Let them move -- another contrarian view.

A lot of well-meaning people are wringing their hands about the lack of affordable housing in the hot cities like Seattle, San Francisco etc etc. Of course the dramatic increases you see (at least judging from Seattle) are pretty localized to an amazingly few neighborhoods. Other areas in the region get carried along by reference to the "100% corners" but it is my observation that if you get out of Seattle the house values drop dramatically. If you go across the Cascades to small towns in Eastern Washington, many of which with full urban infrastructure, houses look "free," at least in relation to what you can buy in Seattle.

So why not stop trying to play King Canute? Don't spend public money trying to subsidize housing in major metro areas so that people can live in them. Let people move and be part of the process of revitalizing small (and even large) towns. If business has to pay higher wages in order to allow blue-collar service workers to live in the hot areas, so what? That is the market reacting. The creation of affordable housing in major cities is a hopeless task, and impossible, so don't bother. Let demand for housing help to revitalize towns and cities now oeverlooked.

Just take it to an extreme. Suppose there was a movement afoot in NYC to provide affordable housing on Sutton Place...the theory running that we need "income balanced neighborhoods" and so upper middle-class people in Queens should have some of their tax money go to subsidize lower middle-class people so they could live on Sutton Place. Idiotic idea, of course. But take it out to the regional level. Why should upper middle-class Seattleites pay to subsidize lower middle-class people? Why not let them move to Bremerton or Tacoma etc etc?

Ok. Only one tomato per reader.