The Fiscal Times

More Tea Party-chic than country club smug, Lancaster, a desert suburb an hour northeast of Los Angeles, is the gateway to the GOP heartland of California. This stucco retirement, military and bedroom community is not affluent. Like similarly planned communities in Arizona and Nevada, Lancaster's property values plummeted during the housing crisis, when unemployment spiked from 7.3 percent in 2007 to over 17 percent in 2010 and 2011.