California Housing Is Killing Democracy

The Gerrymandering War took a bad electoral situation for the Democratic Party in 2030 and made it much, much worse. All thanks to California's housing shortage.

The approved Texas gerrymandered map, reducing Democratic representation on Trump’s orders.

The opinions expressed in this article, and all articles on my publication, represent only myself in my personal capacity. They are not the opinions of my employer, my employment capacity, any affiliate university, or any government or civic board and organization I am a member of.

—

Initially I made this a paid article but today, the New York Times ran a story outlining how finished the Democratic Party is by 2030 when the population shifts give congressional seats to red states. The issue is too important to put behind a paywall.

— Original Post —

It is your duty as an American who supports the principles of democracy to vote in favor of the upcoming California ballot referendum to rid ourselves of the independent redistricting and add 5 new Democratic House seats.

We can only espouse the principles of free and fair redistricting with federal legislation banning gerrymandering. Continuing to pleasure ourselves with a moral code that Trump and his allies openly disregard with widespread disenfranchisement, is no longer tenable. Trump began this gerrymandering crisis by instructing Texas to find him five more Republican elected officials before the Midterm elections as his poll numbers reach historic lows. California has no choice but to counter-gerrymander and stop Trump’s scheme.

There is no question that the Democratic Party has no chance of victory in this gerrymandering war. There are more Republican-run states than Democratic-run states due to geography and population density. Republicans already practice gerrymandering to a greater extent than Democrats — 5 Democratic states are gerrymandered versus 14 Republican states. Red states do not have independent and fair redistricting commissions obstructing them like blue states usually do. The difference at this point is whether Democrats will be brave and counter-gerrymander and lose only 3 - 5 seats in Congress, or be cowardly and lose 8 or more before the 2026 midterms.

The other reason why Democrats shall lose the gerrymandering war is that the Census 2030 redistricting is looking horrible for California. California’s population is relatively stagnant by force due to the housing shortage, and jumps back and forth between declining or slight upticks. Texas and the South have seen tremendous population growth in the last 20 years, due to the high cost of living in California and New England, pushing families down to the South where Southern housing production outpaces expensive blue states.

As of the latest Census population estimates, Texas is on track to steal 3 Congressional seats from California in 2030, directly due to the fact that Texas has build tens of thousands more housing units than the Golden State.

Since 2000, Texas has outpaced California in home production. Although Texas relies heavily on enviromentally destructive suburban sprawl, Texas has been outpacing California in mutli-family housing in urban areas as well. No California metro area made the top ten in new apartment permits issued last year, while Houston, Austin and Dallas placed 2nd, 3rd and 4th place.

It was common around 2020 to see people brush this off by arguing that California and the coasts were exporting Democratic voters and turning red states into swing states. Writers like Charles M. Blow were making the case in the New York Times that Black middle class families living in northern states should return home to the South and create economic powerhouses, particularly in Georgia. In 2020 when Georgia went blue it certainly seemed viable.

Now that theory has blown up in liberal faces. The Republican Party is going all-in on disenfranchising voters to remain in power. Short of a federal ban on gerrymandering, many liberal voters of all races are going lose their voting power in red states. Still, the presence of a growing liberal population in the South is necessary for Republicans to continue sucking away congressional representation from blue states in the next Census. Thus, Democratic voters can be used as electoral meat shields to empower red states, even though their votes count for a fraction of rural voters. The voter export theory, like the demographics is destiny theory, has not only fallen short but has now severely backfired.

If coastal blue states had grown their populations, they’d be on track to bleed red, inland states of their congressional representation in 2030. Even if red states cheated with mid-decade redistricting per Trump’s orders, Democrats could at least get additional blue state congressional appointments later to compensate and then ban gerrymandering nationwide.

Nope!

Now, the South will turn blue state migrants into political meat shields for a permanent Republican minority government. So much for the theory that California’s housing crisis was turning red states into swing states. Even if that theory was true, whatever voting power Southern, Democratic cities were gaining from blue state origin population growth shall now be squeezed into one containment district, or cut into pieces to be outvoted by vast rural areas, which Texas now proposes.

It’s going to get even worse. The Republican Party now has open contempt for the Voting Rights Act, and any day now the Supreme Court will strike it down. Southern states will then re-instate congressional representation maps previously struck down as discriminatory by previous courts, citing the Voting Rights Act. Blue states have delivered Red states electoral power on a silver platter.

What’s California doing to combat this under our newly rejuvenated governor? This month, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed three new housing production bills into law. At the signing, Republican legislators emphasized repeatedly how they were defeating California by becoming more affordable and absorbing its population. Here’s a snippet from Republican state Senator Paul Bettencourt, laying it out: “We've got 340,000 units that we need to build and we're not going to wait around like California [whose leaders] drive their people away to other states. No, we want everyone to come and work in Texas and have a place to live.” It doesn’t make the news in California but it should if Californians were serious.

Texas GOP understands the assignment: steal congressional seats from California in 2030 and carve up districts to maximum political power. California’s so delusional that we’re at the half-time mark — just 5 years left till congressional re-appointment — and the largest city in our state still doesn’t understand it’s even in the game.

Number of homes permitted annually since 1980 (5-year average buckets). Note that while Greater Los Angeles and Greater Austin Texas have been comparable in home construction since 2010, Austin has 2.3 million people versus Greater L.A. at 13 million. The Houston Metro area has 7 million people.

Progress is being made. The California Democratic Party seems to understand the assignment, finally. Left-wing legislators on the LA City Council have been remarkably promising and clear-eyed on housing as of late.

But it’s probably too little, too late.

We’ll see if California is serious about protecting democracy by ending its exportation of working class families to the South, but California is certain to lose some amount of seats come 2030. California's electoral suicide cake’s already been baked. The best we can hope for is getting some population growth back to California before 2030, so we only lose 1-2 seats instead of 3 - 4.s.

Gavin Newsom plans on running for president in 2028 but he’ll have tough questions to answer for on California’s world-renowned unaffordability and the Californians pushed into homelessness (whose tents he’s now trashing) that worsened dramatically during his tenure in office. The very first thing Ron DeSantis attacked Newsom for on Fox News this week was the inability to issue building permits in the burned down area of Pacific Palisades. Newsom hasn’t had good answers for it when questioned about it either, and housing affordability will be an even bigger electoral issue in 2028 than it was in 2024.

Let’s be clear: the Republicans will add seats no matter what. There is no scenario here where Democrats will come out with favorable representation. We have two choices: either complete obliteration or a bruising retreat. Come November, do not be delusional and think that if California lets Texas cheat that no other red states would retaliate. Anyone arguing this unfortunately is unfit for leadership in any capacity in the party.

Democratic representatives in Red states are pleading with blue states to counteract Trump’s gerrymandering order. Any blue state Democrat sitting comfortably on the coast, reassured of their moral superiority and abandoning working-class people in Red states to feel good about themselves are unfit for office.

California has a lot of transformative work to do about how we reconcile our morals with our material reality, because our lawn signs don’t line up with our actions. This map, coupled with gerrymandering and the impending death of the Voting Rights Act, is the biggest threat to Democrats in recent political history. It should be plastered on every door in the California State Legislature.

The latest population projections showing mostly democratic states like New York and California losing congressional seats to rapidly growing, ruby red Texas and Florida.