Here's an rather sad story from my hometown of Santa Barbara, which I'll be visiting in a little over a week:

The City Council is considering whether to use the property to build affordable housing, a condominium complex called Los Portales for families earning up to $160,000 a year.

Now, "it's hard to get sympathy for people making $160,000 a year if you're down in Texas or something," said Bill Watkins, head of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project. Any household with that kind of money is in the nosebleed section of American earners, and "most of the country would think, 'You're going to subsidize that person's house? You're kidding me.' "

But in this city - where the median home price is around $1.2 million - that person needs help. And the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara is about to become the rare public housing agency to assist the well-heeled along with the poor, to build shelter for those whose business cards come in designer leather cases and include words like "doctor," "lawyer," "director."
...
Prospective buyers would probably be "a cop married to a teacher, a nurse married to a guy who owns a plumbing store," Councilwoman Iya Falcone said during last week's City Council meeting. "Some of the people who are going to buy the higher-priced units are doctors and lawyers. But lawyers are people too…. I love this project."

It turns out that the house which I grew up in (4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath) is worth about $1 million right now.  My parents paid about $56,000 for it in 1972 and sold it for $350,000 in 1990.  Add to the fact that property taxes in California are based on the price which you paid for the house (as opposed to its current value), and families have a strong incentive not to leave their house.  Of course, when they do, they are snatched up quickly.  Our former neighbors recently sold their house to a very rich plastic surgeon for about $900,000.  They decided to go for the lower bid because the doctor came with cash.

Of course, it also makes it incredibly hard, if not impossible to buy a reasonably priced house in the area.  In fact, most "normal" people who work in Santa Barbara can't live there, and commute from somewhere else more reasonable, which is getting to be further and further away.

And so that is how it can be that a family who earns $160,000 a year can be considered poor.  After all, a city needs more than just Hollywood elite to make it run.  You need police, firemen, nurses, and garbage men or the city would not be as pristine and gorgeous as Santa Barbara is.  Speaking of which, I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures while I'm out there.

Via Life in the Great Midwest.