Priced out: Sedona workers sleeping in cars 

This is a problem all across the U.S. as rents become unaffordable.

This is normal in America. Pretty soon we will be a nation of car sleepers since rent is unaffordable.

Affordable housing is not sleeping in one's car.

This is the America I served. I can't even afford to live here.

And then they'll arrest you for living in your car, making you, once a contributing citizen into a criminal. And when you can't pay the fines because you keep getting them for sleeping in your car. You'll just end up in prison. Just get the hell out of there and leave them with no employees to run their business' that afford them Lamborghini's and a vacation home in the Hamptons. They'll change their tune.

Just leave, make them take care of themselves and not have the amenities and services that the working class that provides.

That's sad when a community thinks it's doing a kind thing by letting workers sleep in their cars. What about more affordable housing?

Of course it’s a doctor who’s single-handedly preventing needed workers from sleeping in their cars FIVE miles out of town.

How sad. This is the new norm everywhere now.

You cannot have your cake amd eat it too.!! If you want service then provide housing. The disconnect is insulting, they dont care for the employees.

Now Arizona is getting too damned expensive for both the middle class and the working poor. I wouldn’t be surprised that private equity firms have bought a lot of houses in Sedona. This is disgusting 🤢.

Dang shame. Working full time and only being able to afford to sleep in your car.

Anyplace beautiful where the super-rich decide to move to, becomes a hell hole for everyone else. Everyone who works in Billings Montana where Dick Cheney and Harrison Ford live, are housed in a single high rise homeless shelter. There is no place affordable in the entire town.

Wow you need permission to be homeless now. And it costs 850,000$ a year! wow! this is disgusting.

How generous of them to let the sleep in their cars.

Freaking move away, your car is already packed. Don’t slave away for rich people, they don’t deserve your labors. ✌️🙂🖖

This is sick. Are working-class folks supposed to be homeless now? Are housing and food to become luxury items in the land of the free? America is broken.

It's not just there, most of Arizona is too expensive

The employees just need to leave that place, let it rot, without workers that place will fall apart quick!

Welcome to Portland economy 2015... Ive been living in a van for five years. Left the PNW three years ago. Your being Californiaized... Enjoy.

While if all of the restaurant/ hotel and retail workers left Sedona I'm sure they would come up with a plan for housing but then I'm sure they would have no problem letting them sleep in their vehicles.

We dont under pay but our employees cant afford a house.....ya buddy...you do under pay

Some people can’t even afford a car or to maintain a vehicle (tags, insurance, oil changes, new tires and breakdowns).

There is no “somewhere else” anymore. Communities need to plan for where workers will live and commute for now.

There's people with college degree's working 2 to 3 minimum wage jobs interviewing for companies who make them go through 5 -7 rounds of interview steps, just to get ghosted or not hired.

Only 15 miles from Enchantment, you can rent a cot in a room with 5 other people in one of A's many beat-down houses, for $500.month. I don't know how that's even legal. Most under 60 opt for a tent in a wash instead.

every where is getting priced out or already there

A hard-working individual should never have to resort to sleeping in their car. This reminds me of Aspen Colorado years ago when workers could not afford to live there either. We need safe, clean, nice affordable, housing for middle class workers. In this country you either need to be very poor to get everything or you need to be very rich. Somethings terribly wrong with this picture

This is the problem requiring 3X the rent

This is happening in California as well even with the new $20.00 a hour minimum wage people can’t afford to rent. This happened during the last depression as well, just no one wants to acknowledge what is happening.

Good thing they're letting all the people across the boarder. They don't mind working for less and living 20 to a home.

Teachers, firefighters and police officers cannot afford to live in these towns !

This is another result of the greed ideology, it's occurring in most resort towns. Ultimately all employees for ALL businesses should just walk away.

The workers cannot afford to live there so lawmakers want to make it legal to live in their vehicles? Why do people put up with abuse?

So very kind of them to let their help sleep in their cars between shifts of slaving away for rich a$$holes.

The cruelty of the haves, is mind-blowing.....

3000 rent for a 2bedroom is wild

It's happening nationwide, Sedona is not unique having this outrageous rent being forced on us. Something has to give soon, too many people are going under.

Yeah, the car park isn't ideal, but I'm gonna guess the current homeowners who oppose it also don't want low income housing in the town and certainly don't want to wait more than two minutes for their barista to take their order either.

Gentrification prices out the very people that provide the services a city requires. Yet, every county and city council across the country are ignorant of this lesson.

Sounds like many resort areas, workers can’t afford to live there.

It’s been a huge problem. I think it really accelerated after Airbnb bill took hold in Arizona.

I live in California and work full time in hospital. We have same problem I can’t afford to even rent so I live with my parents. I make above minimum wage and single. This is not the America I grew up in.

Work on a general strike/walk-out, organize and completely leave the rich people to figure it out amongst themselves

The seasonal help at Martha's Vineyard actually camps in the wooded areas, with no running water or bathroom facilities. Been like that from the beginning,no plan to do anything about it. It's the norm and tolerated.

Just get a 3rd, 4th, or 5th job. Lazy people.

This is not the new norm everywhere, most people don't live somewhere with this kind of cost of living they shouldn't pretend or think they do, this is another level. This is the price paid for turning your small town into Disneyland. This is a cautionary tale about welcoming tourism and it's money, not the price of renting everywhere.

apparently all of those crystals & energy vortexes still doesn't give rich sedona citizens any more understanding of the struggles of working class people.

Unfortunately, Sedona is a Beautiful, Fantastic Tourist “Sh*t Show! Being loved to death by Tourists. Why not build a Tiny Home Community in West Sedona for Teachers, Medical Workers, Restaurant and Hospitality Workers and Police and Fire Employees. The City could use their Shuttles to Bring them to work and bring them home. C’mon Sedona! Don’t be so greedy!

Just leave! That place will be a lot less attractive once there are no gas stations, restaurants, schools or any other amenities due to a lack of workers to keep them open.

Let the workers leave. Inflated prices from housing to food all over AZ. Those who can afford to live there will just have to start working the menial jobs or pick up extra work to cover for those who can't afford to be there. This is all by design. Cities and towns get greedy for taxes when $$$ starts showing up. This is why you should vote and run for local positions.

It’s everywhere, some places are just worst than others.

Same thing happened in Jackon WY…

The solution is safe parking so they can monitor the 40 "approved" homeless...... My anger grows more and more by the day. I no longer feel sorry for the upcoming Judgement of Humanity.... I will not shed a tear as i have already shed many 😠

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. I’d rather see money fly around in the streets like trash than to live another day in this new hell

Just sad it came to this, every where you go. You see people suffering and the rich simply doesn't care. The greed is just too overwhelming... we need a safe affordable place for people to go... away from these greedy bastards

When this happens in California, the internet trolls go on a tear, blaming Newsom and Pelosi. Well, this is a nationwide problem. Who will the blame now?

Ridiculous situations all across the country.

First thing that needs to happen is short term rentals should be banned. If you arent' living in the home you have no need for it. But that won't fix the whole problem. Simple reality is Sedona is far too rich for normal people to live in. If the normal people simply left the place the rich would pretty soon find themselves up a creek (and it won't be Oak Creek either) - without a paddle. New accommodation needs to be built. They have no problem developing multi million dollar areas for the super rich in their "gated communities" - and selling out their construction ordinances for the pocket books of the stinking rich (the abombination of a monstrosity opposite the Catholic church for example). So maybe they need to try and get a clue about the real world outside of stock options, buybacks, dividends etc, and realize somone has to take out the trash, cook the food, fix the streets and so on.

The State could open land and build housing but that would hurt rich peoples monopoly over the land!

It's like this in other towns also. The workers who keep many stores and restaurants and hotels going can't afford to live there.

Even teachers cannot afford to rent, is all around Arizona.

New American dream buy a full size livable van or car

I was under the impression that people who lived and worked in sedona who weren't the uber rich mansion dwellers lived in nearby cottonwood and campe verde. Sedona is so crowded and space is so limited within city limits i dont know how anyone could live there without having to commute from outside of the city.

Dumb rich people...

I used to see pictures in textbooks of income inequality in third world countries. You’d see a small group of mansions or an upscale neighborhood and then literally in their backyard behind a tall fence is miles of slums. Sometimes I think that’s where the US (and west) may be headed.

poor people working to Support the super Wealthy

Most Sedona workers have never been able to afford living in Sedona. Real story is how workers can't afford or find homes in the surrounding towns like Camp Verde, Cottonwood and Rimrock.

Same in Utah, park city. It's been ruined by those who step on the working class.

Need to start taxing these rich, out of touch people at 90% like we used to do.

I’ve lived in Sedona for 11 years and I have noted over that time that I’ve been here that average Americans can no longer have a home here. I feel it’s a combination of the Sedona city prioritizing tourism over everything else, then add to that the 2016 Arizona legislature making it illegal for any city to regulate short term rentals in anyway, and you had a perfect storm for the doubling almost tripling of home prices in the last 10 years. I have also seen that every attempt at assisting those workers who service all these silver spooned people in Sedona is met with outrage from them and a mobilization to arms to so-called protect themselves from these people, the very people who service those so opposed to them. I personally find it disgusting and I do hope that eventually it gets to the stage where every business in Sedona cannot find anyone to work there.

Housing crisis. Governments need to step in and make affordable housing. That Dr. is discriminating against the poor.

All to common in nice vacation areas. Same thing happened in Jackson WY, Lake Tahoe, Santa Fe, Aspen, Vail...

Shame on Sedona, shame, shame!

Capitalist wealth inequality is the greatest problem facing our nation today. Billionaire Oligarchs get richer, while regular Americans get poorer. This is unsustainable.

Ban Airbnb and vbros now

In 2019, I was planning a move to Sedona from the East Coast. Beautiful 1400 sf two story condo near downtown was 300k. In 2021, that home rose to over 1mm.

And they can’t increase the minimum wage because then the businesses claim they can’t pay that

It's the same in Phoenix.

This is happening in tourist areas all across the country.

Why would anyone expect to find affordable housing in "one of the top vacation spots in the country?' ...do they not understand basic economics? If you want to live affordably, don't try to do it in the same place that all the One-Percenters are flocking. ...duh.

I propose wage limits on crappy Dr's who don't do anything but prescribe pills and get rich

Eight billion people on this one tiny planet .... it aint hard to figure out the source of the problem.

I now live in Costa Rica. I visited family in Tucson last month, and took a week long hiking trip in Sedona. The drive from Tucson to Sedona was very scenic! I did notice how everything from hotels,housing to food was expensive. I bought a beachfront home in Costa Rica that was 1/3 cheaper than most of the homes in Sedona.

Well they are going to cook in their car / ovens like the dough boy come summer.

sounds like they need some migrants moved in there....they'll get them right in perspective...

If the wages "aren't enough" then the wages aren't "high" now are they?

How is it possible the rent is 3x times the average wage?

On plantations, the workers had food and housing and a little land to grow vegetables and raise chickens.

Will only get worse since this is baked into our Capitalist system.

There are several casinos in Nevada that have housing specific to their casino workers (you have to be working at the casino to live in them) and it seems to work-out well for both the casino and the workers. The City of Sedona could do the same thing (housing for local employees) to solve the housing problem. If there is a fear of discrimination against lawsuits, then designate those that work in Secona businesses as a sort of 'auxiliary' town employee (sort of like 'volunteer fire department' personnel), then designate the housing area or 'safe parking area' for them as being for "City Employees' - only.

It’s wild how people retire and continue spending like they still work 😮

sedona is basically Sedona , California

I stopped visiting Sedona when they all got greedy and started charging for parking, anywhere in their highbrow hood, I parked for 30 minutes to go check out the sinkhole, came back to a parking ticket on my vehicle, that is the last time I visited, 20 years ago.

People are priced out. Sleeping in a car is choice. Imagine if every low income worker in Sedona drove the car to Nebraska to work. Every high priced city would take note. As the trash piles up, no grocery workers, and no septic pumping, you better believe some change would happen.

Being a “free spirit” in an expensive world comes with its own set of problems.

What ever happened to Love thy neighbor ????

Government: best we can do is let you sleep in your car.

Just leave the rich to bake in the hot sun because they should learn to be self-reliant

2200 dollar rent!! I live 5 minutes from the beach in California, surrounded by national parks, and pay less than 1000 for a 2 bedroom apartment