Yet another must-read story on the effects of forced urbanization on communities coast-to-coast, this time from the free-market zealots at The Washington Post. The middle-class is bailing on center cities just as the sine qua non of Smart Growth land-use regs, higher real estate prices, begins to kick in. The details:
On the East Coast, a similar trend is underway, with middle-class families fleeing the New York region and Boston for the South. The District has been in the buffer zone, losing middle-class families with children to the Sun Belt but gaining some from the Northeast, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
“There’s a middle-class flight on both sides of the country,” said Frey, who has analyzed county-level census data on both coasts. He has found that real estate costs more than schools are driving the migration.
The trend has city officials worried about what the loss of these middle-class families will do to the vitality of their communities, and they are trying to find ways to stem the flow.
At the moment Charlotte is clearly taking in some of those Northeast refugees. Welcome! This is grits, this is okra, and barbeque is pork. But this will not continue forever, especially not with the higher cost, higher density development needed for the $6 billion light rail mass transit hallucination to take hold. Moreover, many local new arrivals are already opting to live just outside of Mecklenburg to avoid higher taxes. So we have both local and national evidence that the price of housing and the tax rate profoundly influences where people choose to live, especially if they have kids.
Local officials, both elected and entrenched, must heed this lesson, especially as we enter the budget-writing season. If we continue down the current path, then we too will one day look up and say, Where did all the children go?
Bonus observation: How is Charlotte going to attract those 100,000 new jobs to the center city that CATS czar Ron Tober says are needed to make light rail work if no one can afford to live here?
