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> But if the whole city had proper services, transportation, properly maintained housing units and relatively low crime, that should ease the demand on those fe
by maxsilver 9y ago
> But if the whole city had proper services, transportation, properly maintained housing units and relatively low crime, that should ease the demand on those few neighborhoods.
The problem is that this is what everyone is already trying everywhere, and it simply doesn't work.
The minute you improve any previously-bad neighborhood with any of the things you just mentioned, you immediately price it out of any person who previously wanted to / could have lived there. The act of improving anything is itself one major cause of the un-affordability.
Chicago is the textbook example of this - https://local.theonion.com/neighborhood-starting-to-get-too-safe-for-family-to-aff-1819578182 https://local.theonion.com/neighborhood-starting-to-get-too-... is 'satire', but basically 100% true.
- michaelchisari 9y agoThere is a possibility that the trend we've seen in improvements resulting in high rent prices would bear out even if Chicago did revitalize the whole city and not just select areas. That'd be due to good old fashioned irrationality and greed on the part of local landlords who would see fit to raise their rents on par with the "gilded" neighborhoods that came before them. This is a whole other issue, which is that once rents go up, they really don't go down, even in the event of a major market crash. I'm not sure if there is a market-based solution for that.
- crooked-v 9y agoThat's just inflation, though. Everything goes up over the long term. The important part is if rents go up slower than income does.
- michaelchisari 9y agoRent has outpaced inflation for decades now. And median income has lagged behind inflation for the same period. So it is an issue beyond normal economic inflation.