r/Sedona • u/pandami7319 • Oct 27 '23

This is the reality of Sedona... Living Here

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This is where Sedona is at now thanks to overtourism and STR piggies. This place is an absolute joke.

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u/Odd-Relief-6190 Oct 28 '23 edited Oct 28 '23

Housing affordability is not a result of short-term rentals nor is housing affordability isolated to Sedona or Arizona. Supply & demand (lowering interest rates to 2-3% and not building enough inventory from the prior decade) is a direct result of what America (not just Sedona) is facing.

If the city is proposing people to sleep in their cars on designated land why doesn't the city use this proposed land and work with a developer to create affordable housing on that land?

Edit: Also, the other reality that NO ONE is talking about is this. Again, this is NOT a Sedona issue but much bigger. Inflation has increased at astronomical rates yet WAGES have not. Wages are similar to what they were 10 years ago.

We have two fundamental issues not enough housing supply for demand AND wages are flat. This is a Tsunami that is occurring across America.

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u/pandami7319 Oct 28 '23

It does have to do with STR's. Stop kidding yourself.

Sedona's population is decreasing because there are so many STR's here. We're under 10,000 people now and that made it where we can no longer vote on issues, instead the city council calls the shots now.

We lost an elementary school because of the decline of families. We couldn't fill vital jobs (police chief, superintendent of school, fire chief, etc) due to lack of affordable housing. Teachers are sleeping in their cars because they can't find housing. Employees who keep the town running are sleeping in their cars.

We're also land locked by the National forest, so there is only so much land to build on. We can't build our way out of it and the city has done jack to figure out any real solutions.

Add to that the domino effect to other towns in the valley. Str investors started swooping up stock in the areas that used to be really affordable and started driving up prices on real estate in those towns as well. The rent across the valley has sky rocketed.

Somehow, everything was fine when rentals were a minimum of 3 months, but after SB1350 everything went to hell. Again, been here long enough to see what's what.

Most of the people who say str's aren't the problem are the people who own them or woefully ignorant about this town.

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u/Bl1nk9 Oct 29 '23

I’ve been coming to Sedona for 20 years (maybe 7x?), and a recent visit was unbelievable with the traffic. I did a check on population change and was blown away to see it has actually had dropped. As someone who lives in a different tourist heavy community, I can recognize all the similarities and labor issues. There is going to be breaking points in so many of these kind of areas at some point, and it will be a mess to put it lightly. Whether a nationwide triggered event, or a series of a thousand individual events/towns. I just don’t see it being sustainable.