[sershe]

Where did you ever see that? In particular for the actually wealthy? "Oh no, my house went from $10m to $9m, woe is me"? At most, it's a proxy for the above. As a not-so-wealthy, but well-to-do techie, for me the exclusion is absolutely about keeping poor people out. People are just too timid do admit it.

Now I do have to say as a semi-libertarian I support YIMBY, building up everything and making most zoning illegal. Sorta against my self-interest.

But at the same time, I strongly dislike US poor. It's almost an oxymoron that the more meritocratic the society, the better the sorting, and thus the worse an average non-immigrant poor people are. US, compared to most places, is pretty meritocratic. An average person at the same percentile poverty level in Russia (or, I bet, Mexico or China or Nigeria or whatever) is a much better human being than a corresponding non-immigrant in the US (any race). If the way to keep the latter out is to keep local property unaffordable, so be it. I don't really care about broad property values otherwise - I don't want to move and if I do I'd probably buy a similar house.. in fact given the transaction costs, cheaper housing may make moving cheaper.

[someguydave]

I believe the US “poor” could be made to behave better if standards were raised (more and better policing). Nobody seems to have the stomach for that so coddling is the solution.