Yes, it’s true. Just look at Chapel Hill. When you restrict growth, especially the construction of homes, you make homes more expensive. Soon, the poor and even the middle class have to look elsewhere for housing they can afford. For people who can’t afford to live in Chapel Hill, that place is Durham. This is not a new phenomenon. As economist Thomas Sowell writes about the exodus of blacks from the most liberal cities in California:
Prior to 1970, California housing prices were very similar to housing prices in the rest of the country. In more recent times, it has not been uncommon for California homes to cost three times what homes cost nationwide.
What happened in the 1970s was that severe government restrictions on building became common in coastal California. With supply restricted and demand not restricted, it was inevitable that prices would soar beyond many people’s ability to pay.
The main impetus behind severe restrictions on building is environmentalist zealots who demand that vast amounts of land be set aside as “open space” on which nothing can be built.
He concludes:
But the same liberals who applaud that approach when it comes to businesses would be appalled if the same standard were applied to their own environmentalist restrictions that force vast numbers of blacks out of their own upscale liberal communities.
Nor do black “leaders” who are quick to cry “discrimination” and “racism” in other contexts. Apparently it all depends on whose ox is gored.
Sound familiar?
