There is currently a widely-spread opinion that rents in San Francisco, New York and Seattle are rising too fast. I don't think Chicago (among others) is sharing in this trend. It has a similar political orientation, so it can't be dismissed as simply due to politics.
San Francisco is known fo...
Note : immigration happens more to areas with plenty of jobs, areas with plenty of jobs tend to be stronger economically, people in areas that are stronger economically can afford higher rents, places where people are moving to have high demand for living space.
Why would such correlation be in any way meaningful? As Oranges comment states, there are absolutely obvious plausible reasons for such correlation to exist, so a "yes" answer would tell you literally nothing interesting.
@user4012, I agree that it is plausible. But it doesn't mean that it has to be the case. There could be counteracting trends. The migration could be mitigating trends which were already pushing in the opposite direction or they could produce some other counteracting side effects. Essentially, it's one of the variables. Other variables could balance it out. Which is why it would be nice to see if it's been actually studied. Otherwise, it remains a plausible guess.
@grovkin Most definitions would require some 'artificial' suppression of supply, or increase in demand, which would fit equally well with the kind of slum landlord lots of building regulations attempt to prevent. Purely maximising the value of rent received is more in lineyour common or garden market economy.
@origimbo long-time residents using local political process to suppress supply (and taking advantage of the fact that a significant portion of new arrivals can't participate in the political process) fits that definition.
@grovkin "a legal right to work but do not have a legal residency status": seasonal workers, then? Cross-border commuters? No country gives someone a right to work in a long-term position without also allowing them to reside in the place where the job is.
What do you mean? H-1B visa holders do reside in the US, sometimes for years. When you talk about the "length of time before they can participate in the political process," how do you measure that for an H-1B immigrant? The time to getting a green card depends on the country of birth. In many countries, including the US, different people on different paths to naturalization have different minimum wait times at different points in the process. How do you define it elsewhere? EU citizens can vote in local elections in their country of residence, and in many cases so can third-country nationals.
@phoog H-1b is a non-immigrant visa. Majority of people who come on H1B's (not all but more than half) apply and receive a green card after roughly 5 years. Which means they can't participate in the political process (vote) for as much as 10-12 years after their arrival. This makes them different from immigrants who come with a Permanent Resident status (aka "Green Card"). Permanent Residents can generally become citizens 5-6 years after the arrival. H1B visa holders have to leave if they lose employment and can't regain it for some time. This makes them non-residents (ie., migrants).
H-1B is a dual-intent visa. While they may be nonimmigrants for the technical purpose of statutory classification, most of them are immigrants by any colloquial understanding of the word. The problem with relying too much on technical legal definitions of terms like "immigrant" and "resident" is that they are used differently in different jurisdictions. By the dictionary definition, migrants are just a superset of immigrants. Still, I think the problem of measuring the "length of time" across different circumstances will be insurmountable.
Seattle doesn't have NIMBYs?! Are you living in a parallel universe? There's even a special term describing the NIMBYs of Seattle: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_process
@JonathanReez your link does not show that it is specific to construction. The fact is that Seattle's laws are actually there to stall people trying to move away. Because most of these laws were passed when Seattle was losing population. So the laws are actually designed to discourage people from selling property. Best known of them, of course, is the 2% tax on full sale value of properties.
@JonathanReez most of modern real estate laws come from the 70's-80's response to sudden slow down following the boom of the 50s-60s. Taking Seattle proper as indicative is somewhat misleading. King county would be more telling. And Bellevue has quite a few residential buildings 20 stories or higher(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…). And while I agree with you that there is an effective suppression of supply in housing in Seattle proper, there is no culture of NIMBYism.
Discussion on question by grovkin: Is…
Discussion on question by grovkin: Is…