Untangling the Housing Shortage and Gentrification

To a great extent, America’s urban housing troubles can be summed up by one fact. In 1980, homes more than 10 miles from city centers were more expensive than those closer than 10 miles; today, that situation has reversed. “The ascendancy of housing prices in the city center forms the set piece of what is loosely referred to as gentrification,” noted the economists who wrote the study from which this data point is drawn.

But casting an arbitrary 10-mile radius around American downtowns means we’re going to miss a lot. Take, for example, the San Francisco Bay Area. West Oakland (median home value: $647,400) is expensive and eight miles from San Francisco ($1.35 million). It’s gentrifying: It was home to 15,864 black residents in 2000, and the ensuing decade saw this figure decline by one-fifth. Sausalito ($1.33 million) is seven miles from downtown. While it’s as expensive as ever, Sausalito is not gentrifying.