There Goes the Neighborhood
You can think of it as a new form of segregation. Except in this case, we’re not just segregating by streets or neighborhoods. Huge swaths of the population are being priced out of the market across entire cities. The wage differential between those with college degrees and those without them is increasing. As WaPo’s Emily Badger explains: “This effectively means that college graduates in America aren’t simply gaining access to higher wages. They’re gaining access to high-cost cities like New York or San Francisco that offer so much more than good jobs: more restaurants, better schools, less crime, even cleaner air.”
+ “Last December, my partner Rebecca and I bought a rowhouse with another couple. Our wedding was this May. Next month, we’re expecting a baby — the other couple’s baby.” In The Atlantic, Ari Weisbard why he and his partner — faced with the increasing cost of city living — decided to buy a house with their friends, share their space and their lives, and all make a family together. (That sounds like the opening of a horror movie.)
+ “Property costs have dropped to the point that barriers to ownership — to a sort of mogulhood, even — are absurdly low.” Has Detroit hit rock bottom? Many investors think it has. Can this once great American city make a comeback? Welcome to the post-post-apocalyptic Detroit.
+ And welcome to the the post-post-apocalyptic Cleveland. LeBron James has clicked his high tops together three times and decided that there really is no place like home. “In Northeast Ohio, nothing is given. Everything is earned. You work for what you have. I’m ready to accept the challenge. I’m coming home.”
+ And no story on Cleveland would be complete without these two video clips: How do you feel about Cleveland, from Tootsie, and Hello Cleveland from This is Spinal Tap.