Your article on Cape Cod’s housing market (House & Home, FT Weekend, June 19) recalled the writing of Sir Thomas More, now over 500 years old. In Utopia he described the conundrum that Cape Cod — indeed any such peaceful getaway — is going to provide to the city dwellers flocking there.
Such a hot housing market, built on people grasping for a quiet slice of rural or seaside bliss, “lavishes rich rewards on so-called gentry, goldsmiths and the rest of that crew, who don’t work at all or are mere parasites, purveyors of empty pleasures. And yet it makes no proper provision for the welfare of farmers and colliers, labourers, carters and carpenters, without whom the commonwealth would simply cease to exist.”
Now, marketing professionals from New Jersey deserve better than to be called “parasites” or “purveyors of empty pleasures”. But if Cape Cod prices out waitresses, car washers and shop clerks then its housing market will correct itself. Most who go to such utopias expect to be wined, dined and treated like gentry by (someone from) the local economy. At some point you simply have to make provision for the people doing the work. The astute Housing Assistance Corporation officer who says the only solution is to “change zoning to allow multifamily construction and increase subsidy for year-round rentals” is on to something.
Charlie Merwin
Rose Valley, PA, US