I’d like to respond to Greg Simpson’s letter to the editor published on Jan. 31.

Mr. Simpson equated “having a second home in a resort town” with “owning a Subaru”.

Try it like this instead: “Full-time residents are voting on a new tax on second-home owners, and second-home owners do not get a vote,” but replace “full-time residents” with “the local workforce spending 50% of their take-home pay on rent in deed-restricted workforce housing” and “second-home owners” with “non-residents who hoard wealth and drive up local housing prices”, and see if it’s still that unfair.

Or let’s stick with the car metaphor. Instead of “full-time residents”, it’s “locals who drive one used Toyota,” and instead of “second-home owners”, it’s “tourists who just bought their second Bentley”.

Apparently low-income people who work to maintain the resort community of which second-home owners take advantage a few days a year are “bullies,” and rich people who siphon public utilities to and spew greenhouse gases from empty houses are “powerless victims.”

Second-home owners are not powerless. They have plenty of money and resources to hire lawyers to sue local governments anytime they try to regulate short-term rentals, and groups like the Summit Alliance of Vacation Rental Managers work tirelessly to ensure every legislative measure to regulate second homes fails.

When second-home owners want to vote somewhere they don’t live (or when they want the locals’ discount at a cafe), they’re members of our community. But when it comes to paying their fair share for affordable housing–a problem to which they actively contribute–suddenly they are no longer part of the community, and we —the minimum-wage workers with $3,000/month rents — are “stealing” from them.

Also, have some perspective. Thousands of people were just displaced by the California wildfires, but you’re the victim? Please.