Kevin Drum highlights a really regrettable defense of public schools that goes as follows. School systems are neighborhood-based, and so the benefit of good schools is capitalized into home prices. Households that care about education are willing to pay for good schools while those that don’t, aren’t. Freedom! Or something. Commenters on the post in question point out that some people would like to live in neighborhoods with good schools but can’t afford to, leading the author of the original argument, one Erik Kain to write:

You are troubled by the cases of people who value education highly but are still trapped in bad schools. I am troubled by these cases too, though I suspect that the number is smaller than imagined.

To reduce the number of such cases, how about this: since reforming schools is so inherently difficult, we should instead try to make housing more affordable even in the best school districts. I would consider first reforming zoning laws that restrict density and discourage/prohibit rental housing.

Kevin shrugs this off:

Sounds great! Let’s just build lots of affordable housing in nice, upscale suburban neighborhoods. I don’t imagine there will be any political problems associated with that. Should be a piece of cake.

Or, on a more serious note, we could fund poverty and educational interventions with proven track records, allow schools more leeway to deal with incorrigible students…

And so on. Kevin’s ideas for how to improve education are generally good ones, but I wish he would slow down for a minute and think about the issue of affordable housing a little harder. He’s clearly right that it’s anything but a piece of cake to build densely in suburban areas. Developers of infill projects game plan their sales pitches to low density neighborhoods for years, so certain is the appearance of some community opposition. And if you’re aiming for mixed-income housing, well, just prepare yourself for shouting at the community meetings.

But that doesn’t mean that the issue of affordable housing should just be forgotten. It’s really important. The quality of schools isn’t the only thing capitalized into the price of a home. So too is the value of neighborhood amenities, including things like public safety and convenient grocery stores. And of crucial importance to home values is access to employment centers, and the stronger the local labor market, the higher are home values. You’re not just paying for a building or a piece of land; you’re paying for a location that secures for you certain opportunities and a certain quality of life.

Now, folks who live in nice neighborhoods are very, very good at restricting building in their communities. This is true in urban and suburban neighborhoods. And what this means is that supply of homes in high quality areas is held down, and the price of living in the best neighborhoods is extraordinary. And so in the metropolitan areas that have the strongest economies — the Washingtons, Bostons, New Yorks, and San Franciscos — many households can only afford to live by accepting unfortunate conditions. They can opt to live in dilapidated buildings in neighborhoods with few conveniences and high crime levels. Or they can opt for safer communities with newer homes that are miles and miles away from employment centers.

For the poor, the problem is generally insoluble. Many are without reliable automobiles, and so they must live in areas that are either walkable or served by public transit. But the safe, upscale neighborhoods fitting those descriptions are the most expensive of all, and so the poor wind up stuck in ghettos, with crumbling housing, little to no access to fresh groceries, and poor educational options. As troubling, the poor may struggle to access jobs. During the bad old days of mass suburbanization, there were few jobs for unskilled workers in Washington and access to the suburbs, via public transit, was extremely limited. This is one reason why studies of gentrification often find that among the biggest beneficiaries of redevelopment are black residents with high school diplomas. Finally, the jobs have come to them, who were previously isolated away from opportunity. But of course, these opportunities only persist while neighborhoods continue to support a range of incomes.

Middle income households can, and do, get around the problem of unaffordable housing by moving to cheaper metropolitan areas. But this is problematic. Cheaper metropolitan areas aren’t as good at creating the highest paying jobs. Many are often built at much lower densities than the richer cities, which is bad for productivity, and which means that they can absorb far fewer new residents before bogging down in congestion and generally forcing people into awful commutes. And for the poor, wholesale relocation is often not an option. They simply lack the resources to move or to take up residence in a place that requires them to drive everywhere.

And none of the above begins to touch on questions of environmental costs. I just think it’s strange — and really troubling — that writers of all stripes shrug off the huge set of regulatory and legal restrictions that hold down housing supply and density in the country’s strongest economic centers. There are serious consequences to these rules, and we should take them seriously.