By BIANCA VÁZQUEZ TONESS, AP Education Writer

ATLANTA (AP) — It was the worst summer in years. Sechita McNair’s family took no vacations. Her younger boys didn’t go to camp. Her van was repossessed, and her family nearly got evicted — again.

But she accomplished the one thing she wanted most. A few weeks before school started, McNair, an out-of-work film industry veteran barely getting by driving for Uber, signed a lease in the right Atlanta neighborhood so her eldest son could stay at his high school.

As she pulled up outside the school on the first day, Elias, 15, stepped onto the curb in his new basketball shoes and cargo pants. She inspected his face, noticed wax in his ears and grabbed a package of baby wipes from her rental car. She wasn’t about to let her eldest, with his young Denzel Washington looks, go to school looking “gross.”

He grimaced and broke away.

“No kiss? No hugs?” she called out.

Elias waved and kept walking. Just ahead of him, at least for the moment, sat something his mother had fought relentlessly for: a better education.

The link between where you live and where you learn

Last year, McNair and her three kids were evicted from their beloved apartment in the rapidly gentrifying Old Fourth Ward neighborhood of Atlanta. Like many evicted families, they went from living in a school district that spends more money on students to one that spends less.

Thanks to federal laws protecting homeless and evicted students, her kids were able to keep attending their Atlanta schools, even though the only housing available to them was in another county 40 minutes away. They also had the right to free transportation to those schools, but McNair says the district didn’t tell her about that until the school year ended. Their eligibility to remain in those schools expired at the end of last school year.

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Still wounded by the death of his father and multiple housing displacements, Elias failed two classes last year, his freshman year. Switching schools now, McNair fears, would jeopardize any chance he has of recovering his academic life. “I need this child to be stable,” she says.

With just one week before school started, McNair drove extra Uber hours, borrowed money, secured rental assistance and ignored concerns about the apartment to rent a three-bedroom in the Old Fourth Ward. At $2,200 a month, it was the only “semi-affordable” apartment in the rapidly gentrifying ward that would rent to a single mom with a fresh eviction on her record.

On Zillow, the second-floor apartment, built in 2005, looked like a middle-class dream with its granite countertops, crown molding and polished wood floors. But up close, the apartment looked abused and held secrets McNair was only beginning to uncover.

The first sign something was wrong came early. When she first toured the apartment, it felt rushed, like the agent didn’t want her to look too closely. Then, even as they told her she was accepted, the landlord and real estate agent wouldn’t send her a “welcome letter” laying out the agreement, the rent and deposit she would pay. It seemed like they didn’t want to put anything in writing.

When the lease came, it was full of errors. She signed it anyway. “We’re back in the neighborhood!” she said. Elias could return to Midtown High School.

But even in their triumph, no one in the family could relax. Too many things were uncertain. And it fell to McNair — and only McNair — to figure it out.

The first day back

Midtown is a high school so coveted that school administrators investigate student residency throughout the year to keep out kids from other parts of Atlanta and beyond. For McNair, the day Elias returned to the high school was a momentous one.

“Freedom!” McNair declared after Elias disappeared into the building. Without child care over the summer, McNair had struggled to find time to work enough to make ends meet. Now that the kids were back in class, McNair could spend school hours making money and resolving some of the unsettled issues with her new apartment.

McNair, the first person in her family to attend college, studied theater management. Her job rigging stage sets was lucrative until the writers’ and actors’ strike and other changes paralyzed the film industry in 2023. The scarcity of work on movie sets, combined with her tendency to take in family and non-family alike, wrecked her home economy.

The family was evicted last fall when McNair fell behind on rent because of funeral expenses for her foster daughter. The teen girl died from an epileptic seizure while McNair and everyone else slept. Elias found her body.

McNair attributes some of Elias’s lack of motivation at school to personal trauma. His father died after a heart attack in 2023, on the sidelines of Elias’s basketball practice.

On his first day back at school this August, Elias appeared excited but tentative. He watched as the seniors swanned into school wearing gold cardboard crowns, a Midtown back-to-school tradition, and scanned the sidewalk for anyone familiar.

If Elias had his way, his mom would homeschool him. She’s done it before. But now that he’s a teenager, it’s harder to get Elias to follow her instructions. As the only breadwinner supporting three kids and her disabled uncle, she has to work.

Elias hid from the crowds and called up a friend: “Where you at?” The friend, another sophomore, was still en route. Over the phone, they compared outfits, traded gossip about who got a new hairdo or transferred. When Elias’s friend declared this would be the year he’d get a girlfriend, Elias laughed.

When it was time to go in, Elias drifted toward the door with his head down as other students flooded past.

The after-school pickup

Hours later, he emerged. Despite everything McNair had done to help it go well — securing the apartment, even spending hundreds of dollars on new clothes for him — Elias slumped into the backseat when she picked him up after class.

“School was so boring,” he said.

“What happened?” McNair asked.

“Nothing, bro. That was the problem,” Elias said. “I thought I was going to be happy when school started, since summer was so horrible.”

Of all of the classes he was taking — geometry, gym, French, world history, environmental science — only gym interested him. He wished he could take art classes, he said. Elias has acted in some commercials and television programs, but chose a science and math concentration, hoping to study finance someday.

After dinner at Chick-fil-A, the family visited the city library one block from their new apartment. While McNair spoke to the librarian, the boys explored the children’s section. Malachi, 6, watched a YouTube video on a library computer while Derrick, 7, flipped through a book. Elias sat in a corner, sharing video gaming tips with a stranger he met online.

“Those people are learning Japanese,” said McNair, pointing to a group of adults sitting around a cluster of tables. “And this library lets you check out museum passes. This is why we have to be back in the city. Resources!”

McNair wants her children to go to well-resourced schools. Atlanta spends nearly $20,000 per student a year, $7,000 more than the district they moved to after the eviction. More money in schools means smaller classrooms and more psychologists, guidance counselors and other support.

But McNair, who grew up in New Jersey near New York City, also sees opportunities in the wider city of Atlanta. She wants to use its libraries, e-scooters, bike paths, hospitals, rental assistance agencies, Buy Nothing groups and food pantries.

“These are all resources that make it possible to raise a family when you don’t have support,” she said. “Wouldn’t anyone want that?”

Support is hard to come by

On the way home, the little boys fall asleep in the back seat. Elias asks, “So, is homeschooling off the table?”

McNair doesn’t hesitate. “Heck yeah. I’m not homeschooling you,” she says lightly. “Do you see how much of a financial bind I’m in?”’

McNair pulls into the driveway in Jonesboro, the suburb where the family landed after their eviction. Even though the family wants to live in Atlanta, their stuff is still here. It’s a neighborhood of brick colonials and manicured lawns. She realizes it’s the dream for some families, but not hers. “It’s a support desert.”

As they get out of the car, Elias takes over as parent-in-charge. “Get all of your things,” he directs Malachi and Derrick, who scowl as Elias seems to relish bossing them around. “Pick up your car seats, your food, those markers. I don’t want to see anything left behind.” Elias would be responsible for making the boys burritos, showering them and putting them to sleep.

McNair heads out to drive for Uber. That’s what is necessary to pay $450 a week to rent the car and earn enough to pay her rent and bills.

But while McNair is out, she can’t monitor Elias. And a few days after he starts school, Elias’s all-night gaming habit has already drawn teachers’ attention.

“I wanted to check in regarding Elias,” his geometry teacher writes during the first week of school. “He fell asleep multiple times during Geometry class this morning.”

Elias had told the teacher he went to bed around 4 a.m. the night before. “I understand that there may be various reasons for this, and I’d love to work together to support Elias so he can stay focused and successful in class.”

A few days later, McNair gets a similar email from his French teacher.

That night, McNair drives around Atlanta, trying to pick up enough Uber trips to keep her account active. But she can’t stop thinking about the emails. “I should be home making sure Elias gets to bed on time,” she says, crying. “But I have to work. I’m the only one paying the bills.”

Obstacles keep popping up

Ever since McNair rented the Atlanta apartment, her bills had doubled. She wasn’t sure when she’d feel safe giving up the house she’d been renting in Clayton County, given the problems with the Atlanta apartment. For starters, she was not even sure it was safe to spend the night there.

A week after school started in August, McNair dropped by the apartment to check whether the landlords had made repairs. At the very least, she wanted more smoke detectors.

She also wanted them to replace the door, which looked like someone had forced it open with a crowbar. She wanted a working fridge and oven. She wanted them to secure the back door to the adjoining empty apartment, which appeared to be open and made her wonder if there were pests or even people squatting there.

But on this day, her keys didn’t work.

She called 911. Had her new landlords deliberately locked her out?

When the police showed up outside the olive-green, Craftsman-style fourplex, McNair scrolled through her phone to find a copy of her lease. Then McNair and the officer eyed a man walking up to the property. “The building was sold in a short sale two weeks ago,” he told McNair. The police officer directed the man to give the new keys to McNair.

The next day, McNair started getting emails from an agent specializing in foreclosures, suggesting the new owners wanted McNair to leave. “The bank owns the property and now you are no longer a tenant of the previous owner,” she wrote. The new owner “might” offer relocation assistance if McNair agreed to leave.

McNair consulted attorneys, who reassured her: It might be uncomfortable, but she could stay. She needed to try to pay rent, even if the new owner didn’t accept it.

So McNair messaged the agent, asking where she should send the rent, and requested the company make necessary repairs. Eventually, the real estate agent stopped responding.

Some problems go away, but others emerge

Finally, McNair moved her kids and a few items from the Jonesboro house to the Atlanta apartment. She didn’t allow Elias to bring his video game console to Atlanta. He started going to bed around 11 p.m. most nights. But even as she solved that problem, others emerged.

It was at Midtown’s back-to-school night in September that McNair learned Elias was behind in most of his classes. Some teachers said maybe Midtown wasn’t the right school for Elias.

Perhaps they were right, McNair thought. She’d heard similar things before.

Elias also didn’t want to go to school. He skipped one day, then another. McNair panicked. In Georgia, parents can be sent to jail for truancy when their kids miss five unexcused days.

McNair started looking into a homeschooling program run by a mother she follows on Facebook. In the meantime, she emailed and called some Midtown staff for advice. She says she didn’t get a response. Finally, seven weeks after the family’s triumphant return to Midtown, McNair filed papers declaring her intention to homeschool Elias.

It quickly proved challenging. Elias wouldn’t do any schoolwork when he was home alone. And when the homeschooling group met twice a week, she discovered, they required parents to pick up their children afterward instead of allowing them to take public transit or e-scooters. That was untenable.

Elias wanted to stay at home and offered to take care of McNair’s uncle, who has dementia. “That was literally killing my soul the most,” said McNair. “That’s not a child’s job.”

Hell, no, she told him — you only get one chance at high school.

Then, one day, while she was loading the boys’ clothes into the washing machine at the Atlanta apartment, she received a call from an unknown Atlanta number. It was the woman who heads Atlanta Public Schools’ virtual program, telling her the roster was full.

McNair asked the woman for her opinion on Elias’s situation. Maybe she should abandon the Atlanta apartment and enroll him in the Jonesboro high school.

Let me stop you right there, the woman said. Is your son an athlete? If he transfers too many times, it can affect his ability to play basketball. And he’d probably lose credits and take longer to graduate. He needs to be in school — preferably Midtown — studying for midterms, she said. You need to put on your “big mama drawers” and take him back, she told McNair.

The next day, Elias and his mother pulled up to Midtown. Outside the school, Elias asked if he had to go inside. Yes, she told him. This is your fault as much as it’s mine.

Now, with Elias back in school every day, McNair can deliver food through Uber Eats without worrying about a police officer asking why her kid isn’t in school. If only she had pushed harder, sooner, for help with Elias, she thought. “I should have just gone down to the school and sat in their offices until they talked to me.”

But it was easy for her to explain why she hadn’t. “I was running around doing so many other things just so we have a place to live, or taking care of my uncle, that I didn’t put enough of my energy there.”

She wishes she could pay more attention to Elias. But so many things are pulling at her. And as fall marches toward winter, her struggle continues. After failing to keep up with the Jonesboro rent, she’s preparing to leave that house before the landlord sends people to haul her possessions to the curb.

As an Uber driver, she has picked up a few traumatized mothers with their children after they got evicted. She helped them load the few things they could fit into her van. As they drove off, onlookers scavenged the leftovers.

She has promised herself she’d never let that happen to her kids.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

A national climbing gym chain is expanding to St. Paul after the success of its Minneapolis location.

Bouldering Project officially marks its entrance into the saintly city on Saturday when the doors open to its 36,000-square-foot bouldering facility in St. Paul’s West Side neighborhood.

The gym, located at 42 W. Water St., features over 10,000 square feet of custom bouldering terrain, fitness and yoga studios, a fully-equipped weight room and sauna.

For the uninitiated, “bouldering” is a type of rock climbing that involves short, intense climbs and crash pads instead of ropes or harnesses. In bouldering, climbs are usually referred to as “problems” and an emphasis is placed on problem-solving and technique.

Traditional rock climbing, which puts an emphasis on endurance, consists of longer climbs with ropes, harnesses and other safety gear.

Based in Seattle, Bouldering Project has 12 locations across Minnesota, Washington, Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Arizona, Utah and Washington D.C.

The Minneapolis facility, located at 1433 West River Road N., was the company’s third-ever location when it opened in 2018. Today, the facility has over 4,000 members and regularly welcomes around 1,000 visitors a day, said Michael Cavazos, general manager of the St. Paul gym.

“The fact that the other gym is doing so well and has so many people coming to it on a regular basis, (they) wanted to be able to expand and support the entire Twin Cities,” Cavazos said.

Members of the Bouldering Project have access to all of their locations, Cavazos said. “I’m sure a lot of people, even if they live on the other side of town, will drive over here from time to time to have different wall angles and different climbs,” he said.

St. Paul gym

The Bouldering Project St. Paul, a climbing gym near Harriet Island Park in St. Paul Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. The climbing gym opens to the public on Nov. 15, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Located near Harriet Island Regional Park in St. Paul’s West Side, Bouldering Project St. Paul features several vertical, overhang and roof climbing structures that can be customized according to difficulty level.

The difficulty of the routes is noted by the hold colors with yellow being the easiest and mint being the most challenging, Cavazos said, adding that the routes change three times a week.

“We don’t repeat anything, it’s a creative experiment,” said Nic Oklobzija, Bouldering Project’s director of route setting.

“Climbing, unlike other sports, you can find your own way and choose your own adventure,” said Oklobzija, who resides in White Bear Lake. Whether you’re a casual climber or a professional, you can choose your own pace while maintaining that sense of adventure, he said.

Bouldering Project St. Paul also boasts two expansive Kumiki climbing walls, one for kilter and the other for tension.

Bouldering Project St. Paul, a climbing gym near Harriet Island Park, features a Kumiki Kilter board, left, and Tension board, as seen on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. The adjustable boards are used by climbers to practice strength and technique. The climbing gym opens to the public on Nov. 15, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Inspired by the Japanese concept of interlocking wood puzzles, the adjustable, pre-fabricated climbing walls are stuffed with handholds that light up according to a set route.

In addition to the main climbing apparatuses, the building also includes a kids climbing space with shorter walls, a heated yoga studio that can reach up to 105 degrees Fahrenheit, co-working spaces, a co-ed sauna and a retail shop where climbers can buy shoes, chalk bags and crash pads.

The building, which was formerly used as warehouse space, required minimal renovations when the team signed the lease at the end of 2024, said Project Manager Danika Patten Jessen.

Construction on the building began in May for the few renovations the property did need like adding windows and extending the mezzanines, Patten Jessen said, adding, “This is the quickest it’s ever gone.”

Patten Jessen credits her team, general contractors and the building’s landlord for the quick timeline. An entity listed as “Buhl 42 LLC” bought the property for more than $3.2 million in May 2024, according to an electronic certificate of real estate value filed with the state.

Prior to that, the building was sold by 3M for $2.5 million in May 2020, according to records filed with the state.

Building community

Eliza Broan, a Bouldering Project forerunner who tests the routes, said what sets bouldering apart from other sports and forms of exercise is the communal aspect.

Yes, you are climbing alone, but bouldering is “collaborative by nature” as each climber is working “to solve a problem,” she said. Whether you’re 10 feet up and planning your next foothold or getting up after several failed attempts, there is no judgment, Broan said.

“I’ve never met more supportive people than rock climbers,” Broan said. “You can see the community it builds. It’s a safe space.”

Broan said she was first introduced to the sport of climbing 15 years ago at a birthday party in St. Paul. “It’s grown exponentially,” she said of the sport in recent years.

The Twin Cities metro area is home to several climbing gyms including the volunteer-run Minnesota Climbing Cooperative in northeast Minneapolis, Base Camp in Fort Snelling and perhaps Bouldering Project’s main competition: Vertical Endeavors.

Vertical Endeavors, which opened its first indoor climbing gym in St. Paul in 1992, has grown to five locations across the state including two in St. Paul and one each in Minneapolis, Bloomington and Duluth.

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Once the St. Paul gym is in the swing of things, Cavazos said they have plans to add more fitness and yoga classes based on the members’ feedback.

Bouldering Project also has plans to partner with community businesses, like nearby Bad Weather Brewing and Backstory Coffee Roasters, to host events in the area, Cavazos said.

Bouldering Project St. Paul

When: 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday; 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays

Where: 42 W. Water St., St. Paul

Cost: $89/month for membership; $24 adult day pass

By JOSH FUNK, AP Transportation Writer

The Transportation Department’s new restrictions that would severely limit which immigrants can get commercial driver’s licenses to drive a semitrailer truck or bus have been put on hold by a federal appeals court.

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The court in the District of Columbia ruled Thursday that the rules Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced in September a month after a truck driver not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people can’t be enforced right now.

The court said the federal government didn’t follow proper procedure in drafting the rule and failed to “articulate a satisfactory explanation for how the rule would promote safety.” The court said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s own data shows that immigrants who hold these licenses account for roughly 5% of all commercial driver’s licenses but only about 0.2% of all fatal crashes, the court said.

Duffy has been pressing this issue in California because the driver in the Florida crash received a license in California, and an audit of that state’s records showed that many immigrants received licenses in California that were valid long after their work permits expired. Earlier this week, California revoked 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses because of that problem.

Neither Duffy nor California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded immediately Friday to questions about the ruling. Newsom’s office has said the state followed guidance it received from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about issuing these licenses to noncitizens.

Duffy has said the Florida crash, along with fatal truck crashes in Texas and Alabama earlier this year, highlighted questions about these licenses. A fiery California crash that killed three people last month involved a truck driver in the country illegally, only adding to the concerns.

The driver in the Florida crash, Harjinder Singh, appeared before a judge in St. Lucie County, Florida, on Thursday, where his attorneys asked to continue his court proceedings into January as they prepare for trial. Singh has pleaded not guilty to three counts of vehicular homicide and three counts of manslaughter.

The new restrictions on these licenses would only allow immigrants who hold three specific classes of visas to be eligible to get the licenses. States would also have to verify an applicant’s immigration status in a federal database. The licenses would be valid for up to one year unless the applicant’s visa expires sooner.

Under the new rules, only 10,000 of the 200,000 noncitizens who have commercial licenses would qualify for them, which would only be available to drivers who have an H-2a, H-2b or E-2 visa. H-2a is for temporary agricultural workers while H-2b is for temporary nonagricultural workers, and E-2 is for people who make substantial investments in a U.S. business. But the rules won’t be enforced retroactively, so those 190,000 drivers would be allowed to keep their commercial licenses at least until they come up for renewal.

Trucking trade groups like the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association have supported the new rule. There is a bill in Congress that would enshrine the new restrictions on commercial driver’s licenses in law.

“For too long, loopholes in this program have allowed unqualified drivers onto our highways, putting professional truckers and the motoring public at risk,” said Todd Spencer, the trucking association’s president.

Duffy has said that California and five other states had improperly issued commercial driver’s licenses to noncitizens, but California is the only state Duffy has taken action against because it was the first one where an audit was completed. The reviews in the other states have been delayed by the government shutdown, but the Transportation Department is urging all of them to tighten their standards.

Duffy has revoked $40 million in federal funding because he said California isn’t enforcing English language requirements for truckers, and he said earlier this week that he may take another $160 million from the state over these improperly issued licenses if they don’t invalidate every illegal license and address all the concerns.

Associated Press writer Kate Payne contributed to this report from Tallahassee, Florida.

By Alex Wigglesworth, Los Angeles Times

JOSHUA TREE, Calif. — Many Angelenos dreamed about buying cheap land in the desert during the COVID-19 pandemic. Emmanuel Ruggiero actually did it.

On his plot in Joshua Tree, the software engineer built a home specifically as a short-term rental — part of a craze that saw investors seeking to cash in on people fleeing the stress and contagion of cities to isolate in more-remote locales. He equipped his modern cabin with 16-foot ceilings, a swim spa and a private nine-hole golf course.

Now, after two years as a top-rated Airbnb host, Ruggiero no longer wants to deal with the stress of managing a rental three hours away. He is hoping to sell his home for about $200,000 less than its appraised value when he first finished construction.

“If I had bought stocks instead of putting the money into the house I built, I probably would have made more,” he said.

From left, Andrew Fortner, Patryk Swietek, Ryan Cherlin and Josh Rudin, partners of the Cohost Company, a luxury short-term management business, Joshua Tree’s largest short-term rental management company, show off a short-term rental property in Yucca Valley, California, on Oct. 22, 2025. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

He’s far from alone. Operators are exiting the short-term rental market in the high desert east of Los Angeles. This year, the Joshua Tree area has seen a drop in average available listings for the first time since the pandemic drove the number to record highs — with 3,449 to date, compared with 3,606 at the same time last year, according to data from AirDNA.

Some are selling at a potential loss in a real estate market that has cooled since the dizzying heights of 2020 and 2021. Others are seeking long-term tenants to offset their mortgages as they wait to see whether home sales pick up.

The shift may reflect a market correction after the saturation of vacation rentals became unsustainable and some inexperienced investors underestimated the difficulty and expense of managing properties, according to interviews with more than a dozen Realtors, property managers and investors. It may also be driven by a post-pandemic-emergency drop in tourism that has become more acute amid economic uncertainty and a volatile political climate, observers said.

Meanwhile, those who live in the Morongo Basin, a string of gateway communities outside Joshua Tree National Park, are left to grapple with how the vacation rental gold rush reshaped their towns.

Longtime area resident Gina Grandi watched meth labs become multimillion-dollar mansions amid a real estate boom that saw home values skyrocket more than anywhere else in the country, by some measures.

“There was the pandemic and the work-from-home rules and the infusion of social media pumping up this exotic, beautiful landscape,” she said. “And then everyone wanted to have it on their Instagram.”

Grandi herself listed a home in Yucca Valley on Airbnb in 2017. But costs quickly piled up: $15,000 to replace the HVAC system, $10,000 to update the wiring, hefty bills for cleaning services and utilities.

On top of all that was the pervasive feeling that the frenzy was transforming her hometown into something she no longer recognized.

Although Grandi stayed in the vacation rental game for six years, she never made enough to cover her monthly mortgage. She now rents to a long-term tenant.

Although the numbers didn’t pencil out for Grandi, things were different for investors who already had amassed capital and experience running Airbnbs in places such as Los Angeles and Orange County, she said.

Those investors — both individuals and private equity trusts — were able to snap up properties in the high desert and convert them to profitable short-term rentals by stocking them with pricey amenities such as pools and luxury finishes, she said. They could capitalize on relationships with management companies and cleaning services to create economies of scale.

Lavish megamansions, many of them ultra-contemporary and painted black despite the desert heat, rose among tracts of modest ranches, Grandi said.

“It was like Disneyland in the backyard,” she said. “You had bocce ball courts and hammocks with an outdoor fire pit. You had cowboy pools.” One popular listing features a private lazy river.

Quiet neighborhoods where everyone had known each other for generations were disturbed by out-of-towners looking to party on the weekends, and landlords evicted tenants so they could try their hand at vacation rentals, she said. Other property owners were then able to use the drop in supply to justify raising rents.

Patryk Swietek, who owns Joshua Tree’s largest short-term rental management company, shows off a short-term rental property in Yucca Valley, California, on Oct. 22, 2025. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

“During COVID, it was bonkers,” said real estate investor Patryk Swietek. Swietek hosts a podcast focused on Airbnb investing and co-owns Cohost Co., which manages about 120 short-term rentals in the Joshua Tree area.

People typically come to the area looking for space and seclusion, he said. But even homes in relatively dense neighborhoods that “don’t really encompass the Joshua Tree vibe” were booked solid.

That lured even more investors to convert those types of properties, which were cheaper and more available than homes on acreage, he said.

Gita Vasseghi, of Los Angeles, initially wanted to buy a home in Joshua Tree in March 2021, when interest rates were low and she saw others operating successful short-term rentals. But properties there were typically going for $100,000 to $200,000 over the asking price, she said. So she settled on a home along a cul-de-sac in nearby Twentynine Palms.

Vasseghi struggled to find workers to renovate the property. A contractor scammed her out of $17,000. By the time she was ready to list the home on Airbnb nearly two years later, the market was changing, she said.

Companies were calling employees back to offices. Overseas travel and trips to other, more crowded locales became safe again. More recently, inflation and a sluggish job market have strained household finances and injected uncertainty into the future. International tourism to the United States has fallen amid stricter border policies and political unrest.

Vasseghi recently realized “the math was not mathing,” as she put it. She is now looking to rent to a long-term tenant.

“You live and you learn,” she said. “Everybody thought they were going to be an Airbnb millionaire during COVID.”

Amid the drop in demand for desert vacation rentals, neighborhood homes with little outdoor space were the first to struggle, Swietek said. He believes that the decline in listings is driven primarily by investors removing these types of properties from rental platforms.

Swietek has seen this firsthand as the owner of five short-term rentals in the high desert. The first property he bought is near other homes. He decorated it with pink walls and a disco ball statue to create “a cool experience,” he said. But it has struggled to achieve decent occupancy rates. He’s now in negotiations with a long-term tenant.

The market for high-end vacation rentals in the Joshua Tree area remains strong, Swietek said. Although overall area occupancy rates fell from 71% in 2020 to roughly 52% last year, the decline was borne only by economy and mid-scale properties, according to data from AirDNA. Occupancy rates for upscale and luxury properties have increased since 2019. And average daily rental prices, overall, have been higher this year to date than ever before, the data show.

“At the end of the day, the homes that were never meant to be short-term rentals are going to go back to the housing market and hopefully be somewhat affordable,” Swietek said. “Obviously not as affordable as they used to be.”

A view of a short-term rental property offered by the Cohost Company, a luxury short-term management business, Joshua Tree’s largest short-term rental management company, in Yucca Valley, California, on Oct. 22, 2025. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

A trend of short-term rentals returning to the market, on its own, may not be enough to bring housing prices down, said Kevin Klowden, executive director of Milken Institute Finance. He pointed to a 2022 report by the think tank that looked at five California vacation destinations, including the high desert, and concluded that short-term rentals were not a primary driver of affordable housing shortages.

These rentals represent a small slice of the housing stock, and most are expensive single-family homes unlikely to be affordable to local residents, the report found.

“The systemic problem with housing isn’t short term-rentals in the area,” Klowden said. “It is the fundamental underinvestment in all housing.”

Still, he said, an increase in housing units could help, particularly if there is also a decline in demand driven by people who won’t pay prevailing prices, and if owners are willing to sell or rent at reduced rates.

But so far, property owners who bought at the height of the market and sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into renovations and upgrades have been reluctant to sell at market rates, said Bob Armstrong, associate broker with GREEN Real Estate Group in Yucca Valley. Armstrong has been crunching data on the Morongo Basin housing market since 2013 for a widely read newsletter.

Area home prices have not decreased significantly since 2021, and they remain far above what local families can afford, he said. He estimated that roughly 75% of area home sales are for less than $400,000, yet more than 60% of active listings are for homes above that price point.

As a result, he said, homes in Joshua Tree were sitting on the market for an average of 121 days as of last month. Buyers last year closed escrow on 917 homes in Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley, Twentynine Palms and outlying areas and are on track to close even fewer this year, compared with 2,066 homes in 2021, according to data provided by Armstrong.

Inventory has skyrocketed — from fewer than 200 active listings in 2021 to 715 in mid-October, Armstrong said. Per the National Association of Realtors, that puts the area “way into a buyer’s market,” he said. “But sellers haven’t been dropping their prices to act like it’s a buyer’s market.”

Rather than face the prospect of losing money in a sale or having properties sit on the market, owners are increasingly converting homes to long-term rentals, said Mandilyn McGowen, a real estate broker with Accurate Investment Management in Yucca Valley. They’re often unable to command monthly rental rates that cover their mortgages, which average around $3,000, she said.

“People are having to come to terms with the fact that some were bad investments,” she said. “They can either wait until the market improves, or get a tenant in there now and even if they eat the cost a little, at least they’re not having to pay the full mortgage.”

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Although rents have stabilized a bit as some owners elect to settle for lower rates, they are unlikely to ever come down to what they were before the pandemic, McGowen said.

Myriah Westmoreland can no longer afford to live in her hometown. A one-bedroom apartment in Yucca Valley that cost her $750 a month five years ago is now renting for $1,350, she said. She currently lives in a bus, which on a recent October afternoon was parked in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

At first, Westmoreland was fine with the short-term rental boom, hoping that an increase in tourism would bring better jobs and higher incomes. For a time in 2020, she even cleaned Airbnbs.

But although some locals were able to launch housekeeping and maintenance businesses, others lost their homes, she said. The area no longer looks like the place where she grew up, she said, citing lots stripped of native plants and chain stores replacing mom-and-pop businesses.

Westmoreland recalls looking out the window of her old apartment and seeing the stars twinkle so brightly that she had to ask a friend if they were real. She recently stood in the same place and could see only a halo of light obscuring the sky.

“I cry at nighttime when I’m there now,” she said, “because I’ve seen so many stars go away.”

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