Good economy, affordable housing, NIMBYism: pick two. Liberal cities tend to be NIMBY cities -- there's a lot of zoning, an anti-development mindset among many

Good economy, affordable housing, NIMBYism: pick two. Liberal cities tend to be NIMBY cities -- there's a lot of zoning, an anti-development mindset among many, and other restrictions on new construction. These cities also tend to have good economies and high incomes. Constrained supply + increasing demand = exploding price. It's pretty simple. Note the outlier: Orange County. It's got high income and is conservative (by California standards), but it has a sort of peculiar NIMBYism of its own. A lot of people in OC are opposed to "high density housing," and many of its neighborhoods are very planned with newer and higher density construction restricted. OC is the exception that proves the rule.