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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Uh, living in a SFH with good public schools in a Tier 1 city is a luxury good. What's so hard to understand about that? Heck, owning in a SFH in a Tier 1 city is a luxury good in most areas.[/quote]

This. Its a problem everywhere. [/quote]

Why is this problem? What right does someone have to live in a walk up on the upper east side? Or a SFH in Beverly Hills? Or a SFH in Palo Alto or San Francisco? Or a SFH or equivalent in London or Paris? The sense of entitlement here is pretty amazing. [/quote]

Because cities should be attractive places for people to live. All people, not just ultra wealthy people. [/quote]

Many cities have attractive places for people live from the poorest to the ultra wealthy. There are people who think they should have the same housing location as the ultra wealthy.[/quote]

Ok, but many of us do NOT want the same housing location as the ultra wealthy. I want to live in a condo or small duplex/row house that is convenient to public transportation and is family friendly. I am fine with small homes. Fine with apartments. But I'd like something that doesn't make me car dependent (this is just yet another expense) and where I have some access to public green space like parks and playgrounds (since I don't expect a house with a hard, having some kind of common green space is important). I do not need a bunch of high price restaurants and bars nearby, but having some amenities like a decent grocery store and pharmacy, a library, a few places to eat or drink, and a school within walking, biking, or a short bus ride away would be great.

Like basically I want to live like a middle class European person in a city. I don't need the best schools in the city, I don't need lots of high end dining and retail, I don't expect a huge house our a yard or a garage. I'd like to live somewhere that allows me to walk or take public transportation most of the time, and where I can comfortably have a child or maybe two.

This is unbelievably hard to find in DC. We have sort of found it (we live in a 2 bedroom condo) but the surrounding neighborhood is kind of split between super upscale gentrification (essentially pricing us out of a lot of the businesses near our home because they are geared at people who are making 250k+ and we don't, plus we already had to stretch a bit to buy our condo) and also just poverty.

We'd move to the suburbs (I have nothing against suburbs and don't need the "cool" cache of the city at all, I could care less) but most suburbs would require us to have not only one but two cars and have insufficient connectivity via public transportation. And the suburbs that come closest to this are often as expensive, if not more so, than where we currently live. With the added cost of another vehicle and the fact that most suburbs would force us into more square footage (making the cost savings of being further out a bit of a wash because we'd just wind up spending the same amount, but on a bigger house with a yard because it's hard to find 1000 sq ft condos in the burbs that are family friendly).

Like I'm just really tired of the claim that everyone wants a giant, expensive house in the "best" part of town. I don't. What I actually do want is scalable and would serve the needs of an enormous number of families in this city, especially people making somewhere between 60k and 150k. But instead we keep just building housing for wealthy people and then telling middle class families "move further out" which just increases or transportation costs and decreases our quality of life.

Build a city for middle class people. Rich people will carve out niches for themselves in very desirable areas, which is fine. The city will need to find ways to support, house, and help people in poverty. But if you build a city for middle class folks, you get a city of teachers, construction workers, mid-level managers, young professionals, fire fighters, small business owners, etc. What a great place to live! Imagine how great that would be.[/quote]

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