Covid-19 Effect Is Pricing Out Locals From Scotland’s Rugged Western Isles

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People have been leaving cities for the countryside across the U.S. and Europe, and Scotland’s fragile island communities are more at risk than most from the economic shift

Few places are farther from the beaten track than the wind-lashed Outer Hebrides off Scotland’s northwest coast. But they are also now the prize in a tug of war over who should be able to live there.

Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, a surge of buyers have bought up many of the available houses, far fromon the British mainland such as Glasgow or London. Many homes overlook sites such as Luskentyre Beach or the prehistoric standing stones at Callanish. Local leaders say new arrivals could be a lifeline for the fragile communities that have long struggled to reverse declining populations.

But younger islanders worry the influx is pricing them out of the market—and, ultimately, the places where they grew up and their families still live. “Lockdown has become a double-edged sword,” says Pàdruig Morrison, a 24-year-old musician and researcher from the island of South Uist who has begun campaigning for more housing opportunities for younger islanders. “People are being left with few other options but to leave at a time when it is becoming more widely accepted to stay and work online from home.”

 

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DemoRATS have created CHAOS and ANARCHY... Congratulations

You can see this shift all across Europe (e.g. West Sweden, Western Ireland etc) in the most beautiful places, which lose their community.

Never understood why people want to live in cramped dirty cities in the first place

So, the people with money-power are coming from the cities to take over their lands, offering them wads of currency. That means that they too are victims of coronavirus, even if they don't have the disease. Their lands may be getting out of their reach for life.

OMG

this is why the FM has made it illegal, for anyone to cross the border. The police are aware, and will impose fines

The cities are dying or dead

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