So far, this has led many state politicians to call for doubling down on conventional means of providing affordable housing: using government subsidies to build homes for a relative handful of residents. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, however, believes the biggest impediment to affordable housing is the lack of new housing stock. He backs a plan to repeal regulations and allow 160,000 new dwellings to be built in his city.

Now there’s another prominent East Coast liberal weighing in with a similar view: Vox’s Matthew Yglesias, among the most influential policy wonks in liberal circles. Yglesias’ comments come in a discussion of Thomas Piketty’s ballyhooed book “Capital in the 21st Century” and the criticisms of it by MIT graduate student Matt Rognlie, which centered on Piketty not grasping the relevance of extreme housing costs to income inequality. Yglesias’ key point:

Yet if labor’s falling share of national income is entirely accounted for by the increased returns to housing capital, then it seems we should be looking at housing-specific trends to explain the problem. Rather than robots [taking away jobs], the problem is almost certainly snob zoning rules that prevent the construction of new affordable housing in expensive areas.

Rognlie cites work by economists Ed Glaeser, Joseph Ryorko, and Raven Saks to argue that exclusionary zoning practices have contributed greatly to lack of housing affordability and that this should be more central to the wealth inequality debate. Lawrence Summers, likewise, argued in a review of Capital that “an easing of land-use restrictions that cause the real estate of the rich in major metropolitan areas to keep rising in value” should be an important element of the policy agenda to address Piketty’s concerns.

East Coast vs. West Coast policy gap on housing as well as schools?

It is nothing new for Yglesias to make the point that more housing stock is badly needed. He’s been doing it for years, most notably in his book, “The Rent is Too Damn High.” But what’s interesting is how in this case he explicitly links income inequality to the modern regulatory state.

By contrast, many California Democrats argue that the impact and cost of regulations is exaggerated, starting with leading environmentalists.

When it comes to housing policy, we could see stark regional differences that amount to a replay of the education reform debate. East Coast liberals have been far more receptive to school reforms like teacher competency testing and use of metrics in measuring student and teacher performance than West Coast liberals. Massachusetts arguably has the best-run public education system in the nation, and its landmark education reform measure was adopted in 1993.

There’s also a long history of East Coasters understanding that union interests are not aligned with student interests. In Woody Allen’s 1973 movie “Sleeper,” about a New Yorker in suspended animation who wakes up 200 years in the future, the lead character learns that America was destroyed when “a madman named Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear weapon.”

The joke was aimed at New Yorkers, many of whom loathed a teachers union leader named Albert Shanker who led a 55-day citywide teachers’ strike in 1968. This New York Times obit of Shanker reflects on the strike’s rancor and mentions the “Sleeper” reference.

The prime cause of the strike was Shanker’s objection to a pilot program in which local communities were allowed to take over three struggling schools in minority neighborhoods. Nearly a half-century later, similar issues are at play in the Vergara case involving Los Angeles schools. The lawsuit centers on the plaintiffs’ claim that union-backed state laws protect teachers and hurt struggling minority students.

That didn’t sway the Legislature, which passed AB 484 — the legislation Duncan ripped — or Gov. Jerry Brown, who praised the Legislature for its approval and whose aides helped craft the CTA- and CFT-blessed bill.

So what does the Obama administration do? Education reform has arguably been the single strongest policy initiative of the president, reflecting an unusual willingness to take on teachers unions, a core Dem constituency. And Obama is also a lame duck, with no election on the horizon. He can do a Nixon-goes-to-China thing if he wants and stake out for history his support of the common-sense idea that bad teachers need to be weeded out of public schools.

But no. It’s easier to duck a fight, the Los Angeles Times reports.

“Duncan toned down his recent criticism of California in an interview with The Times, calling his previous threat to withhold federal funding from the state over a new plan to test students a ‘last resort.’

“‘We want to be flexible, we want to be thoughtful,’ Duncan said. ‘We don’t want to be stuck. There are lots of different things happening across the country. I don’t want to be too hard and fast on any one of these things because I have not gone through every detail, every permutation.'”

From critic to supplicant in one week

Duncan wasn’t done yet with his kowtowing.

“He also praised the efforts of California and specifically Gov. Jerry Brown to adopt high academic standards and move quickly to new and improved standardized tests.

“‘I give the governor tremendous credit,’ Duncan said. ‘He’s worked really, really hard’ in moving to new and rigorous learning goals. ‘He’s put real resources behind that.'”

Groan. How can the Obama administration give California credit for anything on the education front? As the Times article notes …

“Duncan’s department and California have been at odds at times over the high-profile Race to the Top grants and waivers from onerous provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The state lost out on both because of its unwillingness to mandate the use of standardized test scores in teacher evaluations.”

A 1971 state law MANDATES that student performance be part of teacher evaluations. So when the Brown administration refuses the carrot in the Obama administration’s carrot-and-stick approach, it’s not just keeping federal dollars from California and blocking reform — it’s breaking state law!

Does the Times point out this ridiculous contradiction? Nope. Why? Who knows?

East Coast media more cynical about teacher unions

The West Coast media continue to lag the East Coast media in their coverage of teacher unions and education policy. They’re only about 30 percent cynical. The East Coast media have been 80 percent cynical for decades. Do you know about Woody Allen’s 1973 movie “Sleeper”?

Woody Allen’s 1973 science fiction comedy Sleeper depicted teacher union leader Albert Shanker as a madman who destroyed the world …

That’s real-life Amercian Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker, not a made-up character, who brought chaos to New York public schools in the 1960s. We have plenty of Shankers out here.