They both exist. In my original post about the baby boomers, I linked to an article featuring interviews with developers, who were pretty candid in stating that part of why they don't build condos is because a lot of folks looking to live in the city for the first time already own property elsewhere and are looking for a more "flexible" presence within the city limits. I think you underestimate how wealthy a lot of people are in our world of ballooning income inequality. Meanwhile, the race-based exclusion thing is so self-evident that it's practically a truism. Property values in America have always been tied to exclusion. Nowadays it's usually dressed up in terms of "crime" rather than blatant racism, but it's a double standard: Downtown and the Wedge, for example, are statistically more dangerous than Phillips, but the latter is still considered "more sketchy" to a certain wealthy set (and property values/rents correspond accordingly). Gee, I wonder why that is? Also, don't you see how a 6-story podium serves another purpose besides parking? How having your courtyard six stories removed from the street is an amenity in itself to a certain kind of person?Do these people exist? Or are they like the baby boomers who have house in Maple Grove and a one-bedroom downtown?the high-income households who are actively looking to pay a premium for excluding minorities and poor people from their neighborhood.
Overall, David Greene's point is spot-on. if you really wanted there to be more funding for public housing, there could be--if you used these forums to agitate for that, instead of trying to mock people who point out that the development status quo is bad for poor people and minorities.