At the local government level, I'm not sure there's enough consistency between local governments of the same party for this sort of analysis to really work. As you pointed out, Houston Democrats "aren't like" Oakland Democrats in the way they approach the problem, and as you eluded to and as everyone would know, their local housing situation, their state governments, their weather, their economics, etc.. are very, very different.
So I guess what I'm saying is national party-affiliation doesn't seem like the right lens through which to view what works on housing, because it's not "Dems" vs "Rs" it's "Houston Dems" vs "Oakland Dems".
The other major, major confounder is that virtually all cities are blue-run. There aren't enough Oklahoma Cities to work it out (and OKC is the most spare large city in America, it has tons of farmland in its limits). So any time an issue becomes an urban issue it will get associated with Dems.
Btw, the left-wing Danish government has rather famously stayed in power and kept generous social services of all kinds going by being very close-borders on immigration, something which the mayors of big cities don't really have control over, and will always be harder for the US to do even at the national level because of our very long borders and wealthier economy. It's very hard to find examples of countries with both more open borders and more generous social safety net than the US. I can't even think of one.
This is fair. Even in OKC, the Republicans there are relatively liberal by national Republican standards. The problem is the analysis is genuinely quite hard which is why one way or the other its difficult to characterize the urban homeless crisis as a blue city issue.
I could do pages of debate about whether social programs depend on closed borders or not. Practicality of open borders and generous social programs aside, its not like low immigration levels correlates with better social programs. Does it?
"The problem is the analysis is genuinely quite hard which is why one way or the other its difficult to characterize the urban homeless crisis as a blue city issue"
Right, and you include a lot of that in your post, and to me that's the whole thing. I think most of the Blue City / Red City analysis is kind of playing on the chosen turf of people making ridiculous twitter arguments about Dems and cities. It's fine as far as it goes, but hard to convince anyone of anything there, and most of the people making "Dems mess up cities" claims on twitter aren't going to be open-minded, analytical sorts anyways.
"its not like low immigration levels correlates with better social programs. Does it?"
Not strongly, but it's a complicated issue of causality.
I would claim that social programs help attract immigrants (and if you're a defender of the programs, I would think it would be especially hard to disagree), but high levels of immigrants often cause some level of resentment and pushback, either against the immigrants or the social programs themselves.
The main theories for "causes" of social programs are usually #1) Economic development, which allows for social programs - BUT incidentally - also attracts immigrants and #2) Homogenous national cultures, which can be defrayed by immigration.
So connecting those back to immigration, if the immigrants are raising the economic levels and assimilating, it probably doesn't hurt social programs and may even help. That's probably how I would describe immigrants in California, by and large. But, if they aren't raising the economy and aren't assimilating, they'll tend to push social programs support lower. That's how I would describe immigrants in Scandinavia and much of Northern / Western Europe.
I'd also describe Canada like California, but the recent issues with expanded immigration due to Diploma Mills and Family Chain Migration pushed things closer to the Scandinavia situation and predictably generated a backlash.
Thanks so much for putting this perspective out there. Here in Michigan my work has put me in touch with rural poverty many times, and it says something almost more shameful about our society that people living in these truly terrible conditions just out of sight are scarcely mentioned in political discourse. Rural America seems to be in a state of denial about itself in many ways. Feeling the pain of things they don’t want to fully admit are happening and Republicans seem to be feeding off of it without offering any real solutions.
At the local government level, I'm not sure there's enough consistency between local governments of the same party for this sort of analysis to really work. As you pointed out, Houston Democrats "aren't like" Oakland Democrats in the way they approach the problem, and as you eluded to and as everyone would know, their local housing situation, their state governments, their weather, their economics, etc.. are very, very different.
So I guess what I'm saying is national party-affiliation doesn't seem like the right lens through which to view what works on housing, because it's not "Dems" vs "Rs" it's "Houston Dems" vs "Oakland Dems".
The other major, major confounder is that virtually all cities are blue-run. There aren't enough Oklahoma Cities to work it out (and OKC is the most spare large city in America, it has tons of farmland in its limits). So any time an issue becomes an urban issue it will get associated with Dems.
Btw, the left-wing Danish government has rather famously stayed in power and kept generous social services of all kinds going by being very close-borders on immigration, something which the mayors of big cities don't really have control over, and will always be harder for the US to do even at the national level because of our very long borders and wealthier economy. It's very hard to find examples of countries with both more open borders and more generous social safety net than the US. I can't even think of one.
This is fair. Even in OKC, the Republicans there are relatively liberal by national Republican standards. The problem is the analysis is genuinely quite hard which is why one way or the other its difficult to characterize the urban homeless crisis as a blue city issue.
I could do pages of debate about whether social programs depend on closed borders or not. Practicality of open borders and generous social programs aside, its not like low immigration levels correlates with better social programs. Does it?
"The problem is the analysis is genuinely quite hard which is why one way or the other its difficult to characterize the urban homeless crisis as a blue city issue"
Right, and you include a lot of that in your post, and to me that's the whole thing. I think most of the Blue City / Red City analysis is kind of playing on the chosen turf of people making ridiculous twitter arguments about Dems and cities. It's fine as far as it goes, but hard to convince anyone of anything there, and most of the people making "Dems mess up cities" claims on twitter aren't going to be open-minded, analytical sorts anyways.
"its not like low immigration levels correlates with better social programs. Does it?"
Not strongly, but it's a complicated issue of causality.
I would claim that social programs help attract immigrants (and if you're a defender of the programs, I would think it would be especially hard to disagree), but high levels of immigrants often cause some level of resentment and pushback, either against the immigrants or the social programs themselves.
The main theories for "causes" of social programs are usually #1) Economic development, which allows for social programs - BUT incidentally - also attracts immigrants and #2) Homogenous national cultures, which can be defrayed by immigration.
So connecting those back to immigration, if the immigrants are raising the economic levels and assimilating, it probably doesn't hurt social programs and may even help. That's probably how I would describe immigrants in California, by and large. But, if they aren't raising the economy and aren't assimilating, they'll tend to push social programs support lower. That's how I would describe immigrants in Scandinavia and much of Northern / Western Europe.
I'd also describe Canada like California, but the recent issues with expanded immigration due to Diploma Mills and Family Chain Migration pushed things closer to the Scandinavia situation and predictably generated a backlash.
Thanks so much for putting this perspective out there. Here in Michigan my work has put me in touch with rural poverty many times, and it says something almost more shameful about our society that people living in these truly terrible conditions just out of sight are scarcely mentioned in political discourse. Rural America seems to be in a state of denial about itself in many ways. Feeling the pain of things they don’t want to fully admit are happening and Republicans seem to be feeding off of it without offering any real solutions.