6 ms·

Well, isn't that kind-of sad. Basically what I read into this is that when you need to provide for more than yourself, good luck being able to afford space in a

• delinka 13y ago
  I think "desirable location" changes when you gain intimate relationships and dependents.
  • mathattack 13y ago
    Exactly. Once you have kids, "Having a cool bar with craft brews nearby" and "Fun concerts" pale in comparison to "Having a public school nearby that actually educates kids." I think this is much more important than rental prices.
    • jameshart 13y ago
      Actually, it would be kind of nice to have both... is there some law of nature which prevents them co-occurring?
      • mhurron 13y ago
        > is there some law of nature which prevents them co-occurring? Yes, your expected to give up all semblance of having a life outside your children once you have them.
      • dangerlibrary 13y ago
        Not of nature, but of economics. For instance, you can absolutely have both if you are wealthy enough to afford private school or the rent / price premiums in neighborhoods with both good schools and trendy bars.
      • HarryHirsch 13y ago
        There is a confluence of factors, I think: rigid zoning laws that prevent mixed-use neighbourhoods, the car-orientedness of recent construction (think cul-de-sac-neighbourhoods with one single outlet to a major highway), and of course the fact that once you have kids you are not supposed to have a social life any longer. American town planning has been a disaster since time immemorial.
      • ahmadss 13y ago
        Boulder and Austin fit the bill for having both. DC, not so much (in the education realm, but with new charter schools popping up in DC, the situation is getting better).
      • JunkDNA 13y ago
        A person's priorities in life just change. I in no way ascribe to the "helicopter parent" approach to raising kids, but having kids changed me in fundamental ways that cause my outlook on life to change in a manner that often surprises me. Case in point: I used to be a movie buff. I loved watching movies. Now, I have the ultimate setup for watching movies and it doesn't even interest me. I have other things (not even necessarily always spending time with my toddlers) that I would rather spend 2.5+ hours doing (getting sleep being a prime contender).
        • jameshart 13y ago
          Oh, I kind of agree; but I also think that there's value in remaining yourself too, and not giving up everything for your kids. Not least because I think it can help your relationship with the person with whom you started the family in the first place. I just wish it was possible to live in a neighborhood which has good schools, nice neighborhood kids who you can trust to babysit, combined with somewhere within walking distance that's worth going to when you've got a sitter.
          • mathattack 13y ago
            You can remain yourself, but your priorities shift. Even with restaurants, you look for those that are stroller friendly and have enough other kids that you don't feel bad when lunch winds up on the floor. The problem with schools is that it is a very large entrenched organization, with lots of special interests (politicians, teachers, administration, etc) who don't want to give up monopoly power. The central organizations suck in a lot of money, and don't improve quality. There are ways to fight this (more charters, close bad schools, etc) but it's very hard and requires a lot of different folks in government willing to fight special interests.
            • jameshart 13y ago
              Your idea of a fun date night with your SO must be very different to mine.
              • 13y ago
      • rayiner 13y ago
        It's largely a failure of American urban planning combined with the implications of American welfare policy. On the urban planning side, American cities spend huge amounts of time and effort preventing the demolition of old housing and the construction of housing. This drives up the price of housing. On the welfare policy side, American states corral all their poor people into their large cities. In Manhattan, riverfront property might be dedicated either to expensive condos (upper west side), or public housing (lower east side). The suburbs, for their part, go to great lengths to prevent the introduction of services for lower-income people. In most cities, #2 is a bigger problem than #1. If you're willing to compromise on space, living in the suburbs often isn't dramatically cheaper. In theory, getting a 1,500 square foot house would be cheaper in the suburbs versus the city, but suburban municipalities tend to discourage the construction of smaller houses, so often the choice is between 1,500 square feet in the city, or 3,000 square feet in the suburbs, at not altogether dissimilar prices factoring in the cost of commuting and cars. The biggest problem is schools. In most places, you have to pay for public schools even if you send your kid to private school. And public schools in cities are almost uniformly terrible, not because public schools in cities must intrinsically be terrible, but because as a result of #2, urban school districts are 90%+ low-income. Putting a bunch of poor kids all together in the same school is not a recipe for success. People like to paint it as a funding problem, but its a socioeconomic demographics problem. In Illinois, schools inside Chicago spend almost 40% more per student than schools outside Chicago, but perform far below those outside the city. Now of course, even the most progressive parents aren't willing to send their children to schools where 90% of the kids come from welfare homes, disproportionately don't have fathers, etc. And they don't want to pay $10,000 per year (for parochial schools), or $20,000+ (for non-religious schools) to send their kids to private schools. So they move to the suburbs, where they can send their kids to socioeconomically homogenous public schools, and take advantage of the services for which they're paying for anyway. I think the confluence of these factors is really unfortunate, and has an unfortunate impact on American families. First, I think it discourages people who might want kids from having kids. Second, it robs kids of the wonderfully enriching experience of living in cities, in close proximity to other people.
      • sliverstorm 13y ago
        Trade-offs. You have limited $$; would you rather live in the neighborhood with excellent schools and no bar scene, or the neighborhood with good schools and a good bar scene? The neighborhoods with excellent schools and excellent bar scenes exist, but you and I mere mortals are priced out of them.
        • mathattack 13y ago
          Indeed. NYC has Tribeca. There's a reason that a few good schools and great restaurants are in close proximity to so many hedge funds. :-)
    • bluthru 13y ago
      Proper planning and policy would mean that people wouldn't have to make this decision. Funding schools based off of local property values creates a rich-get-richer scheme for school quality. It also encourages people to sprawl, which is what we don't want to encourage if we want vibrant, walkable environments. If every student in America had the same funding (cost of living adjusted) we wouldn't have as many failing schools or encourage people to flee the city when they have a kid.
      • rayiner 13y ago
        School funding is a red herring. In the Washington Metro area, D.C. and Baltimore spend $19k/year and $15k/year per pupil, versus $13k/year for Fairfax County. Yet, any parent would rather send their kids to Fairfax County public schools rather than D.C. or Baltimore public schools. What encourages people to flee the city when they have a kid is that urban liberals are incredibly hostile to the idea of allowing school boundaries to be drawn along socioeconomic lines. Middle class parents don't just want to send their kids to schools that are adequately funded (as schools in most major cities certainly are), but to schools where the other kids are from families like themselves. They don't want their kids being influenced by kids whose dads are in jail for drug dealing. That's the politically-incorrect reality of parenthood. They can get this in the suburbs, but cities make it extremely difficult and expensive to do this. For example, until recently San Francisco had this wonderful (from a social progress point of view), but terrible (from a parenting and urbanism point of view), policy of not having "home" schools based on geographic location, but incorporating some element of lottery selection. The net result was that middle and upper class people couldn't pick their schools by moving to a particular neighborhood. Of course, this created a tremendous incentive to just leave the city, and even ultra-liberal san francisco was recently forced to end the policy. The problem is that school policy has been hijacked by teachers, so the debate always revolves around "more money." But throwing lots of money at a school where 75% of kids don't have a father in their lives isn't going to help those kids learn. Throwing money at things like Section 8, which might let those families move to suburbs where they can go to a school where they aren't surrounded by that culture, that could really push forward the cause of social progress.
        • 13y ago
  • hosh 13y ago
    I am curious: may I ask, are you speaking from experience?