tl;dr : NYC is much larger than SF, and there are more affordable neighborhoods. "Bed-Stuy, Inwood, and Crown Heights bottom out the rankings, with prices per

tl;dr : NYC is much larger than SF, and there are more affordable neighborhoods. "Bed-Stuy, Inwood, and Crown Heights bottom out the rankings, with prices per square foot between $488 and $503. These more affordable neighborhoods of New York bring up an important distinction between the two cities. While New York does boast a high price per square foot in many neighborhoods, it still has the benefit of density that San Francisco does not. San Francisco is simply a less dense city, with less inventory, so its rapid price growth has more effectively pulled many city neighborhoods into a relatively narrow, expensive price range. "There aren't as many affordable neighborhoods there as there had been," Valhouli says. "By comparison, New York City is a larger city with a broader price range and still more opportunities at the more affordable end of the market."" http://ny.curbed.com/2016/6/27/12040004/nyc-vs-san-francisco-housing-prices http://ny.curbed.com/2016/6/27/12040004/nyc-vs-san-francisco... Blacks (and other low-income people) are being squeezed out of SF because the politicians have made the zoning laws to squeeze them out. To me and my friends, diversity, both racial and economic, is important. To the politicians of SF, not so. If this were important to citizens of SF, they'd elect politicians that fixed the housing problem by removing the deliberate attempt to make housing more expensive. It costs no money, just a vote to fix the zoning laws and the price of housing will drop as supply increases (as the Edward Glaeser article explains).