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Comment by mgunes | Hacker News Reader

No, the only alternative isn't Detroit.

Wealthy people move in, raise property values, spur local economy, but displace lower-income families and the kinds of independent marginal businesses that served them. Or, wealthy people move out, property values plummet, services are slashed, land goes vacant, crime skyrockets, and kids can't safely get to school anymore.

What is the middle ground? I'm asking seriously. Imagine you were a city planner or the mayor of SF or Detroit or BDFL of California or whatever. What's your plan?

If I were a city planner, I'd require that all new (or renovated) appartement buildings include a percentage of "affordable appartements", with fixed limits on the cost per square foot. That's how cities like Vienna keep rents affordable.

Isn't the majority of all housing in Vienna controlled by the state? It's probably easy to make rent controls work if you can bypass incentive problems by simply making all housing public.

How do you keep wealthy people from renting all the cheap apartments in the not-cheap buildings? I'm not sure I comprehend the plan.

Gentrification is often a problem of inefficient or overly segregated housing supply. Historically, many cities have benefited from highly productive industries without becoming gentrified ghettoes of the rich.

Didn't San Francisco's city management exacerbate this problem by imposing new low-density zoning restrictions at the same time as an influx of wealthy professionals starting driving prices up?

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