Can you afford to live where you grew up, on your current income?

Talking about how much it costs now, not when you were a kid.

I definitely can't afford to live where I grew up. Google opened up shop and now it's been "revitalized."

So far everything is either:
• No, it's been gentrified
• No, grew up in a wealthy neighborhood but not wealthy now
• Yes, never left, not been displaced by gentrification yet
• Yes, moved away before gentrification has happened, have more money now

Haven't gotten any "yeah I just have a large income" presumably those people are embarrassed to share? "I grew up in a wealthy neighborhood and am also wealthy" or "it's been gentrified but my income went up too" categorically should exist but nobody has said them so far

Something I hate about gentrification is how it feels impossible to not be complicit in it once your own hometown gets gentrified; and the few things that wouldn't be complicit still line the pockets of landlords and the real estate industry with even more profit.

1. Get priced out of hometown
2. Move somewhere you can afford
3. Real estate value "goes up" because people are moving there
4. Gentrification displaces more people, and eventually you as well
5. Repeat

And if you like.... Try your damn best to afford higher rent so you're not moving into a neighborhood with cheap rent (but still more affordable than hometown, probably an already gentrified area)

Well now you're giving even more money to landlords. Possibly even the same ones

And there's just not really a way to opt out. You can't go home. Home is gone. Even if you hated your hometown it doesn't exist anymore. It's been gentrified. You can't afford it and it looks nothing like you remember anyway. You'll always live in someone else's neighborhood now

We need to abolish the housing market.