Comment by jeffbee

Unmentioned in this article is the spread of small business pretend as a lifestyle, where someone signs a lease for the space, pays the rent, and never opens it or only after years of futzing around. They can do this because they have some other source of income, and it is just another aspect of wealth inequality that pretenders can outbid sincere small business operators. In my neighborhood we had a prominent corner store that was apparently vacant but actually had been leased by a restaurant that then spent 7 years intermittently remodeling the interior. Of course all the local NIMBYs spent the entire 7 years shouting about developers, but it wasn't their fault really.