The income gap between families who are leaving expensive urban areas and the affluent newcomers who are replacing them is widening, reports The Wall Street Journal. New research from Issi Romem, chief economist at building-data website BuildZoom, found that cities like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Miami are seeing an influx of new residents from all over the U.S. These new residents make quite a bit more than the residents who are leaving. Many, including policymakers and advocates for low-income housing, worry that rising home prices are pushing lower-and moderate-income residents away from more desirable neighborhoods and into less ideal ones that have longer commutes. But Romem’s analysis of U.S. Census data shows that expensive American cities are losing lower-and middle-income families — who help support sectors like restaurants and hotels as well as schools and police departments — not to the suburbs but to entirely different metropolitan areas.
In San Francisco, home prices have risen 87 percent since 2010. In 2016, people who moved to San Francisco and Silicon Valley earned nearly $20,000 a year more than those who were leaving that same year. Other cities like New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles are all witnessing the same trend. In LA, the income gap between those coming and going was about $7,600 in 2016. In Seattle, it was $11,400.
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