
The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore - dvdhnt
https://www.wired.com/2016/12/year-housing-middle-class-cant-afford-live-cities-anymore/
======
laughfactory
This article reflects my wife and my experience: just a month ago we left San
Diego for a small town north of Salt Lake City. We make over six-figures and
San Diego held only poor economic prospects for us. We'd have a very difficult
time buying a decent home (2000 sq ft, good neighborhood, reasonable commute)
for a price which wouldn't jeopardize other essentials like retirement
savings, kids college savings, savings in general, and debt payoff and
avoidance. When a small box in Clairemont (neighborhood of San Diego) cost
$500-600K you know things are out-of-wack.

Things are more reasonably priced here, but probably still higher than their
intrinsic value. However, at least we can afford them without mortgaging our
(and our kids') future.

The truth is that this isn't a situation the government has shown any ability
to solve for. There are a myriad of reasons, but ultimately my feeling is that
federal housing policy is deeply flawed.

Inevitably, by necessity, the solution to this mess will come from all those
in the middle class who've been forced to find another way. Our voting with
our feet will shape the next ten to twenty years in ways which are hard to
predict. One likely outcome is that big cities will not be able to maintain
their current housing price structures. A tipping point will come. You can't
build a viable local economy only on the top and bottom of the income
spectrum. You need a robust middle class. Otherwise the absence of the middle
class creates a vacuum, and conditions for an implosion into that vacuum.

~~~
mhneu
It's not just housing policy that's gone wrong, it's transit policy. We
haven't built good public transit in our cities, and now that cars are filling
all available roads, even houses far away from cities are too expensive for
how long commutes are.

We wish we had a train system in many cities that allowed the middle class to
live 40-60 minutes away from their jobs.

Ultimately however the main problem is wealth inequality. If median income had
increased with GDP since 1980, instead of all gains going to the 0.01%, you
would be able to afford to live in the suburbs of San Diego.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Inequality is not the problem. The problem is there are more people who want
to live somewhere than there are houses. With perfect equality there would
_still_ be more people than houses.

The one and only fix is more houses. That's it. Any other solution is just
picking winners and losers different ways. But no matter which way you pick
the same number of people win and the same number lose.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _The one and only fix is more houses_

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The heart of the problem in many parts of
the country is that we fund our schools with property taxes.

Hence, a cycle of better schools and increased demand in concentrated areas,
which causes the supply-demand imbalance and price increases. Compounding this
is the fact that people in such areas actively block "higher density" housing,
which naturally means fewer houses per acre.

Building more houses would help to a limited extent, but the shortage would
still exist and resistance is stout.

Hence, the shortage of housing is just a symptom of how we fund education,
which is the real problem.

> _Inequality is not the problem_

Inequality absolutely enters here because if wealth/income were more evenly
distributed, then funding for schools would be more evenly distributed, thus
alleviating concentrated housing demand in small areas with better schools and
driving up prices.

~~~
ghaff
I'm not sure I understand your comment. Public schools in dense cities tend to
be almost universally bad--in spite of often being funded at significantly
higher per-student levels than even relatively tony suburbs that have high-
performing schools. If you look at Massachusetts public high schools for
example, the one public high school in Cambridge (where housing has gotten
_very_ expensive) has some of the highest per-pupil spending and is in the
bottom tier of test results.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Hmm. It's a little hard to imagine that per-student funding in high-density
city schools outstrips that for truly wealthier and presumably sparser suburbs
with any significant consistency. I'd want to see the actual numbers. For
instance, where is this funding coming from for the cities? And, where is the
suburban tax money going?

And, what's the history? Were these schools neglected for years, then the
state recently started pouring in money?

I mean, maybe there are some exceptions (perhaps partially gentrified cities
where some tax base is moving back into cities at inflated prices?), but these
would generally be outliers. Since wealthier people have fled most major
cities for the burbs, the tax base and educational investments have generally
followed them. You see this over and over again in communities throughout the
country.

For example:

[http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-
schools...](http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-
a-money-problem)

~~~
ghaff
OK. For Massachusetts 2015, to pick a town and a city that each have one high
school and are both expensive property values.

Cambridge (expensive city) $27,569 per pupil

Concord (expensive suburb) $17,517 per pupil

[http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/ppx.aspx](http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/ppx.aspx)

Rankings

Cambridge Ringe and Latin was 214 out of 340

Concord Carlisle High was 27 out of 340

[https://www.schooldigger.com/go/MA/schoolrank.aspx?level=3](https://www.schooldigger.com/go/MA/schoolrank.aspx?level=3)

Not cherry-picked data.

A lot of the difference is that cities, even expensive ones, are cities. A lot
more diverse student body. A lot more students with problems at home. More
disruption, etc. You can spend more money but the average student in the city
school almost certainly has less parental involvement and less of a home
environment that's conducive to learning than in the tony suburb.

The linked article (and decades of debate) notwithstanding, it's also hard to
really correlate spending per pupil with educational outcomes past a certain
point--especially as measured on standardized tests. Poorer cities do spend
less. Two Lawrence high schools have the worst test results in Massachusetts.
But its spending, $14,475 per pupil, is still only a bit less than Concord.

------
1024core
I live in SF, and am flabbergasted at the number of 1- or 2- floor single-
family homes. A city the size of SF (46 sq mi) and population (850K+ and
growing) simply can't afford so many SFHs.

I was in Barcelona recently (yay NIPS!) and Barcelona is smaller than SF (36
sq mi) and has nearly twice the population! Everywhere you see are 6-floor
buildings, with the bottom reserved for shops and people living above them. It
is so walkable, with great (and reliable) public transportation. We kept
thinking: why can't SF be more like BCN?

~~~
criddell
I have too many hobbies that take space to live in a place like Barcelona.
Where do people work on their hobby car or motorcycle? Where do you do
woodworking? Where do you keep your boat or paddle board? Do they have
gardens? What about an outdoor kitchen for grilling and smoking? Do their kids
have bicycles and scooters and skateboards and baseball gear?

~~~
seanp2k2
Join a club for the sports stuff. There's a few nice sailing clubs in the Bay
Area where they keep the boats and the gear there (some have lockers). There
are motorcycle garages and storage units for race vehicles, parks, vacation
homes, and get-togethers with opportunities to cook outside. Skateboards fit
in closets. For wood/metalworking, there's stuff like TechShop.

It's not practical to live in a city and have a pole barn with a station for
each different hobby, but you can still do a lot and make it work. Sometimes
it ends up being pretty expensive, e.g. Keeping an extra car in the city could
be ~$300/mo in the case of SF, but car storage around say Laguna Seca can be
quite a bit cheaper.

~~~
criddell
And I live out in the burbs because I want to do all that stuff. My point was
that for some of us, suburban life is a great fit.

------
two2two
This article mentions "hot cities" including Austin, which not too long ago
was just another small eclectic city with steady growth. Once it grew large
enough and provided the ingredients to hold it's own, industry wise, against
other "hot cities" it became what it is today. Austin was just a little weird
city in Texas when I grew up in Dallas, but now it's up there with the big
boys. What this tells me is there are many Austin like cities out there
waiting to be discovered and grow in a similar way. I believe, in large part,
Austin's recent growth and success is attributed to the very problems
presented in this article. As long as the economy keeps pushing in this
direction, the more of these smaller cities will grow to compete.

~~~
larsiusprime
Until those cities inevitably become too expensive, too, just like Austin did.
(I desperately hope I'm eventually proved wrong)

"I asked a passing teamster, for want of something better to say, what land
was worth there. He pointed to some cows grazing so far off that they looked
like mice, and said, 'I don't know exactly, but there is a man over there who
will sell some land for a thousand dollars an acre.' Like a flash it came over
me that there was the reason of advancing poverty with advancing wealth. With
the growth of population, land grows in value, and the men who work it must
pay more for the privilege." \-- Henry George

~~~
ScottBurson
For anyone unfamiliar with Henry George:
[http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm](http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm)

------
cddotdotslash
This article fails to mention that the middle class can't afford to live in
the "nicest parts" of cities, but many cities have other areas as well. Take
NYC for example. Sure, if you want to live in the Chelsea or West Village
neighborhoods in Manhattan, it's going to cost you. But there are tons of
available houses in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx that are plenty
affordable. The other day I saw a house for sale in a decent part of Queens
for $240k - definitely affordable for middle class. Unfortunately, though, the
most desirable areas of the densest part of the city is being reserved for
poor and upper class, which I think is the point of the article.

~~~
schoolsman
> But there are tons of available houses in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx
> that are plenty affordable. The other day I saw a house for sale in a decent
> part of Queens for $240k - definitely affordable for middle class.

Do you have kids? Because this glib reaction signals that you don't, or you'd
be aware that the areas you are touting as affordable have terrible public
schools. That's why they're relatively cheap. That, and the hour-plus commutes
(each way) to where most middle-class jobs are.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _terrible public schools_

There are affordable parts of Long Island and Connecticut with great public
public schools less than an hour from Manhattan by train.

We've grown accustomed to overporting our post-war suburban archetype of what
a "middle class" family "deserves," _i.e._ lots of bedrooms, garages and lawn
space, while diminishing previously (and still!) common practices like having
roommates when young, not owning a car, _et cetera_.

~~~
gaius
Right. People expect to skip straight from 22 or even 18 to a late-20s or
early-30s level of "stuff" and general lifestyle, without paying their dues in
the middle. It's called a "property ladder" for a reason.

~~~
rdlecler1
It's less of a ladder than a Ponzi scheme. In SF housing prices have grown at
a compound growth rate of 6% for over 50 years. Older generation squats on
property paid for by debt, low taxes, and then retires at 60 -- all paid for
by a younger generation that doesn't have jobs and can't afford housing.

~~~
shostack
Don't forget that Prop 13 disproportionately favors buyers who bought closer
to when it was rolled out. Their rates were locked in a long time ago. I'm not
sure how repeatable this will be for new buyers.

------
rukittenme
The people who write these articles almost always live in California or New
York City. I just have to laugh.

Move to any major Texan city, any major Floridian city -- really any city in
"The South" \-- and the situation is much different. There are tons of great
properties for unsubsidized, lower class purchasers. Seriously, zillow
downtown Nashville TN. You can find great deals for the poorest amongst us.

People in (sorry to say) liberal cities have such warped, contradictory views
of housing that it blows my mind. "We need more transport, we need more
subsidies, we need X!" No, what you need to do is to let go. Let housing take
care of itself. All of these schemes have contributed and will continue to
contribute to the eviction of the middle and working class tenants.

~~~
abalashov
That may be, but first-class cities concentrate a lot more of the most
desirable economic opportunities. Living in the Silicon Valley and SF area
would be completely irrational on all grounds, except for the fact that you're
within driving distance of 900 of the world's top 1000 technology employers
(figurative example, I wouldn't have an exact count). Similar arguments can be
made for entertainment, music and film in LA, and for finance, fashion and
media in NYC.

Yeah, Charlotte, Tampa, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix are
a lot cheaper. But that's in large part because they're not SF or NYC. :)
First-class cities can literally provide 10x-20x the value for a lot of folks.

I have no dog in this fight; I lived in Atlanta for ten years and now live in
a small-medium college town. Being self-employed for a long time now, I have
no intention of moving to SF or NYC. But I can certainly see why someone
would.

That said, the US has a unique advantage here compared to most of the world,
"developed" and otherwise; it is very decentralised economically. In the grand
scheme of things here, life in Charlotte just isn't _that_ different from NYC.
In many other economies, a sizable chunk of the GDP is parked in the capital
and maybe one or two other top-tier cities, and the difference between life
there and life anywhere else—anywhere else at all, even another fairly large
city—is considerable. In my native USSR—and as I understand it, its descendant
Russia—there a huge chasm between "Moscow" and "not Moscow", even though there
are dozens of other sizable cities in Russia. The Soviet economy was
exceptionally geographically centralised, so makes for a very extreme example,
but I think you get my point.

~~~
Waterluvian
I always say that Canada is just the U.S. put through a low-pass filter. In
this case, it feels very true too. Toronto and Vancouver are like our NYC and
SF, to a somewhat more toned down extent. But then there are countless other
cities where living in them yields the same overall quality of life at a
considerably lower price tag.

------
jamespitts
The reasons behind the housing supply crisis are many, and the situation can
seem intractable.

I have been assisting architect Eugene Lew with a comprehensive and audacious
solution to this problem. If you are interested in reading a draft version of
his white paper, DM me on
[https://twitter.com/jamiepitts](https://twitter.com/jamiepitts).

The concept is tailor-made for the west districts of SF but can be applied to
any city.

It combines finance, architecture, land-creation, community involvement, and
propagation, and the output is a nonsubsidized 3BDR, 2BA home for households
with incomes between $100,000 and $150,000. There are 15 homes in a six story
elevator building, and the goal is to build hundreds of them across SF.

~~~
ilamont
If 300 units are built it will help 4500 middle-income households. That's
great, but how many middle-income households will still be unable to find
affordable housing, therefore keeping market-rate rents sky-high?

I think the solution is not trying to cram more units into a small area.
Manhattan has done that for decades, and it's still not enough to balance
supply and demand. Rather, it's to encourage business development and
residential living elsewhere, either nearby or far away. We're seeing that
with Oakland and northern NJ but there are many more opportunities to expand
this to other areas of the country. A lot of credit goes to southern states
which encouraged (through tax breaks and other incentives) heavy industry to
set up shop in smaller cities and rural areas. What will it take Google, GE,
or Microsoft to move a big chunk of their respective operations away from San
Francisco, Boston, and Seattle?

~~~
twblalock
> What will it take Google, GE, or Microsoft to move a big chunk of their
> respective operations away from San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle?

It's a chicken and egg problem: companies don't want to invest in cities where
there aren't a lot of qualified workers, and workers don't want to move to
cities where there aren't a lot of jobs. Furthermore, the most competitive
workers tend to move to the cities you mentioned, so companies located in
those cities can stay where they are and enjoy having the best workers come to
them.

Consider the Sacramento area: it's about 2 hours from Silicon Valley by car,
with significantly cheaper housing, and plenty of well-connected people
because Sacramento is the state capital. Why doesn't that area have a booming
tech economy? Because the most competitive tech workers from Sacramento have
already moved to the Bay Area. Bay Area companies don't need to open offices
in Sacramento to attract those workers.

~~~
BWStearns
I don't think it's illegal to collude to improve a second tier city's economic
prospects. Large tech cos have proven their inclination and ability to
cooperate to influence markets before, why not put that collaborative spirit
to work for good and profit?

~~~
twblalock
If tech companies would benefit from doing that, why haven't they done it
already?

The simple answer is that they would not benefit by doing that. They can just
sit tight in Silicon Valley, Seattle, and New York while the best talent comes
to them.

------
aaronchall
The problem could be lessened if NIMBY's would stop trying to dictate how
property they don't own should be used (that is, we allow construction) and if
we'd stop subsidizing people who can't even marginally afford to live there.

I figure if we'd eliminate the latter, we'd take care of a lot of the former.

In NYC, we have recently seen rents reduce due to new housing supply coming on
the market.

~~~
colordrops
In Beijing they dealt with this problem by disallowing foreign investment in
real estate except for personal use. Seems like a huge chunk of properties in
L.A. are being purchased as investments by Chinese and other foreign entities,
without ever physically visiting the house, which is at least as much of a
problem as those you list.

------
paulddraper
Huge cities...good riddance.

I live nearish to Salt Lake City (whose metro pop. is less than a quarter of
Boston's), have tons of software job opportunities, have a 17-20 min commute,
and bought a 2k sqft house on 0.19 acres for less than 200k.

Big cities are crowded. They have their advantages, but even if they weren't
overpriced, I'd probably still prefer my elbow room.

~~~
vectorjohn
Well good for you, but you don't speak for everyone.

~~~
vanderreeah
Isn't that implicit in every comment in an online forum?

------
rmason
I think this article is coastal centric. If you don't want to live on either
coast the cities are affordable by the middle class. Certain neighborhoods
might not be.

I see millennials just a few years out of college buying houses in Detroit for
example. Just not downtown or in Corktown. Similarly I've got friends with
houses in Chicago, Cleveland and Minneapolis. I've got upper middle class
friends who can't afford to buy a house anywhere in Silicon Valley.

~~~
WillEngler
Yes yes yes. I seemed to me that the article defined "hot" cities as ones with
expensive housing, which prevented it from looking at hot cities with less
housing problems. Pittsburgh and Columbus come to mind as two cities with
growing creative/professional industries where the middle class can afford to
live.

(Although housing in the epicenter of these cities' tech boomlets can be
absurd compared to the rest of the city. This new construction in Pittsburgh's
East End - [http://www.zillow.com/b/bakery-living-pittsburgh-
pa-63CwP3/](http://www.zillow.com/b/bakery-living-pittsburgh-pa-63CwP3/) \-
charges the same for 1 bed that I paid for a 3-bedroom townhouse in a solid
neighborhood ~1 mile away 2 years ago.)

------
Clubber
Strange, I'm middle class and I live in a city. There are other cities than
NYC, SF, LA and Boston.

~~~
rublev
What about places like Canada? Where your only real options are Toronto and
Vancouver. Other places are lonely and small.

Personally I'm into music. Composing, playing shows, going to the symphony,
the opera, the ballet. Sure, I could leave Toronto, except now I'm in the
middle of nowhere where there are no jobs and no culture. Now what?

I'm sure it's similar for others in the US.

~~~
jessewmc
Montreal? Very cheap to live, probably the most cultured city in Canada. I'll
admit the job situation isn't great there but that's why it's cheap. Calgary
and Edmonton both have top notch symphonies, the world class Alberta Ballet,
and burgeoning music scenes. Much cheaper than Vancouver or Toronto.

There are huge, huge affordability problems with Vancouver and Toronto, but
they're hardly your only choices.

~~~
Sgt_Apone
Exactly. Canada is very diverse and there are plenty of music scenes,
symphonies, and other culture centers outside of Vancouver and Toronto. It's
like saying the only good places to enjoy culture in the US are New York and
LA.

------
amyjess
Good. I don't want to live in a city.

I dislike density and can't stand not having lots and lots of space. I love
the look and feel of sprawl, and I want more of it... you couldn't pay me to
live in an urban environment.

Crowded cities feel like something out of the past to me. Like, my great-
grandparents lived in a crowded city when they first came to this country, and
every subsequent generation has moved farther and farther out into the burbs.
Moving to a city would feel like moving to 1901 to me.

------
jorblumesea
I really think a big part of this is the QE/low interest rates the Fed used to
dig us out of the hole. Everything seems inflated, from stocks to housing
prices, because borrowing is so cheap and you can over-leverage yourself quite
easily.

Anecdotal story: I live in a decent but not super nice part of Seattle and we
had a house a few blocks away sell for 750k, which seems insane as everything
else in the area goes for 400-500k and historically has basically been the
ghetto. I could not imagine trying to get into this market, I would be living
6 miles down the road.

Will be interesting to see how prices are impacted once the fed raises rates.
Borrowing will be more expensive and _should_ have a depressing effect on home
prices.

~~~
user5994461
Agree. It's the trivial consequences of interest rates.

People will always pay most of their money in rents, everyone needs a place to
live [and wants it to be nice].

Low interest rates are allowing people to take 20-40 years mortgages, for huge
total sums of money.

If rates were higher, the duration and sum would be forced to be lower. It's
basic maths.

------
sh_tinh_hair
In order to afford a decent newer house in the suburban beltway (DC) you need
to spend 500k+. That's $2200 a month. Personal property tax on a 3 year old
SUV and a new sports car is $2700 yearly. Car insurance is > $300 monthly. Car
payments >= $1900 month. (college + personal) Loan repayment = $400 monthly.
Food and gas + energy >= $600 monthly. State and federal tax + ss take about
45% of gross.

Upper middle class == ~ 170k a year. Welcome to northern virginia.

~~~
snowwrestler
The car numbers jump out at me. The rest sounds familiar but you must have
some nice cars to run up those car tax, loan, and insurance bills.

For comparison, a couple of 5 year old Japanese cars run me less than
$100/month insurance and around $600/year in property tax in NoVA. No payments
because we saved up and paid cash, but if there were, they'd be well under
$1,900/month.

> State and federal tax + ss take about 45% of gross.

Even after the mortgage deduction? Have you calculated your effective tax
rate? Mine is around 30%, including sales taxes.

~~~
sh_tinh_hair
My situation is extraordinary regarding the mortgage since I can't deduct it:
so tax rate is pretty accurate. The sports car is nicer than the average
(approaching supercar) and the SUV is categorized as luxury. Not out of the
ordinary in this area.

~~~
snowwrestler
I'm curious why you can't deduct the mortgage payments. Just so far down the
amortization curve that it's mostly principle now? Or you're talking about an
investment property?

~~~
sh_tinh_hair
Relationship penalty.

------
SmallBets
While pricing people out of "hot cities" sucks, there is an upside to up and
coming cities being built up. Even Austin and Denver mentioned in the story
were not on par with 'out of reach' cities a decade ago.

There will continue to be waves of this as we see places like Nashville, NC
cities, SLC, Charleston etc building up now.

This relocation is a form of spreading the wealth and based on geography the
optimistic view is some of the benefit will go to areas we saw most left
behind and divided this election (south, midwest).

In the long term that could be a boon to middle class outside megacities and
more opportunity to escape the mega city bubbles/echo chambers

------
chmaynard
The first sentence is obviously false -- the well-known landscape architect
Frederick Olmsted was born in 1822, so he could not have designed Highland
Park in the 1700s. Not a good way to start the article.

------
nkoren
I'm a founder bootstrapping a startup, so at the moment both my income and my
assets are very well short of middle class. Nonetheless, I can afford to live
in London Zone 2 -- a ten-minute walk away from Tower Bridge -- because I'm
happy to live communally with a handful of excellent flatmates. There's
nothing wrong with this arrangement, and I think it's an arrangement that will
only grow in the future. I'm seeing the property development and and rental
industries evolve to accommodate it. This is good.

That's not to defend the way that most of the property industry has become
simply a vehicle for financial speculation, which is to the benefit of nobody
who isn't at the apex of the financial services industry.

~~~
closeparen
> because I'm happy to live communally with a handful of excellent flatmates.

Television. In a small apartment, if one person is watching TV, the rest of us
are locked into it too. Any hope of reading, programming, or any other focused
activity goes out the window. After long days in a noisy open-plan office,
coming home to other people's blaring TV show wore down my sanity very
quickly. No job could possibly be good enough to justify that life.

In college, you could at least escape it in any of the multitude of secure
24x7 spaces with tables, power, WiFi, etc. But the libraries around here close
at the end of the workday, and that's about the only quiet public space we
have in this country.

I'd kill for a "media only with headphones" communal apartment.

~~~
ticviking
So post some ads locally and make it happen.

------
ctulek
I have 2 questions:

(1) Do not such articles sound like "not everyone can afford a holiday in
Hawai"? Or "all my friends have a Mercedes AMG but I don't"? What is the
difference? *

(2) In Bay Area, the daily commute itself is an obvious sign of
overpopulation. How does more housing not make it even worse?

* I exclude the gentrification problem which is really affecting the lives of poor and old people as their mobility is far worse than middle class, and most of the time they won't be able to buy the new houses and apartments anyway.

~~~
closeparen
>(1) Do not such articles sound like "not everyone can afford a holiday in
Hawai"? Or "all my friends have a Mercedes AMG but I don't"? What is the
difference? *

It would be useful, for many reasons, to have a greater proportion of people
living in cities. So, it's useful to challenge your implicit assumption that
doing so ought to be a luxury.

(2) In Bay Area, the daily commute itself is an obvious sign of
overpopulation. How does more housing not make it even worse?

a) The commute is awful because the Bay Area is overpopulated relative to its
transit infrastructure, not some natural limit. Or, conversely, the Bay Area's
transit infrastructure is under-provisioned relative to its population.
Faster, more extensive transit infrastructure can drastically improve the
commute at both current and higher population levels.

b) We also underutilize the land close to commute destinations, so everyone
(but the residents of single-family homes near downtown) has to travel further
than they should. Pedestrians don't need much in the way of infrastructure
(just sidewalks, which most of SF already has). Building more residential
skyscrapers in the midst of business districts lets more people walk to work
in a short time. Building more mid-rises (~6 stories) where there are
currently single-family homes gets more people into commute distances that are
reasonably quick on a bicycle, motor scooter, or public transit. Density of
residents also promotes density of stores, so that i.e. everyone can be a
short walk from their grocery store, rather than needing a car to shop, and
the reclaimed land previously dedicated to parking can house more people.

~~~
ctulek
(1) For the sake of extending the same analogy, the question is not whether
people should have vacations and cars or not, it is about everybody asking for
luxury vacations or cars.

(2) IMHO, housing may for sure move some people closer to their work but it
also means more service workers and other jobs to move to the same spot; this
sounds to me like a vicious circle. At the end isn't it this vicious circle
that drives city growth? Even if the commute problem is solved, which I doubt
looking all the cities I lived or know a little bit, how are we going to
prevent the classic environmental challenges: clean water, or effects on
natural habitat?

------
bootload
Just read this article, _" The retirement wave changing Sydney"_ about the
effects of boomers retiring in Sydney and ^holding the crease^ in the housing
market. [0] Interesting effects (economy slows as displaced younger workers
have to travel further).

[0] [http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/the-retirement-wave-changing-
sydne...](http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/the-retirement-wave-changing-
sydney-20161229-gtjj01.html)

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badwulf
> Landlords are able to charge more, and long-time rental residents get
> displaced when they can’t afford the new prices.

So just because you rent a place somewhere for a couple of years you are
entitled to be able to stay there forever? even if everything around you
changes?

What if I have more money, and I want to move in as well, but can't because
you are still renting the place you are entitled to for cheap?

> That’s what’s happening in Fort Hill, a traditionally African American
> neighborhood that is whitening every year as black residents who’ve rented
> there for decades are replaced by high-turnover college students willing to
> pay the ever-higher market rates for apartments.

I find it disturbing that this article throws in race despite this being a
purely economic situation.

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noobermin
>In Fort Hill in 2016, meanwhile, initiatives to build new affordable housing
to keep those long-time residents in the neighborhood were met with resistance
by some homeowners fearing an influx of low-cost housing would negatively
affect their home values.

Someone enlighten me, why does the government have to listen to the wealthy
NIMBY's over the longtime residents? Are certain voices more important than
others? We live in a egalitarian democracy, no?

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dragonwriter
The article talks about "the middle class", but the people it talks about
(teachers, etc.) are wage laborers with respectable pay, not independent
business owners deriving income by applying labor to their own capital -- that
is, they are middle income working class, not middle class.

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brequinn
Worth pointing out that the article defines middle class as an annual
household income of $50-125K. That's higher than I would've expected on the
high end. Also, they rightfully call out too-restrictive zoning as being
responsible for a lot of the shortage.

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DoodleBuggy
If you ever want to see evidence of just how thick of a bubble the tech world
lives in, and how disconnected it is from the rest of the population and
economy, read comments on any article with "middle class" in the title.

Good grief.

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Ericson2314
The cities skew Democratic, but I wonder if increasing urban migration will
create more Democrats. Then the Democratic Party has more of an incentive to
build more nice-city.

...Might have worked 8 years ago.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
This is absolutely the case, there are loads of books about the phenomenon.
And every mid-sized city has some chamber of commerce that is trying to crack
the code on how to be "the next Austin/Portland/whichever-hip-city". Hell,
I've got friends in Virginia and Maine who are working on this.

They're doing it for fiscal/influential reasons, not political, but yes, this
trend would benefit the Democrats, except that you can't attract hipsters with
policy.

~~~
analog31
I live in such a city. We are trying to make the city more desirable to
economic growth. One factor is that people will tend to locate their
businesses where they want to live, so it makes sense to add amenities
associated with upper middle class lifestyle, such as good public schools and
bike infrastructure.

But there are some things that we don't control. Probably the most important
engine of growth in the entire state is located in our city -- the university
-- but the city doesn't operate it, and we have no voice in state government
thanks to partisan gerrymandering.

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vidoc
Speaking of housing in the city, an amazing display of the situation, in SF at
least, is the number of people who share housing. I'd actually love to have
stats!

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bdcravens
I live just north of Houston in a 1600 sq ft, corner lot, large porch, 2 car
detached garage, 3 bedroom house. Currently valued at $130,000.

~~~
nunez
Houston's is a great place to work too, especially if you're into oil and gas!

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cozzyd
That's one nice thing about Chicago, you can live in a high-rise downtown for
a fraction of what it would cost in in SF, NYC, or Boston.

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jgalt212
Once and if we ever get away from zero interest rates this problem will solve
itself.

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muninn_
The middle class can afford to live in cities, just not in a 3500 sqft house
with a 2 car garage and a boat, and with the best school district and
certainly not in NYC, SF, Boston, DC, etc.

There are plenty of places to live in America. You have to adjust your
standard of living and your expectations according to your income and desires.

~~~
jamespitts
This is a view that will lead to a highly dysfunctional society.

First off, you are dismissive of the issue with that bit of exaggeration. It
is not as if this group wants all the good things in life that only a tech
salary afford. Perhaps a dignified life would be sufficient.

You also place NYC, SF, Boston, DC, etc. into a category of city that is
naturally not available to the middle class. Is NYC a luxury like a 3500 sq ft
house and boat? Housing scarcity and the resulting price inflation is actually
a situation that residents of cities accidentally created, something highly
unnatural.

Working class and middle class people are critical to the economy and wider
culture of cities. Teachers. Police officers. Artists. The guy who makes your
coffee. The gal not from a wealthy family who wants to start a business.

It is not enough that a certain group can just live somewhere in America.
Critical workers must live within a reasonable commute to their jobs.

There should be plenty of places in each city for them to live in, and there
should plenty of infrastructure in place to move them about.

~~~
muninn_
Is NYC a luxury? Absolutely. The access to institutions, the culture, the
people, the shops, the history... all of that is a luxury. That's why people
want to live there versus somewhere like Cleveland I guess.

Once those cities are unaffordable for the very people you mention, they will
just move to more affordable places where they have a better cost of living,
and then they will bring ideas, creativity, and resurgence to these areas and
make them better.

If you're a critical worker, then surely you can demand a pay raise. If not,
move. If somebody can replace you, you're not critical. If somebody can't
replace you, they'll have to pay more.

I'm not dismissive of the cost of these cities at all, nor the plight of those
living there, but you get what you pay for. If you're a teacher in New York
and you can't afford rent, move somewhere else instead. What else are you
going to do? Rent control? Then you just have people who can never afford to
build lasting wealth because they will just rent for life.

There isn't a 'solution' to this 'problem' because it's just a basic fact of
human organization. I'd love to live in Colorado, maybe Breckinridge, but I
can't afford that. So I live somewhere else and visit. Does that suck? Yeah
sure, it also sucks I can't buy a Ferrari.

Ideally we want mixed-use development neighborhoods with differently priced
homes for people with different income levels to live in. But it looks like
without the government enforcing it, that isn't going to happen.

~~~
jamespitts
I do not think that big city life should be a luxury, any more than the
internet or computing should be a luxuries.

While it is beneficial to improve districts, the migratory upgrading of urban
areas is an economic model that may be problematic for the population. People
need to get work done and take care of their families, not constantly deal
with a series of dismal choices and life-uprooting changes.

Instead of waiting for price bubbles, wage bubbles, hostile populations
causing problems due to inadequate conditions, perhaps cities should work on
the infrastructure of growth.

There are many necessary conditions for civilization that governments enforce
or produce. I argue that generating NYC conditions for the general population
is one of them.

~~~
ghaff
>I argue that generating NYC conditions for the general population is one of
them.

OMG, I certainly hope not. They'd certainly better not try to generate NYC
conditions for me.

~~~
jamespitts
Yeah that isn't for everyone!

Whatever the category of neighborhood -- big city or small town or even
country -- there are minimum requirements for a decent life that IMO the
community is morally obligated to create.

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ensiferum
ad blocker blocker blocks reading the article.

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fbreduc
then don't live in cities?

~~~
nocoolnametom
What about those who provide social services to city-dwellers? Teachers,
firefighters? It can be problematic to have the police tasked with protecting
a city they don't even live in. Next time you see an SFPD officer with a free
moment ask him/her what they think of the explosive growth in SoMa.

~~~
superbaconman
If they can't afford to live where they work maybe they're under payed?

~~~
drdeadringer
I don't think that's a "maybe".

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alexnewman
THe problem is we still believe america has a middle class. It really doesn't.
Even the people I know with household incomes in the bay exceeding 250k a year
aren't really saving any money. Easy access to debt has confused access to
capital with savings in america. I'm just glad I'm rich

~~~
moron4hire
Bullshit. There is no place in the United States where $250K means you're
living paycheck to paycheck. You know people who don't know how to manage
their money.

~~~
wott
On this forum, there are plenty of people who are totally out of touch with
reality when it comes to salaries, doubled by the fact they they believe they
are so above everyone else that they should earn 10 times average Joe's salary
and live like kings, hence everything else is a failure.

Very recently, there were the 'unworthy' Japanese salaries. They were 50%-80%
higher that what I am used to see around me for equivalent qualifications, but
no, the general opinion here was that they were outrageously low (without
consideration for any other factor).

I also remember one guy saying he was earning 150k$/year and that leaving in
France was with that salary _OK but barely so_. Truth is that's 3 to 4 times
what most mid-career engineer earn, and their salary allows them to have an
easy life. That's 6 times the median salary, which means that half of the
population can live 6 years or more with a single year of his salary. That's 8
times the minimum wage, and lots of people live with it, some without any
problem, some with difficulties, depending on the family situation, the
location and the spending habits, but they all make do. Finally that's 20
times the amount of welfare, which is enough to live a poor and simple life.
So the guy could have lived, say 10 years with a single year of his income,
and yet he was whining.

My jaw regularly falls when I read money/salary related posts on this forum.

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tabeth
I agree with the article. However, people should be able and willing to make
the appropriate sacrifices commensurate with their future expectations.

If someone is 22 and is making 35k a year, and can keep all of their expenses
at 15k per year (it's easy to find places in Dorchester 850 rent all inclusive
for a room plus 150 food and 3k year entertainment), save 5k per year for
retirement and emergencies and finally save 10k for a house they'll be have
100k when they're 32. With 100k in boston that's 25 percent on a 400k house in
a suburb or parts of Dorchester. Worst case, move somewhere cheaper and that
can be as much as 50% down.

Keep in mind this assumes no salary increases and no spouse. It's very doable,
but people want to live a lavish life. Can you live a lavish life in Boston
for 35k? Nope.

~~~
Glyptodon
Your numbers are entirely unreasonable unless they're after tax. Maybe in
Arizona and not saving 5k for retirement. But even there $150/week for food is
like Ramen, Beans, and Rice, you're not accounting for transportation or
medical costs, etc. You can live on 35k for sure, but saving 10k of it every
year is pretty optimistic.

~~~
tabeth
35k after tax is about 28k [1]. What's wrong with rice and beans and
occasional meat? An average 22 year old doesn't need medical insurance. Given
that many people don't save at all this would be pretty good.

Also the plan I described already had leeway for unexpected expenses.

12k housing and food 3k entertainment 10k house 5k saving

I agree that it would be a boring life. That being said, this is using 35k and
not the 50k minimum being defined as middle class, per the article.

1\.
[http://taxformcalculator.com/state_tax/massachusetts/35000.h...](http://taxformcalculator.com/state_tax/massachusetts/35000.html)

~~~
KallDrexx
I know plenty of people in their 20s that thought they were too healthy to
need medical insurance, until something happened and they had to have their
appendix taken out and now have $50k plus in medical debt.

