Rents are dropping across the US

I grew up in the Midwest, which people romanticize as the real America, small town life, etc. But now it’s mostly strip malls, chain stores, and deranged, adversarial politics. In LA, by contrast, I could find a small, locally-owned business for just about any service or need and people were friendly and accepting of everyone.

If you can separate yourself out from the Hollywood BS and gentrified neighborhoods, it’s really a great place.

Where you have the perfect stew composed of a high mixture of all walks of life, from economic background, educational background, ethnic background, cultural background, etc..., and until someone figures out how to combat the change, it always seems to be overrun by gentrification.

I’ve seen a few higher reaching accounts over the past couple of years saying, “When you make improvements to your community, always be aware the actions you take may attract gentrification which will decimate the community you’re trying to build and price you out in the process. You could be improving yourself right out of your house or business. Build that community but beware of gentrification.”

I’ve seen gentrification happen in a couple of places, but one of the most stark examples has to have been Portland, OR.

I know multiple people who have moved from California to Portland like 4 years ago. When visiting, they raved about how amazing all of the small little shops were, how green everything was, all of the amazing little restaurants, how many people walk/biked everywhere, the lack pretentiousness, how everyone preferred dive bars, etc...

Many of those same people who have moved here now variously complain about the people who walk/bike, drive or take ubers the mile or so to work, complain about the lack of parking, don’t shop at any of the little stores, drive 15 minutes out of the city to shop at big box stores, and seem enraged they cant find clubs that only allow in “beautiful people.”

I know Portland isn’t the only place to experience this and to be clear, I’m not trying to shame them, but I’ll never understand how someone can like a place so much, they go out of their way to hunt for a new job, pick up and move to an entirely new city, and then complain or refuse to do the things which it takes to maintain that which made you fall in love with a place.

I think many of the people which cause gentrification, they see the cosmopolitan nature of a place, love it, and then want to make it exactly like the place they left.

Prior to coming back to Portland, I lived on a Caribbean island for a couple years for a work project, and I saw first hand how adamant they are at pushing back against newcomers trying to change the culture which make the place so beautiful in the first place. I think they understand on a gut level how attempts to make something more like some other place has ripple effects and those usually lead to economics which price out the good stuff.

The worst part is, when we see a place that has a vibrant community, with open mic nights, and cute little shops with locals who own the shops etc..., those communities spent decades making their own little spaces in their image and people move in and just don’t adapt.

I mean some people just prefer living a suburban existence, and that’s OK. Plenty of people are proud to be rural, plenty of people who are proud to be cosmopolitan, why not just be proud to prefer suburbs. We all have different preferences, we don’t need to force cosmopolitan areas to lose all resemblance of itself when there’s already a place tailor made for people who prefer strip malls where parking lots seem to always be 90% unoccupied.

Sorry for the ramble, I’ve just seen gentrification decimate cosmopolitan communities that spent decades building them up and force lifetime old residents and businesses out time and time again, only for the new residents to complain about the very cosmopolitanism they loved in the first place and before ya know it, its looks shockingly like the suburb which is a mere minutes away.

Maybe downtown SF is just the lesser of two evils between SF and SV because of job location. Maybe they really want to be with their extended family in a suburb of Cleveland.

Brutal commute, though.

My grad school cohort in the late 80s, many of whom worked for Boston area computer companies or in finance, basically none of them actually lived in the city.

Which plays into a lot of the noise about city housing prices. Basically, the urge among young wealthy urban professionals to live in cities is mostly quite recent.

I also think the environmental cost is lower, for example if you're not burning fossel fuels in single occupant SUVs in order to do everything. My personal experience is also that avoiding that last part is good for your health, physical fitness and stress.

Having parks, beaches, produce shops, restaurants, schools and friends in walking distance is the value.

Covid has proven those things can’t be replicated online.

Also, they raise plenty of kids in other countries where they haven't oriented life around suburbs.

Also, this was more true in the United States before white flight, and the US raised plenty of healthy kids then.

So I don't think the kid thing makes as much sense as they say. But the state of US school systems does make the urban kid raising thing needlessly expensive for many.

There's no natural law that says kids can't play safely in nature in an urban environment. Plus the added benefit of meeting and interacting with other kids from all different walks of life.

We just have to prioritize it - and unfortunately the "got my own piece of nature and I'll drive everywhere else" suburban mindset is part of what forces our cities (and suburbs) to remain dangerous asphalt wastelands.

We moved from a big city to suburban hell a few years after having a kid. In those first years, we took our kid to museums, parks, playgrounds, etc. all over the city. Now there is jack shit to do in the suburb we're in except going to the mall, cannot walk anywhere, have to use the car 100% of the time to even go to a shop. A backyard is a sad place compared to something like Central Park. I feel so sad for my kid. If the prices keep going lower in cities and remote work becomes the norm, we're moving back. (Un)fortunately my wife hates it here too, and we've often talked about moving back to a city.

Maybe it’s just a “grass is always greener” thing, but I always wonder why people assume kids really want the suburban life.

I might as well just copy your last paragraph.

Additionally, we love the parks, the playgrounds, the gardens, we walk to childcare, walked to work before this whole pandemic thing. We all have memberships with the museum and the zoo that give us unlimited visits. And since the pandemic, my son often rides in a Thule transport behind my bike. we've got a creek along the bike trail, and one in one of the gardens. we've even got a children's farm down the road.

Culturally many Australians are like Americans: the refrain is "you need to move to suburbia once you've got kids" and "kids need a back yard to run around in" and "you can't raise a kid in an apartment". To the point that half of them never move into the city in the first place or reflexively move out without an actual thought or goal. And it IS frustrating to lose friends (so far everyone I've talked to that has moved out regrets it or at least looks back wistfully) , and knowing that this belief is the viscious circle that stops people improving cities.

But while I will admit that rural areas have something we can't replicate in the inner city (we all have trade offs after all), I WANT my child to have the opportunities afforded in the city and will actively fight the forces trying to set suburbia as a default. judging by the number of childcare centres, prams and scooters showing up in my neighbourhood, we might finally be on the verge of a generation that will try to stay.

the pandemic has changed things, but as I've said to my wife and has been echoed by other posters, maybe this will clear the way for people who want to be here...

By contrast, the Boston area for example you can get to significantly cheaper (though not exactly cheap) housing out where a lot of the, especially local, tech employers are. Things have shifted more towards the city in recent years but a lot of tech is still 30-45 minutes outside the city.

It's been so freeing. If I'm working on something late or at odd hours, I don't have even have to think about the the noise impact on my neighbors[1]. Same with music - if I want to enjoy it, I just can. Simple as that; no more mental triage list of precisely where I listen to it so as to have the least impact on the inhabitants of any adjoining units, scrambling if the song changes to one with far more bass and I need to suddenly adjust things, or copping out of those mental gymnastics by settling with headphones after having already had them on for most of the day at work.

I've also got similar hobbies/interests/side-hustles as you, that involve accumulation and use of physical equipment and tooling. I've been able to really dive into those areas far more since I don't have to be hyper aware of spacial efficiency. Without even being fully cognizant of it, I had spent years minimizing how much attention I gave to those areas of interests while maximizing towards things that either had minimal physical prerequisites or leveraged things that both wouldn't cause a disturbance to the others living adjacent to me while also being multi-purpose enough to justify making space for it.

Before moving, it didn't really both me as I wasn't particularly cognizant of the many mental micro-checks I had accumulated organically over the years to ensure my behavior aligned with the noise, space, and practicality constraints of urban living. But now that I've been able to let those go, there's no way I could go back unless I somehow hit it big and suddenly become able to afford the astronomical price of urban living with the suburban luxuries of space and isolation. Anything short of that would now just leave me feeling constantly stifled and constrained at home.

[1] My neighborhood is packed in pretty tightly on small lots, so still have to be somewhat conscientious of noise impact on neighbors. But sound is sufficiently buffered that I can do pretty much whatever I like whenever I like without having to even think about whether doing so would disturb the neighbors. It's worlds apart from urban living, where SFHs are rare and you're more than likely to have at least one adjoining wall with a neighbor, and potentially have five "outer" walls all adjoining different neighbors.

On the other hand it might be a good idea to be on the move and buy/rent something cheap.

My point is that norms can shift without big company announcements so long as companies don't actively prevent them.

I do think this is going to become a big deal for people as they consider current and future jobs. It's probably also going to be a big issue for onboarding junior people.

Same principle for rent. It's not quite about what people can afford, it's about what they feel they have to pay (and how much they can reasonably afford is one factor in that).

They generally identify vacancy tax properties by looking for residential properties that aren't receiving utility bills or which have very low utility bills.

I'm pretty sure the region existed before tech blossomed half a decade ago. It was definitely a different place even 20 years ago. Also, like 99+% of folks here don't work for a startup.

The people with the money don't seem to care about fixing the region's problems. The other people can't afford to. This area seems like it will just continue devolving into some sort of dystopian, cyberpunk future.