I just finished my first year of a PhD in Creative Writing at UNLV, and I really enjoyed Goldfield’s article. Las Vegas is a fascinating city because it’s both a microcosm of the United States and so thoroughly its own place. Like New Orleans, it’s a city with a truly unique point of view, a city that feels like a three-dimensional character, and one that tourists are likely to experience very differently than those who live here. Unlike New Orleans, however, many people don’t see Vegas as a place real people live, which can occlude its realities, positive and negative, from the national imagination.
When I first got here, my professor told me one of the things she loves about Vegas is that the American Dream™️ still seems possible here, that families can actually improve their economic status in a single generation through more achievable access to education, home ownership, etc., in a way that feels impossible in other cities of its size. However, Goldfield doesn’t explore the fact that the “‘Gentrification. Developers. Inflation.’” driving people to Vegas from Hawaii has , much more recently, come for Vegas as well. Wealthy people, especially from Southern California, have been moving here in increasing numbers, buying houses in cash over the asking price, which drives housing prices up, and rents are rapidly becoming untenable. People I meet who are from here or have lived here more than ten years describe being priced out of renting in the more centralized, desirable neighborhoods, and none of them see home ownership in these areas as attainable. A man I met said he had a 1-bedroom apartment in a building whose rents have incrementally increased from $700/month four years ago to $1500/month this year. The house next to where I live sold in 2006 for $70K. Last year, someone bought it for over $300K. It doesn’t seem that any meaningful value had been added to the property in that time—the owners still haven’t moved in because the house needed so many improvements—all new plumbing, new AC, etc. Utilities in the city are astronomical, often around $400/month in the summer, and I just got a weather warning to expect record, dangerous heat this week with temperatures over 105 (usually this heat level wouldn’t be reached until August).<br />
It’s important, I think, to recognize this, especially in relation to a story that focuses on a population driven to this city by the same phenomena in their home state. My professor, who’s lived here since 2006, was right that Vegas is a city of possibilities, but even in a single year I’ve watched these possibilities shrink rapidly, as they had been before I arrived, and as they will, unfortunately, continue to do if nothing is done to stop it.
I just finished my first year of a PhD in Creative Writing at UNLV, and I really enjoyed Goldfield’s article. Las Vegas is a fascinating city because it’s both a microcosm of the United States and so thoroughly its own place. Like New Orleans, it’s a city with a truly unique point of view, a city that feels like a three-dimensional character, and one that tourists are likely to experience very differently than those who live here. Unlike New Orleans, however, many people don’t see Vegas as a place real people live, which can occlude its realities, positive and negative, from the national imagination. When I first got here, my professor told me one of the things she loves about Vegas is that the American Dream™️ still seems possible here, that families can actually improve their economic status in a single generation through more achievable access to education, home ownership, etc., in a way that feels impossible in other cities of its size. However, Goldfield doesn’t explore the fact that the “‘Gentrification. Developers. Inflation.’” driving people to Vegas from Hawaii has , much more recently, come for Vegas as well. Wealthy people, especially from Southern California, have been moving here in increasing numbers, buying houses in cash over the asking price, which drives housing prices up, and rents are rapidly becoming untenable. People I meet who are from here or have lived here more than ten years describe being priced out of renting in the more centralized, desirable neighborhoods, and none of them see home ownership in these areas as attainable. A man I met said he had a 1-bedroom apartment in a building whose rents have incrementally increased from $700/month four years ago to $1500/month this year. The house next to where I live sold in 2006 for $70K. Last year, someone bought it for over $300K. It doesn’t seem that any meaningful value had been added to the property in that time—the owners still haven’t moved in because the house needed so many improvements—all new plumbing, new AC, etc. Utilities in the city are astronomical, often around $400/month in the summer, and I just got a weather warning to expect record, dangerous heat this week with temperatures over 105 (usually this heat level wouldn’t be reached until August).<br /> It’s important, I think, to recognize this, especially in relation to a story that focuses on a population driven to this city by the same phenomena in their home state. My professor, who’s lived here since 2006, was right that Vegas is a city of possibilities, but even in a single year I’ve watched these possibilities shrink rapidly, as they had been before I arrived, and as they will, unfortunately, continue to do if nothing is done to stop it.