America's Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/opinion/california-housing-nimby.html

by pdog • 7 years ago

127 110 7 years ago

mishkinf2• 7 years ago

Blame Wealthy Liberals? What does the liberal part have to do with it. Blame wealthy corporations. The formation of ultra large corporations who pay people in highly unequal ways is the root cause of all of the country's problems; offshoring of labor, layoffs, huge executive compensation, real wages being stagnant, corruption that led to the 2008 housing crisis, government corruption, etc..

yohann305• 7 years ago

You got baited and someone downvoted you! I have a feeling I’m next

gipp2• 7 years ago

And what causes them? There is no such thing, really, as a "root" cause, just causes we can effectively intervene on.

door52• 7 years ago

Capitalism.

mishkinf2• 7 years ago

If you have a limited amount of money coming in and you allocate it in highly unequal ways (via a race to the bottom (in terms of expenses), can you be surprised when there are so many people who are suffering from not having an increased standard of living? You cannot disassociate the choices made in compensation of corporations to the standard of living of people in general. Amazon is putting small businesses out of operation because they can do it cheaper at a mass scale. Those families who are put out? They're toast. What did you expect? And Jeff Bezos is the one who reaps all the reward of all the lost wages of small mom and pop shops.

rubicon333• 7 years ago

Did you read the article?

Nope. Instead, Anthony Portantino, a Democratic state senator whose district includes the posh city of La Cañada Flintridge and who heads the appropriations committee, announced that he’d be shelving the bill until next year.

sdinsn• 7 years ago

So the title should be: Blame a specific wealthy liberal who is a state senator

save_ferris• 7 years ago

It can't all fall on the shoulders of wealthy corporations here. Corporations operate throughout the entire country, not just SF.

The problem with some "progressives" is that they're not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to elevate the quality of life for others. The same thing is happening in Austin, TX, another liberal stronghold.

Most of the new construction going on in Austin is high-end, far out of financial reach for many. Neighborhoods are denying requests to build denser affordable housing because they want to have their cake and eat it too.

It's what happens in a society that's constantly told us that owning our home is the way to wealth generation for the middle class. People who already own homes are going to do everything they can to benefit themselves, and who can blame them? That's the system working the way it was designed to. It's just not sustainable.

On top of that, there are a lot of multi-family developers and brokers making an absolute killing it on buying and selling apartment complexes and making massive returns on their portfolio. Had a buddy who worked for a PE real estate firm in Austin that gave their employee of the year an Escalade a couple years back.

heurist3• 7 years ago

Auto companies promoting mass construction of roadways and suburbs last century are a big reason for urban sustainability issues today. Cities that grew around cars are struggling to shift toward a more economically sustainable pedestrian orientation.

Not the only reason for issues, of course. Austin could have had a slightly better code with CodeNEXT but the NIMBYs got to it and successfully sold the message that it would destroy neighborhoods, despite all the concessions they received.

esaym• 7 years ago

Blame wealthy corporations. The formation of ultra large corporations who pay people in highly unequal ways

A corporation can only do one thing, and that is give you money. So I'm not sure it is that simple. Personally, I really wonder how much government welfare and other government sponsored "help" has lead to part of the wage issue. In the "good ol' days", a company had to be competitive in order to retain workers. Sure there was a more abundance of jobs, but that is not the only reason. Watch any documentary about Walmart to see what I mean. During a new employee's orientation on the first day of work, they go through the normal HR routines, but they are also shown all federal and state welfare programs their low wage also qualifies them for. If their employees did not qualify for these programs, they would most certainly have to have a more competitive wage. Basically they are paying half the employee's wage and the government is paying the other half. Not saying "welfare" is the problem here, but clearly it is being gamed.

justinph• 7 years ago

55 years of republicans working to lower taxes and demonize public employees has had an effect, even in cities that don't vote republican. Our cities are starved of money for basic maintenance and to pay the best and the brightest to do public work.

gok• 7 years ago

The headline about all American cities seems like it doesn't match the rest of the article, which is really just about San Francisco.

bryanlarsen• 7 years ago

NIMBYism is a problem in all American cities.

rubicon333• 7 years ago

I'm not sure that there will EVER be a solution to this, especially in California.

Why?

Property is an investment (and that investment creates wealth for CA via Prop 13). It's rational to oppose anything which would decrease the value of your investment. For many home owners, their home is one of their biggest wealth sinks.

That said, we should have never treated housing as an investment without some sort of control.

TulliusCicero21• 7 years ago

The bay area is the most obvious example, but the problems of exclusionary zoning in America are extremely widespread. In practice, this means the booming, high-income metros (which are largely liberal, like SF, NYC, Boston, and Seattle) are suffering the worst of high housing prices.

More conservative metros will at least build outward to deal with housing supply problems. Yeah, that's not really good for the environment, but it does help with prices. But not liberal cities: they don't want to build out OR up.

Instead, you get a plethora of excuses as to how they really shouldn't be expected to host any more human beings: why can't another city in the metro build more? Why can't those people move to another state? Why can't those companies hire more in another state? What about my god-given right to free, abundant car parking? Shouldn't we build more infrastructure before more housing (also let's not build that infrastructure please)? Why can't we freeze my neighborhood in amber? Etc.

ptyyy2• 7 years ago

More conservative metros will at least build outward to deal with housing supply problems. Yeah, that's not really good for the environment, but it does help with prices. But not liberal cities: they don't want to build out OR up.

SF, NYC, Seattle, and Boston don't have more land to open up for development by virtue of their geography. Of course places like Dallas, Oklahoma city, etc. are able to build outward -- they aren't surrounded on multiple sides by large bodies of water. To build outward in SF, NYC, Seattle, and Boston they would have to recreate Waterworld.

nostrademons4• 7 years ago

The headline about wealthy liberals doesn't match the bottom of the article, which rags on both parties. It's clickbait - it got you to click, after all.

I thought the article made a good point, that tribalism and xenophobia is common to most humans and that wealthy & powerful people have the means to enforce their exclusivity on less wealthy & powerful people, and that different parties just manifest it through different policies operating at different levels. Then they dress it up in outrage politics because that generates pageviews.

TulliusCicero21• 7 years ago

Reading opposition to SB 50 and other efforts at increasing density, I’m struck by an unsettling thought: What Republicans want to do with I.C.E. and border walls, wealthy progressive Democrats are doing with zoning and Nimbyism. Preserving “local character,” maintaining “local control,” keeping housing scarce and inaccessible — the goals of both sides are really the same: to keep people out.

100% spot on. NIMBYism is the left's version of xenophobia. The mantra is very much "Welcome to my country, now get the hell out of my city".

heurist3• 7 years ago

Seems to mostly be "get out of my neighborhood" more than city, though the city part comes from not allowing growth in neighborhoods.

TulliusCicero21• 7 years ago

It's both. Neighborhoods do often have input at community meetings, but actual regulations are usually decided at the city level.

rch• 7 years ago

I don't think this comment reflects the heterogeneity of the American urban and semi-urban landscape. There are places actually trying to understand how to progressively and responsibly manage infill development, along with issues like mobility, local organic/regenerative agriculture, modern educational resources, and so on.

TulliusCicero21• 7 years ago

What heterogeneity? Most US cities and suburbs dedicate most of their land exclusively for detached single family homes. This is true even in most major cities.

There are places actually trying to understand how to progressively and responsibly manage infill development

You make it sound like they're having to do groundbreaking research or something, but Japan and France and Germany have had responsible infill development for decades now. If we're failing to leapfrog using their lessons, it's because we're stupid and obstinate, not because we're mature and wise.

themacguffinman2• 7 years ago

That democrats have their own version of xenophobia isn't surprising, but I don't know that it can be clearly attributed to wealthy progressivism. The ideas are inherently reactionery and not very progressive. I think it shows that party lines don't neatly capture ideological divisions, especially in cities that overwhelmingly lean towards one party.

In other words, SF being all blue doesn't mean it's all progressive, it'll still have its fair share of right-leaning xenophobes. In a different environment where the Republican party had less of a broad stigma, I suspect a lot of these people wouldn't identify as Democrats.

As much as this sounds like a "no true Scotsman" argument, it doesn't make sense to me that NIMBYism is actually seen as a progressive stance.

TulliusCicero21• 7 years ago

The point of the article is that people who are ostensibly progressive (and do vote that way state-wide and nationally) are actually reactionary jerks for local issues, yes.

They're all for helping the poor and working class, until it may bother them at home. Then it switches to the ol' "fuck you, got mine".

shse• 7 years ago

The more you build the more people will come. When can you consider a city to be full? When there is no land to build? Or maybe when it's impossible to provide an infrastructure to support its population? Are you ok with raising a family in a 400 sq. feet condo like people do in Asia? Because if you increase density that's going to be a new standard for American cities.

The problem is the high concentration of IT businesses in a small region of space. And the solution is to spread it to other cities across US. It's already happening as companies struggle to find workers in SF bay area opening offices in other west coast cities.

TulliusCicero21• 7 years ago

The more you build the more people will come.

Sure, but demand is not infinite.

When can you consider a city to be full?

No such thing.

Are you ok with raising a family in a 400 sq. feet condo like people do in Asia? Because if you increase density that's going to be a new standard for American cities.

I'd rather that be an option than only having slightly larger apartments that are unaffordable, like the bay area currently does.

I think Vienna is a better model, though. Dense and highly livable. I live in Munich right now, which is similar. It's a great place for families.

The problem is the high concentration of IT businesses in a small region of space. And the solution is to spread it to other cities across US.

Wrong. Ecosystem effects are a natural phenomenon. There's a reason you tend to get clusters for industries: they're more effective that way. Forcibly spreading out the economic success also means reducing the economic success in total. A much better option is just letting people come. The bay area isn't dense at all right now anyway.

epistasis4• 7 years ago

They won't come unless there are jobs.

But if there are already jobs fro them, it's absolutely 100% the responsibility of cities to make sure that they allow enough housing to be built.

Right now California cities are encouraging growth in jobs while simultaneously actively preventing any sort of balance with housing. This has great effects for the pocket books of landowners in cities, and tremendously negative effects for the environment and all the workers that come later.

It's a completely false strawman to assert that families in 400sqft condos are the inevitable result of density. But we know what happens when nothing is built, that families savings are drained until they are forced to move to other areas, displacing them. That's by far the worst consequence, and it is the active choice of wealthy people in California.

stillbourne• 7 years ago

I find it odd that people blame the left for NIMBYism I guess its a regional thing but here in Denver most of the left of center folks are trying to get YIMBY legislation rolling. I don't think this is a left right issue here more of a stubborn old people want to see mountains from west facing windows issue.

lemony_fresh• 7 years ago

All this news looks like a good complex systems / agent based modeling problem. Is anyone aware of such research?

heurist3• 7 years ago

Not sure complex systems researchers have gone that far into the practical issues yet, but Luis Bettencourt and Geoffrey West are the current leaders in urban growth/sustainability as far as I can tell as an interested outsider. Strong Towns [1] takes an antifragility approach in line with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and touches on complex systems thinking (without taking a theory/purely scientific stance). NNT occasionally posts thoughts on localism, though again usually quite abstract relative to the practical modeling question you pose.

The most practical related work I've seen has been on growth of major international cities and large villages/slums in third world countries. I can't recall any authors in particular. Some of my commercial work approaches what you're asking about but I build products more than perform research and have never worked with zoning data.

If anyone has a better answer I would love to hear it; this is my jam.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/

sonnyblarney4• 7 years ago

If San Franciscans don't want their city to be 'verticalized' that's perfectly fine.

There's actually quite a lot of space in Cali, and cost of living is not quite insane in many areas just outside the bay.

So if there were some thoughtful progress even on just transportation (i.e. imagine something faster than Bart/Caltrain that looped quickly around) and some quick commuter trains ... combined with less of the various needs to be in the Valley/City ...

Then maybe places like Stockton, Merced, Morgan Hill etc. could flourish smartly.

Consider if there were a fairly quick way to get from Gilroy to the Valley+City without fuss? Maybe someone would open a big office there? The entire North Bay seems to be 'cut off' (many residents probably like that...), but maybe 'a tunnel' where the Golden Gate is, to connect that 'fast train' to Santa Rosa? (Yes, 'earthquakes' surely) but it's worth considering.

The Valley, and even many places in SF are not particularly aspirational places, frankly. My bet is people would be happy to live a ways away if they could get into the office quickly.

TulliusCicero21• 7 years ago

If San Franciscans don't want their city to be 'verticalized' that's perfectly fine.

No it's not. It's ridiculous. Cities are meant to change, to grow, to adapt to conditions over time.

By refusing to build enough housing to match its booming economy, the cities in the bay area are seriously hurting people. They're seriously hurting economic opportunity. That is not okay.

sonnyblarney4• 7 years ago

No, the notion that every city should become 'Dubai' is ridiculous.

NYC has already 'verticalized' ... and they are one of the example 'problem cities' - and they still have extreme inequality and 'housing problems'.

So when SF crams in 5 million more folks, will they have 'solved the problem'? Or will they be just like NYC?

Why haven't Chicago, NY or Hong Kong, with all their 'amazing density' solved this ostensible problem?

By this 'build out' logic Stockholm, most of London, Zurich should be bulldozed and turned into NY or Hong Kong as well?

So first, is the notion, hinted above, that 'more density' in no way implies a solution to the problem - because there's nary any limit to how many people might want to come into the city.

Second, which underlies the above, is an issue called 'Supply and Demand'. People moving to the Bay have to make that rational decision as to housing costs vs. pay. Moving to the Bay is usually a choice, not some kind of coercion, so people are for whatever reasons, making that choice.

If the Bay wants to expand smartly they should consider wicked fast transportation to places around the bay, and those places could be built with a little more density than now as well.

There's quite a lot of space, there's no reason that even working class folk can't live a decent standard of living.

anomie31• 7 years ago

Isn't the problem not so much liberals but the perverse incentives created by a housing market in a globalized economy?

epistasis4• 7 years ago

It's not a globalized economy that's made perverse incentives, it's local control that prevents enough housing to match the number of jobs in the area.

Also, it's only sort of "liberals" that are the problem, the real problem is those who claim progressive values, except for when those values may affect themselves.

ptyyy2• 7 years ago

Clickbait title and hyperbole aside, this is the same guy who published a piece declaring that he was unplugging from social media and continued to use Twitter. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/farhad-manjoo-nyt-unplug.php

crispinb• 7 years ago

Opinion columnists are lazy unoriginal authoritarian dictator manques. Stop writing imperative mood headlines.

SamuelAdams• 7 years ago

We need to be careful about where this line of comparison will take us. X is a problem, blame group Y.

This sounds a lot like something Hitler would say: he used the Jewish community as a scapegoat for many problems the country was facing, so some citizens were all too happy when they were quietly being taken away.

thrower123• 7 years ago

The best part is when they have so polluted one area that they start to flee to greener pastures, and they turn right around and start instituting the same policies in the new place.

overthemoon2• 7 years ago

*Blame the wealthy.

Liberals at the levers of power are certainly part of the problem (or at least their neoliberalism is) the problem is the wealthy of all ideological stripes.

Blaming nimbyism is just a roundabout way of blaming government regulation, which I find nonsensical.

TulliusCicero21• 7 years ago

Why is it nonsensical? It's absolutely the problem.

The bay area in particular isn't even that densely populated. It's just that most of the residential land is reserved for detached single-family homes still. When you constrain supply that much and demand shoots up, the result isn't exactly surprising.

overthemoon2• 7 years ago

It's nonsensical because it's too limited. Housing is like health care in that the market is sorely lacking in its ability to distribute those resources equitably--pinning the problems on nimbyism is admitting that market solutions are the best we've got, which I think is wrong. I'm advocating for socialized housing, not tweaking the knobs of the market until it comes out fair. Moreover, nimbyism is a lot like the solutions for environmental problems that stop at consumer boycotts and individual choices to recycle or reduce water usage. Good things, but predicated on individual virtue over systemic changes.

Finally, nimbyism is resentment about gentrification in reverse. I find objections to gentrification pretty convincing--why shouldn't people have a say in what happens to their neighborhood?

TLDR a lot of the description of the problem (IE nimbyism) depend on the market continuing to do what it's doing, and I think the market is the problem to begin with.

docker_up• 7 years ago

San Francisco's budget for homeless is over $300 million per year. If you add the additional $300 million they got from their tax on companies, that's over $600 million per year.

Even at $300 million, we have no idea how that money is being spent. There are 7500 homeless people in San Francisco, and yet Market Street looks like something out of a 3rd world country.

San Francisco is mishandling the budget, plain and simple. They have more than enough money, and yet they are completely opaque and they have zero accountability.

This is the government that we want to give MORE money to, because somehow more money is the solution to this problem? Hell no. Hold the politicians accountable. Get a proper budget that will focus money on where it will most help and make people accountable. Fire those in charge and put people who are willing to help without wanting to suckle from the teat of public funding and taxation.

lucaspm98• 7 years ago

Do you have any sources about those numbers or other information about where this money is going? That works out to $40,000 per homeless person, or almost double the pre-tax annual income working full time at California's minimum wage.

epistasis4• 7 years ago

It's an extremely dishonest look at the numbers. I'm having trouble finding the article from sfchronicle.com now, but the idea that each person is getting an average of $40,000 is comically wrong. The homeless population is always in flux: new people become homeless, some people get housed, and some people migrate. Treating a year time span as having a static population of X is just an unrealistic way to look at it.

There are something like 20,000 different homeless individuals in the city throughout the course of the year. Something like 15,000 end up getting some sort of services.

However, that's not really much of the story, because the bulk of that $300M budget from prior years goes directly to the easiest and cheapest intervention to stop homelessness: paying people's rent. For families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, a single unexpected expense can get them kicked out.

Without that $300M, the problem would be immensely worse, on a huge scale.

Dirlewanger2• 7 years ago

Lol, flagged post. Seems like some "wealthy liberals" here on HN don't like being called out.

xrd4• 7 years ago

OK. Correlation does not imply causation, or something...

So, San Francisco still votes 8% Republican. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_San_Francisco

Is it possible that there are a majority of people in SF that support changing their city and are Democrats? And, that a small minority of people (who could be Rs or Ds) can effectively block legislation to change housing laws? I'm not sure this article proves it is all "liberals" doing it, just that a) lots of liberals live in SF and b) SF has been ineffective at tackling the housing crisis ("...a place where lots of liberals live! QED!!!").

Having said this, my mom considers herself very liberal, and still has signs up on her lawn saying "Preserve Historic Houses" (which means "I don't support tearing down houses in my neighborhoods to build higher density places").

BUT: I do think she would be open to changing her mind. I'm not sure someone that lives in SF and that agrees with Trump's approach to immigration would be open to changing their mind. Is that biased of me?

bdittmer• 7 years ago

Nope. There is no vast right wing conspiracy to prevent affordable housing. I don’t want to jump to conclusions but I’m guessing you don’t live in SF or California?

xrd4• 7 years ago

I never said there was a "vast right wing conspiracy" nor did I imply that. You are the only person saying that and thinking that in this thread.

You don't want to jump to conclusions, but you already did, didn't you?

I wrote: "... that a small minority of people (who could be Rs or Ds) can effectively block legislation to change housing laws."

How did you turn that into a vast right wing conspiracy UNLESS you already felt that "someone out there" already thinks that (well before my post)?

xrd4• 7 years ago

For the record, I do appreciate you actually explaining your thinking. It's not accurate thinking given what I wrote, and it displays courage to write up and not just click the downvote button.

TimJRobinson• 7 years ago

Is it really wealthy liberals or just Californians? Seattle is building like crazy to keep up with demand, as are many other Democrat run cities.

TulliusCicero21• 7 years ago

Seattle is doing a much better job than SF, but they're also still doing a terrible job. Most of the residential land is still zoned for super low density housing, even though it's a major city. It's absurd, but people accept it because it's one of those American absurdities, like people dying because they couldn't afford health coverage.

Single family home-only zoning is economically segregationist, and should not exist. It's fine if people want to own a single family home themselves, but wrong to keep the poor and working class out of their neighborhood by making that type of home mandatory.

sonnyblarney4• 7 years ago

Texas is growing like crazy, and housing is super affordable.

asdff5• 7 years ago

No zoning and what do you know, supply appeareth.

trabant00• 7 years ago

The part about North Dakota having senators way above population share in the country: why is this bad?

Maybe they represent a different kind of life. Maybe the zones that encourage overpopulation shouldn't have monopoly on representation. Because on some issues they clearly did bad.

And I think we can stretch this logic to the entire article. The author is as guilty as "not in my back yard" as the rich people. Move you yard! Vote with you wallet. Go live, work and pay taxes where they respect your way of thinking.

Now you want to have your cake and eat it too. You talk against corporations and rich people but you consume their products and dream about making it big yourself. What other reason could you have for staying in mega cities?

TulliusCicero21• 7 years ago

The part about North Dakota having senators way above population share in the country: why is this bad?

Because it's anti-democratic?

Maybe they represent a different kind of life

Maybe Hindus have a different way of life than Christians in the US. Should they get bonus representation too, since they're a much smaller population?

And I think we can stretch this logic to the entire article. The author is as guilty as "not in my back yard" as the rich people. Move you yard! Vote with you wallet. Go live, work and pay taxes where they respect your way of thinking.

Absurd. Land is fixed, you can't just go generate more of it. And by not allowing more people to live where a booming economy is, they're hurting people, they're hurting economic opportunity, and they're hurting the environment. That is not okay.

The winners here are selfish people, largely landowners who benefit from the housing prices being so high. The losers are the rest of us.

mfatica4• 7 years ago

Because it's anti-democratic?

Good thing the US is a federal republic

elhudy2• 7 years ago

Just curious why has this been flagged for removal?

umeshunni• 7 years ago

There are lots of wealthy Bay Area liberals on HN.

WalterGR2• 7 years ago

I’ve noticed that lots of accounts that post dismissive, low-content comments like yours have an “about“ section in their user profile that matches the exact format of

about:

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/<Hn profile name>; my proof: https://keybase.io/<Hn profile name>/sigs/n_-<text matching [a-zA-Z0-9]+> ]

Complete with the opening and closing brackets.

Why is that?

nostrademons4• 7 years ago

Politics, presumably. From HN guidelines:

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

elhudy2• 7 years ago

That's unfortunate. The article offered an interesting new perspective to me and I don't think it's one that would generally be found on tv or elsewhere.

Dirlewanger2• 7 years ago

Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports

This is like 30% of HN's front page at any given time. Let's be honest: this one got flagged because someone didn't like "wealthy liberals" in the title, despite being the actual article title.

dqpb• 7 years ago

It seems the social infrastructure of Silicon Valley is too meta for this crowd.

noxToken• 7 years ago

The headline feels so disingenuous just to garner clicks.

First of all, this article is about San Francisco. SF is parodied within many groups for being exactly the way that it is.

However, put that aside. Are the problems of SF cause by liberals or are they cause by people who happen to be liberal. This is an important distinction. If it's the latter, then the problems are caused by the inhabitants, and you could substitute any politically identifying individual in to get similar results:

Then there is the refusal on the part of wealthy progressives to live by the values they profess to support at the national level. Creating dense, economically and socially diverse urban environments ought to be a paramount goal of progressivism.

That's what I mean. Is that due to liberals only paying lip service, or is that due to wealthy people not wanting to co-mingle with commoners? I agree with some of the base reasoning in the article: NIMBYers make it hard for a major city to be inhabitable by others. However, how much of this politics compared to people?

mfatica4• 7 years ago

Cleveland, Ohio is perfectly fine. We have amazing suburbs, nature, a beach, a beautiful lake, tons of unique places to go and see, and a bunch of jobs (tech especially, many startups as well).

asdff5• 7 years ago

That's because greater cleveland has lost population almost every decade since the 1970s, so there is plenty of supply to meet demand and keep housing costs low.

alphabettsy• 7 years ago

The problem is wealthy people, not just wealthy liberals.

scythe• 7 years ago

Zoning is half the battle, but municipal boundaries are equally absurd. Many town boundaries are still where they were 50 years ago, but the economic reality has moved past them. For example, a meaningless line between the nonexistent "places" of "San Francisco" and "Brisbane" constrains the development of Hunter's Point.

As it is, if one municipality upzones alone, they see an increase in demand and the neighboring municipalities see a decrease in demand. As a result, whoever blinks first loses. So Palo Alto wants San Francisco to upzone and San Francisco wants Palo Alto to upzone.

This problem is systemic: it particularly affects suburbs that were originally created by segregation, most famously contributing to Detroit's budget crisis.

In ancient times, cities were autonomous units, defended by local armies. The idea of a "suburb" financially independent of the main city was unthinkable; the city was the state. The modern US has created a system of social organization with entities called "cities" and "towns" which are really nothing of the sort; they are more like electoral fiefdoms, chartered by whit of the state government usually back in the time when we were still killing Indians and promoting racial hierarchies. And these "towns" have given rise to their own mythology, with a call to defend "our community" (usually from annexation) which is neither ours nor a community, but a haphazardly sown legal artifice whose primary effect in reality is moving tax money around and putting up signs.

This whole charade has got to end sometime. But what would that look like? And how can it be squared with our love of bottom-up governance, which, via English common law, has always been a part of America?

novok• 7 years ago

This is why you need state level bills with teeth to end the stalemate.

deviomi• 7 years ago

The problem goes deeper than that. I've have discussion with highly educated people in San Fransisco and it becomes obvious they really don't understand this is basic supply and demand problem. The first step in fixing this is somehow teaching econ 101 as a PSA.

WalterGR2• 7 years ago

That hasn’t been my experience.

flatfilefan• 7 years ago

«with a fifth of the population struggling to get by» - isn’t this just per definition of poverty: the lower quintile? That is in any place lower quintile is poor. Regardless of their absolute living standards.

Left8ntright• 7 years ago

Liberal policies create homelessness period. Show me a city or state rife with poverty and crime and I will show you a city or state run by Democrats for decades. 9 out of the 10 poorest most crime ridden cities in America have been under Democratic control for decades. Chicago, Detroit, Flint, I could go on and on. And then you have the model of conservative values. Texas which has one of the fastest growing economies in the country and was until recently a mostly red state. But with people fleeing California in droves because the liberal policies of over-taxation and over-regulation and other Nanny State policies. Truth is a big government makes the people small. Now the people that have fled California are made up of a lot of people with liberal ideology and they don't have enough sense to see that their belief system is what screwing everything up. So they are now trying to change Texas into the nightmare that California has become. That is the Democratic way Liberals forced to leave areas that are becoming unlivable because they voted for people to enact their liberal ideology when everything goes to hell in a they are too blind to reality to see what caused it so they criss cross the like Locust leaving Devastation in their wake.They are taking a perfectly good state like Texas and screwing it up. California's economy which was built on conservative values was rated the 4th or the 5th in the world has now 7th or 8th and falling fast. This is under liberal policy. Data shows that conservative values conservative fiscal policies conservative ideology leads to high employment and more people enjoying the American dream. Capitalism is not by any means perfect but Has Lifted more people out of poverty than any other system. Not once in the history of the world has socialism helped anybody but the Elite and those high up in the . You can bet your last dollar that when they start running out of everybody's money that the government will get theirs first and all their rich friends, and then if there's anything left the people get theirs last and that's how it's always worked Venezuela is a perfect model for that that's where we'll be if we take on the socialist agenda the Democrats have for us socialism always starts out sounding so good and turns out being so bad. I have yet to hear somebody point out the difference between socialism and Democratic socialism other than you vote for somebody to steal from you and your neighbors. Government has never produced anything. Everything the government has they take from somebody who worked to produce it the government paid for it they paid for it with money they took from somebody who worked for it.

America's Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals.

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