Sunday 28 December 2014

Homie Homies

From the Telegraph

The residential property market is surging, up more than 10 per cent in the last year, as people are priced out of other Los Angeles neighbourhoods. Properties are being snapped up by investors and professional house flippers have started targeting the area. Compton's first home with a price tag of $1 million recently went on the market.

Key to attracting companies and families is Compton's geographical location close to LAX airport, Long Beach port which is the second busiest container port in the US, and near office buildings in downtown Los Angeles.

Mrs Brown said: "In California they're not making any more land. And with the high cost of land, from a business standpoint, being able to move your goods quickly and cheaply makes Compton an attractive place to be."

"And traffic is so horrible here in Los Angeles, and getting worse, that if you want to have a quality of life not on the freeway, you may want to live nearer where you work. I think people are getting to grips with that. I think Compton is a really attractive place for young families."

That's one smart 32-year old mayor. Understands how land values work, and that all that's depressing them in Compton at the moment is the dealers and the violence. So, she's got the gangs together an stopped them fighting which has made it a nicer place to live (and raised land prices).

Give it a few more years and California will probably legalise cannabis, at which point, the dealers will largely disappear and it'll be a pretty pricey place to live.

5 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

From her point of view, it's a virtuous circle - get rid of gangs, rents and prices go up; rents and prices go up so low income people more likely to be in gangs move out of the area.

Tim Almond said...

Yeah. Thing with drugs is that you often get an area of a city that becomes known for where to get them. If she can get them to go to another area nearby...

mombers said...

At least they collect a bigger portion of the rents via progressive property taxes. That's despite the idiotic Proposition 13

benj said...

Perhaps drug cartels should do negative gentrification?

Completely ruin an area, buy up as much property as possible, then move out, gentrify said area (providing vigilante services/art studios/coffee outlets/ikea/waitrose), and sell.

You are laundering the drug money at the same time. What's not to like about that?

benj said...

BTW,

We did something on Georgist films a while back. We can add Robocop 2 to that list.

OCP(OmiConsumerProducts) ferments crime in Detroit so it can privatise the City, demolish it, and become the sole landlord over the new one.


So, using crime to cause an upshift in land values, isn't a novel idea.