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A decade ago, I opened a restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and found out quickly how perilous our local economy can be.[qh]
十年前，我在马萨诸塞州的普罗温斯敦开了一家餐馆，很快就发现我们当地的经济是多么危险。[qh]
One afternoon in July, a few of my line cooks—all Jamaican culinary students who had traveled to the United States on student work-study visas—rolled into work late for the third time that week. [qh]
七月的一个下午，我的几个流水线厨师——都是牙买加烹饪专业的学生，他们持学生工作学习签证来到美国——这周第三次上班迟到。[qh]
The other cooks were annoyed. So was I. I’d been spending my days stumbling through what seemed like impossible situations, and here was one more crisis.[qh]
其他厨师很生气。我也是。我一直在磕磕绊绊地度日，似乎总是遇到不可能解决的情况，而现在又多了一场危机。[qh]
But the students had a good excuse: They had landed in Provincetown with two promises from a nearby restaurant: a summer job and a place to live.[qh]
但学生们有一个很好的借口：他们来到普罗温斯敦时，附近一家餐馆承诺给他们一份暑期工作和一个住处。[qh]
The job had materialized (as had a second one, filling in at my restaurant). The housing hadn’t.[qh]
工作已经找到了（第二份工作也找到了，在我的餐馆顶班）。住房却没有解决。[qh]
These teenagers had been living out of the back of a borrowed car parked illegally in a faraway beach parking lot.[qh]
这些青少年一直住在一辆借来的汽车的后座上，这辆车非法停在一个遥远的海滩停车场。[qh]
Away from home for the first time, working seven 16-hour days a week, these cooks had nowhere to live in an ultraprogressive town that desperately needed their labor.[qh]
这些厨师第一次离开家，每周工作七天，每天工作16小时，他们在一个极度进步的小镇上无处可住，而这个小镇迫切需要他们的劳动力。[qh]
Hearing this, I realized: If I want to keep my restaurant open, the local housing crisis is my problem too.[qh]
听到这里，我意识到：如果我想让我的餐厅继续营业，当地的住房危机也是我的问题。[qh]
Provincetown, a remote little village on a thin spit of sand at the very tip of Cape Cod, has about 3,700 year-round residents but a summer population estimated at up to 16 times that.[qh]
普罗温斯敦是一个偏远的小村庄，位于科德角最尖端的一片细长的沙滩上，常年居民约有3700人，但夏季人口估计多达这个数字的16倍。[qh]
Once one of the busiest fishing ports in the United States, it now has an economy that relies on the influx of tourists and wealthy second-home owners, many of whom identify as LGBTQ and revel in the town’s inclusivity and peculiarity.[qh]
它曾是美国最繁忙的渔港之一，现在的经济依赖于大量涌入的游客和富有的二手房业主，其中许多人都是 LGBTQ，他们陶醉于小镇的包容性和独特性。[qh]
The drag performer Dina Martina likes to call Provincetown a “delightful little ashtray of a town.” [qh]
变装皇后迪娜·玛蒂娜喜欢将普罗温斯敦称为“一个令人愉快的小镇烟灰缸”。[qh]
I agree, but with one footnote: Some of the burning issues in town are profound—an extreme version of what’s happening in the U.S. economy as whole.[qh]
我同意，但有一点需要说明：镇上的一些热点问题是深刻的——是整个美国经济正在发生的事情的极端版本。[qh]
If you work for modest pay in the service industry, Provincetown isn’t an escape from the real world; it’s a harbinger of a dystopian, ever more unequal future. [qh]
如果你在服务业工作，拿着微薄的薪水，那么普罗温斯敦并不是逃离现实世界的避难所；只有一个反乌托邦、更加不平等的未来。[qh]
My job was to sell lobster rolls. But to do that well, I also had to become a landlord; over the next several years, my business spent more than a million dollars buying, renting, and operating housing for our workers.[qh]
我的工作就是卖龙虾卷。但要做好这项工作，我还必须成为房东；在接下来的几年里，我的企业花费了一百多万美元为员工购买、租赁和经营住房。[qh]
I helped employees work through the tangle of affordable-housing applications and joined community boards discussing housing issues. Still, the shortage keeps getting worse.[qh]
我帮助员工处理经济适用房申请的复杂问题，并加入社区委员会讨论住房问题。 尽管如此，住房短缺的情况仍在不断恶化。[qh]
In the second quarter of 2024, the median single-family home sold for $2.4 million, according to one report; the median condo sold for more than $900,000. Two-thirds of renters are cost-burdened.[qh]
一份报告显示，2024 年第二季度，独栋住宅的中位数售价为 240 万美元；公寓的中位数售价超过 90 万美元。三分之二的租房者负担沉重。[qh]
The local economy has become dependent on temporary foreign workers whom the U.S. immigration system allows in grudgingly or not at all.[qh]
当地经济已经变得依赖临时外国工人，而美国移民系统要么不情愿地允许他们入境，要么根本不允许。[qh]
We’re buffeted by political and economic forces far beyond the control of anyone in town.[qh]
我们受到政治和经济力量的冲击，这些力量远远超出了镇上任何人的控制。[qh]
