How the Rich Stole America's Most Elite Beaches
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- Опубліковано 5 чер 2023
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I was reading Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America's Most Exclusive Shoreline When I realized that I could look and see for myself just how bad Connecticut's public beach access problem has gotten. - Розваги
One of the reasons I love living in Oregon: our beaches are 100% public, you can hike the entire coastline without trespassing even once.
Yep, even here in Hawaiʻi!
OREGON NUMBER 1
Texas ong 😝😝
It’s mentioned explicitly that this is true in CT also; the issue is that that right is relatively theoretical when there’s no way to get onto the beach in the first place short of a helicopter
I live down in southern oregon, and my favorite goto activity(when i have money) is going out to the mountains
This is not an issue in the US only, it is even worse in tourist hotspots around the world, enforced by foreign investment and aggresive capitalism. I am from Croatia and many hotels and private residences think they own the beaches they are built upon even though it is illegal to do so. Instead they softblock people by making beaches hard to reach and fill the beaches with beach chairs that you are required to pay if you aren't the hotel guest.
Same thing in Israel. Often times, the beach is private and they can't kick you off if you insist that you know the law. They think that putting their own chairs on the beach make it their own private property. By the way, same thing happened to me when I visited Egypt, but I just brushed it off and left because it's a foreign country. Never let things escalate when visiting a foreign country, It's not worth the consequences. Dropping your ego and taking the L is way better.
Even in some islands in the caribbean even if the beach isn’t private, it’s basically enclosed by the resort so locals can’t get access.
Puerto Rico is a prime example of this.
The Bahamas
In Barbados all beaches are public but the hotels try thier best to make it difficult to get to the beaches so thier guest can have private beaches.
Well that's infuriating 🙃
I grew up in a wealthy shoreline Connecticut town and it never occurred to me how weird it was that all but one of the beaches were private. It’s so common here I didn’t even realize that wasn’t a universal thing.
Ye fr, I'd go to my friends house in Newport and think nothing of his house that had a private beach that's 10x better than the public one that no one but him and his family could use
exactly the same with me, I never really realized it wasn't a thing everywhere when I was about 14
It’s definitely not universal lol. I didn’t even know people were allowed to do that.
That's how they get you. Make it seem normal.
Another common Robert W
i completely agree
@@ville__ username checks out
wobert wolppi
Not only are many of the beaches private in CT, you cant use intertubes, boogie boards, or surf boards and you get stared at the few public beaches. So they made it suck so bad that no one wants to even go to the beach there.
I've lived in Connecticut for over 20 years, and our beaches aren't anything to write home about. Imagine your racism/classism so strong that you feel the need to go to these lengths to defend your mid ass beaches against "those people"
Write home about *
Dude last summer a group of friends and I drove to a Connecticut beach from NYC and honestly I’m never going again (we were all black)😭 so expensive so complicated and we couldn’t go no where without police officers trailing close behind.
Another thing is that my family literally got redlined from moving into Connecticut back in 2008. The real estate agent wouldn’t show my parents anything outside of Heartsford even though my family could afford to live in other areas.
I just gave a bunch of anecdotal evidence but as far as my personal experience goes, this video checks out fr.
In NY we have beaches that you gotta pay for but it’s never more than like $20 and sometimes you just gotta pay for parking
Yeah, I don't mind things like paying 20 to go to Riis beach. And you can take the bus if you want to.
I used to teach some fun after-school stuff in Greenwich (I didn't live there I had to drive in quite a ways) , and more than one child openly asked me in front of the whole class "Are you POOR?" like asking if I had a third arm, and follow up questions about what it's like to be poor (when they saw something like my brand of clothes or old phone.). It was crazy to hear the rich and isolated children's perspective on the world unfiltered, the amount of privileges they had but were very understandably un-aware of at like 7 years old, and it was very wild to me how much of them just had generations of old money, and would never have to worry or think about it, so many of them had a beach in their backyard, horse stables, compared their nannies with each other, the casualness of it, they assumed everyone had 3 ponies.
Anyway I don't work that job anymore, especially in that area, being treated not like a person for not being rich, as a TEACHER, started to wear on me there. After driving all around Greenwich for work, just trying a nice beach to have lunch at, I drove around for MANY combined hours just to find ONE BEACH on government park land that wasn't owned.
It's wild right? We lived in a neighbourhood like this in Finland, but my mum and us kids lived very humbly (2nd hand clothes, hand me down phones, etc). My friend next door sat me down one day because she was concerned I was being abused, and asked me straight to my face if my parents loved me. Because we didn't have new brand name clothes. It was a strange window into their thinking.
Not the point, but I love the woman who said they were her guests and everyone who welcomed them. There's also a special place in Heaven for the demonstration organizers. Also, thanks Robert because I had no idea any of this happened
“Building a summer cottage for Aquaman” 😭😭😭😭
i went to college in at UNH in west haven and studied marine biology (graduated this spring). not only would we do field work along the coast and go to see a lot of really cool coastal ecosystems, i was part of a school club that did beach cleanups, and a lot of my friends did thesis data collection all the way from mystic to bridgeport. none of this would've been possible if the beaches were private, which is really upestting. i loved seeing people hanging out on the beach, walking their dogs, relaxing, asking us what we were doing. it was a really nice sense of community.
your flood insurance part of the video took me right back to my environmental economics class where we discussed this very topic. over half of the US lives at least 50miles from the coast, and living on the coast is still being seen is a rich luxury instead of bleeding tax money that is given from the government to rich people to fix their houses that will just flood again in a few years. moving people away from the coast is a grassroots effort, when the whole community is involved every step of the way, they are more likely to move. flood insurance surely is one of the issues of all time
An underappreciated issue, thank you for your work
From general essays to full-blown journalism what a step-up keep that up.
I’m from CT and honestly they can keep the hypoxic Long Island sound water
eegh yeah
I live in southern CT. My town has a pretty decent sized beach. What is the public access portion you may ask ? Less than an eighth of a mile long. You can walk the length of the beach in under two minutes.
I actually worked at a checkpoint at a private beach in CT, it was terrible needless to day. I was sexually harassed by two coworkers, I wasn't allowed to sit down and technically I didn't even have a lunch break, while other coworkers got smoke breaks, and I only had a break once every two weeks. I ended up quitting after I was told, not asked, to come in on my day off and wasn't given another day to replace it. Also, the snotty rich people were awful to me, so that was fun as well. 0/10 do not recommend
WHO CARES
@@ville__I care
@@ville__🤨weirdo
where I live in Florida you see private access beach signs a lot but they're intentionally misleading because you legally can't own the land some several several feet from water to property. they're intentionally trying to trick people into thinking they're not legally allowed to use the beach when they in fact are
No one should be able to own waterfront property. It's limited and should be open to all. Eat the rich.
This was genuinely the most riveting and well conveyed piece of commentary I have seen in quite a while!
i never really understood people or entities just owning land
I mean, the idea is security. You don't want someone to just take your house one day.
But the idea of owning land you don't even use is bullshit.
@@IsomerMashups I understand owning the area around your house but just like... owning a whole area of land?
My family owns a plot of land for like familial reasons (that’s where I grew up and where our family started) but also because my grandma is the off-the-grid type. It’s literally just an acre tho on unfarmable land, so I think for my family it’s about always having a place to go to because we have experienced homelessness at times. Just my personal perspective.
@@theeccentric7263 tbh one acre of “undesirable” land with a multigenerational family living on it will never be the target of these conversations IMO. You’re good. I’ve seen suburban houses with an acre of lawn and 1 or 2 people living in them. My family on the other hand used to own a probably problematic amount of land, over 40 acres along the coast. And while it was used for cattle farming and hunting, it was given over to a historical preservation project years ago and is now fully open to the public. When you know better you do better!
@@jnkiee get over it this is America we don’t share land
I had a vague idea of this since I heard it half asleep while listening to NPR lol. But this is an incredible video that spotlights undervalued and overshadowed American history
Yass the orange tracksuit is giving me mr perkins like okay
omggg i just read an interesting article about the right to experience wildlife and nature.
It’s in french (french canadien)
they were talking about how so many nature views around houses are being privatized… when in fact nature should not be private and monetize.
who cares
I lived in SE Conn 20 years ago. The contrast between extreme wealth and poverty is more stark in that state than anywhere else I know. At the time Conn was #1 in per capita income, but you would never know it from the bad condition of the highways.
I completely agree, however not only do I not live in Connecticut but I also hate going to the beach anyway lol
before anyone asks what I have against beaches, it's a fear of the ocean, disliking the feeling of hot sand on my skin, and being very prone to sun burns. i like the idea of the beach in theory, but in practice i just end up being miserable lmao.
I have mixed feelings about the modern practice of this. There is clearly a line and these CT towns/associations are crossing it, but, for instance, where I live (not in CT) there are county funded public beach parks that are free to the public on weekdays, resident or not. On weekends, however, we get an influx of out-of-towners who come at the asscrack of dawn and fill the parks to capacity so the people who's taxes actually fund the park are crowded out. They started charging to use the parks on weekends as a result. They check driver's licenses at the gate and if you're from outside the county, you pay $20 (no separate parking charge) for the carload of people vs the $5 in-county residents do. That feels fair to me i dont know... my taxes are funding this park and I have no problem with anyone coming to use them, but there needs to be some system to ensure the people who keep the place funded are able to actually use it.
the state parks have similar parking fees, rocky neck is like $22 for out-of-state people but like, we don't have a lot of beaches like that and the reasonable ones get stupid crowded because there just aren't all that many options. like i don't have a lot of anecdotal evidence considering i avoid beaches because of those crowds but like,, yeah there really aren't all that many options it's pretty bad
70% is crazy, I thought you meant like a couple of little bays like in the UK not a vast majority
it's like that here in Washington too, it infuriates me to the point of wanting to come back in a dinghy at high tide and float over the land I wasnt allowed to walk across out of pure spite
I grew up seeing my grandparents in Ocean park washington, always thought it was wack how they let you drive on the beach there
I took a class with Professor Kahrl in college called Race & Real Estate, it did more to radicalize me than anything else I’ve ever learned (& I also took a class on Marx). He is awesome
This reminded of a great podcast called La Brega about Puerto Rico, which did an episode about people fighting for access to public beaches there.
You always make such high quality videos on unique topics. Not all of the topics you talk about interest me, but that’s what I like about your content. It has variety and appeals to different people.
I’m from CT and found this very informative! Great state but there are still lots of issues pertaining to race and social class that go unchecked. Keep up the great work!
great video as always!!! i’m very thankful to live on big island, there are no private beaches
Great video, keep up the great work. I really enjoy your content. 😊
I like this channel. I like the research and learning of new things
Gosh you’re so grounded!
Do jersey beaches next!
Great rabbit hole.
This is such an interesting video and I wish UA-cam had actually notified me when it was uploaded
Fun fact: realtors on certain parts of CT’s coast had verbal agreements until the 1980’s to deter/prevent Jewish (demographics show Black families too but I haven’t heard/read anything) families from moving to certain towns. Often they’d be shown the worst homes available well below the families budget, and the realtors would show them nicer homes in other towns.
As far as I know there are no private beaches in Europe, so when Europeans I know find out there are some in the US they are flabbergasted. Like one was visiting SoCal once and went to Malibu thinking they could picnic on the beach, there were signs everywhere saying the public could walk near the waves but weren't allowed to stop.
Europe absolutely does have private beaches. Both literally and those that are made virtually inaccessible to the public.
In Italy only a few dirty meters are public.
I can appreciate someone who does the research. EZ SUB
I loved this! Do you have any other book recommendations about CT issues similar to Free The Beach?:)
absolutely ridiculous
My family would always go to a beach in Oregon. Non-tourist beaches are very nice, I don't understand why anybody would want to go to crowded beaches like they have in Florida.
Still, my favorite beach was at a resort on Vancouver Island, Canada. I think it was early spring, so we were pretty much the only non-staff at the resort. The beach was covered in fist-sized gravel that made it hard to walk, and had lots of very intense wind coming off the ocean, which had a lot of wind chill and seemed to want to knock me over. It was close to some sort of industrial facility too, I think it was a quarry and small port for loading the rocks onto ships, which would pass by a couple times a day.
It was a good and scenic place to walk. And the areas that had sand were very interesting to look at too- they looked like the sides of a canyon or cliff, due to erosion from the wind and water. And the industrial facility contrasted very well with the seemingly untouched nature.
This is my favorite video by you so far. Excellent journalism!!
who cares
private property should not exist
Love this video
We're so lucky the oregon coast is completely open to the public
I guess this is why I thought Connecticut didn’t have a swimable coast
I grew up in Kelowna, BC where provincial law similarly makes all land up to the high water line public. Nonetheless it’s a recurring issue that asshole rich people will put up fences or docks illegally and usually the response from city and provincial officials is anywhere from “We don’t like it” at a press conference to a tiny fine to (usually) nothing at all. And people are regularly harassed for using one of the (thankfully relatively common) public beach accesses and then walking along the shore or getting out of the water to take a break from swimming or kayaking (as has happened to my parents multiple times)
amazing video
11:03 this sentiment is funny because if anyone thought that at this point of the video, they’d have to had ignored your redlining point in the beginning.
In the Chicago land area beaches are strictly available to people who live in the high income neighborhoods they are in. If you want to go to a beach outside of those neighborhoods they are covered in garbage and packed everyday after Memorial Day. There’s a beautiful beach in Highland Park that allows non-residence to go for $15 an hour. It’s wildly expensive, but some multimillionaire is attempting to buy and fence off a section of it for themselves.
@@ville__ literally taking the time out of your day to say who cares is wild
@@ville__ ratio
did you really thumbs down my comment?
The many beachfronts in the city of Chicago proper are pretty much all public. They are not "covered in garbage" like you say. They can get crowded because Chicago itself has a population of nearly 3 million people, not including the surrounding suburban populations.
I have no idea how you got that impression but our public beaches are really clean, actually. And it's great that they're completely free to the public.
If YOU want to go to the private beaches outside the city, fine, but don't try to downplay the greatness of our public beaches and lakefront area.
@@iiNaoki I’m not talking about Chicago, please learn to read a comment before commenting. I’m talking about the surrounding area that refuses to cater to anyone but the upper class. As I said in the first sentence “in the Chicagoland area” Chicago land means surrounding suburbs. ❤️ I also specifically mentioned rosewood beach which is located in the northern Chicago suburbs, it’s called highland park.
Lakes as well
Just moved to CT recently and it’s so ridiculous. Just looking at the private beaches in Fairfield compared to the beaches closer to Bridgeport where there are larger black populations. The difference isn’t subtle at ALL
They should be prohibited from receiving public funds.
Aha my state is funi
Robert in oregon we say (Or eh gun) not (Or E gone)
More reasons why Connecticut is the WOOOOORRRRRSSSSTTTTT!!! (second only to New Hampshire).
Still happening today. Look into what Space X is doing in Brownsville TX it’s sad
I lived in Westport, Connecticut, and found it really hypocritical how a town that prides itself on its liberal progressive, inclusive values railed against Compo Beach becoming public. There was a huge outcry, and residents complained that they didn’t want poor people visiting the beach. It was even worse when residents voted against the town for building affordable housing units. It became so toxic that residents in my town tried to compare Compo Beach to Sherwood Island Beach and said the out-of-town residents would turn it trashy even though it’s less than half a mile away.
Not the Rise of the Valkyries
Hey, love the video, but Oregon isn't pronounced "Ore-gone".
The second I saw myself say it like that when editing this video, I knew somebody would comment this 😅
@@RobertTolppi it's Oregon state law that whenever someone pronounces our state's name incorrectly one of us have to chime in.
I think about this topic (although on a broader scale I guess?) so often. I daydream about vacationing at beautiful beaches but because I’m poor I’m barred from visiting… nature lol. I’m white so I don’t have to face the racial aspect of this issue but it’s difficult to accept that even parts of the earth is a luxury
now do private property
All Connecticut beaches suck anyways let’s be for real… the sand is the worst all time.
but… beach 🥺
@@hallehuckleberry the sand 90% shells and is worse than legos on the feet. Not worth it.
My parents own a lake beachfront... not in Connecticut, though. It's on a farm in Ontario.
But hey: no jellyfish.
hey that’s neat
@@hallehuckleberry
Of course, the vast majority of the lakefront is public... not that anyone uses most of it, given it's mostly cliffs.
What’s your opinion on bill gates owning farmland?
CT beaches aren't even good true story ( source: being from CT, living there for 18+ years)
lets go keep em private
not everyone agree w/ you...
crazy that you can just make a whole ass beach private
Capitalismo
Im a pretty hardcore libertarian, in a dicussion with a good friend who is a socialist I did have to concede that there is no justification or really even honest way for anyone making more than a doctor (200-500 grand a year).
so, libertarian can be for private beach. ok, it is not against liberty??
Robert. I am not one to criticize but rich people work hard for what they want. I just want to understand why you are bashing rich people? The rich people help create jobs despite what the media says. RIch or poor there is bad on each side but until you take a look of the truly hard work rich people have to endur you will see why we offer so much here in america and why so many people flee from other countries to start a new life. When you are paycheck to paycheck, you will see why people are so hard to be a sucess story and actually have the life they truly want.
Why do you have against capitalism?
huh?