Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 592 posts

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#531

Post by bumby »

dcow wrote: post #320
RC_ITR wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, nearly everyone largely agrees that wealth inequality at the current US level is bad. Wealthy people moving to low-cost areas (and thus raising cost of living) accelerates inequality for a few reasons. 1) Unlike you scenario, many working-class people in places like Sedona can only afford to rent their homes (25% of total, give or take in Sedona). These people incur huge monetary costs in being forced to move…

So if simply moving creates inequality, then what do people do? Stay in their hometown their entire life? Sounds like you need to revise the game, not hate the player.

“Revising the game” is exactly what the GP commentator was warning about. Push the inequality far enough and the social contract will likely get changed. So you asked what can you do? I’m not saying don’t move to the area you want, but make conscious choices that help reduce the inequalities that may drive those inequalities. Maybe don’t be riled up about high density housing bringing down your property values. Maybe support local businesses even though it costs more. Maybe vote for higher taxes that provide better schools even if you don’t have kids. Love how much father your income goes in that new town? Maybe donate just a portion of it to help provide a safety net for “locals” who may otherwise be negatively impacted by the “out-of-towners”.

And maybe you do all those types of things already. But the tone of your comment comes across as, “Welp, what choice do I have but to myopically try to get the most out of this hustle??”

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#532

Post by mikestew »

lizknope wrote: post #526
seattle_spring wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a pretty backwoods part of Washington and even as a white but liberal looking person I get that to a much lesser extent. I can't imagine what you've had to deal with.

After my trip through Burns, Oregon where I got some of those comments at the grocery store I went to John Day, Oregon. I mainly went to see the fossil beds national monument but I also stopped at this small museum which was a Chinese run store and apothecary in the late 1800's and early 1900's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kam_Wah_Chung_%26_Co._Museum The tour guide mentioned how welcoming the people were to their C…

Boy, do I doubt "how welcoming the people were to their Chinese immigrants", given Oregon's history with non-white folks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_black_exclusion_laws

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#533

Post by dcow »

bumby wrote: post #531
dcow wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if simply moving creates inequality, then what do people do? Stay in their hometown their entire life? Sounds like you need to revise the game, not hate the player.

“Revising the game” is exactly what the GP commentator was warning about. Push the inequality far enough and the social contract will likely get changed. So you asked what can you do? I’m not saying don’t move to the area you want, but make conscious choices that help reduce the inequalities that may drive those inequalities. Maybe don’t be riled up about high density housing bringing down your property values. Maybe…

I’m not sure how you got that tone from my comment. Things like better funding for schools and not treating property like an investment vehicle are exactly the type of game changing tactics we need to consider collectively enforcing as local communities, hence my suggestion to revise the game not hate the players. The comment I responded too is suggesting that people [moving] are the problem and while there may be some implicit moral responsibility expected of those who relocate when their income would be higher than average in their new location, the problem, to me, seems systemic.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#534

Post by randcraw »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #424
RC_ITR wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, nearly everyone largely agrees that wealth inequality at the current US level is bad. Wealthy people moving to low-cost areas (and thus raising cost of living) accelerates inequality for a few reasons. 1) Unlike you scenario, many working-class people in places like Sedona can only afford to rent their homes (25% of total, give or take in Sedona). These people incur huge monetary costs in being forced to move…

I’m pretty sure there is economic research showing that movement actually decreases inequality.

Source please. I can see how increased demand for property in an area would increase inequality but not the reverse. When the cost of living rises but you're not invested in the parts of the market which gain from higher valuation, you're going to lose ground until either you can't compete or you buy in. And if you can buy in, great. But I suspect few locals have the capital or professional skills to ante up.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#535

Post by silent_cal »

eysquared wrote: post #24

There seems to be a lot of negativity in the comments so far. Is this not the dream that is often touted on hacker news? Work at a FAANG and "retire" somewhere more affordable? I'm personally doing just this. I was lucky enough to land a good job out of college, buy a house in a desired area, and see it appreciate in the last 10 years. This increase plus the birth of my kids left me wondering if there wasn't a better…

Probably because they resent liberals for ruining their own cities, running away from them to smaller towns, and then having a condescending attitude towards the more conservative locals who have been there longer, while proceeding to push liberal politics, turning their new home into a liberal hellhole like the one they just left.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#536

Post by bumby »

dcow wrote: post #533
bumby wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Revising the game” is exactly what the GP commentator was warning about. Push the inequality far enough and the social contract will likely get changed. So you asked what can you do? I’m not saying don’t move to the area you want, but make conscious choices that help reduce the inequalities that may drive those inequalities. Maybe don’t be riled up about high density housing bringing down your property values. Maybe…

I’m not sure how you got that tone from my comment. Things like better funding for schools and not treating property like an investment vehicle are exactly the type of game changing tactics we need to consider collectively enforcing as local communities, hence my suggestion to revise the game not hate the players. The comment I responded too is suggesting that people [moving] are the problem and while there may be so…

Sorry if I misinterpreted, maybe it’s just the loaded phrase used as a quip that threw me off.

I agree, the way forward is to revise the structure and incentives. However, I don’t want to completely absolve individuals of moral responsibility just because they’re playing within the rules of “the game”

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#537

Post by labcomputer »

giantg2 wrote: post #509
labcomputer wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not base the the revenue on income taxes instead Yup, California does that. That's why CA has a reputation as a high-tax state. Although total tax burden isn't that different from places like Austin, TX though (at least that's how the numbers come out when my friend or I have seriously looked into moving there). > I don't see what the right fix is for that. Ha. People have been shouting it from the rooftops. Bu…

"Ha. People have been shouting it from the rooftops. Build more houses! More specifically, just allow people to build more houses. Stop preventing people from building more houses. Frankly, that's really the only solution. If you have n households in a country, you need approximately n homes to put them in." The whole point I was getting at was distribution. Sure you have n households in the country, but nothing says…

> The whole point I was getting at was distribution. Sure you have n households in the country, but nothing says that n/10 need to live in just one or two counties of that country. Even if you get the green light to build more, it will be very expensive to do so, and you will have population density/congestion issues.

Nobody is forcing everyone to all live in one place. Some combination of lifestyle, economic opportunities, and other stuff makes people want to do that. Locals complain that housing is expensive in SV, but housing is expensive because of a vicious cycle, promulgated by locals, that made it that way.

A different set of policies would have prevented the vicious cycle and made housing cheaper and more abundant. In this alternate universe, with smarter housing policy, more people could be living in SV with less traffic congestion for less total cost. The only downside is that locals wouldn't have been able to sell their houses for 20x what they paid.

You can either: accept that an area is desirable and make accommodations for housing the people who want to come; or accept that housing is going to be expensive. Or I guess you can just kill all the newcomers and eat them. Normally, though, we like to at least pretend that we live in a civilized society. As a positive side-effect, being known for cannibalism does stand a good chance of reducing your locale's desirability on the lifestyle front! So maybe try that one first and let us know how it goes.

In other words, you can learn from California's example or your can make the same mistakes. Your choice.

> They are seeing influxes in some areas, but it's not an even distribution.

Sure, but it is making the distribution within the US as a whole more uniform.

> They aren't really complaining about spreading out but more about the problems created when going against the established customs, or bringing the same problems with them (taxes, property values, etc)

That's my point. They are not bringing the problems. They are coming, and locals are creating the problems by following the same bad policies that failed for locals in California. Yes, that does mean some things will change. You can't stop the change, but you do get to choose its character.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#538

Post by AnimalMuppet »

bumby wrote: post #527
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

f I build a vacation home somewhere where there wasn't a house, and I neither live in it nor rent it, does it diminish anyone else's supply of housing? No, it doesn't. You may say that it could have increased someone else's stock of housing. And that's true. But if I built it as a vacation home, then if it wasn't going to be used as my vacation home, I wouldn't have built it, so it wouldn't have increased anyone else…

Maybe we’re too focused on the word “home” rather than “real estate”. That lot you built your vacant vacation home on could be someone else’s primary residence lot. As the saying goes, “they aren’t making any more land” so there is at least a theoretical supply constraint within city limits.

True. Many vacation homes are not within city limits, though.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#539

Post by randcraw »

zip1234 wrote: post #453
giantg2 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'll never understand anti-gentrifiers." I think the main point is being forced out of your life-long home due to increased costs or taxes. Or the destruction of the local cultures/customs through change in local government policies. If you want an extreme example, you can look at the way that cult in Oregon took over a county/town in the 80s or 90s. Nothing legally wrong with it (the population segment with the hig…

Every place changes regardless of people trying to preserve them in amber. The 'forced out of your lifelong' home thing is tough but I haven't seen any good solutions to it. California absolutely messed up their state with their property tax changes that turned home ownership into feudalism. Good intentions to help the old people stay in their homes but it means that the new people moving in support the people that l…

There are good reasons why Houston stays cheap. (I lived there for a couple of years.)

It's a huge metro area with no zoning. That dissuades people from building a castle when a toxic waste dump (or refinery) could go in upwind without warning.

The city's large size and the ever-expanding radius to growing exurbs tends to dilute the value of existing homes which slows their appreciation. And the land in the region has no natural beauty. It's scrub. So creating a synthetic upscale suburb would be hard to sell economically. So neighborhood trendiness tends to arise organically, mostly from proximity to central neighborhoods (like University Village near Rice or Memorial in the museum district).

Low home prices in Houston wasn't the result of an engineered or government-driven initiative. Like all economic change in Texas, it happened on its own.

It's the same phenomena that have restrained home price inflation in Las Vegas. There's a lot of surrounding desert there and not much natural beauty to motivate gentrification in upscaleing the homes/suburb near a natural hot spot.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#540

Post by solipsism »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #422
solipsism wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that most educated people living in small towns want to get out Doesn't seem like you know much about small towns. I grew up in one. The educated people are there because they want to be. That's sort of by definition, and follows from the fact that they're educated -- they have been somewhere else (you don't get "educated" in a small town, not in the way you mean), and they chose to go there. The ones wh…

You and I share some similar observations but come away with very different interpretations. "The educated people are there because they want to be" the parents, sure, but their children are there because the parents chose for them. "1. [children from big cities] haven't lived much. They haven't done many things." Are you seriously suggesting that there are more things to do in Boise than Manhattan? "2. They don't se…

Are you seriously suggesting that there are more things to do in Boise than Manhattan?

It's not about how many things there are to do. It's about what life experiences you've had.

I'm not talking museums here. I'm talking working tough jobs, dealing with addiction or death (in family or acquaintances, having a job, living on your own, etc etc. The kids I'm talking about have had very sheltered lives.

That certainly described everyone I knew who wasn't a cultist in Salt Lake City.

We may have different definitions of "small town". Salt Lake City is unique in many ways and not representative of rural or rust belt small towns.

Post reply on HN