A middle class family can afford . . .

The long-term trend is for more and more people moving to larger and larger urban environments.  It will be interesting to see how this works in the long term - - the model will not be very economically sustainable if it produces large numbers of "refugees" in search of cheaper housing.  It will also be interesting to see how the economic costs and pressures of things like climate change adaptation and rising seas levels get reflected in the cost of living in places like SF and NYC.  If I was a policy maker in those two cities, I would be very worried about who can actually afford to pay for noble goals of resiliency and sustainability.

Consider the following regarding what a middle-class family could afford:

• 14% of the homes in the San Francisco area
• 24% in the New York area
• 50% in the Austin area
• 55% in the Denver area
• 57% in the San Antonio