Housing.com News, Analysis & Opinion: Moving & Relocation: The Suburban Poor

Two interesting articles on the changing face of urban and suburban demographics of note.

First we have a report from the Drum Major Institute on the middle-class squeeze of New York City. The basic upshot is that the city is getting way too expensive, and costs are rising far past the meager increase in typically middle-class wage levels for individuals and families alike. Once they're stuck at their economic level, they are more apt to stay there, and just as apt to flee the cities looking for cheaper places to live. Housing-related excerpt:

The last decade of housing policies had a significant impact on the city’s middle class, for both good and ill. Affordable housing construction under Mayors Koch and Bloomberg benefited the city’s middle class, according to our respondents, while the weakening of rent control legislation and the prevalence of subsidies for luxury real estate development harmed middle-class New Yorkers.

In fact, however, the gentrification of many urban neighborhoods, from Brooklyn to San Francisco to Washington, has forced many working-class residents out. In a reversal of the classic migration story, many of these displaced residents have fled to the suburbs, lured in part by the growing pool of mostly low-wage jobs there--cleaning homes, mowing lawns, staffing restaurants, strip malls and office plazas. Alan Berube, co-author of the Brookings Institution study, says the "decentralization of low-wage employment" is one of the main factors driving suburban poverty rates up.

It makes sense when you think about it--the gobbling up of every last square plot of land and development of McMansions and the like subsidized an entire new class of indentured servants. Now that the bubble is failing, the richer are moving back to increasingly-gentrified cities, while the poor are quite literally left behind. One has to wonder if they'll take over those empty homes and turn them into multi-family dwellings.

It's totally Kunstlerian, and a frightening glimpse of where we might be headed.

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Two interesting articles on the changing face of urban and suburban demographics of note. First we have a report from the Drum Major Institute on the middle-class squeeze of New York City. The basic upshot is that the city is getting way too expensive, and costs are rising far past the meager increase in typically middle-class wage levels for individuals and families alike. Once they're stuck at their economic level, they are more apt to stay there, and just as apt to flee the cities looking for cheaper places to live. Housing-related excerpt: The last decade of housing policies had a significant impact on the city’s middle class, for both good and ill. Affordable housing construction under Mayors Koch and Bloomberg benefited the city’s middle class, according to our respondents, while the weakening of rent control legislation and the prevalence of subsidies for luxury real estate development harmed middle-class New Yorkers. Second is an essay from the Nation on the increasing numbers of suburban poor. Excerpt: In fact, however, the gentrification of many urban neighborhoods, from Brooklyn to San Francisco to Washington, has forced many working-class residents out. In a reversal of the classic migration story, many of these displaced residents have fled to the suburbs, lured in part by the growing pool of mostly low-wage jobs there--cleaning homes, mowing lawns, staffing restaurants, strip malls and office plazas. Alan Berube, co-author of the Brookings Institution study, says the "decentralization of low-wage employment" is one of the main factors driving suburban poverty rates up. It makes sense when you think about it--the gobbling up of every last square plot of land and development of McMansions and the like subsidized an entire new class of indentured servants. Now that the bubble is failing, the richer are moving back to increasingly-gentrified cities, while the poor are quite literally left behind. One has to wonder if they'll take over those empty homes and turn them into multi-family dwellings. It's totally Kunstlerian, and a frightening glimpse of where we might be headed.