Last spring, I moved with my wife Karen Davis from Hudson, NY to West Palm Beach, FL. In part, this was to be closer in our aging years to one of our children. We bought a condominium in a vintage 1969 10-story building right on the Intracoastal Waterway, across the way from Palm Beach, where billionaires and Donald Trump have their palaces.
We have twice experienced gentrification in our earlier lives. Beginning in the late 1970s, we lived in a little house on a side street in Cambridge, MA. By the time we left some 30 years later, the housing prices in Cambridge were such that our little house was on the market for over $1 million dollars within a few years after we left.. We had bought it for $35,000 in the ’70s. We could not have afforded to start a life owning a house in Cambridge in the 2000s. After 15 years in Hudson, the same was true. In just that time, gentrification had driven prices up so much that we could no longer afford to buy a house there.
Our move to WPB has not prepared us for the next phase in wealth and income inequality.
We find our condo in the Portofino to be just three blocks south of a newly constructed mansion.
