More Damage from Liberals: Middle-Class Americans Can't Afford to Live in Liberal Cities

From TheAtlantic.com:

Even after adjusting for income, left-leaning metros tend to have worse income inequality and less affordable housing.

On April 2, 2014, a protester in Oakland, California, mounted a Yahoo bus, climbed to the front of the roof, and vomited onto the top of the windshield.

If not the year's most persuasive act of dissent, it was certainly one of the most memorable demonstrations in the Bay Area, where residents have marched, blockaded, and retched in protest of San Francisco's economic inequality and unaffordable housing...

But San Francisco's problem is bigger than San Francisco.

Across the country, rich, dense cities are struggling with affordable housing, to the considerable anguish of their middle class families...

..the relationship is clear: In general, richer cities have less affordable housing.

But there's a second reason why San Francisco's problem is emblematic of a national story.

Liberal cities seem to have the worst affordability crises, according to Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko.

In a recent article, Kolko divided the largest cities into 32 “red" metros where Romney got more votes than Obama in 2012 (e.g. Houston), 40 “light-blue” markets where Obama won by fewer than 20 points (e.g. Austin), and 28 “dark-blue” metros where Obama won by more than 20 points (e.g. L.A., SF, NYC).

Although all three housing groups faced similar declines in the recession and similar bounce-backs in the recovery, affordability remains a bigger problem in the bluest cities.

"Even after adjusting for differences of income, liberal markets tend to have higher income inequality and worse affordability,” Kolko said.

Kolko's theory isn't an outlier.

There is a deep literature tying liberal residents to illiberal housing policies that create affordability crunches for the middle class...
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Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-are-liberal-cities-so-unaffordable/382045/