Don’t forget that in LA even the exurbs are slums. Remember Palmdale. A quiet Desert valley with not much there except peach growers and farms. Builders came in and put up affordable little single family homes. My friend and her husband bought out there, just to be able to afford the picket fence dream. For almost a decade they had a wonderful, diverse, safe, new community with Bbqs and kids running from house to house. Then LA turned any empty homes to section 8. Within 2 years my friends, paying high rates on a mortgage when the house’s value dropped precipitously with all the crack dealing and new gangbanging, just left the key in the door and moved back closer to town.
Urban planning in LA. Ha. For decades the west SF valley was BLED with property taxes, and NO POLICE PRESENCE. So many problems. Don’t even get me started aboutnLAUSD.
Young people that have the means to buy a home are much more aware today of how the government (or just economics) can destroy their property value; most won’t risk thirty years of mortgage payments (and here in NJ high property tax payments) just to end up living in a Third World toilet five years after closing on the loan...