Craving to fulfill lifelong dreams? Longing to get a second start in a new setting?
MSNBC.Com in a special feature on their website suggests five retirement spots that offer “the best quality of living for the least money possible.” They are a strange group: Ashland, Oregon; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Charleston, South Carolina; Barcelona, Spain; and Phuket, Thailand. Ashland has made a number of these lists over the last several years and as a result things don’t seem as nice here as they used to. Some call it “Californication.” Others “gentrification” or “upscaling.” The result has been a lot of growth, more traffic and a different vibe than there used to be. What’s the vibe? I’d say less mellow and a bit more smug. Medford has been included on some of the best lists and growth is even more tremendous up there. And with Measure 37 claims lining up we can look forward to more subdivisions and developments. But the folks who are just arriving find it to be a wonderful place which it still is, relatively speaking. Curiously, MSNBC chose to feature not retirees but a software developer and his activist wife who have landed in Ashland and love it. I’ve met Paul Collins, the guy in the little multi-media presentation. He’s in the Mac Users Group and a very bright guy. But he’s no retiree. That’s not to say there aren’t retirees headed this way in droves. There are. And, it ultimately will change Ashland into a hilly Sun City kind of place. Families with kids are on the decline. Two schools have been closed. There are noises from the state level about an idea to sell Southern Oregon University to some other university system. A certain percentage of wealthy people are going to continue to make their way to the best places like Ashland. The irony is that as population and demographics change the ambiance will change with it. Ashland will become hoity toity. Water will become more of a problem as it will everywhere else. And in Ashland, with hotter summers the trend, the chance of wildfire looms. This doesn’t seem to stop big houses from cropping up on the hillsides and in the dry woods. I’m sure the realtors are happy to see this kind of publicity and since we are getting ready to put our house on the market I suppose we should rejoice as well. But I’m still going to call it bad publicity.
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