How do they live? (Anchorage, Homer: apartment, insurance, home)

[starlite9]

Originally Posted by Metlakatla

About the tourism jobs---those are mostly taken by out of staters and often the businesses supply them with a place to stay. And the college students who come up to work in the canneries mostly camp out on Homer Spit.

They shut the "Spit rats" down. So they have to den elsewhere now.

[Grannysroost]

Originally Posted by starlite9

They shut the "Spit rats" down. So they have to den elsewhere now.

Say what??? Rats...we have bears, wolves, moose...is there aerial hunting for rats, do you need a license....

[Metlakatla]

Originally Posted by GrammasCabin

I don't have any personal knowledge of Homer economics but I do know that the tourist industry does very little to sustain the locals there - or anywhere else in the small towns. Metlakatla's right, the industry imports their yuppie workers, imports their Chinese Alaska souviners and boards up the shops then the season's over.
It's tough, unless you own the grocery store, have a teaching or medical degree. We just do what we have to do. I paint houses in the summer, weather permitting, deckhand on fishing and tour boats and substitute teach part-time during the school year. It's that way with most of us anymore, scrounge the work wherever you can find it. Suppliment your food bill by gathering all the seafood and meat you can, grow your own veggies and if you want or need something you figure out a way to make it yourself. It's amazing how little you can live on when you finally figure out how little you really need.

This post is the truth; except that I sort of enjoy the seasonal workers. Most of them are adventerous people in their own right.

I wonder how the offshore jewelry stores are going to do this season...

[GrammasCabin]

Word here is not well! I think there's only about one ship a week coming to Wrangell this year and I think that's the little Princess of the North. The big ones started pulling out of here a couple years ago when they realized that, economy or not, Wrangell was not going to "sell out" to them. Since they can't turn our town into junk shops, they decided they don't make enough money off us. Even tho they take 40 percent of the money our little tour boat operaters charge. Hurts but we're just not willing to prostitute ourselves. The other sad thing is that their passengers just loved it here. Time and again I've been told "FINALLY! This is what we came up here for!" after they'd been drug from Ketchikan to Skagway and actually told which shops to patronize! We loved having them too and did all we could to show off our little town and make it fun for them to be here.
Can you tell I'm not impressed with the cruise ship industry?

[mal_flisk]

You and Met are like 2 peas in a pod. I hear you on the cruise industry. They run people through the airport here in Anchorage like their on a cattle drive, and from what I've seen of the way they treat the passengers at the hotels in FBX, they do the same thing there.

[ImAHobbit]

I hope to be a 'cruiser' but I would never actually take a cruise ship and I've spent enough time around tourists to know that I don't want to be around them.

I've been trying to figure out how to get up there this summer without breaking the bank. We really need to spend some time looking around if we are going to figure out where we want to move to and what jobs look like. We didn't think we could afford to go this year but out of the blue I got a bonus check today(don't tell Geithner) and I think my wife and I might call it a 20 year anniversary trip and head out as soon as school is out.

[starlite9]

Originally Posted by GrammasCabin

Word here is not well! I think there's only about one ship a week coming to Wrangell this year and I think that's the little Princess of the North. The big ones started pulling out of here a couple years ago when they realized that, economy or not, Wrangell was not going to "sell out" to them. Since they can't turn our town into junk shops, they decided they don't make enough money off us. Even tho they take 40 percent of the money our little tour boat operaters charge. Hurts but we're just not willing to prostitute ourselves. The other sad thing is that their passengers just loved it here. Time and again I've been told "FINALLY! This is what we came up here for!" after they'd been drug from Ketchikan to Skagway and actually told which shops to patronize! We loved having them too and did all we could to show off our little town and make it fun for them to be here.
Can you tell I'm not impressed with the cruise ship industry?

I don't think it was so much as "Selling out" that caused the ships to drop the port calls, because as you said, the passengers loved it. Some towns were getting a lot of cruise ships and they started to charge a "Head" tax for each person that hit the beach. The ships just started not to go to those towns. Whitter did it years ago, and now they don't see any ships at all, they just go to Seward and drop the passengers off there and they take the train North instead of from Whitter.

There is a downside to the ships dropping thousands of people off at a time, but there is some economic benefits to the towns too, but many of them got greedy at the city council level, and cut their nose off to spite their face. Now the passengers are just not taking the trips due to the economy, so the ships are going elsewhere on top of all the other issues.

Like you said, the tour boat operators were paying 40% to the cruise lines for bringing passengers to them, but now they get to keep 100% of nothing. I would bet most of them are in financial trouble about now.

The cruise ships also brought some of the misery onto themselves at the same time, they pumped sewage overboard and other such oddities and got caught, so the State went after them too. It wasn't all of them that did it, but it only took a few to raise the bar another notch towards finding different routes after more restrictions were put in place.

Overall, I would say there is no really winners on either side of the beach...

[GrammasCabin]

Yeah, it does hurt the economy here now that they've dropped us. The bigger lines told us 3 years ago that they would make Wrangell part of their permanent stops so many of my friends went into debt for bigger, better boats. We broke our backs to make walking trails, picnic areas and organize inexpensive fun trips. Then two years ago they actually did come out and tell us that they didn't make enough money off Wrangell to warrant keeping us on their schedule - that is unless we were willing to let them open shops here. Now all these used-to-be-loggers and used-to-be-fishermen have become used-to-be-tour guides and are in debt for boats they can't fill.

[george_t]

Don't quite a few people live in cabins in Homer?

I've been to Homer, and it's a spectacularly scenic place. I don't know about the economic situation in Homer specifically, but I assume that home prices have skyrocketed after being "discovered", so to speak. That's happened to a LOT of scenic towns around the country- housing is affordable, then the town becomes the newest hot spot, and prices go crazy. If a place gets too expensive, everyone is priced out except retirees. The kids have to live with their parents forever!

[akck]

Originally Posted by ImAHobbit

I hope to be a 'cruiser' but I would never actually take a cruise ship and I've spent enough time around tourists to know that I don't want to be around them.

I've been trying to figure out how to get up there this summer without breaking the bank. We really need to spend some time looking around if we are going to figure out where we want to move to and what jobs look like. We didn't think we could afford to go this year but out of the blue I got a bonus check today(don't tell Geithner) and I think my wife and I might call it a 20 year anniversary trip and head out as soon as school is out.

A cheap way to do it would be to drive to Prince Rupert and take the ferry to Haines. You can plan stop overs in various cities along the route. The only problem is that you may have to stay an extra day or two to catch the next ferry.

Once in Haines, drive up to Fairbanks and come down the Parks Highway to Anchorage. You can then drive down to the Kenai Peninsula. Return to Anchorage and return via the Glen Highway and then down the ALCAN back to the lower 48. You'd need about 3 weeks minimum to do it justice.