Higher prices are driving some resort community residents to leave: ‘There is a sadness’
This is the fifth instalment of New Roots, a series from Global News that will look at how evolving migration patterns and affordability challenges have changed life in communities across Canada since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Michelle Schiewe is in the process of leaving her dream community.
For the past 12 years, the 48-year-old day trader and single mom has lived in Revelstoke, a small city with a population of 8,200 in British Columbia’s southeast.
Nestled in the Kootenay Rockies, it has long been a destination for outdoor adventurers, particularly when the nearby ski resort opened in 2007.
Life was “easy, adventurous and fun” when Schiewe and her family moved to the city from Edmonton in 2011, she told Global News. When she got divorced three years later, finding a new home to rent was relatively easy.
By 2019, however, when Schiewe was forced to move again, she says short-term vacation rentals had taken over the available housing stock, and securing an affordable place to live was “next to impossible.” A lucky break prevented her from being forced to move into a motel.
Now, Schiewe and her high-school-aged daughter are packing up and moving to Saskatoon. She cites many reasons for the move to Saskatchewan — being closer to her family, the lack of available single men her age — but keeps returning to the ever-rising cost of living, which she says is impacting the small B.C. city’s appeal.
“There is a sadness of leaving such a beautiful, in my mind, paradise,” she said.
“It was an absolute a dream to live here. I had never been able to say that I live in a beautiful community … but that sense of community is being disrupted and is eroding for sure.”
Schiewe’s story illustrates a growing trend in tourist towns across
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