6 ms·

Exploring the dividing lines between rich and poor in American cities

45 points by misnamed 10y ago

arcanus 10y ago
I'm surprised they didn't adjust for cost of living across each city. I lived in D.C. for four years, and it was certainly less expensive than NYC/SF, broadly speaking.
massysett 10y ago
Pointless summary of original. Please link to original: http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/2016/wealth-divides/index.html http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/2016/wealth-divides/index....
- DoodleBuggy 10y ago
  Agreed. Content regurgitation is so annoying.
- sctb 10y ago
  Thanks, we've updated the link from http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/12/esri-map-income-inequality-washington-dc-new-york-san-francisco/510398/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/12/esri-map-income-inequ....
elastic_church 10y ago
Areas of household income around $16,000, what reported occupations are these? Part time temp work on and off? Also, isn't there a lot of utility by looking at assets as well. It wouldn't seemingly change a discussion around the article presented, but it is kind of pointless to have a discussion of annual income and neglect people that have assets greater than their income, liquid or not.
- DoodleBuggy 10y ago
  > Areas of household income around $16,000, what reported occupations are these? Part time temp work on and off? Minimum wage is $7/hour. 40 hours a week * 52 weeks and you're not even making $15k despite working full time and not taking even a week off. Pretty abysmal.
- ap22213 10y ago
  Retail and service jobs. I have a few friends who are single parents and make less than $12,000 in retail. Many want full time work, but it's rarely available.
  - DoodleBuggy 10y ago
    Wow that must be really tough. Many people are really struggling out there, that is something I think many either aren't aware of, ignore, or forget.
    - pryelluw 10y ago
      It is so tough that I never want to experience it again and motivates me to work as hard as I do. But not everyone is as lucky as I've been.
    - nommm-nommm 10y ago
      It's very, very hard. Need a car repair? That will be 3 weeks take-home pay. I worried about money 24/7. I couldn't ever forget.
nugget 10y ago
Housing is the real problem. Let's call it what it is. Once you have a place to live, then the cost of a pleasant existence is a) pretty cheap, b) controllable [eat out versus eat at home], and c) more or less the same in many parts of the country. Education and health care costs are close runner ups but the real affordability crisis that we have to solve for is affordable housing in desirable areas (job centers). On the other hand, there is so much household savings tied up in housing that any major effort to reduce prices would cause a lot of economic pain. I don't have any answers.
- DoodleBuggy 10y ago
  Housing is really cheap in the midwest and south. Maybe everyone who can't afford the expensive areas can relocate and telecommute? Kind of silly, but not entirely.
  - psyc 10y ago
    I would happily move to Nowhere, Kansas, if I could find a semi-stable remote job. I've been looking for about a year and haven't found anything suitable. Meanwhile, I know I can land a decent job anytime, within weeks, in Seattle or Boston. The availability of remote jobs does seem to be on the rise - the problem is that it's small and rising slowly.
  - ianlevesque 10y ago
    I used to do that, but you can make 2x-3x by going into an office. Sadly still true.
eldavido 10y ago
Am I the only one who hates how it's become received wisdom that, to quote the article, "A skyrocketing real estate market, fueled in large part by the tech industry" is the main culprit for this? What about height and floor area limits, surrounding communities on the peninsula that won't build, aggressive neighborhood associations in San Francisco, overly-restrictive building and zoning codes (wife is architect in SF, currently going through 2-year permitting process on one of her projects), and excessive developer fees? It's telling that other cities, e.g. Washington, DC, are experiencing similar levels of economic and population growth, without all the hand-wringing, just by building more hosting stock. It doesn't have to be this way. It's this way because SF's electorate chooses to make it this way.
- arcanus 10y ago
  Yep! > It's telling that other cities, e.g. Washington, DC, are experiencing similar levels of economic and population growth And not are all tech hubs. Nyc is more finance driven than tech. D.C. is a very different beast.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  Another story I've heard from a real estate industry employee is a high rise in downtown SF getting killed because someone proved it blocked a butterfly migration path. The local laws that empower this kind of stuff is a source of many issues here. At this rate LA will have more transit, subways and dense housing than SF in a few decades.
- hguant 10y ago
  There are three legal entities governing housing in and around the D.C. Metropolitan area - the District, Maryland, and Virginia. The laws and geography have worked such that Virginia is currently experiencing the benefits (from an economic/tax point of view) of the whole tech fueled growth in DC. Housing is being built in the district, but there are hard and soft limits to how much can be made available. DC is tiny, and land in and around the city center (or near a metro stop) is at a premium. Furthermore, the District has laws restricting the height of buildings - no new building is allowed to be taller than the top of the Captitol building. That's the hard limit - the soft limit is that D.C. politically is really pushin back against gentrification in all forms. There's a lot of effort being spent to keep neighborhoods and areas the way they are, which makes developing rather difficult. Maryland has had cheap housing for a while, but it's been developed already - there's nothing new being built, because it's either already at capacity, or the land is never going to be built on because it's in a super rich community. Maryland (well, the parts of Maryland amenable to housing) also has the complication of being separated from the city center by north east D.C., which is mostly residential and terrible to commute through. This wouldn't matter if the metro functioned properly, but it's been on the fritz for about 3 years now. This has resulted in a massive building spree of high rises, both for luxury condos and cheaper apartment blocks, on the other side of the river in Virginia. The Ballston area in particular has had three new apartment building open up in the last year, with more being built as I type. Sorry for the ramble, it's just interesting having grown up here, and seeing some of the reasons why things are the way they are.
JauntTrooper 10y ago
"the upper five percent of Manhattan residents earned more than $860,000 in 2014" Really? 1 in 20 people make that much money annually?
- otoburb 10y ago
  Only on the island of Manhattan. The other boroughs of New York City do not have the same concentration of households making this much. The article's sources are listed at the bottom of the page, and they are primarily household income statistics.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
madengr 10y ago
Gave up reading after it crashed 5 times on my iPhone. What ever happened to plain HTML?
- gumby 10y ago
  on my computer the space bar didn't let me move through the article either. I guess they didn't want either of us to read it.

45 points by misnamed 10y ago

I'm surprised they didn't adjust for cost of living across each city. I lived in D.C. for four years, and it was certainly less expensive than NYC/SF, broadly speaking.

massysett 10y ago

Pointless summary of original. Please link to original: http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/2016/wealth-divides/index.html http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/2016/wealth-divides/index....

DoodleBuggy 10y ago
Agreed. Content regurgitation is so annoying.
sctb 10y ago
Thanks, we've updated the link from http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/12/esri-map-income-inequality-washington-dc-new-york-san-francisco/510398/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/12/esri-map-income-inequ....

elastic_church 10y ago

Areas of household income around $16,000, what reported occupations are these? Part time temp work on and off? Also, isn't there a lot of utility by looking at assets as well. It wouldn't seemingly change a discussion around the article presented, but it is kind of pointless to have a discussion of annual income and neglect people that have assets greater than their income, liquid or not.

DoodleBuggy 10y ago
> Areas of household income around $16,000, what reported occupations are these? Part time temp work on and off? Minimum wage is $7/hour. 40 hours a week * 52 weeks and you're not even making $15k despite working full time and not taking even a week off. Pretty abysmal.
ap22213 10y ago
Retail and service jobs. I have a few friends who are single parents and make less than $12,000 in retail. Many want full time work, but it's rarely available.
- DoodleBuggy 10y ago
  Wow that must be really tough. Many people are really struggling out there, that is something I think many either aren't aware of, ignore, or forget.
  - pryelluw 10y ago
    It is so tough that I never want to experience it again and motivates me to work as hard as I do. But not everyone is as lucky as I've been.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    It's very, very hard. Need a car repair? That will be 3 weeks take-home pay. I worried about money 24/7. I couldn't ever forget.

nugget 10y ago

Housing is the real problem. Let's call it what it is. Once you have a place to live, then the cost of a pleasant existence is a) pretty cheap, b) controllable [eat out versus eat at home], and c) more or less the same in many parts of the country. Education and health care costs are close runner ups but the real affordability crisis that we have to solve for is affordable housing in desirable areas (job centers). On the other hand, there is so much household savings tied up in housing that any major effort to reduce prices would cause a lot of economic pain. I don't have any answers.

DoodleBuggy 10y ago
Housing is really cheap in the midwest and south. Maybe everyone who can't afford the expensive areas can relocate and telecommute? Kind of silly, but not entirely.
- psyc 10y ago
  I would happily move to Nowhere, Kansas, if I could find a semi-stable remote job. I've been looking for about a year and haven't found anything suitable. Meanwhile, I know I can land a decent job anytime, within weeks, in Seattle or Boston. The availability of remote jobs does seem to be on the rise - the problem is that it's small and rising slowly.
- ianlevesque 10y ago
  I used to do that, but you can make 2x-3x by going into an office. Sadly still true.

eldavido 10y ago

Am I the only one who hates how it's become received wisdom that, to quote the article, "A skyrocketing real estate market, fueled in large part by the tech industry" is the main culprit for this? What about height and floor area limits, surrounding communities on the peninsula that won't build, aggressive neighborhood associations in San Francisco, overly-restrictive building and zoning codes (wife is architect in SF, currently going through 2-year permitting process on one of her projects), and excessive developer fees? It's telling that other cities, e.g. Washington, DC, are experiencing similar levels of economic and population growth, without all the hand-wringing, just by building more hosting stock. It doesn't have to be this way. It's this way because SF's electorate chooses to make it this way.

arcanus 10y ago
Yep! > It's telling that other cities, e.g. Washington, DC, are experiencing similar levels of economic and population growth And not are all tech hubs. Nyc is more finance driven than tech. D.C. is a very different beast.
mahyarm 10y ago
Another story I've heard from a real estate industry employee is a high rise in downtown SF getting killed because someone proved it blocked a butterfly migration path. The local laws that empower this kind of stuff is a source of many issues here. At this rate LA will have more transit, subways and dense housing than SF in a few decades.
hguant 10y ago
There are three legal entities governing housing in and around the D.C. Metropolitan area - the District, Maryland, and Virginia. The laws and geography have worked such that Virginia is currently experiencing the benefits (from an economic/tax point of view) of the whole tech fueled growth in DC. Housing is being built in the district, but there are hard and soft limits to how much can be made available. DC is tiny, and land in and around the city center (or near a metro stop) is at a premium. Furthermore, the District has laws restricting the height of buildings - no new building is allowed to be taller than the top of the Captitol building. That's the hard limit - the soft limit is that D.C. politically is really pushin back against gentrification in all forms. There's a lot of effort being spent to keep neighborhoods and areas the way they are, which makes developing rather difficult. Maryland has had cheap housing for a while, but it's been developed already - there's nothing new being built, because it's either already at capacity, or the land is never going to be built on because it's in a super rich community. Maryland (well, the parts of Maryland amenable to housing) also has the complication of being separated from the city center by north east D.C., which is mostly residential and terrible to commute through. This wouldn't matter if the metro functioned properly, but it's been on the fritz for about 3 years now. This has resulted in a massive building spree of high rises, both for luxury condos and cheaper apartment blocks, on the other side of the river in Virginia. The Ballston area in particular has had three new apartment building open up in the last year, with more being built as I type. Sorry for the ramble, it's just interesting having grown up here, and seeing some of the reasons why things are the way they are.

JauntTrooper 10y ago

"the upper five percent of Manhattan residents earned more than $860,000 in 2014" Really? 1 in 20 people make that much money annually?

otoburb 10y ago
Only on the island of Manhattan. The other boroughs of New York City do not have the same concentration of households making this much. The article's sources are listed at the bottom of the page, and they are primarily household income statistics.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

madengr 10y ago

Gave up reading after it crashed 5 times on my iPhone. What ever happened to plain HTML?

gumby 10y ago
on my computer the space bar didn't let me move through the article either. I guess they didn't want either of us to read it.