Why Democrats suck, part I: housing affordability

Because there are so many ways that Democrats suck, it's too much for a single post. So I start out with Part I, housing affordability.

The biggest problem facing the middle class is the high cost of housing. You hear Democrats occasionally say stuff like "today it takes two incomes where one used to do," but they seem completely clueless when it comes to the reason why it takes two incomes: the unaffordability of housing.

Because Democrats never met a regulation they didn't like, they have zoned and regulated the housing market and caused a massive increase in the cost of housing. If a residential development is even allowed by zoning laws in the first place, the builder faces bureaucratic hurdles in getting it approved for construction which significantly increase the builder's costs.

Steve Sailer has empirically proven the damage done to housing affordability by Democrats by demonstrating the extremely high inverse correlation between whether the people of a state voted for Bush and how much housing costs have risen in that state (greater percentage of votes for Bush equals lower housing costs). Where Democrats run things, they create zoning laws and construction regulations which cause housing to become unaffordable. Unfortunately, Steve seems more interested in how this affects "affordable family formation" instead of using this as evidence that the Democrats are the political party which has most hurt the poor and the middle class.

How hypocritical is it for Democrats to complain about housing affordability when it's their fault?

Comments

[Dennis Mangan]

Just to throw in another data point, California has been until recently Republican majority, yet housing has always been more expensive hear than in flyover country. It's immigration that's turned it Democrat.

[Half Sigma]

California housing is probably cheaper in Republican areas than it is in Democratic areas like the San Francisco/San Jose area.

California has the most liberal judges of just about any state, so it's hard for me to consider that state a Republican stronghold of any sort.

[Peter]

It's not just zoning and land-use restrictions that have caused the high price of housing. It seems as if everyone wants big houses with all sorts of floor space and multicar garages and all that. The average square footage of new houses has increased by something like one-third over the past few decades, even as families have gotten smaller. And then you have the fetish among so many families for houses in "good" school districts so their precious ankle-biters will start out life with every possible advantage. After all, a child who will become a Nobel laureate if he or she attends a high school with an average SAT score of 1,300 will end up flipping burgers if he or she instead goes to a school with an average score of 1,100. It's totally ridiculous - most children can get a decent education just about anywhere - but idiotic parents won't think otherwise.

[Half Sigma]

Peter: "It's totally ridiculous - most children can get a decent education just about anywhere - but idiotic parents won't think otherwise."

I agree with the parents on this one, children learn behavior from their peers, so if you want your children to learn upper middle class habits, they need to be in a school with other upper middle class children.

And an upper middle class white kid sent to a school with lower class black kids will probably get beat up, and that can't be good for the kid at all.

[SFG]

Much truth to this, though I would say as a place becomes more developed, people get sick of the congestion and agitate for zoning, driving housing prices up as fewer houses are built.

Also, if there are high housing prices and people are forced to rent, economic inequality increases and they will tend to vote Democrat.

I do wonder if the increased wealth of the upper middle class (Fussellian or as commonly defined) and upper class is contributing to this, though. As they can afford bigger houses or bid up prices, they push other people out. Look at Manhattan.

[Half Sigma]

SFG: "though I would say as a place becomes more developed, people get sick of the congestion and agitate for zoning"

That doesn't explain why rural but heavily Democratic Vermont has such high housing costs. Much higher than the big cities in Texas.

[Peter]

And an upper middle class white kid sent to a school with lower class black kids will probably get beat up, and that can't be good for the kid at all.

Actually he probably won't be bothered. And if he does get whacked around a bit he'll probably learn how to fight, which is an extremely useful skill that most non-proletarian people no longer acquire.

[JewishAtheist]

Steve Sailer has empirically proven the damage done to housing affordability by Democrats by demonstrating the extremely high inverse correlation between whether the people of a state voted for Bush and how much housing costs have risen in that state (greater percentage of votes for Bush equals lower housing costs).

Aren't you (or he) ignoring the fact that states which voted for Bush were poorer per capita, which would obviously cause lower housing costs?

[Half Sigma]

JewishAtheist: "Aren't you (or he) ignoring the fact that states which voted for Bush were poorer per capita, which would obviously cause lower housing costs?"

This isn't obvious at all, because the cost of constructing a house should be the same regardless of whether the people living in the state are poor or rich. The lumber, the concrete, the big yellow construction vehicles, they don't cost twice as much in a state where the people have a little bit more money per capita.

[JewishAtheist]

HS:

But land and demand are both higher in rich states.

[David Alexander]

And an upper middle class white kid sent to a school with lower class black kids will probably get beat up, and that can't be good for the kid at all.

But how many upper middle class kids get sent to school with lower middle class kids in the first place?

[David Alexander]

If you want to encourage more home ownership amonst the working class, encourage the development of more townhouse and condominiums. They're considerably cheaper than buying a full-sized home, the property taxes are lower, and you also gain the benefits of owning the property, which means that you'll be able to use it to build equity in the same way that people do with their "normal" homes.

The zoning regulations aren't coming back, and uncontrolled sprawl just isn't sustainable in the long term. It's better to convert the current residences currently being rented by the poor into dwellings that they can own.

Just as a stupid sidepoint. Has anybody compared home ownership rates and plot sizes in Canada versus the United States? I periodically go to Ottawa, Ontario, and their so-called overpriced housing market seems dirt cheap by New York City standards and the newest homes seem to sit on plot sizes no bigger than homes built in the late 1950-1970 period here in the States.

[David Alexander]

I agree with the parents on this one, children learn behavior from their peers, so if you want your children to learn upper middle class habits, they need to be in a school with other upper middle class children.

What good is being with upper middle class kids if the children end up hanging around the upper middle class kids who do drugs in the privacy of their large empty homes? If the middle class parents are working to pay for an upper class lifestyle, then it's safe to presume that the kids are not spending time with their parents. Time which probably would have been spent explaining "stay away from the bad kids".

[Half Sigma]

JewishAtheist: "But land and demand are both higher in rich states."

Demand for gasoline is higher in California than it is in Wyoming (more than fifty times as many people in CA), but the price per gallon is the same (unless CA has higher gasoline taxes).

The price of of a big backyard is obviously going to be higher in more densely populated areas, but there's no reason why the price per square foot of living space should be higher except for zoning and land use regulations.

[michael vassar]

David: The upper middle class kids who do drugs in the privacy of their large empty homes generally turn out OK. The law treats them surprisingly differently from lower class kids, but they know how to treat it differently as well.

Fixing public transportation in the US could go very far towards reducing the real cost of housing with a given level of access to desirable locations.

Half: I really don't see any difference between Democrats and Republicans on this issue.

Cost of living increases are also substantially driven by healthcare costs and by the educational arms race. Rising social security and medicare taxes are also a big deal.

[michael vassar]

Oh, and local/sales/state-income taxes.
Oil.
And real inflation much greater than the official CPI numbers.
Official numbers say that 1950s dollars are about 10X current dollars, but it is difficult to come up with 1950s goods that can be had for less than 10X the 1950s price today and VERY easy to come up with 1950s goods that today cost much more than 10X the 1950s price.

[Peter]

Fixing public transportation in the US could go very far towards reducing the real cost of housing with a given level of access to desirable locations.

Workplaces have become so decentralized in so many cities that it's difficult to imagine how public transit systems could be made useful to more than a relatively low percentage of workers. And this is assuming that, somehow, the strangehold which public-employee unions have on transit systems could be broken.

[JewishAtheist]

The price of of a big backyard is obviously going to be higher in more densely populated areas, but there's no reason why the price per square foot of living space should be higher except for zoning and land use regulations.

I'll admit I'm no economist, but it seems to me that:

more people wanting to live somewhere + scarce space = high prices.

[Half Sigma]

JewishAtheist: "more people wanting to live somewhere + scarce space = high prices"

That's only true if zoning prevents builders from building denser housing.

Vermont has lots of open space and high housing prices.

[Spungen]

"Actually he probably won't be bothered. And if he does get whacked around a bit he'll probably learn how to fight, which is an extremely useful skill that most non-proletarian people no longer acquire."

Peter, upon what experience are you basing this? This is so off-base I almost suspect straw puppetry.

First of all, kids who fight usually don't do it one-on-one. It's a bunch ganging up on one or two. It's not like in the movies where one guy calls out the new kid in town, and they proceed to harmless fisticuffs ending in mutual respect and friendship. Maybe in the 50s. Nowadays you're lucky if no one has a knife or gun. I've seen guys who were permanently disfigured or otherwise damaged simply from an outnumbered fistfight.

Second, even if no one is actually physically harmed, harassment and ostracism -- or even just misunderstanding -- make school very difficult. That is what happens to people who are different, for whatever reason. The guy (or girl) wouldn't have to be of a different class; he could just be of a different race. It is much worse when you are white and outnumbered, because adult sympathy is not on your side when you fight or argue back.

I got stuck at a Catholic high school that was mostly Latina and Filipina (the public school in my neighborhood was reportedly bad, too). No one beat me up, but standing out was still not a good thing. It also meant, frankly, that the school's academics sucked, even though we had few dropouts. There were no AP classes because there weren't enough takers. Grade inflation at other high schools was such that you virtually couldn't get into places like UCLA without the AP grade boost. But, the school's limited resources were devoted toward getting the daughters of mostly immigrant parents a high school diploma, the ability to go onto secretarial or nursing or teaching programs, and having them not get pregnant before they did so. This hugely limited what the graduates went on to do with their lives, especially the smart ones. Even though the students were not really poor, we could not compete with graduates of the middle-class Catholic or public schools.

Every time I tell some well-meaning white dodo about the ethnic mix at my school, and they smile and say, "Oh, that diversity must have been so WONDERFUL," I want to hit them.

And, trust me on this, hitting people when you get mad is absolutely *not* a good coping strategy for an upper-middle-class professional.

[Spungen]

My real point being: Housing prices were so high in Los Angeles after 1980 that many families, including mine, who would have been considered middle-class in the previous decade had to live in lower-class neighborhoods and go to lower-class schools. And, this does make a difference in how their children's lives turn out.

I don't know if the Republicans can help us with this one, though. Republicans like to think people get where they are based upon talent and hard work, not the right or wrong neighborhood or school.

[superdestroyer]

Michael,

You are wrong about inflation. An economist at George Mason University took a Sears Catalog from the 1950's and compared it to the same items today. After correcting for inflation, many of the items are signifcantly cheaper than in the 1950's. A 1000 dollar TV in the 1970's (using 1970's dollars) was a 25 inch screen with a mechanical remote. A 25 in TV at Wal-Mart can easily cost less than $100 in 2000 dollars.

Peter, I believe you are wrong about a white kid going to majority black schools. Now that NCLB has come about many majority black schools are reporting lower graduation rates for white students than for black students (See Dayton Ohio or Baltimore Maryland). A white kid in a black school would instantly become a target and would be without any support mechanism. If you watched the MTV special about such students you would find that the white students survived by "acting black" to get along including hip-hop dress and attitudes, listening to rap music, disdaining learning, etc.

[Spungen]

And, HS, where did you get the idea Democrats are responsible for restrictive zoning? Maybe things are different on the East Coast. But, in California, it's often conservatives who fight new developments, especially housing, at least at the local level. NIMBYs are well-off and selfish, not really political. Their party affiliation usually depends upon geography, and they use the same arguments regardless:

1. New home development will drive down housing prices (which should be a liberal argument, but Republicans use it) by flooding the market;

2. It will "change the character" of the neighborhood by making it affordable to a different class of people;

3. It is bad for the environment, because of decreased animal habitat, decreased plant habitat/wetlands, increased traffic, increased pollution, and increased "light pollution." (Believe it or not, Republicans love this one.)

[David Alexander]

David: The upper middle class kids who do drugs in the privacy of their large empty homes generally turn out OK. The law treats them surprisingly differently from lower class kids, but they know how to treat it differently as well.

Which is rather sad. IMHO, the poor kids should get the same treatment as the rich kids, or those rich kids should be in San Quentin or Attica for coke habits.

Fixing public transportation in the US could go very far towards reducing the real cost of housing with a given level of access to desirable locations.
Workplaces have become so decentralized in so many cities that it's difficult to imagine how public transit systems could be made useful to more than a relatively low percentage of workers.

Some targeted tax cuts and a shit of property tax burdens from commercial to residential could have an effect on some relocations, but with the increase in services and decrease in labour for offices anyways (think when filing used to be done by people and not computers) means that companies need less space, and that suburban locations will always be cheaper.

High density encourages public transport usage which is good, but high density in turns encourages higher prices especially if there's a land use restriction that prevents sprawl. As long as we're stuck in that quandry, we're not going to solve this issue.

And this is assuming that, somehow, the strangehold which public-employee unions have on transit systems could be broken.

For a country that can fight two fronts in World War II, develop atomic weaponry, and send men in to space and have them return *safely*, the entire notion of a strike seems to scare Americans more than a black guy holding a gun. Other countries seem to have strikes and take it in stride, while Americans just seem to panic.

Housing prices were so high in Los Angeles after 1980 that many families, including mine, who would have been considered middle-class in the previous decade had to live in lower-class neighborhoods and go to lower-class schools. And, this does make a difference in how their children's lives turn out.

One of the things that I hear discussed in some of my classes is the idea that if the lower and middle classes lived together, the lower middle class would abandon their bad habits because of the scorn of the middle classes living with them. Hence all of the discussion of building new developments that have "mixed" housing when replacing the old housing projects. Apparently, it doesn't seem that occured in your neighbourhood. Or maybe, you weren't really middle class. Besides, wasn't that period rife with high inflation?

BTW, your concerns about your former neighbourhood sounds like what happens in most middle class black neighbourhoods. My neighbourhood is middle class, but it's still peppered with a lot of working class people which seems to dillute the middle class effect considerably.

[Half Sigma]

David Alexander: "One of the things that I hear discussed in some of my classes is the idea that if the lower and middle classes lived together, the lower middle class would abandon their bad habits because of the scorn of the middle classes living with them."

The lower class kids will learn better habits from the middle class kids, but the middle class kids will learn worse habits from the lower class kids. This is why middle class parents who care about their kids will try to keep them away from the bad influence of lower class habits.

[David Alexander]

The lower class kids will learn better habits from the middle class kids, but the middle class kids will learn worse habits from the lower class kids. This is why middle class parents who care about their kids will try to keep them away from the bad influence of lower class habits.

Which probably explains why the children in black middle class neighbourhoods tend to "screw up" despite being middle class.

If middle class kids tend to pick up bad habits from poor kids, then how can we get poor kids to pick up good habits without ruining the middle class?

[Peter]

Spungen -
Except in extreme cases white children in majority-minority schools are unlikely to be the only whites in the schools. It's more likely they'll be among a 5% or 10% white minority. In circumstances such as that the white students will be drawn toward one another and most will be able to socialize quite well within the group. For instance, in the small college which I attended the black students, who were about 10% of the student body, all seemed to be friends with one another. It makes logical sense, and I see no reason why this wouldn't apply in middle schools and high schools as well.
Keep in mind that the way schools are, you're always going to have some children who are outcasts. Being an outcast because you're part of a small racial minority is probably much better than being an outcast because you just happen to be unpopular, at least in the former case there's a good reason and it's not your fault.
As for the violence issue, it's my understanding that relatively little school violence crosses racial lines. Oddly enough, despite all the horror stories you hear it's pretty much the same in prisons.
I understand your point about the effects of being stuck in a low-performing school, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First of all, most of the middle-class families who go deeply in debt to move to places with "good" schools aren't moving from areas with poor schools, instead they're moving from places with good schools to places with slightly better schools. Second, to be a good student stuck in a poor school actually might have some benefits, in a big-fish-in-a-small-pond sense.

Now that NCLB has come about many majority black schools are reporting lower graduation rates for white students than for black students (See Dayton Ohio or Baltimore Maryland). A white kid in a black school would instantly become a target and would be without any support mechanism.

It might also be that many of these white students are from poor, dysfunctional families, worse off than most of their black schoolmates.

[Chris O']

I grew up poor, white in the inner city of Boston and went to "majority minority" public schools from 1st through 9th grade:

-If you are white, you learn to fight because the brothers hate whitey--especially a whitey who is alone and an "easy target" (Not a mean crazy snarling whitey who might kick their ass or a gang of mean crazy snarling whities---even better!)

-You had better hang together with other whites because there's no telling when a gang of monkeys will get it in their head to bash you in the face---so even if you hate all the white dudes around you, never be alone.

-Lastly, going to a majority minority school really makes you hate black folks. I got out in 10th grade---went to private school. After I graduated college, I moved to one of the whiter states in the country just to put as much distance between me and the blacks as possible---I think the last time I spoke to a black American was 2003---and I will have to say, it is nice not being involved with blacks.

[Peter]

Chris O -
No offense, but it sounds like you've got some "issues" that go beyond the school you attended.

[Chris O']

Peter: No issues dude, I've just spent enough time, with enough blacks to know they aren't my kind...when something or someone rubs you the wrong way, the best thing to do is just stay away.

[Noumenon]

In Chris O's defense, it is a lot easier to be racially tolerant in the abstract, when you are functionally segregated from other races, then when you grow up in the same neighborhood and can develop some legitimate grievances.

[Noumenon]

To the original point, spungen is on target with his "where did you get the idea Democrats are responsible for restrictive zoning?" There's a fundamental national/local division in American politics -- the national corporate community and local growth and development coalitions. Local power isn't held by the same "Democrats" who hold national office. Most local elections aren't even held with party affiliations listed on the ballot, except in the largest metro areas.

The best way to understand Sailer's position would be as an expression of the frustration that people who have power in national politics and need healthy national markets feel when they find they can't control how people with local power behave while seeking their own local self-interest. Actually, that's an extremely muddled sounding sentence so it probably isn't the best way. But Sailer certainly shouldn't be taken at face value the way Sigma does.

Look, here's how you would go about proving that the Democrats are responsible for the high cost of housing:

1) Provide examples of legislation and policy passed by Democrats that raised the cost of housing. (You have a head start here because everybody knows about rent control in New York City.)

Here's how not to show that:

1) Assume that states that voted Democrat in the 2004 national election have had their local politics controlled by Democrats during the whole time this process was developing

2) Assume that a correlation between Democratic voting and high cost of housing means that Democrats caused the high cost of housing, and not that Democratic voters tend to live in cities. (Don't bother trying to take the data down to the county level where the price of housing actually determines tax revenue, either.)

3) Reconfirm the conclusion you had in mind before you began writing the post, that Democrats suck at everything.

[leftcider]

You pointing out the positive correlation between housing costs and Democratic voting in no way prove that Democratic policies CAUSE housing prices to rise. I would speculate that higher housing costs and voting Democratic seem to be obviously correlated with urban vs. rural areas. Urban areas are more expensive and more Democratic.

If you're trying to prove that zoning laws or other housing laws that Democrats support causing housing prices to rise, why not look at the cost of housing before and after such regulations, or a similar comparison which may get us closer to causality?

[ChrisV82]

That doesn't explain why rural but heavily Democratic Vermont has such high housing costs. Much higher than the big cities in Texas.

I was under the impression that Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, et al voted Democratic.

2004 Presidential Election:

Dallas County went 50/50.
Harris County (Houston) went 45-55 for Bush.
Bexar County (San Antonio) went 44-55 for Bush.
Travis County (Austin) went 56-42 for Kerry.

Those results include, unfortunately, the suburbs, which were heavily Republican. If I could find the results by city, I would check, but I have since realized you probably weren't arguing that cities in Texas were cheap, so I'll just conclude and leave the figures anyway for anyone wishing to mull over them.