Towns need year-round residents if they are to thrive. Tourism alone can’t sustain bus services, libraries, chip shops and playgroups
Wind-whipped sand, grey sea, people sitting in beach huts under blankets with hot-water bottles, ring doughnuts, bare trees, hot chocolate, empty pier rides: there is a particular tang to a British seaside town out of season that few places can rival. A specific mushy peas and condom wrapper bleakness that, personally, I love.
But the news that coastal areas now have three times the number of Airbnb listings per dwelling as non-coastal areas threatens the very future of these places, not to mention the lives of their residents. Housing campaigners point out that the huge number of “entire places” listed on the website show how landlords have been drawn towards short-term holiday rentals precisely at the time when people need affordable homes. They’d rather rent their spare house – you know, just that other house they have – to 50 well-off families for weekends than a local family for the year.
Nell Frizzell is the author of The Panic Years and Square One
