nor do you i think, your blaming one mans small part for the whole thing.
im not saying its not a problem in the area there is no arguing with that. my argument is your all blaming one man. maybe they should not have sold off so many homes to tourists
you are clueless if you think blaming one man for the entire problem is a solution it is not. EVERYONE who owns a tourist home there having 33% of the house constantly empty and shut up.
Yawn. Perhaps youâd like me to take your side and consider that being and admirer of Hitler and his Nazi party is perfectly acceptable as is one mans selfishness when he is happy to kill off a community through his obsession with privacy. Itâs not going to happen. Iâve been there, seen it and spoken with concerned local people. You? YouâŠ
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yes there we have it, he is to blame because he is obsessed with nazi memorabilia.
The town has been in free fall long before he started buying it all up.
So yes YAWN!! Fixation on his obsession is not the reason the town has died.
People buying property to have a week here or there maybe once a year and no young fresh blood moving into the area (likely because its so dead already)
Closed minded obsession, I personally would be interested in his side of things, likely hiding away because of all of this and people blaming him only.
Is there proof he is an admirer? I must have missed that part in the story where he said he was an admirer of Hitler and the naziâs
I think it is unfair to say that holiday homes are closed up and used once a year. Mine is used 5-6 times minimum. Other people I know go less but stay for long spells
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I have no idea how often they are used unfortunately. I know several families and most only come once a year sometimes twice.
People i know have just bought at luchon but only plan to come for 2 weeks a year.
I understand that some folks come more, but point being is 5 or 6 times a year for 1 or 2 weeks that still leaves a property sitting empty for 40 to 46 weeks a year
We try to be over as much as possible but, at the end of the day, we can only be over as much as annual leave from work allows which is 5-6 weeks of the year - as Harry points out that leaves our house empty for 46 weeks.
2nd homes and their owners are not infrequently contentious, and often for good reason - more than 15-25% 2nd homes in a town can certainly âkillâ it. The village in which we bought has a high rate of abut 25% 2nd home ownership - whether as a result or just because it is difficult to maintain businesses in the face of a general move of the population away from rural localtions - we have lost the bar, restaurant and butchers within the last few years (only the restaurant was still open when we bought) with no prospect of their restoration.
However, in France, the bulk are actually owned by the French themselves - about 2.25 million out of 2.5 million in total.
I donât think owning 10% of the properties in a town could turn it into a âghost townâ if it was previously thriving and vibrant. Owning 10% on top of an already high proportion of 2nd homes could easily be the straw that broke the camelâs back.
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we just lost our village cafe, while the boulanger now serves coffee it is not the same. Few years ago we lost our town supermarket.
That is a town with 2 nursing homes in it and only a population of 750 off and 285 homes. We used to have 2 restaurants.
The 10% of homes in question are all together and central. Far different from 10% of empty homes spread out across a commune.
In the village I work, the Mairie bought an empty old shop, build a new bakery/mini supermarket. They rent them at a very attractive price (it included accomodation). Theyâve been careful about the motivation of the tenents. We now have a super Boucherie Traiteur and Boulangerie Patisserie (which have a part for basic household necessities). They even sell fresh fruits and vegs, some of them comming from a local Bio producer. There is a Doctor, a Dentist, a KinĂ© and a pharmacie. What Iâm trying to say, is if the commune is ready to help small shopkeepers to stay, that is the first big move to keep a small town alive, because next thing is sadly the closure of the school. It has happened in an other village close to us.
its not 10% holiday homes over 2 thirds of the English who live in the town who own holiday homes there. Oh wait how do i know? I know someone who lives round that way (holiday home) over 20 homes mainly in the town itself used as holiday accommodation and those that are left some of those are only here part of the year, not including the estimated 14 empty houses owned by french people. so that makes how many? 34 or more without including the ones he owns which is 11 and 2 of those are now rented out with a further 2 on the cards to be rented. Leaving him just accounting for 7 empty houses.
And yes he is being targeted mainly because of his obsessing over nazi stuff. As Vero said. NUFF SAID.
Yes, we are very fortunate, and yes, the Mairie/Maire, can make a huge difference to the 'health of a Commune, and itâs a win win result, more people wish to become residents, Brits included 
Two different things. The main concern is the killing off of the community. The Nazi thing is something else. If you find it acceptable that says a lot about you. You are brave to make such a stand in a public forum. What do you know about the town? Nothing. A lot of hot air blowing from the south.
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im not getting involved in the nazi thing that is his personal choice. Please do point out to me where I have said its acceptable as i certainly cannot remember writing that. I certainly would not be friends or have anything to do with such a person but its got sweet fudge all to do with the decline ion a commune thatâs been going down hill for years due to how many tourists live there a minuscule amount of time compared to full time families.
Then again know it all are someone else I try to avoid as well even though they are perfectly normal human beings.
Little bit of research and a few questions later and I got the low down from an actual resident, who by the way does not want to get involved in this conversation due to some of the parties involved in this discussion. They even admit that they along with many people they know are probably the root cause of the lack of people in the community long before he started buying up houses up for his big plan.
And my real local resident is worse informed than yours? I think not. Mine is real. Come and see the situation for yourself then decide. Until then your posts are worthless. You do not know the region or the people, stick to what you know.
not at all they may have a difference of opinion, as I know th other person and i do not know your âlocalâ contact I go with what ive been told from a person who owns a holiday home there.
End of the day the place has gone down hill because of tourist homes, that bloke has not helped and as much as you would love to be able to blame him you cannot. as I said, give me some hard evidence which is the third time ive asked, put up or shut up as they say.
Until you can provide evidence to show this bloke is the sole reason for the downfall of a community which has been in free fall for many years btw, which is clear when looking at yearly data.
What you are saying is that there are not many holiday homes owned by foreigners? show me facts not fiction that you and your pals choose to play with make believe figures to make it look like your are 100% right.
As I said give us pure facts (if you had facts in the form of documented proof you would have posted by now)
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You seem very passionate about and involved in this particular case, Harry.
Nope, what I do see is a person getting the blame for all the wrong reasons.
His very odd obsession in collecting nazi stuff seems to have made him the scape goat in all this and while im pretty sure it has not won him any friends locally, the town was in decline long before that and it seems to me and others that the local mayor is using him as a main reason for its decline.
End of the day they are doing too little too late and if they focused all their effort into revitalising the town that they have clearly wasted on this one man and his odd behaviour which has not helped but was not the root cause of the issue.
now if this post had been about his âcollectionâ I would not be a fan of his. My grandad was while he was alive Polish and he was in the polish army during ww2 and fought to defeat the nazi regime and we lost allot of our family tree when they invaded Poland so i have no love for them or anyone who supports them still.
But this is all about a towns decline like many many others that are in decline, hence the recent funding of over 200 towns to g=bring them back to life. Just a pity this town was missed out.
David and Harry both seem very passionate indeed.
Widening the debate, if we can, it was mentioned that several close by villages also seem in decline- @David - would you agree with this and, if so, why do you think this is the case? Obviously you feel strongly that Mr Wheatcroft has contributed materially to the decline of Luchapt but what of other towns in the area?
Not unlike our village - with the closure of the bar and the butchers a small DépÎt de pain/bar/general store was opened in a property owned by the community - with a bail dérogatoire to keep costs and commitment down. Sadly even with a rent of only 250⏠a month it was not profitable and closed after a couple of years. We supported it when we were there but I was never clear how the proprietor was managing on the trade she was generating.
As I have observed before those communities which have maintained shops tend to have populations larger than than about 1000-1250, pretty much all the smaller villages have lost their commerce.
At least our village is growing, from a low point in the mid 70âs of about 580 individuals to 769 in 2014 (the last year for which I can find data), however cartefrances.fr suggests nearly 25% 2nd homes (in 2007, canât find more recent figures) which seems high, lâinternaute says only 30-odd foreigners living in the village which is not too many (about 4%).