4 ms·
Would they though? Are cities required to make up the difference? Problem: cities are artificially keeping housing prices up, pushing lower income people out i
by joecot 8y ago
Would they though? Are cities required to make up the difference?
Problem: cities are artificially keeping housing prices up, pushing lower income people out in favor of the upper class. The housing market is forcing lower income people out of cities.
Solution: tell cities they have to stop artificially keeping housing prices up, or the federal government will stop subsidizing low income housing and subsidized loans.
If the goal is to gentrify your city and keep prices high, how is that a real threat? That solution is only a threat if you assume these cities aren't paying attention to what's happening at all, and I don't think San Francisco's leaders are that dim.
- grandmczeb 8y agoThere’s a pretty clear political mandate in SF to provide things like healthcare and housing for the homeless, part of which is paid for by HUD. If a large chunk of that budget went away, I doubt voters would want to cut services, so the city would have to make it up themselves.
- bluGill 8y agoIt isn't just about your city. If the working poor find it advantageous to live your city for one half way across the state that is less people to work the lower income jobs - now it is more expensive to get the toilets cleaned in the office. This raises your cost of living, and lowers it in the other city. Of course how this all works out is very complex and messy and will take dozens of years before we see anything significant.
- joecot 8y agoSan Francisco has already found "ways" to deal with many of those issues. They can't afford wait staff anymore, so restaurants are switching to counter service[1]. A law firm started housing their lawyers in Texas and flying them in because it was cheaper than housing there [2]. Delivery drivers can't afford to work there, so they experimented with having robots do it instead [3]. It's been tremendously clear that San Francisco has become an experiment in seeing if you can still run a city while pushing out all the poor people. Its been worker infrastructure has been coming apart at the seams for years now and the city's leadership has made little attempt towards fixing it -- instead entrepreneurs are just trying to find ways to work around it. I have little confidence that threatening to pull federal housing funding will dissuade the city from their path. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17394551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17394551 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874565 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15880100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15880100