Cities with No Children
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Anonymous
Luxury condo living may be great if done well. It has to be a family sized apartment, great sound insulation as families are very noisy in general, some safe outdoor space, like balcony/terrace, storage units for bulky items families have, playrooms for kids, amenities that private home owners aren't likely to have, like pools, gyms, party and movie theater rooms. And these condos have to be located in safe neighborhoods with decent public schools walking distance away (since you want to reduce reliance on a car), near transit to jobs. And there have to be family friendly amenities serving children, like daycares, sports centers for kid's athletic classes, art classes, music and dance, pediatric offices and doctors offices and certainly playgrounds and safe sidewalks, all within walking distance. Can you make this happen to attract enough urban enthusiasts? |
Anonymous
Especially in cities where alternatives are readily available and affordable. In NYC people have no choice, don't compare, if you want to raise your family in an apartment in supremely dense area without a car, and have lots of other families around doing the same, then move to NYC. |
Anonymous
| Affordable housing people seem kind of racist to me. They always to pretend that areas like Anacostia — predominantly black neighborhoods where housing is cheap — don’t exist. |
Anonymous
+1 PP acts like they only have Metros in DC. The Metro expands out into many of the burbs with homes not living in a luxury box. |
Anonymous
You've never been to any of the Metros besides DC. Because many of them aren't 6 or 7 mile bike rides away from a station. 
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Anonymous
You cannot give a chance to anyone to live anywhere they want, unless they want to get a tent and live as homeless on the street of their favorite neighborhood. Shelters are not going to be embraced in expensive parts of the city and building adequate housing there would cost tons of money, someone has to pay for. Someone will be left over, low income families have higher chances scoring lottery housing in cheaper parts vs. expensive parts, there is never going to be enough cheap housing supply for them in expensive parts. No landlords or developers will forgo their bottom line. You also forget about the "birds of feather" effect. Affluent generally do not want to live next to poor and vice versa. Achieving a healthy mix of different socio-economic groups artificially is a very difficult exercise. It can happen organically given longer history and high density like it has in some parts of NYC, not happening in DC or other cities easily. For your dreams to come true, RE has to stop being an asset, plain and simple. It's almost like former socialist block countries where housing was government assigned and could not be sold/bought like commodity. |
Anonymous
As opposed to the people on here who are arguing that (economic, and therefore de facto racial) segregation is a desirable outcome of our housing policy? |
Anonymous
"Naturally"? If government-sponsored housing is concentrated in lower-cost parts, it's because the government made a deliberate decision for that to happen. |
Anonymous
What's factually incorrect about the statement you're criticizing? |
Anonymous
I'm an economist and this is a total mischaracterization. Housing filters down because most people only need to live in one house. "Trickle down economics" is really just a statement about tax multipliers, because people whose taxes are reduced consume more goods and services, which leads to greater employment and therefore economic activity. Just not the same thing at all. Please don't make false equivalences like this if you haven't at least minimally thought them through. We economists only have so much time to combat the misinformation that people spread using our theories as justification. |
Anonymous
Government owns loads of property in high cost areas and can confiscate it from private owners without spending any money to acquire it? |
Anonymous
Land costs less in cheaper parts. To build cheap housing you need cheap land, what's unnatural about this? |
Anonymous
Segregation is not desirable, but in capitalist economy where property is privately owned and is an asset it's hard to avoid. You need a time machine and a jet to fly to former Soviet countries, or interview people who lived there to find out what happened after RE became privatized. |
Anonymous
It's a decision to build "cheap housing" for poor people. It's also a decision to locate housing for poor people on cheap land. Neither of those things happens naturally. |
Anonymous
Last time I checked IT COSTS MONEY to buy land, demolish, develop, and build. In your world perhaps it's free and it's natural to build luxury housing for people who don't pay or can afford to pay very little? |