American Dream

A developer is renovating two buildings in downtown Salem, Oregon's state capital. The refinished buildings will have stores downstairs and four to eight loft apartments upstairs. The Salem city council is so appreciative of the developer for helping to revitalize downtown that it publicly thanked him for investing in the area. But he said no thanks were necessary, as he has a long waiting list of people who want to live in his loft apartments.

Actually, the city thanked him in advance by giving him $1.4 million in low-interest loans and at least $200,000 in outright grants for the projects. The developer himself is putting in less than $200,000 in one of the buildings. The story does not say how much he is investing in the other building, but since it is twice as big it is probably no more than $400,000.

No doubt when the buildings open we will see stories such as this one about how everyone wants to move back to the cities with no mention of how those who moved back were heavily subsidized to do so. Nor will the stories mention that "everyone" is really a tiny minority of Americans. In fact, as Wendell Cox observes in this recent study, of the 53 metro areas with more than 1 million people, the cores of 43 lost population while their suburbs continued to grow. That hardly indicates an inner-city revival.