Inappropriate Content: Back to the City, Quick!

Quilly has an interesting observation:

Moved 75 miles because I just can't afford the commute from the real country to work anymore. When you can buy a house for what it costs you to commute you probably ought to. So I did. Picking up 2 1/2 hours of time each day not spent driving is a bonus as well.

Maybe the rising price of gasoline will be what reverses the flight from the city. It has in my case.

DC is a good example of what the major cities on the Eastern Seaboard will look like in ten years, if Quilly's prediction is correct. DC is in the middle of a job boom, economic renaissance, inevitable gentrification. Most of the poor black residents of northeast will be forced into southeast and Prince George's County, Maryland, in the next ten years. (However, DC's housing board has developed a good process for transforming public-owned housing projects into tenant-owned co-ops in gentrifying neighborhoods. It's a perfect example of how a New Deal sort of programs are supposed to work, with few of the terrible screw-ups that usually come with them.)

DC is also in the middle of a housing boom that has left most of the long-term Districters I know in a state of what can only be described as shell-shock. One young couple I know purchased a condo shortly after they got out of law school. It's value has grown so much in just two and a half years that by selling it and moving out west, they could pay off their student loans—something that usually takes ten or fifteen years.

And while I'm on the subject of housing, I need to go look at roomate ads. See you all tomorrow.