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This article by Richard Hanania is very relevant. He argues that when comparing net inward migration across the fifty states, Americans' revealed preferences consistently show that they would rather live in more economically libertarian states than not.
How much of that is that is housing?
Saying people prefer to live in states with abundant housing is somewhat misleading - at the margin people have to live in states with abundant housing because of the pigeonhole principle. What we actually see is that people are willing to pay a premium to live in California and not Texas, but there isn't enough housing in California to accommodate them.
This is still a government failure, but it is a quite specific one rather than "people would rather live in more economically libertarian states".
(FWIW, I think Texas is sufficiently well-governed that quality of government is an important pull factor, but other fast-growing red states are not).
I don't think you can disentangle housing from a whole host of factors. For working adults, the supply of housing is only one part of an equation, and the other half of that equation contains within it a pretty good proxy for economic vibrancy and economic libertarianism. If I were looking to live in a place where the cheapest apartment for rent is 3000$ but where I can easily find a job with a high salary that makes it trivial to pay that, then why would I even complain about the price of housing?
People leave California not because the price of housing in a vacuum is too high, but because the californian economy cannot pay people enough to support those high prices.
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People are also moving for lower tax burden, though, and Texas and Florida are often able to attract corporate moves by offering lower regulation.
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I mean, I think it depends on the person. People in tech and entertainment want to be in California because those industries are centered in California. That does create a certain demographic who wants to live in California because they’re wealthy enough to pay to live there.
Even in red states, you find people clustered in red areas around blue cities. People want to work in the big cities because the high value industries are clustered in cities. If possible, they prefer to live in red counties that surround those cities because it’s cheaper and has less crime. And I think the reason for the people willing to live in California for those industries, it’s a combination of those industries being very lucrative and the relative distance between LA or San Francisco and the nearest available cheap red state housing. In my area, you can live in bright red Arnold MO and commute to bright blue St. Louis in about an hour. Most middle class people do that because it’s cheaper, safer, and easier than trying to live in the city.
Judging by Scott's article on the subject, housing in the Central Valley is also relatively cheap, isn't it?
The climate is terrible, and pollution and crime are rampant there. The Central Valley - especially the southern bits - is a miserable place.
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I haven't read the Hanania article and thus can't speak to his arguments, but if more economically libertarian states tend to have more abundant housing, then that seems to be the mechanism by which Americans come to preferring to live in such states. Revealed preference for economically libertarian states doesn't mean that someone is judging states on the basis of their economic policies and preferring to move to one that's more economically libertarian. Revealed preference means that states that are more economically libertarian tend to create conditions that cause more people to decide that moving there is a better decision than moving elsewhere. The abundance of housing could be one of them. So I wouldn't say that that's misleading.
This occurred to me as well.
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