Poor Neighborhoods Make the Best Investments

However, I believe it will be at least 20 years before my local municipality will be able to learn from any of these lessons. The planning meetings for any type of development are dominated by those with the time to go to them mid-day: retired people that set up the initial zoning and are dead set against any potential change. The same person who is super concerned about negative impact on property values will in the next sentence rail against those wanting to do development for their "greed."

I really gotta move out of California...

Affluent neighborhoods are built in a way that cannot be easily improved upon.

It's not a California thing. As part of my job, I spend a lot of time presenting at public meetings and in my spare time I do a fair amount of advocacy (for various causes) which also results in a lot of time in public meetings. I've been in public meetings in small rural villages and large cities across 30 states. And I've observed the same thing - the folks that attend those meetings tend to be dominated by those affluent enough to take the time to go.

The starkest example of that are public meetings in poor cities where projects will affect large minority areas and yet 95% of the attendees will be affluent folks from the outer suburbs. It's not that the affected folks don't care, it just that when the meeting is held at 2pm or 5pm or even 6pm on a weeknight, they have jobs to go to and they can't make time to attend. The most diverse, well-attended public meetings I've been to have always been held on Saturday afternoons.

With the way automation is taking jobs I wouldn't be surprised if these kinds of low income housing investments turn out to be solid cashflow producing investments.