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BEND, Ore. - Susan and Mike Telford had a plan back in the boom years in California. They would sell their house outside Fresno at a solid profit and take their equity to this sunny mountain city to build a better life, a fresh-air future in Oregon.
"We wanted to lose the commute, to lose the smog," Mrs. Telford said. "We wanted to lose California."
They moved here in 2006, when Bend was one of the fastest-growing places in the West and money and migration from California fueled that growth. Now the Bend area's unemployment rate, at almost 16 percent, is one of the highest of any metropolitan area in the nation. "For sale" signs dot desert-toned, unfinished subdivisions. Luxury furniture stores downtown are going out of business. San Francisco chefs have fled.
The freefall has made Bend a succinct symbol for the economic perils of "lifestyle destinations" in the so-called New West, recreation-heavy communities where jobs have been heavily tilted toward construction and services and where many of the new residents were self-made exiles from California cashing in on their overpriced real estate. Bend, a former timber town that now has 80,000 residents, was particularly popular among those drawn to the often rainy Northwest because it is located on the sunny side of the Cascade Range. More here.
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