I agree with you that it’s a big problem. But it’s not Washington’s problem, as suggested in the NYT article. It’s a local problem for the affected cities.
"Rich, Urban areas"
"Rich, Urban"
Considering the way that "urban" became a euphemism relating to low-income inner-city African Americans, I want you to stop and think about the way you're saying there's nothing wrong.
Here we are, universally gentrifying anywhere there's actually jobs. We apparently dont care where people go, or if there are jobs there to be had.
The regulatory scale of each instance may be local, but the effects are national, even international. Britain, Germany, the US, Canada, even France has serious problems with runaway housing rents.
Even those "median income" cities cited in another comment has seen median housing rent rise by 50% in the last 15 years while wages stay flat.
But since the responsibility lies with your city council, (and not, say, global international banks treating our housing as "investments" that magically never decreade in price, even after housing bubbles collapse!) this must be a local issue!
But who cares about those low-income people and where they're going. Let them eat cake! Are you the kind of person who cannot understand why young people want some Socialism?
The idea that job growth is limited to a few high cost metro areas is a myth. Job growth in the south is very strong. From 2005-2013, California and New York underperformed in terms of job growth compared to Montana, Idaho, Texas, Utah, Oklahoma, North Carolina, etc. http://www.policymattersohio.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/...
You can tell the housing crisis is a local issue because it’s not evenly distributed. America actually has some of the most affordable housing (comparing average house price to average income) out of large metro areas in the developed world: https://www.newgeography.com/content/005858-housing-affordab....
The “socialism” angle is odd. It’s the most progressive and heavily regulated cities that are burdening their young people with unaffordable housing. The unemployment rate in Indianapolis is 3.2% (less than half the rate of Paris) and you can buy a house for just 3 times the median income. The unemployment rate in LA is 4.5% and a house costs 9 times the median income. From a housing perspective, it seems like we need more Mike Pence and less Gavin Newsom, not the other way around.
I am willing to admit that this hope might be irrational and wishful thinking.
Federal programs post WW2 were involved in the birth of the modern day suburb. We wanted housing and we created it in droves. We created a particular kind of housing -- single family detached designed for the nuclear family. That became our standard and remains our standard.
The Birth And Death Of America's Oldest Suburb is about Levittown.
https://thecommunityalliance.blogspot.com/2005/08/birth-and-...
Levittown gets its name from its builder, the firm of Levitt & Sons, Inc. ... which built the district as a planned community for returning World War II veterans between 1947 and 1951.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York
The G.I. Bill aimed to help American World War II veterans adjust to civilian life by providing them with benefits including low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans and financial support. African Americans did not benefit nearly as much as White Americans. Historian Ira Katznelson argues that "the law was deliberately designed to accommodate Jim Crow". In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I....
In the United States, suburbanization began to occur in mass amounts after World War II, when soldiers returned home from war and wanted to live in houses outside of the city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburbanization
The rapid growth of homeownership and the rise of suburban communities helped drive the postwar economic boom. Suburban neighborhoods of single-family homes tore their way through the outskirts of cities. William Levitt built the first Levittown, the archetype suburban community, in 1946 in Long Island, New York.
The country’s suburban share of the population rose from 19.5% in 1940 to 30.7% by 1960. Homeownership rates rose from 44% in 1940 to almost 62% in 1960.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/ushistory2ay/chapter/the-r...