The wages of sin... are fabulous!

June 23, 2007 10:03 PM

High salaries and rising property values in Sodom and Gommorah? There Goes the Neighborhood: How and Why Bohemians, Artists and Gays Effect Regional Housing Values.
posted by orthogonality (38 comments total)

Local politicians to inquire: "Is that a pumping piston of economic growth in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"
posted by orthogonality at 10:11 PM on June 23, 2007

There Goes the Neighborhood: How and Why Bohemians, Artists and Gays Effect Affect Regional Housing Values.

/pedant
posted by rkent at 10:11 PM on June 23, 2007

It's an unofficial part of our agenda, we tried to keep it quiet.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:29 PM on June 23, 2007

Blazecock Pileon

You just outed yourself and declared you have an agenda ;)
posted by Mblue at 10:37 PM on June 23, 2007

IANTLH¹: The housing has value regardless the Bohos, so they aren't effecting it, ie. causing it to come into being, or making it happen, but are affecting it, ie. changing or influencing it.
¹I Am Not The Languagehat.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:01 PM on June 23, 2007

The final .pdf is riven with grammar and usage errors. Should it affect my perception of its credibility? Maybe not. Does it? Definitely.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 11:17 PM on June 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Living in San Francisco I do see a lot of young educated kids moving into the city because they were not offered the high paying salaries or opportunities to excel in their talents that are so greatly appreciated here. I have seen a recent surge of entreprenuers from Asia. It is the open mindedness,the acceptance, the attitude and diversity that adds to the vibrantcy of the city.
posted by believe at 11:19 PM on June 23, 2007

I'm not saying that they didn't use it erroneously, but if TEH GAYS ET AL are creating value then aren't they "effecting" it as well as "affecting" it?

If I'm wrong, then I encourage pedantophiles to correct me.
posted by Riki tiki at 11:27 PM on June 23, 2007

From the article:
But these groups are small, and the evidence of their effect on housing prices is anecdotal. We argue that artists, bohemians, and gays through two kinds of mechanisms: aesthetic-amenity premium and a tolerance or open culture premium. To examine this, we introduce a combined measure of bohemian and gay populations - the Bohemian-Gay Index.

Note the sentence I put in bold is incomplete. You argue that artists, bohemians, and gays *what* exactly? The thesis statement of your entire paper, and you can't even bother to state what your argument is? Pardon me if I can't bother to care what your argument is in return.

Also, 'Bohemian-Gay Index', as a term, wins the Internet.
posted by Ryvar at 11:55 PM on June 23, 2007

Tampa is gay friendly?!
posted by photoslob at 11:57 PM on June 23, 2007

Oy vey. This is a working paper and as such shows the often underrated value of proofreaders and editors.

Once this is submitted for peer review somewhere, the paper will be rewritten several times to address these issues, along with any errors in the data, and if the journal's a good one the galleys will undergo a lot of careful correction.

I assume the authors are, at this stage, throwing their ideas out for airing prior to publication but I cringe for them anyway. Reading an unedited paper is like looking at ideas in their underwear. Sometimes it's a sexy experience, but mostly it's just embarrassing for everybody.
posted by melissa may at 12:13 AM on June 24, 2007 [6 favorites]

Can the Bohemian-Gay Index be measured for websites¹? What is the BGI for MeFi?

¹ Yeah, I could probably find out for myself if I read the damn pdf but I'm not going to.
posted by sveskemus at 12:17 AM on June 24, 2007

Diversity and acceptance results in a more diverse and successful marketplace? Shocking. Who would have thought?
posted by icosahedral at 12:34 AM on June 24, 2007

these are referred to as the "gay-geoisie"; and they recruit.
posted by eustatic at 12:39 AM on June 24, 2007

I'm not saying that they didn't use it erroneously, but if TEH GAYS ET AL are creating value then aren't they "effecting" it as well as "affecting" it?

No, they would be effecting the change in the value, so it would have to be re-written something like:

eg: "How and Why Bohemians, Artists and Gays Effect Rise Of Regional Housing Value."
or: "How and Why Bohemians, Artists and Gays Effect Regional Housing Value Inflation."
etc.
posted by -harlequin- at 1:40 AM on June 24, 2007

If I'm wrong, then I encourage pedantophiles to correct me.

are all pedantophiles gay?
posted by geos at 5:24 AM on June 24, 2007

I noticed this in mid-town Sacramento a while ago, but wasn't sure if it was a general statistical trend or not. Although, I thought it was entirely related to the increase in income for gay male couples over heterosexual couples + the lack of child expenses.
posted by BrotherCaine at 6:04 AM on June 24, 2007

A gay friend of mine told me he was going to the beach at Asbury Park today. I was like, "Where the debris meets the sea?" And he was like, "Oh, it's not so bad anymore; it's the most recent place we've decided to take over and make fabulous."
posted by The Straightener at 6:59 AM on June 24, 2007

If any investors would like to pay me to move someplace, I'm open to negotiations
posted by hermitosis at 7:40 AM on June 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

This is no secret. Follow the gays and artists, buy property, reap a ripe financial reward as they rejuvenate a neighborhood, plus, if you live there it will probably be a fun place to live.
posted by caddis at 7:56 AM on June 24, 2007

Tampa is gay friendly?!

I've lived in Tampa, and the only time it is gay friendly is during Gasparilla, when they celebrate the take-over of the city by the notorioius Jose Gaspar, a poor excuse of a pirate who also happened to be gay, a fact which still rankles the more conservative business leaders.

However, Ybor City and Old Hyde Park are actually gay-friendly, as Ybor was revitalized by the art set in the 90's.
posted by misha at 8:53 AM on June 24, 2007

I wonder how long it will take Bill O'Reily to tie this into his theme of "culture wars" in America? How the so-called secular progressives are experiencing economic growth and prospertity through diversity, while the "traditional Americans" in fly-over country are left in squalor in their trailer parks, seething with righteous fury and ready to rise up against the heathens which oppress them.

Give him a few days.
posted by mstefan at 9:24 AM on June 24, 2007

You know, I would actually like to see the poor "traditional Americans" rise up. It'd be kind of funny actually, once they realize how few there are left of them.
posted by Talanvor at 9:49 AM on June 24, 2007

Tampa is gay friendly?!

I've had similar reactions to generalizations from the Creative Class followers for years; they love to come up with their little "Bohemian indexes" and measures of "aesthetic-amenity premiums," but often wind up having little or no relation to the reality of cities on the ground. I think it was when I read that Florida was using Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill as a major example - none of those towns can be said to have anything even close to a thriving downtown - that I first began to get suspicious. Since then, almost everything I've read that takes his analysis as a starting point has struck me as ridiculously vague and over-generalized.

This incomplete, unedited .pdf does nothing to change that.
posted by mediareport at 10:09 AM on June 24, 2007

when I read that Florida

(meaning Richard Florida, the original author of The Rise of the Creative Class.)
posted by mediareport at 10:21 AM on June 24, 2007

No, they would be effecting the change in the value

Gah! No. They would be affecting it.

X affects Y. X has an effect on Y.

And Z just sits around nitpicking grammar, with no apparent effect.
posted by ook at 12:07 PM on June 24, 2007

Hey you ghays: get off my rapidly-appreciating lawn!
posted by ZenMasterThis at 3:05 PM on June 24, 2007

There's a decent response to this by Jaffer Kolb over at 3quarksdaily.
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:18 PM on June 24, 2007

No, they would be effecting the change in the value

Gah! No. They would be affecting it.

Sorry, nuh-uh, they would be affecting (in the "to act on" usage) the value, by effecting (in the "to bring about/cause" usage) the changes (effecting the change affects the property values).
posted by biscotti at 4:11 PM on June 24, 2007

Orthogonality is smarter than just about everybody debating his grammar. This is so lame.
posted by caddis at 6:22 PM on June 24, 2007

"while the "traditional Americans" in fly-over country are left in squalor in their trailer parks, seething with righteous fury"

Awwwwww, the poor seethers.
posted by Twang at 6:43 PM on June 24, 2007

As my racially-mixed wife was working on her welding project in our back yard (using salvaged copper pipe, of course) this past weekend, I was thinking, hey, what we need is more gays in this (mixed-income, economically on-the-upswing) neighborhood. I'm on the fuckin' cusp.
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:46 PM on June 24, 2007

caddis writes "Orthogonality is smarter than just about everybody debating his grammar. This is so lame."

Thanks, but I just copied the pdf's subtitle verbatim.
posted by orthogonality at 7:57 PM on June 24, 2007

You don't weld copper, you solder or braze copper.

(Will now sit quietly and wait for the grammar police to call in back up from the metalurgy squad.)
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 8:12 PM on June 24, 2007

You don't use a comma between independent clauses; you use a semicolon.
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:17 PM on June 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

Metalurgy is what happens to people with a fetish for brass balls.

Metallurgy is for people who weld and solder.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:41 PM on June 24, 2007

It's true, of course. Easily traced in NYC. Believe it or not, in the 70's, the upper west side was fabulous and affordable (to only name one part)
posted by Goofyy at 9:21 AM on June 25, 2007

Too lazy to read the entire thing, but it occurs to me this could be selection bias, not causal. Intelligent, productive folks of all stripes are more mobile and selective, so it could be that areas friendly to non-conformists attract the brightest, most productive of that lot disproportionately, leading to higher overall productivity.

But even if this hypothesis is true, it doesn't disprove that the causal effect is there. In fact, they could both be operating in a positive feed-back loop.
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:20 PM on June 25, 2007