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The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

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Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#201

Post by uiri »

Clubber wrote: post #5

Strange, I'm middle class and I live in a city. There are other cities than NYC, SF, LA and Boston.

It all depends on what exactly you mean by the word "city". A lot of the US population is in rural areas or small towns. Their idea of a city is definitely going to be very different from the idea of someone who grew up in NYC, Chicago or San Francisco. Even within those metropolitan areas, ideas may differ between those from the suburbs and those from the city proper.

Personally, I think that a metro/subway system is a good marker of whether or not a place is dense enough to be considered a city. By that metric, the US only has a handful of cities: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland (?!), DC, Los Angeles, Miami, NYC, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and San Juan Puerto Rico (?!).

If you look at a pure density metric of 10k people per square mile at the center of a metro area you end up with a subset: Boston, Chicago, DC, Los Angeles, Miami, NYC, Philadelphia, San Francisco. The City of LA itself has a density of only 8k per square mile but 27 of the surrounding municipalities have a density above the threshold so I included it in the list. Providence, RI happens to also be particularly dense although just below my arbitrary cut-off. There are a few incorporated places throughout the US which are small enough to meet the density threshold but are part of a larger metropolitan area which do not.

Arguments could be made for Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, or San Juan based on the first criterion. Places like Houston, Austin, Seattle, Dallas, Lousiville, Salt Lake City, etc. might be considered by some to be cities. Based on my time there, I would say that Seattle is on the cusp of becoming a city and that this may apply to a lot of other places throughout the US. If the US was a lot less car-centric it might have a lot more cities (based on both criteria).

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#202

Post by ghaff »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #190
ghaff wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your comment. Public schools in dense cities tend to be almost universally bad--in spite of often being funded at significantly higher per-student levels than even relatively tony suburbs that have high-performing schools. If you look at Massachusetts public high schools for example, the one public high school in Cambridge (where housing has gotten very expensive) has some of the highest per…

Hmm. It's a little hard to imagine that per-student funding in high-density city schools outstrips that for truly wealthier and presumably sparser suburbs with any significant consistency. I'd want to see the actual numbers. For instance, where is this funding coming from for the cities? And, where is the suburban tax money going? And, what's the history? Were these schools neglected for years, then the state recentl…

OK. For Massachusetts 2015, to pick a town and a city that each have one high school and are both expensive property values.

Cambridge (expensive city) $27,569 per pupil

Concord (expensive suburb) $17,517 per pupil

http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/ppx.aspx

Rankings

Cambridge Ringe and Latin was 214 out of 340

Concord Carlisle High was 27 out of 340

https://www.schooldigger.com/go/MA/schoolrank.aspx?level=3

Not cherry-picked data.

A lot of the difference is that cities, even expensive ones, are cities. A lot more diverse student body. A lot more students with problems at home. More disruption, etc. You can spend more money but the average student in the city school almost certainly has less parental involvement and less of a home environment that's conducive to learning than in the tony suburb.

The linked article (and decades of debate) notwithstanding, it's also hard to really correlate spending per pupil with educational outcomes past a certain point--especially as measured on standardized tests. Poorer cities do spend less. Two Lawrence high schools have the worst test results in Massachusetts. But its spending, $14,475 per pupil, is still only a bit less than Concord.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#203

Post by quickben »

rublev wrote: post #18
Clubber wrote: post #5

Strange, I'm middle class and I live in a city. There are other cities than NYC, SF, LA and Boston.

What about places like Canada? Where your only real options are Toronto and Vancouver. Other places are lonely and small. Personally I'm into music. Composing, playing shows, going to the symphony, the opera, the ballet. Sure, I could leave Toronto, except now I'm in the middle of nowhere where there are no jobs and no culture. Now what? I'm sure it's similar for others in the US.

I'm genuinely curious. Wouldn't a quiet little place be better for your composing work? Or your prefer larger city because of the scene itself?

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#204

Post by iMiiTH »

laughfactory wrote: post #128

This article reflects my wife and my experience: just a month ago we left San Diego for a small town north of Salt Lake City. We make over six-figures and San Diego held only poor economic prospects for us. We'd have a very difficult time buying a decent home (2000 sq ft, good neighborhood, reasonable commute) for a price which wouldn't jeopardize other essentials like retirement savings, kids college savings, saving…

> Inevitably, by necessity, the solution to this mess will come from all those in the middle class who've been forced to find another way.

Yes, they will be living in condos and apartments. You can have a large detached home, or live in a city. You can't have both.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#205

Post by wott »

moron4hire wrote: post #123
alexnewman wrote: post #121

THe problem is we still believe america has a middle class. It really doesn't. Even the people I know with household incomes in the bay exceeding 250k a year aren't really saving any money. Easy access to debt has confused access to capital with savings in america. I'm just glad I'm rich

Bullshit. There is no place in the United States where $250K means you're living paycheck to paycheck. You know people who don't know how to manage their money.

On this forum, there are plenty of people who are totally out of touch with reality when it comes to salaries, doubled by the fact they they believe they are so above everyone else that they should earn 10 times average Joe's salary and live like kings, hence everything else is a failure.

Very recently, there were the 'unworthy' Japanese salaries. They were 50%-80% higher that what I am used to see around me for equivalent qualifications, but no, the general opinion here was that they were outrageously low (without consideration for any other factor).

I also remember one guy saying he was earning 150k$/year and that leaving in France was with that salary OK but barely so. Truth is that's 3 to 4 times what most mid-career engineer earn, and their salary allows them to have an easy life. That's 6 times the median salary, which means that half of the population can live 6 years or more with a single year of his salary. That's 8 times the minimum wage, and lots of people live with it, some without any problem, some with difficulties, depending on the family situation, the location and the spending habits, but they all make do. Finally that's 20 times the amount of welfare, which is enough to live a poor and simple life. So the guy could have lived, say 10 years with a single year of his income, and yet he was whining.

My jaw regularly falls when I read money/salary related posts on this forum.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#206

Post by forrestthewoods »

cynicalkane wrote: post #186
forrestthewoods wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality is not the problem. The problem is there are more people who want to live somewhere than there are houses. With perfect equality there would still be more people than houses. The one and only fix is more houses. That's it. Any other solution is just picking winners and losers different ways. But no matter which way you pick the same number of people win and the same number lose.

There are two fixes, which must be done simultaneously: more housing and more transportation infrastructure. Our modern economy wants to centralize in cities, and not doing so is leaving free lunch on the table. Also keep in mind that more people in cities = cheaper suburbs for those who prefer it.

Improved transportation infrastructure is a valid way of increases the number of homes available to job centers.

Increased centralization in cities is a bit of a problem. But cities are such an economic multiplier that it's difficult not to. That's a tougher nut to crack.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#207

Post by closeparen »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #199
closeparen wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If everyone gets large, personal spaces you're back to suburbia and all it's disadvantages. This is true on the x-y plane but not the z-axis. We can have substantially more sqft available per sqft desired in the same land footprint by building up, which is currently heavily regulated or outright illegal.

I support more density, but the relationship between density and personal space isn't side-stepped by building up. You're just adding a vertical commute component. It's better than yards and boulevards, but a building of three-bedroom apartments to the edge of space will have a different human dynamic from one with mostly one-bedrooms.

Well first, a 1-bedroom is the most expensive way to live, at the rate we're going we'll have 3-bedroom apartments with 3 families per bedroom instead of 3 bedrooms per family :). Back to the Industrial Revolution tenements.

You can get your human dynamic just fine on sidewalks, cafes, parks, etc. It doesn't need to be in-building. And even ~70 stories by elevator is still only a few minutes, nothing like the hour-plus train rides middle-class people in cities currently need to endure.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#208

Post by twblalock »

ilamont wrote: post #181
jamespitts wrote: post #68

The reasons behind the housing supply crisis are many, and the situation can seem intractable. I have been assisting architect Eugene Lew with a comprehensive and audacious solution to this problem. If you are interested in reading a draft version of his white paper, DM me on https://twitter.com/jamiepitts . The concept is tailor-made for the west districts of SF but can be applied to any city. It combines finance, a…

If 300 units are built it will help 4500 middle-income households. That's great, but how many middle-income households will still be unable to find affordable housing, therefore keeping market-rate rents sky-high? I think the solution is not trying to cram more units into a small area. Manhattan has done that for decades, and it's still not enough to balance supply and demand. Rather, it's to encourage business devel…

> What will it take Google, GE, or Microsoft to move a big chunk of their respective operations away from San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle?

It's a chicken and egg problem: companies don't want to invest in cities where there aren't a lot of qualified workers, and workers don't want to move to cities where there aren't a lot of jobs. Furthermore, the most competitive workers tend to move to the cities you mentioned, so companies located in those cities can stay where they are and enjoy having the best workers come to them.

Consider the Sacramento area: it's about 2 hours from Silicon Valley by car, with significantly cheaper housing, and plenty of well-connected people because Sacramento is the state capital. Why doesn't that area have a booming tech economy? Because the most competitive tech workers from Sacramento have already moved to the Bay Area. Bay Area companies don't need to open offices in Sacramento to attract those workers.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#209

Post by closeparen »

Svenskunganka wrote: post #197
forrestthewoods wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality is not the problem. The problem is there are more people who want to live somewhere than there are houses. With perfect equality there would still be more people than houses. The one and only fix is more houses. That's it. Any other solution is just picking winners and losers different ways. But no matter which way you pick the same number of people win and the same number lose.

I believe there's another option; make the cities more attractive (and affordable) to live in for the middle class. You can see this across European cities, which is explained really well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQSxPzafO_k It's easy to say and hard to do, but concerns like a good neighborhood or decent commute when looking for living arrangements in the cities is definitely not as common in Eu…

The cities are attractive, too attractive, that's why prices are so high. We do not have a demand shortage. We have a supply shortage.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#210

Post by [deleted] »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #190
ghaff wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your comment. Public schools in dense cities tend to be almost universally bad--in spite of often being funded at significantly higher per-student levels than even relatively tony suburbs that have high-performing schools. If you look at Massachusetts public high schools for example, the one public high school in Cambridge (where housing has gotten very expensive) has some of the highest per…

Hmm. It's a little hard to imagine that per-student funding in high-density city schools outstrips that for truly wealthier and presumably sparser suburbs with any significant consistency. I'd want to see the actual numbers. For instance, where is this funding coming from for the cities? And, where is the suburban tax money going? And, what's the history? Were these schools neglected for years, then the state recentl…

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