Affordable Housing Institute : US

What two states are facing the highest rates of emigration? 

 

“Boston!”  “New York!”

 

From the Boston Globe:

 

Massachusetts lost more residents than it attracted in recent years, at a greater rate than any other state but New York, according to Census Bureau estimates released today.

 

 

The estimates show that between 2000 and 2004, more residents left Massachusetts than moved to the Bay State — with an average annual exodus of 42,402 people. That amounts to a rate of 6.6 people leaving the state per 1,000, second only to New York’s rate of 9.6 residents per 1,000 during that period.

 

These statistics support the Zoning Electoral Hypothesis advanced a while back when I asked this provocative question:

 

Are Democrats zoning themselves to a structural electoral minority?

 

In ecological terms, are restrictive zoning policies self-extinguishing?  Do they carry the seeds of their own demise?

 

Specifically, I hypothesized that:

 

Liberal Democratic policies beget restrictive zoning

Which begets high-priced housing

Which begets slower economic growth

Which begets emigration

Which begets reduced electoral strength

 

The causal linkages are:

 

The Zoning Electoral Hypothesis

 

1.       Land prices and voting correlate both ways.  High housing prices vote bluer than low ones.  Those who vote Democratic are more likely to restrict growth.

2.       Zoning drives land pricing.  Zoning is destiny, and because land value is a residual, tight zoning drives up land prices.

3.       Land prices squeeze affordability.  High land prices mean high development costs and increase the cost-value gap. 

4.       Lack of affordability dampens and inhibits economic growth.  Via linkage, increased taxes, or otherwise. 

5.       Affordability influences population growth.  Americans are the most mobile people in history.  We go where the jobs are, and where we can afford the housing. 

 

 

Do the Census figures bear this out?

 

“I can’t bear these visual puns.”

 

Consider the political makeup of the states and cities that have lost the most emigrants.  As reported in the New York Times:

 

About 183,000 more people left New York State annually than moved in from other states from 2000 to 2004, fewer than in the 1990’s but nearly as many as the 191,000 residents Florida gained annually.

 

Ever since we lost that World Series, we’ve been losing population too.

 

Florida ranked third in the highest rate of domestic [im]migration, relative to its population, after Nevada and Arizona.

 

The estimates are the latest to document flagging population in Massachusetts, which has become an issue among candidates for governor in this year’s campaign.  Demographers pointed to the region’s precipitous loss of high-tech jobs and the continued high cost of housing as factors driving Massachusetts residents elsewhere.

 

Where did people go?  Check out this Boston Globe chart:

 

 

Housing demand is elastic, housing supply is inelastic.  People have a faster OODA loop than do property markets, so if the jobs that sustain the home prices exit stage left, so do the workers:

 

”I think that’s plaguing a lot of the country — these go-go places of the late ’90s, especially those with the high-tech components and persistent high housing costs,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

 

Frey said metropolitan Boston has been losing people since 1990, but in recent years the loss has been occurring at greater rates than at any time since the recession of 1990 and 1991.

 

 

Not only do high-cost states lose people to lower-cost, high-cost cities also permanently export people:

 

Today’s report found that among large metropolitan areas, Greater Boston trailed only San Francisco and New York City in its rate of loss.

 

Three big cities, three very blue cities.  All three have or had rent control.

 

Emigration is only one of two population drivers; fertility is the other. 

 

The latest estimates measured domestic migration rates, and not overall population, and so do not include new immigrants or overall birth rates. The Massachusetts population estimate as of July 2005 was 6,398,743, down more than 8,000 since 2004, the Census says.

 

Is it housing prices?

 

Paul Harrington, an economist at Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies, discounted housing prices for the exodus. ”I think that’s a tired excuse for poor performance,” he said, criticizing Governor Mitt Romney, saying he failed to turn around the jobs market.

 

For ‘tired,’ professor Harrington, substitute ‘true,’ since the dynamics (pop loss since 1990) long predate Governor Romney, and operate in other similarly high-cost states:

 

The gains in Rhode Island and Maine were attributed, in part, to the expanding borders of the Boston suburbs.

 

No one would call Rhode Island or Maine conservative, except in comparison to Boston.

 

Another reason for moving is the availability of jobs. The flight from California to other states in the 1990’s was accelerated by reversals in the aerospace and military industries.

 

Workers will tolerate high housing prices in a booming economy, justifying it on a combination of shorter commutes, better schools, and expected home appreciation.  But if the economy then sputters, some people will move, because demand is much more elastic than supply. 

 

Some moves are short range, for instance, just over the Massachusetts border, where a ten-minute commute increase may mean big drops in state taxes and home prices:

 

Professor Frey attributed much of the pattern to soaring housing costs.

 

 

“In effect, the housing affordability crunch in metro New York is a windfall for nearby areas like Allentown and Poughkeepsie and Southern hot spots like Tampa and Orlando,” he said. “And on the West Coast, it’s interior California and the rest of the West that is gaining.”

 

Coastal California is blue, the Inland Empire red.

 

In California, on average, 221,000 more people moved out every year than moved in from other states in the 1990’s.

 

Where are Americans going? 

 

Headin’ fer the wide open spaces!

 

Warm places with jobs:

 

Nationally, the regions picking up population are in the South and West, with Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and Idaho topping the list.

 

If you’re scoring at home, that’s five red states gaining population.

 

Romney’s communications director, Eric Fehrnstrom, noted those centers of population growth and attributed Massachusetts‘ losses to New England’s weather. ”Generally speaking, people tend to migrate to warmer climates where the housing is cheaper and more plentiful. There’s not much we can do about the New England weather, but we are very much focused on pro-growth policies that will encourage the creation of more housing and lower taxes so living here is more affordable,” Fehrnstrom said in a statement.

 

All the evidence is confirmatory.  In every case, the described population movement is from a blue voting area to a red one. 

 

As Shoeless Joe Jackson might have whispered, “If you gouge them, they will leave.” 

 

“Come on, boys, we’re outta here.”

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