The rich have turned the region into “ultra-exclusive enclaves,” creating hazardous living conditions for everyone else.
In such places, the word gentrification doesn’t do justice to the magnitude of this shift. In the context of the huge changes to real estate markets and the massive displacement of local workers, a new term is needed. In his book Billionaire Wilderness, Justin Farrell, a professor at Yale University’s School of the Environment, describes an “awe-inspiring concentration of wealth and a canyon-size gap between the rich and the poor,” all of which has led to a wholesale transformation of these Mountain West hubs into “ultra-exclusive enclaves.” A better word for what is happening in the Mountain West might thus be ultra-gentrification.
Affluent families, flush with tech dollars, crypto fortunes, and booming energy investments, cashed out their real estate in beleaguered big cities and bought up, or built from scratch, beautiful mansions in Teton County, in Bozeman, in Boise, Idaho—anywhere with clean air, lots of open space, and public areas that weren’t yet inundated with unhoused people experiencing a multitude of health conditions, including addiction and other mental health disorders. With the arrival of Zoom and other videoconferencing technologies, they were able to set up shop and work remotely from their modern-day castles. Hell, they could even make billion-dollar financial deals while hiking their favorite mountain trails.