Sarena Neyma: Excluding ordinary people from extraordinary places
For decades, I’ve returned to Truro, Massachusetts, drawn by some of the most breathtaking vistas on Cape Cod. I never tire of biking through the dunes, hiking the sandy bluffs of the National Seashore, or watching the sun rise over the tidal flats.
But today, the beaches I once shared with families like mine are being quietly claimed by the ultra-wealthy.
This spring, we stayed at Zinnia Cottage, one of the iconic Days Cottages along Route 6A.
These 22 identical flower-named cabins sit right on the bay, so close to the water it feels like the ocean might slip in your window. They’ve stood here for over 90 years.
I stayed in one 30 years ago with my kids. Even as a single mother, I could afford to rent one for a week. But these tiny 448-square-foot houses have since been sold as condos, fetching as much as $655,000.
In the off-season, we were still able to rent one, but it ran $225 per night. And aside from a spruced-up kitchen, not much had changed inside.
What was different was the old Days’ Market across the street.
Gone was the shelving crammed with rows of games, swim floats, fishing supplies and staples like Campbell’s soup and Ronzoni spaghetti. In its place, a sleek specialty store, with an artful gray color scheme and offerings like Mediterranean baked crackers, creamed artichoke spread and gourmet pasta — with no prices marked on anything.
Down the road, the takeover by the affluent was even starker.
Near Coast Guard Beach, a few grandfathered houses still perch atop 125-foot dunes, with sweeping views of the Atlantic. I once stayed in one called Spion Kop, a ramshackle cottage next to Highland Light, Cape Cod’s oldest and tallest lighthouse.
Built in 1897 as tourist lodging by the grandson of the first lighthouse keeper, I rented the unit from his elderly grandson. Upon his death in 2017, a retired bus line executive from New Jersey bought it and demolished it.
Locals tried unsuccessfully to stop the demolition. A former renter’s letter to the Truro Zoning Board captured the heartbreak:
“I speak for the hundreds if not thousands of people who have stayed there through the years when I say it was NEVER about the accommodations. It was always about the land itself …
“The sea as your living room. The roar of the ocean a constant 24/7 in your ears — so much so that even when you go back home, it is still in your ears.”
The new owner built a tasteful replica. But it was no longer accessible to the many families who had basked in its magic over the past 120 years.
Next door, the Hi-Land View Cottages met a similar fate.
For 65 years, six small cottages offered thousands an affordable slice of paradise. But in 2021, an anonymous trust bought the land for $5 million.
The trust converted one into a pool house and demolished the rest. In their place sits a 5,100-square-foot spaceship of a house.
Rumor has it JLo and Ben Affleck were the buyers. Last I heard, the grand house was sitting empty.
The 2011 Truro survey documents a steady decline in the town’s small summer cottages, once a mainstay of affordable tourist lodging. And it’s not just the Cape; it’s everywhere.
In the 1950s, even new immigrants like my parents could rent a summer cottage at one of the many bungalow colonies in the Catskills.
Rosmarin Cottages —where this Bronx-bred 7-year-old declared herself a “country girl” — is one of the few remaining. In their place often stand cavernous single-family homes.
Public lands — the last remaining refuge for many — are also under threat. The recent federal budget cuts will slash at least 30% from the National Park Service, leaving campsites closed, trails unmaintained and public access increasingly out of reach.
These shifts are all a direct result of a 40-year transfer of wealth from the 90% to the 1%, which have produced the largest wealth gap in a century and decimated the middle class.
And the transfer of wealth isn’t just evident in bank accounts. It’s also evident in the quiet disappearance of ordinary people from the landscapes that once restored them.
For generations, families could count on a patch of sand, a path through the woods, a porch facing a lake — places to escape the grind and feel human again.
Now, those places are being reclaimed by the ultra-affluent and a quiet but brutal message is spreading: If you can’t afford to relax, you haven’t earned it. If you can’t pay for beauty, you don’t deserve it.
The ability to rest and renew is becoming the exclusive domain of those who are served — not those who serve. When teachers, nurses, and factory workers are shut out by the wealthy, we lose a shared dignity, a shared claim to joy.
That may not make the front page. But it marks a quiet unraveling, because a society that denies beauty to the many and reserves it for the few has lost part of its soul.
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