A tiny Florida beach town is rebuilding after a hurricane. Is it becoming a preserve of the rich?
Clyde Yarbrough lives at the end of a dead-end road in Cape Coral, where a road is cut through thick woods and a parking lot is surrounded by pine trees. His is a modest and quiet life, but he is one of the few in his community who doesn’t drive.
He doesn’t have cable TV, because he says he’s embarrassed by it. He doesn’t have satellite radio, because he says he gets too fidgety and it scares his dogs. His cell phone is old and has gone dead five times. His only television is a tiny antenna that he plugs into the car’s cigarette lighter—and he’ll do anything to avoid putting it through the dish.
His house is a two-story white stucco bungalow. The first floor is open, with no bathroom or kitchen.
“I wouldn’t want to live like that,” he said, pointing to a floorboard. “But some people are just a little bit different.”
Cape Coral, a small, bucolic city that is about half the size of Orlando, has a population of fewer than 5,000 people and is not nearly as well known as Orlando. But it is as well known as it is for its natural beauty, and it is known as a retirement community for locals working in the oil and gas industry. Its beaches, its pine-covered mountains and its slow pace of life are drawing hundreds of new residents and boosting the population of Cape Coral, which officials expect to grow by 20 percent within five years.
But as Cape Coral and other parts of the state struggle to stay above flood waters and evacuate residents, it is also transforming.
Cape Coral has seen several hurricanes in the past 15 years. The state is in the midst of a massive rebuilding effort, but while other parts of the state have begun recovering a little in recent weeks after hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Cape Coral has taken much of the brunt of the damage.
And it is already beginning to feel like a preserve of the rich.