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Amenity migration a challenging, complex issue

Banff Centre forum tackles problems accompanying the ‘mountain living dream’
1522amenity
Trail Fix The Valley Trail is part of a portfolio of amenities drawing in new residents.

“Play, live and retire here.”

“Your life can find a place to enjoy itself.”

“A place for your business and your home.”

“Stewardship comes with ownership.”

Those are just a few of the advertising slogans developers are employing in effort to sell properties in North American mountain communities, said Linda Kruger, guest speaker at the Understanding and Managing Amenity-led Migration in Mountain Regions conference, which took place at the Banff Centre last week. Running from May 15 thru 19, the conference drew more than 70 delegates from Canada, the U.S., Europe, Argentina and Malaysia.

A research social scientist with the United States Forest Service based in Juneau Alaska, Kruger shared a presentation on Friday, May 16 that focused on affinity to place, serious leisure and community resilience in so-called “amenity communities.”

Accompanying the “mountain living” dream, Kruger said, for every new home constructed, for every property sold to every smiling new homeowner — and equally satisfied realtor — comes the reality of challenges and problems for the already existing community where the phenomenon of amenity migration is taking place.

“The issue of amenity migration is profoundly complex,” Kruger said. “It can lead to wicked problems that can’t be easily resolved with simple solutions.”

Among those problems is the reality that long-term residents of an established community often find themselves being forced to adjust to what many of them perceive as an invasion of newcomers whose vision of mountain living differs greatly from their own.

“Long-term residents often perceive those migrants as invaders,” Kruger said. “And at the same time, those long-term residents often feel excluded from the community.”

This is particularly evident when there is a great difference in the material wealth of the migrants compared to that of less affluent residents whose choice to make that community their home was based on a very different set of desires, circumstances and even values.

In many cases, the municipality’s planners and decision makers are in effect held hostage by developers, leaving them to implement policies that are reactionary rather than proactive, Kruger said. The key is to encourage both long-term residents and newcomers to become involved in community visioning strategies.

“Canmore is not alone where developers have taken control,” Kruger said. “I think as many people in the community as possible need to be proactive and engaged in focusing sessions. It’s hard work, but I think it can be done. The town needs to find ways to coalesce people to take their community back.”

Within the boundaries of a single geographic community, visions of what makes that community home can differ widely, said guest speaker Norman McIntyre, an author who studies the influences of multiple dwellings on people’s concepts of home, identity and place.

“People build different meanings of place, and those different meanings can create power struggles,” McIntyre said. “But change is the new normal. The challenge is not to resist change, but to embrace it and to expect the unexpected.”

Other challenges discussed at the conference included the aggressive construction of homes meant to be used as occasional or second homes that are a lot larger than the country cottages of decades past, many of which are built on land that is environmentally sensitive in terms of sustaining wildlife populations. In many places, Kruger said, protection of the natural environment has become a key component in attracting amenity migrants.

“The rural landscape is a changing commodity,” Kruger said. “Places are commodified, leading to consumption of the landscape.”

The phenomenon of amenity migration is fuelled by a variety of factors, including the technology of the Internet, ease of mobility provided by readily available air travel, as well as changing social customs, said Lawrence Moss, director of the Spokane-based International Amenity Migration Centre in his keynote presentation on Thursday, May 15.

“The living realm is expanding,” Moss said. “People don’t think of themselves as living in just one place. Increasingly, people are living in communities that are not place based.”

One of the problems faced by amenity communities is a sense of impermanence created by homeowners who occupy those homes only a handful of weeks or even days per year, and the steady flow of people leaving the community as they are driven out by rising real estate costs or a shifting social environment.

“Second homeowners are considered to be a main source of a sense of impermanence,” Moss said. “When we look at so-called ‘permanent’ amenity migrants, we often find they aren’t that permanent, as many of them spend their winter months in warmer places like the south.”

Another cause of out-migration is that of long-time homeowners cashing in on greatly increased property values, suggested conference delegate and Canmore’s Mayor, Ron Casey, as he posed a question to Kruger.

“If you’re successful at attracting new people to the community, real estate prices rise, and people are cashing out,” Casey said. “People are not able to control themselves from cashing out because the money is just too big. But it blows the long-term population apart.”

Offering a potential solution to the dilemma, Moss related the decision of some European communities where policies have been implemented whereby the community collects a percentage of the profit the property owner realizes from the sale.

“That inhibits speculation, and it brings funds earned by the community and the environment back into the community,” Moss said.

Seeking solutions to the challenges brought on by amenity migration that are geared toward the specific issues faced by a particular community or region can be achieved by inclusive visioning and mission building processes which must be followed by diligent monitoring and implementation, Moss said.

“People get burned out with the visioning if they are not invited to stay through the process,” Moss said. “Monitoring and implementation is crucial, but that is usually not done.”

One issue that hasn’t received nearly enough attention, Moss said, is that of the worker population, as in many locales, particularly in mountain regions, where the wealthy amenity migrant has cornered the market.

“Not all amenity migrants have money,” Moss said. “It’s one of the issues of biggest concern.”

Many who have chosen to make their homes in mountain communities, including artists, writers, schoolteachers and mountain guides, have chosen to live in what they perceive as desirable places for personal, professional and even spiritual reasons. They make sacrifices and compromises to stay in the communities that they have made their home, and where they have become valuable threads in the community. But their stay in their own hometown is often tenuous. In the case of many, including service industry workers, the town is not sustainable without them, yet many cannot earn enough money working in the available — and necessary jobs — to stay, a phenomenon which eventually leads to severe staff shortages.

“That’s one of the issues of the biggest concern,” Moss said. “There are no solutions yet. One of the reasons we’re here is to try and invent some. We have to think in ways we haven’t yet.”