Only the rich are moving in

From The Real Deal:

Pricey American cities are starting to attract more residents who can afford those prices.

Research from economist Issi Romem has found that new residents coming into cities like New York, Miami and Los Angeles are making significantly more money than residents who are leaving, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The trend is strongest in San Francisco, where the people moving to the city and nearby Silicon Valley earned almost $20,000 a year more than the people who left the area in 2016. In Los Angeles, the income gap between people leaving and people arriving was $7,600.

Former industrial cities like Detroit and Cleveland are seeing the opposite trend, where new arrivals are making less than people leaving the cities.

New arrivals to cities also tend to be younger, more likely to rent and less likely to have children than people leaving.

Hipsters moving to Detroit

From the NY Times:

“Detroit, Just West of Bushwick,” read the first billboard that popped up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, this spring, with a working class scene from one of Diego Rivera’s “Detroit Industry” murals. “Detroit, Be Left Alone,” a second one preached soon after, again in Bushwick. And then a third sign appeared, in two locations in Brooklyn and two in Manhattan — “Detroit: Now Hiring.”

No one quite knew where they were coming from or who had put them up.

But when an unrelated photo popped up on Instagram — “Move to Detroit” spray-painted on a girder of the Brooklyn Bridge — the campaign’s anonymous crusader finally revealed himself.

“I rent billboard spaces where others don’t see value. That is how I saw Detroit on my first visit four years ago,” said Philip Kafka, the 28-year-old man who then put his passion behind the billboards with his SoHo-based company, Prince Media. “I saw great buildings, a deep and rich cultural history, and met amazing people.”

He now owns six buildings in the Motor City, one of which will house his new restaurant, Katoi, across the street from Detroit’s most photographed “ruin porn,” the Michigan Central Station. “I want people to know that in Detroit you can afford to make art, be a chef, buy houses, start a business, do anything if you work hard,” he said.

It is now well-documented that some of Brooklyn’s much-written-about creative class is being driven out of the borough by high prices and low housing stock. Some are going to Los Angeles (or even Queens), but others are migrating to the Midwest, where Detroit’s empty industrial spaces, community-based projects, experimental art scene and innovative design opportunities beckon, despite the city’s continuing challenges.

“Brooklyn lost its whole sense of adventure for me,” said Ben Wolf, 31, a Pratt Institute graduate who, after more than a decade in New York, moved to Detroit almost three years ago to continue creating his site-specific installations and sculptures, made from rotten boards, rusty stairwells and peeling paint, or as he said, “the decadence of abandonment.”

The Bloomberg solution for illegal immigration

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From the Daily News:

Mayor Bloomberg has a fix for the nation's immigration debate: Send 'em to Detroit.

"If I were the federal government," Bloomberg told David Gregory on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday morning. "Assuming you could wave a magic wand and pull everybody together, you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agree to go to Detroit and live there for five or ten years."

Detroit has suffered a devastating population loss in recent decades, losing 25% of its citizens since the last census.

Meanwhile, immigrants are clamoring to enter the United States.

Bloomberg says he can fix both at once.

The immigrants would arrive in Detroit, "start businesses, take jobs whatever," Bloomberg said. "You would populate Detroit over night because half the world wants to come here ... You can use something like immigration policy - at no cost to the federal government - to fix a lot of the problems that we have."

It might seem like an easy solution to Bloomberg - but the mayor of Detroit isn't so sure, a spokeswoman said.

"There are things that would have to be considered before we just open the flood gates and say everyone come in," said Karen Dumas, a spokswoman for Detroit Mayor Dave Bing.

I guess he's solved all of NYC's problems since he's giving advice to Detroit now. Why are we a Sanctuary City again?