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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

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
orbitur 10y ago
As a southerner who's moved to a northern city that expanded before cars blew up in the 50s, I gotta say, I can't ever see myself going back until you can feasibly live without a car. My homecity is now over 600k people, but it's really just a network of highways and avenues/parkways connecting them all. Public transit is underfunded, and only the poorest of the poor use it until they can buy a car. Buying a car is simply a necessity, like a roof over your head. Maybe the freedom of not being trapped in a car to get anywhere interesting costs more. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- rukittenme 10y ago
  > Maybe the freedom of not being trapped in a car to get anywhere interesting costs more. Perhaps it does. That is little consolation to the poor. All of whom have cars.
mhneu 10y ago
Housing doesn't take care of itself. Cities built on the American car-centric model work fine until they reach a certain size and then traffic chokes them and quality of life for everyone goes down. Atlanta, a southern city, is a good example of a city whose economic growth is limited by traffic. Society and government exist to help us citizens coordinate our efforts to solve problems bigger than any of us. Building public transit and forming density-friendly zoning rules are what we should all be doing together.
- rukittenme 10y ago
  Public transit won't reduce the cost of housing in cities. The opposite has been shown. Zoning protects incumbents -- always. Incumbents are the reason more density is not being built in places like SF. Every solution you've presented has been done, is being done, and will always be done until it becomes politically unpopular to do so. I don't see how doing it again will solve anything.

abalashov 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.

orbitur 10y ago

As a southerner who's moved to a northern city that expanded before cars blew up in the 50s, I gotta say, I can't ever see myself going back until you can feasibly live without a car. My homecity is now over 600k people, but it's really just a network of highways and avenues/parkways connecting them all. Public transit is underfunded, and only the poorest of the poor use it until they can buy a car. Buying a car is simply a necessity, like a roof over your head. Maybe the freedom of not being trapped in a car to get anywhere interesting costs more. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

rukittenme 10y ago
> Maybe the freedom of not being trapped in a car to get anywhere interesting costs more. Perhaps it does. That is little consolation to the poor. All of whom have cars.

mhneu 10y ago

Housing doesn't take care of itself. Cities built on the American car-centric model work fine until they reach a certain size and then traffic chokes them and quality of life for everyone goes down. Atlanta, a southern city, is a good example of a city whose economic growth is limited by traffic. Society and government exist to help us citizens coordinate our efforts to solve problems bigger than any of us. Building public transit and forming density-friendly zoning rules are what we should all be doing together.

rukittenme 10y ago
Public transit won't reduce the cost of housing in cities. The opposite has been shown. Zoning protects incumbents -- always. Incumbents are the reason more density is not being built in places like SF. Every solution you've presented has been done, is being done, and will always be done until it becomes politically unpopular to do so. I don't see how doing it again will solve anything.