Why do gay men live in San Francisco?

San Francisco is known both as one of America's loveliest cities and as home to an unusually large gay community. We argue that this overrepresentation of gays is not coincidental. Gay households face constraints that make having children more costly for them than for similar heterosexual households. TT is reduces lifetime demand for housing while freeing resources for allocation elsewhere. Therefore, gay men disproportionately sort into high-amenity locations. A ranking of metropolitan areas by their gay concentration finds high concentrations in America's most attractive cities. Regression analysis reveals that measures of local amenities predict gay location more strongly than does gay friendliness. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science.