Whatever else Blue America has going for it, its done a terrible - TopicsExpress



          

Whatever else Blue America has going for it, its done a terrible job of generating enough housing supply to accommodate all the people who might like to live there. So in addition to the traditional southward migration of retirees you now see a substantial net population flow away from richer areas in the Northeast and the California coast to the relatively low-wage economies of Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia. For many working- and middle-class Americans, the lower cost of living makes a decisive difference. This comes about primarily because coastal areas have adopted excessively strict zoning rules. There is not enough semi-dense mid-rise construction in the affluent suburbs of San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, etc. Secondarily, there are too many restrictions on the creation of new big apartment towers in the very most expensive parts of coastal cities. Incidentally, the widespread nature of the high coastal housing cost problem should give pause to the people who insist that it has nothing to do with zoning and is all about absentee foreign billionaires.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 06:49:38 +0000

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