a lot of people want to live in cities in America right now, esp. wealthy yuppies. the problem is most of these neighborhoods don't have enough actual houses/units to go around. wealthy neighborhoods block development of both public and private housing in theirs, and the burden gets shifted to poor neighborhoods who have less power to say no. this then starts a positive feedback loop as more and more yuppie-centric businesses like cutesie new gyms and bars and axe throwing places attract more attention to the neighborhood, causing further gentrification and displacement, etc.
another issue is that all the new housing being built is being built for a profit motive by megadevelopers with very few local/private firms doing business. lot sizes are too big for that, causing these huge block swallowing generic developments (called 5-over-1s or texas donuts) and it's nearly always overpriced and poor quality. this is why there's so much "missing middle" in the housing market right now, everything is either a dense urban apartment or a sprawling mcmansion and there's no in-betweens like townhomes, 2/3/4-flats, 6-plexes, quadplexes/duplexes.
the reason is that cities have their entire regulatory frameworks designed to reward these rent-seeking, predatory developers by prioritizing big projects over small ones. a lot of solid housing is actually illegal to build now b/c of fucked up zoning regs while extreme luxury developments and skyline-fucking-up bullshit is totally legal since these fat cats know how to jump through the hoops. the faircloth amendment also continues to limit how much public housing the federal government can build, meaning cities have to finance these things themselves.
since the cities are more mired in neoliberal grift than they are interested in providing housing, you can guess why they haven't taken it upon themselves to build public housing in lieu of the feds.
i don't really know how this is going to get better anytime soon. wealthy NIMBYs have too much power and poor neighborhoods have too little to actually force these developments to be built in an equitable way.
a lot of people want to live in cities in America right now, esp. wealthy yuppies. the problem is most of these neighborhoods don't have enough actual houses/units to go around. wealthy neighborhoods block development of both public and private housing in theirs, and the burden gets shifted to poor neighborhoods who have less power to say no. this then starts a positive feedback loop as more and more yuppie-centric businesses like cutesie new gyms and bars and axe throwing places attract more attention to the neighborhood, causing further gentrification and displacement, etc.
another issue is that all the new housing being built is being built for a profit motive by megadevelopers with very few local/private firms doing business. lot sizes are too big for that, causing these huge block swallowing generic developments (called 5-over-1s or texas donuts) and it's nearly always overpriced and poor quality. this is why there's so much "missing middle" in the housing market right now, everything is either a dense urban apartment or a sprawling mcmansion and there's no in-betweens like townhomes, 2/3/4-flats, 6-plexes, quadplexes/duplexes.
the reason is that cities have their entire regulatory frameworks designed to reward these rent-seeking, predatory developers by prioritizing big projects over small ones. a lot of solid housing is actually illegal to build now b/c of fucked up zoning regs while extreme luxury developments and skyline-fucking-up bullshit is totally legal since these fat cats know how to jump through the hoops. the faircloth amendment also continues to limit how much public housing the federal government can build, meaning cities have to finance these things themselves.
since the cities are more mired in neoliberal grift than they are interested in providing housing, you can guess why they haven't taken it upon themselves to build public housing in lieu of the feds.
i don't really know how this is going to get better anytime soon. wealthy NIMBYs have too much power and poor neighborhoods have too little to actually force these developments to be built in an equitable way.