynical you say, nah, seen it in Philly when energy costs created an enlarged city and the poor had to move to darker pastures. Such is life, but it's those pesky people who make it good or not so good. And scapegoating media, the modern whine, doesn't help a single soul.

 

[editec]

Yeah any rentor living on a fixed income in a booming economy like that is in trouble.