The Golden Gated Communities -- Will progressive governance turn Northern California into Detroit?

From Kevin D. Williamson at National Review:

Though its charms are wasted on me, San Francisco obviously is enormously appealing to a great many people, as is the Bay Area in its entirety. There are some rough spots, to be sure, but the great swath of territory that runs from San Francisco to San Jose before taking a U-turn up to Berkeley contains a great deal to recommend itself: untold high-tech wealth, a stimulating intellectual climate, world-class educational and cultural institutions, beautiful waterfront properties, and municipal infrastructure that is much better than the American average. As one of my progressive correspondents put it, the high price of San Francisco real estate should communicate to a market-oriented critic such as myself that the city is doing something right. And there is something to that, but there is an important limitation to that analysis. California is a great place to live if you are rich.

And California is not very rich.

The median income for a three-member household is only $67,401 in California. That is not a terrible figure, but it is a bit less than the considerably less glamorous Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ($68,848), only about 30 venti frappuccinos per year ahead of Nebraska ($67,235). That figure is considerably lower than in, say, Wyoming, where the median three-member household takes in nearly 10 percent more each year, and it is far, far behind Alaska, where the median three-member household could buy a new Ford every year and still have as much left over as its California counterparts.

Of course, California has some very poor spots, and your typical Silicon Valley grandee does not spend very much time so much as downwind of one of them. But there is trouble in the happy valley, too. San Jose boasts one of the nation’s highest median household incomes at $81,000 a year — pretty heavy money for a midpoint. But the median price of a single-family house in San Jose is $775,000, or just over nine and a half times the median income. By way of comparison, in Austin, San Jose’s high-tech Texas cousin, the ratio is only 4 to 1 — even as the Texas capital sees record housing prices. In San Francisco, the ratio is 10.2 to 1; in Houston, it’s only 4.3 to 1.

That means that the median family in San Jose could never responsibly purchase the median house in San Jose: Saving ten years’ pre-tax wages and betting it all on a single investment — in California real estate, no less — would be enormously risky. No responsible mortgage lender (if there is such a thing) would approve that loan. ...................................

Is San Francisco the progressives’ best counterexample to the devastation in Detroit? Ask again in 20 years.

I don't think it will take that long.