Could LA's exodus happen here? (Atlanta, Rome: middle-class, transplants, real estate)

[ATLTJL]

I just happened to see this article:

They're leaving California for Las Vegas to find the middle-class life that eluded them - LA Times

What really struck me is all the problems cited in the article seem to be true here as well. $1160 for a one bedroom apartment? Check. 90 minute to 2 hour commutes to live in a more affordable area...check.

Yet the narrative here seems to be people are moving TO Atlanta, not AWAY from it. That strikes me as odd given the situations are similar.

What do you think?

Personally, I think this article is wrong. I know a lot of people who live in LA. They know they overpay, but they're just not willing to leave. They've got it good and they know it....in fact, all they have said to me for 20 years is, "When are you moving out here???"

[bryantm3]

i personally know a lot of people who have at least been tempted to throw in the towel on trying to live in atlanta and moving to a cheaper and less money-driven metro area. in just five years atlanta has changed a lot with all of these corporations relocating here, the film industry relocating here, etc., it has attracted a ton of investment but one that isn't directed towards the individuals that already live here— instead we've got new people coming in to reap the benefits. i sort of feel like my city has been stolen by global financial and economic interests. it doesn't feel like home anymore, it feels like somewhere else.

[Ant131531]

Atlanta is still a lot cheaper than LA, like a lot cheaper. The only places that are truly expensive are neighborhoods in and around Midtown and Buckhead. You guys really overstate how expensive Atlanta is. Go live in LA or SF or Seattle and it's not even just the city that's expensive. Literally much of the entire metro area is expensive.

[jsvh]

It depends if we can avoid California's NIMBY habit of killing most new housing developments:

The great American single-family home problem | Atlanta Business Chronicle & New York Times

...“Single-family neighborhoods are where the opportunity is, but building there is taboo,” Romem said. As long as single-family-homeowners are loath to add more housing on their blocks, he said, the economic logic will always be undone by local politics.

In addition to allotting more money for subsidized housing, the package included a bill to speed the approval process in cities that have fallen behind state housing goals. There was a bill to close the policy loopholes that cities use to slow growth, and there were proposals that make it easier to sue the cities most stubborn about approving new housing.

Neighbor Opposition
The 1300 block of Haskell Street sits in a kind of transition zone between the taller buildings in downtown Berkeley and the low-rise homes scattered through the eastern hills. The neighborhood has a number of single-family homes, and the street is quiet and quasi-suburban, but there are also apartment buildings and backyard cottages that nod to the city’s denser core.

A little less than three years ago, a contractor named Christian Szilagy bought the property and presented the city with a proposal to demolish the house and replace it with three skinny and rectangular homes that would extend through the lot. Each would have one parking spot, a garden and about 1,500 square feet of living space.

The neighbors hated it. The public discussion began when Matthew Baran, the project architect, convened a meeting with 20 or so neighbors in the home’s backyard. A mediator joined him and later filed a three-sentence report to the city: “The applicant described the project. Not a single neighbor had anything positive to say about it. No further meetings were scheduled.”


On paper, at least, there was nothing wrong with the proposal. The city’s zoning code designates the area as “R2-A,” or a mixed-density area with apartments as well as houses.

Berkeley’s planning staff recommended approval. But as neighbors wrote letters, called the city and showed up at meetings holding signs that said “Protect Our Community” and “Reject 1310 Haskell Permit!,” the project quickly became politicized.

One focal point was Kurt Caudle’s garden. Caudle is a brewpub manager who lives in a small house on the back side of Trew’s property (that lot has two homes, or one fewer than was proposed next door). Just outside his back door sits an oasis from the city: a quiet garden where he has a Buddha statue and grows tomatoes, squash and greens in raised beds that he built.

In letters and at city meetings, Caudle complained that the homes would obstruct sunlight and imperil the garden “on which I and my neighbors depend for food.” Sophie Hahn, a member of the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board who now sits on the City Council, was sympathetic.

“When you completely shadow all of the open space,” Hahn said during a hearing, “you really impact the ability for anybody to possibly grow food in this community.”

The debate was easy to caricature, a textbook example of what housing advocates are talking about when they denounce the not-in-my-backyard, or NIMBY, attitude. Reality is more nuanced. As cities become magnets for high-paying jobs and corporate headquarters, there has been a backlash of anti-development sentiment and a push for protections like rent control.

Home prices in the ZIP code surrounding the 1300 block of Haskell Street have just about doubled over the past five years, to an average of about $900,000, according to Zillow. Those numbers are terrifying to people like L.C. Stephens, 67, who is retired from the state corrections department.


Stephens pays $1,600 to live in a modest apartment complex that was built in 1963 and sits just a few lots down from the project site. His building was recently purchased by investors and is being painted and renovated. The rehabilitated units go for $2,400 and up.

“People are getting priced out,” he said. “It’s not about ‘We need more housing.’ Yeah, we can use it, but it needs to be affordable.”

The proposed homes are not that. They are estimated to sell for around $1 million. But this is an illustration of the economist’s argument that more housing will lower prices. The cost of a rehabilitated single-family home in the area — which is what many of the neighbors preferred to see on the lot — runs to $1.4 million or more.

Even so, economics is not politics. The argument that quiet, low-slung neighborhoods have to change to keep everyone from being priced out is never going to be a political winner. When the Haskell Street proposal came up for a vote, Jesse Arreguin, who was then a city councilman but is now mayor of Berkeley, gave a “no” vote that sounded like a campaign speech.

“This issue is bigger than Haskell Street,” Arreguin said. “This project sets a precedent for what I believe is out-of-scale development that will compromise the quality of life and character of our neighborhoods throughout the city of Berkeley.”

...

[nature's message]

Real estate and cost of living are still markedly cheaper than in large coastal cities. Not likely.

[Clayton white guy]

short answer: No.

Long answer: no, no.

[2Easy]

It’s LA’s working poor and lower middle class that are leaving for places like Las Vegas. And places like Atlanta too if I’m honest. The people described in the article are going to Atlanta from places like LA and NYC, not leaving.

[jsvh]

If you think we can't get to $2,400 rent and $900K for homes in a "transition zone between the taller buildings in downtown ... and the low-rise homes" mentioned in the article you are not paying attention. We are already pushing those numbers in some similar areas around Atlanta. A lot of people don't want to live in the suburbs and we are pricing them further and further out. We need to legalize more density.

[2Easy]

In LA it costs $300 to $400 per square foot to buy in Compton. 1,500 square feet costs about $500,000 in Compton. Let that sink in.

[jsvh]

And why do you think that is impossible here? If we restrict the new housing supply as tightly as California we will be in the same boat.