In case you didn’t realize it, having to work two jobs in order to pay the rent is now referred to as “portfolio diversification:”

Firefighters who want to live in high-priced cities can work two jobs, said W. Michael Cox, chief economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “I think it’s great,” he said. “It gives you portfolio diversification in your income.” Pay for essential workers like plumbers and cabdrivers will tend to go up, he said.

… from an article in the NY Times about the declining availability of affordable middle class homes in large US cities. Canadian cities are no different.

One more soundbite:

But middle-class city dwellers across the country are being squeezed.

This time, they are being squeezed out by the rich as much, or more so, as by the poor — a casualty of high housing costs and the thinning out of the country’s once broad economic middle. The percentage of middle-income neighborhoods in metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington has dropped since 1970, according to a recent Brookings Institution report.

The percentage of higher-income neighborhoods in many places has gone up. In New York, the supply of apartments considered affordable to households with incomes like those earned by starting firefighters or police officers plunged by a whopping 205,000 in just three years, between 2002 and 2005.

Personally, I think we’re losing something if families can’t afford to live in cities any more. Am I the only one who feels that something is missing in neighborhoods without children? Can you really call it a community if it’s all 20-30-40-something married-to-their-career types?

Tags: city, children, housing, affordability, middle class, NY Times, john koetsier