21–30 of 174 posts
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In short: the poor neighborhoods have the most low-hanging fruits, and can be improved in obvious ways using small, low-risk investments. Affluent neighborhoods are built in a way that cannot be easily improved upon.
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He's not referring investment in the sense of individuals coming in, buying houses, improving them and flipping them. > We're talking about things like putting in street trees, painting crosswalks, patching sidewalks, and making changes to zoning regulations to provide more flexibility for neighborhood businesses, accessory apartments and parking. His argument is that small civic investments in infrastructure in poor…
That raises the question: Property taxes increasing won't by themselves increase people's incomes. Since they aren't trying to affect jobs(per-capita income) and explicitly mentioned density is not the issue(population), then the only thing left is to change the demographics(transfer wealth in).
Investment could be meant more broadly(like education or healthcare), but he explicitly disclaims that at the start("What I'm going to present here is pure dollars and cents. "). Somehow it doesn't seem right to advocate for city policy that swaps out the existing citizens for more profitable ones, though I suppose the existing citizens do come out ahead.
Isn't the article describing the classic Gentrification move?
No, because the gentrification move would be to buy up those $50,000 dollar houses, renovate them/replace with a condo block and drive out the local residents. Gentrification comes from developers, whereas what he's describing comes from the city itself. Key quotes: "It's wealth that is shared throughout the neighborhood." -- about as anti-gentrification as you can get. "American cities can make low risk, high return…
The trick would be to apply the improvements to every poor neighborhood at the same time so you don't create winners and losers and upset the balance in the housing market, but this is basically impossible.
There are investment groups like http://www.ohiocashflow.com that go into the rust belt and buy up homes in the poor neighborhoods, return them to being inhatible and then sell them off as turn key rental properties. 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.
If the people renting these are increasingly likely to be automated out of a job why do you think this would be anything but a very risky investment?
This seems tautological. Those areas are "profitable" because they are using fewer services. If you invest more there, they would no longer be "profitable" -- and increased investment may not increase future "profits." I think this essay falls down in part because it's nonsensical to use these private industry terms when discussing municipal governance. I want my city to concern itself with equity and quality of life…
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whoa.
what about the person whose spouse died last year, and whose house burned down over Christmas?
^^ she's a 1st order connection, but not my tenant.
how about the aunt who's got +2 mouths to feed & house after her sister died?
^^ again, real human, facing real serious cash-flow problems.
there are so many ways to wind up in a hard way, necessitating low-cost housing.
as a student at university, I did significantly more damage to rental properties than I lost deposits to repair... intentionally. and I smoked a lot of pot.
I'm not disputing your point that most individuals in a place to afford the time and money to 'get into property' are going to want to avoid situations that represent a financial risk to them.
however, I was totally put off by the war zone characterization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because the gentrification move would be to buy up those $50,000 dollar houses, renovate them/replace with a condo block and drive out the local residents. Gentrification comes from developers, whereas what he's describing comes from the city itself. Key quotes: "It's wealth that is shared throughout the neighborhood." -- about as anti-gentrification as you can get. "American cities can make low risk, high return…
Either way if you make the neighborhood a nice place to live more people will want to move there. The more people who want to move there the higher prices will go. The higher prices go the higher taxes and rents go. After some time the original residents can no longer afford to live there. That's gentrification. The trick would be to apply the improvements to every poor neighborhood at the same time so you don't crea…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because the gentrification move would be to buy up those $50,000 dollar houses, renovate them/replace with a condo block and drive out the local residents. Gentrification comes from developers, whereas what he's describing comes from the city itself. Key quotes: "It's wealth that is shared throughout the neighborhood." -- about as anti-gentrification as you can get. "American cities can make low risk, high return…
Either way if you make the neighborhood a nice place to live more people will want to move there. The more people who want to move there the higher prices will go. The higher prices go the higher taxes and rents go. After some time the original residents can no longer afford to live there. That's gentrification. The trick would be to apply the improvements to every poor neighborhood at the same time so you don't crea…
The difference I see here is that the developers and new residents are the ones who reap the benefits of the increased property values from gentrification, whereas if the city makes modest improvements before it's current residents are forced out by increasing prices/taxes, then the current residents reap the increased value. Even if they move because they don't want to pay taxes on higher property values, their property is still worth more when they sell it.