The Houston Independent School District announced a large drop in student enrollment this year, as did most major cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Denver. While many blue states are just losing population entirely, even some red state cities, such as Houston, are losing children to surrounding suburbs. If cities are going to survive financially, they can’t just become playgrounds for the young and the rich. They need to become places where families with children can grow and thrive. And cities have tremendous power to change their policies to make this happen.
The family exodus is not mysterious. Parents are leaving because housing is too expensive, public disorder makes daily life family unfriendly, and public schools do not offer a safe environment where children can learn. Families are not seeking perfection. They are asking for normalcy: attainable housing, safe streets, and functioning schools.
Cities don’t need to wait for Washington to become more livable. Start with housing. Many cities, especially those in blue states, impose counterproductive policies that actually raise prices by decreasing supply, which is exactly what rent control and affordable housing mandates do. Repealing these regulations would be a good first step toward housing affordability.
Cities also need to make it easier to add density by allowing more duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and townhomes. If a project meets objective rules, it should be approved automatically. Finally, stop taxing construction into scarcity. Development impact fees, exactions, and linkage fees are sold as “making developers pay their fair share,” but they function as a surcharge on every unit that guarantees fewer units get built. Cities should reduce or repeal these fees rather than trying to shake down builders for affordability.
On safety, families want more than low crime, which is falling. They also want order. Parks where children can play, sidewalks that feel normal, and transit that doesn’t feel like a gamble. Cities must enforce bans on public drug use and camping in public spaces. Open-air encampments are a public health disaster and a criminal ecosystem. Third, cities must clean up transit. Families will not ride trains where fare evasion and disorder are routine. That means fare enforcement, removal authority for repeat offenders, bans on sleeping on platforms and trains, and visible security.
Finally, cities will have to improve their public schools. Parents will tolerate a lot, but they will not gamble their children’s futures on schools that are unsafe and unserious. The first reform should be basic restore discipline, including truancy enforcement. Schools can’t teach children who are not there, and they can’t educate when disruption is allowed to rule the classroom.
Second, teach reading the proven way, phonics, and explicit instruction. Follow the “Mississippi Miracle.” Literacy is the gateway skill. Without it, everything else is theater. Third, end union rules that block accountability. Principals should control hiring, and ineffective teachers must be removable. Public education can remain public, but it can’t remain a system built to protect adults first.
IF DEMOCRATS WON’T PROTECT CHRISTIANS, TRUMP SHOULD
Cities can stop bleeding families if they stop attacking the conditions families need. Repeal rent control and affordability mandates, legalize building, stop taxing construction, enforce public order, remove encampments, clean up transit, restore discipline in schools, teach children to read, and make adults accountable for results.
Cities don’t need to become playgrounds for the young and the rich. They should be vital engines of economic growth that are open to everyone, including young men and women who want to start and grow families. But if city leaders keep protecting government unions and nonprofit special interest groups, families will keep taking their children, ingenuity, paychecks, and tax dollars elsewhere.
