# Gentrification of Rural America **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 28, 2021, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695 "2021-08-28T21:41:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/141 "2021-09-03T17:35:37Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > It’s obvious less restrictions around multi-family development in California would alleviate some of the problems with affordability, but it wouldn’t make California Ohio or West Virginia, it would still almost certainly be among the most expensive states to live in for simple economic reasons. Sure, but maybe it could at least make it Connecticut, a more wealthy state per capita than California with more affordable housing. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/142 "2021-09-03T17:36:37Z")
I don’t believe most of San Francisco is zoned single family. The “bay area” maybe, but that’s an area much bigger than San Francisco proper, which is only the north end of the San Francisco peninsula. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/143 "2021-09-03T17:39:38Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > Connecticut, for example, has a higher median household income than CA and significantly lower median home prices. Most of Connecticut is farm land, as in California. Fairfield County was the richest of New York’s suburbs and notorious for luxury homes on many acres. (It’s now [slipped to second by a hair](https://www.cnbc.com/2012/04/26/Americas-10-Richest-Counties.html) but five of the top ten counties are New York suburbs and only Marin - not Silicon Valley - is in California.) Fiarfield doesn’t have county-wide zoning and the 2008 recession hurt housing prices there, but it’s still typical of wealthy counties restricting affordable housing, while leaving prices stagnated in places beyond commuting distance. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/144 "2021-09-03T17:43:11Z")
Fairfield County doesn’t have county-wide zoning because there is no county government in Connecticut. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/145 "2021-09-03T17:45:46Z")
And to a New Yorker, that’s incredibly weird. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/146 "2021-09-03T17:54:39Z")
It’s a very small state with I think eight counties. Stuff that other states do on a county level is done at the state or regional level in Connecticut. (And I think some of the other small states also eliminated county government.) ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/147 "2021-09-03T18:06:37Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I don’t believe most of San Francisco is zoned single family. Looks like you are correct. 37% of SF residential is single family, 16% is 2-units, and the rest is 3 or more. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/148 "2021-09-03T18:10:01Z")
Same to a Virginian, and our whole counties vs “Independent Cities” thing is weird enough that I thought I wouldn’t be surprised by another state’s organizational norms. No county government seems really alien to me. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/149 "2021-09-03T18:15:51Z")
I think it’s also worth noting that SF has about 2% of California’s population, and it’s clear that it’s by far one of the most expensive areas. But for the _median_ CA house price to be so high, that’s not the excesses of a specific wealthy city. It’s a systemic problem statewide problem. Connecticut also has extremely wealthy locations with exclusionary zoning, but manages to have a median house that costs way less than the median house in CA. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/150 "2021-09-03T18:30:15Z")
California has far more attractiveness than Connecticut, which exists these days merely as an appendage of New York plus wasteland (dying Rust Belt cities and low-quality farms). No one would expect Connecticut to have high house values in the wasteland. The two states are not properly comparable in any way, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/151 "2021-09-03T18:36:11Z")
Not weird to this New Yorker - but then again, we don’t have any county government here. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/152 "2021-09-03T18:36:48Z")
My point is that the ratio between CA’s median house price and median household income is larger than most states. I attribute the delta to “excessive regulation inhibiting building”. Yes, houses in CA are more expensive because Californians have more money (on average) than residents of the average state. But they’re _also_ way more expensive than other high income states. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/153 "2021-09-03T18:45:16Z")
And that’s also incredibly weird to an Upstate New Yorker. Yet you guys have 5 DA’s, one for each county. AAAARRRGGHHHHH. We try not to have to think about NYC for any reason. Doesn’t do us much good, but we try. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/154 "2021-09-03T19:15:26Z")
> [@Oredigger77](#): > > I think you’re just describing America. You can’t even buy groceries in Kiowa without a car in working order and someone to drive it. In fact the closest grocery store is in Elizabeth. I can’t think of a single home visible from the main grocery store in Elizabeth let alone walkable. The WalMart just had a thousand homes built on the field across from it but walking that stretch would probably be suicidal. We’ve set up as a car focus culture for the last 100 years and despite the dreams of the urban folks that is just life in rural America. Quite a lot of people in the several villages closest to me live within walking distance of the grocery store, drugstore, library, school, local diner-type hangouts, etc. My guess is that Kiowa used to have a grocery store. Most villages did. It’s true a lot of them have died recently – sometimes because the people with money who moved to town do most of their shopping elsewhere. If they just built a thousand homes on the field across from Walmart without any provision for pedestrian and bicycle access, that was very unwise and currently rather out of style town planning. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I’d also say you were just plain wrong that wealth had nothing to do with the Californian affordability crisis. California has had a tremendous increase in wealth and high concentration of wealthy people in its cities. If you don’t actually think basic economics means that those areas will see rising property values, I dunno, I’d suggest you stay out of the real estate business. I’ve seen (sorry, can’t remember where) this sort of problem in the denser areas of cities blamed on the invention of elevators. Before elevators, living in housing more than two or three floors up required frequently climbing more stairs than most people really wanted to have to climb. Therefore, as cities got more dense and built upwards, the higher apartments were rented to poorer people; and rich and poor people lived in the same neighborhoods, because they lived in the same buildings. If the trash didn’t get picked up, it affected the rich people too. Once elevators were common, the upper apartments, which were now as easy to get to as the lower ones and which had less street noise and greater privacy, became more desirable than the ground floor ones – but the difference wasn’t enough to just reverse the situation. So what we wound up with were areas with only rich people, and other areas with only poor people. And the richer people, instead of just driving the poorer people up a story or two, drive them out of the area entirely. I haven’t actually researched the history of this; but it does make sense to me. – doesn’t have all that much to do with gentrification of rural areas, though. And we’re certainly not going to get rid of elevators. > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Fairfield County doesn’t have county-wide zoning because there is no county government in Connecticut. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > And to a New Yorker, that’s incredibly weird. Much of New York State does have county governments, but still doesn’t have county-wide zoning. It’s the individual towns/villages/cities within the county (which generally has a number of them) that have zoning. (Or, in some cases, still don’t.) ---
**Author:** ![Oredigger77](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oredigger77/32/3181_2.png) [@Oredigger77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oredigger77)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/155 "2021-09-03T20:27:24Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > If they just built a thousand homes on the field across from Walmart without any provision for pedestrian and bicycle access, that was very unwise and currently rather out of style town planning. I just pulled it up on Google maps and it does appear they built 2,000 ft of sidewalk that ends at Walmart. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Quite a lot of people in the several villages closest to me live within walking distance of the grocery store, drugstore, library, school, local diner-type hangouts, etc. What makes a village? I’m not overly familiar with the term and can’t think of anything I would call a village around here. Most of the places out here built on a trading post model when people go into the big town to do their shopping rather than each place set up as independent. Maybe an east coast vs west thing? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/156 "2021-09-03T21:19:16Z")
Village is a term for a small town. Only 25 states legally incorporate small places as “villages,” all of them eastern except for Oregon. They’re defined differently in each state but normally can be thought of in the old-fashioned pioneer sense of a village being a few hundred or thousand people around a crossroads. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/157 "2021-09-03T21:25:01Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Not everyone should live in one metro. I agree. That’s why we maintain a city apartment in Hudson County, NJ overlooking Manhattan and a second country home out near the Poconos. …that isn’t what you meant, was it? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/158 "2021-09-03T22:21:03Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > > > Connecticut, for example, has a higher median household income than CA and significantly lower median home prices. > > Most of Connecticut is farm land, as in California. Fairfield County was the richest of New York’s suburbs and notorious for luxury homes on many acres. (It’s now [slipped to second by a hair](https://www.cnbc.com/2012/04/26/Americas-10-Richest-Counties.html) but five of the top ten counties are New York suburbs and only Marin - not Silicon Valley - is in California.) > > Fiarfield doesn’t have county-wide zoning and the 2008 recession hurt housing prices there, but it’s still typical of wealthy counties restricting affordable housing, while leaving prices stagnated in places beyond commuting distance. I grew up in Fairfield County and know the area well (or did). I suppose the flip side of that is COVID has led to an increase in housing prices in places like Fairfield County as people exiting NYC look for homes. Usually “restricting affordable housing” means "ban condos, apartments and dense multi-family developments. Which is understandable. If you live in one of these affluent suburban towns, you tend to want to keep the rustic New England woodland vibe and not be overrun by apartment complexes, strip malls and big box stores. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/159 "2021-09-03T23:19:48Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I haven’t actually researched the history of this; but it does make sense to me. – doesn’t have all that much to do with gentrification of rural areas, though. And we’re certainly not going to get rid of elevators. Makes a lot of sense. And we’re likely seeing a similar thing (a geographical redistribution of people by income due to technological change) with rural gentrification as well. Except that it’s not elevators causing the rich to all live near each other in cities, it’s telecommunications technology causing the rich to live wherever they feel like. Now that broadband is common, and people can largely do white-collar work from anywhere in the country, prices in more out-of-the-way places with limited local industry are rising. Particularly if the weather or geography other local amenities are enticing. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2021, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695/160 "2021-09-04T01:12:21Z")
> [@Oredigger77](#): > > Most of the places out here built on a trading post model when people go into the big town to do their shopping rather than each place set up as independent. Maybe an east coast vs west thing? Maybe? Do you mean that even fifty or a hundred years ago a collection of several dozen or even several hundred houses would have no local store, no place where people could pick up necessities without having to drive extended distances every time they ran out of milk or toilet paper? Or do you mean that there were no such collections, and what’s being “gentrified” is individual houses scattered miles apart? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentrification-of-rural-america/949695.md?page=9)