One concern is that jobs are generally located in the city. It's unfortunate that people who cannot afford to live in the city must also often make long commutes into the city. It'd be a shame if we said it was a luxury to avoid long commutes.
But it is a luxury... The demand for housing is affected by convenience. Those with more buying power are able to afford more convenient locations.
This is not unique to any particular city or country. I personally have experience with SoCal and Moscow. In SoCal, a 2br condo in Santa Monica costs the same as a house in a nice suburb, the difference is an hour+ drive. In Moscow, inner city is gridlocked 24/7 and unlike most of US, that's where the best jobs are, so the closer to downtown, the more expensive it is. Further out, prices are highest in walking proximity to a metro station (just like BART).
And then of course, the conversation turns to poor people using cheap cars to get there. And for once this is a "relatively" good deal for the poor, because the savings on car price more than make up for the difference in fuel costs for quite a distance (given that you can easily get a car $20k cheaper than a new efficient car.
Needless to say, this must be stopped ! "Not" because it makes life possible for a huge swath of poor people, that's not the problem. It pollutes ! "We" can't park anymore (because unlike poor people we don't arrive at work at 6am). "We" must stimulate public transport usage (without, of course, using it ourselves). Not that public transport even passes through the places where you'd live if you didn't have money, but who cares about that ?
