Slate finance writer Henry Grabar offers a microcosmic view of American housing's theme and variations here in an article, titled "San Francisco's Civil War."

The Slate sub-headline reads, "YIMBYs! Socialists! The only thing the Bay Area’s tenant activists hate more than high rent is each other."

But both the title and the subhed belie the true breadth of the story, which Grabar captures in his lead sentence.

"Local politics is always, in one way or another, about housing."

Policy-makers and economists focus on national levers they might engage or release to get housing back on track compared with prior recovery periods following a cyclical trough.

What's more, housing has nudged itself out of the confines of economic and political circles of debate, deliberation, and action. Affordability--in both the need sense and the desire sense of the term--has emerged as a full-on social and cultural pain point that private enterprise as well as public policy decision-makers have been drawn into whether they like it or not. .

Grabar's piece, however, lets us know how local an issue progress or improvement can or can't be for housing. So polarizing are granular details of residential development at the neighborhood level, that even people on the same page politically on nearly every value, every social issue, and every economic theme are ready to throttle one another when it comes to conversation about new local housing. Grabar writes:

"It’s like a circular firing squad at a co-op meeting."

Demographer Wendell Cox has this different take on the struggle to reconcile ideology, city planning, economics, and community.

America's most highly regulated housing markets are also reliably the most progressive in their political attitudes. Yet in terms of gaining an opportunity to own a house, the price impacts of the tough regulation mean profound inequality for the most disadvantaged large ethnicities, African-Americans and Hispanics.

Cox's point is that there's a sharp correlation between politically progressive citizens, intensely regulated land-use and zoning, and the lack of affordable homes for people who've been treading water economically and socially for more than a decade. The data speaks for itself.

Housing inequality by ethnicity is the worst among the metropolitan areas rated "severely unaffordable." In these 11 major metropolitan area markets, the most highly regulated, median multiples (median house price divided by median household income) exceed 5.0. For African-Americans, the median priced house is 10.2 times median incomes. This is 3.7 more years of additional income than the overall average in these severely unaffordable markets, where median house prices are 6.5 times median household incomes.

It is only marginally better for Hispanics, with the median price house at 8.9 times median household incomes, 2.4 years more than the average in these markets."

A Redfin data scientist, Taylor Marr, has begun tracking domestic migration trends in the context of households looking for more affordable living options. It turns out, Marr finds, that out-migration patterns from highly-regulated, high-priced markets toward rent and home price relief in other markets show people from "blue" urban metros moving to "red" markets for more affordable housing.

Marr writes:

Overall, 7.4 percent more people moved out of blue counties than to them. Compare that with red counties, which saw about 1 percent more people moving in than moving out. Purple counties, where there’s a more balanced share of Democrats and Republicans, saw 3.9 percent more migrants moving in than out.

Just looking at swing states—the most populous being Florida—the trend is even more pronounced. In these states, counties with more Democratic voters lost 9.2 percent more people than they gained while Republican counties gained 2.3 percent more than they lost. Swing counties in swing states saw 1.8 percent more people move in than out.

Redfin analysts see this migration pattern as a geographic re-melting pot effect that could de-polarize sharply divided areas by adding greater diversity to the local mix.

The point, though, is this. Regulatory over-reach at the local level is where both the paralysis is, and where the opportunity for progress can take hold and gain leverage. Affordable housing has and will continue to be a nationally relevant calling point for action, especially as more young adult workers establish their foothold as householders and voters. We're betting it'll be local heroes who'll break the inertial forces that are holding back densification and development of more attainable housing options.

Note on source for top image: National Association of Realtors, Housing Affordability Index (Composite) [COMPHAI], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPHAI, October 15, 2017.