Y-a-a-a-w-n … Ironically, as I was going through bookshelves in my study last week to see if I could gather a pile to donate, I ran across this keeper (circa the “gulf war malaise”):
[img_assist|nid=16133|title=Special Issue – Time Magazine|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=447|height=600]
[img_assist|nid=16134|title=Table of Contents November 18, 1991|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=436|height=600]
This issue has been debated over and over again for the last 30 years or so.
I decided to open it up and read the interview with then Gov Pete Wilson and the chapter on “Environment” called Gobbling up the Land. Even back then, in an era when nearly every single proposition/referendum was summarily rejected by state voters, our PTB practically all over the state found Big Development and their backroom bribes just too tempting to pass up from the time of this printing forward.
Piggs complaining that there are too many gov’mt workers and too many workers vested in defined benefit pensions need only to look to your local elected officials who voted in CFD after CFD in multiple layers radiating out from city cores but all, of course, in need of continuing “services.” Thus, we now have before us the hellish nightmare of urban sprawl (much of it currently “underwater” and otherwise “distressed”).
Wilson was extremely troubled by the exodus of producing taxpayers from CA and the entrance of immigrants (with little resources of their own) in their place. He lambasted conflicting Federal laws which state both that an illegal immigrant is ineligible for any government services/benefits and ALSO that ALL resident children are legally entitled to a public education, no matter what their immigration status. He talked about CA public school teachers having to take on many more roles for this population than they were hired for. In a nutshell, he stated the relentless influx of new immigrants and their children and the refusal of voters to pay more taxes would eventually cause the state’s residents to wrestle with some very difficult decisions. Wilson’s prognostications have sadly now come to fruition.
There are so many things in the OP’s article that Kotkin pointed out that I think are terribly skewed but I’ll just stick with his “young family being priced out of coastal RE” argument and his “entrenched native” counter-argument.
I think the “real” problem with the vast majority of “young families” today making good money but complaining about where they have to live and what they have to live in is that they have much greater housing expectations than transplants who first moved here 20+ years ago. These young parents are no longer willing to live in a “starter home” in a “starter neighborhood” or even a well-established “working-class” or “retired” neighborhood. They want new construction <5 miles from the beach for their first house straight out of the gate! The vast majority of “entrenched CA natives” have in the past and are living today in much, much less than what a “newcomer” expects, ESP if they have “inherited” their parents home and have decided to make it their principal residence. Very few CA residents actually send their kids to private school. It is a small fraction of children overall, in the single digits. I can’t understand how worker-bee newcomers to CA would be focused on that, what with all their other relocation and job concerns. Private school is not a necessity.
“Young families” who made good wages in the 70’s and 80’s simply bought a home near relatives (if they had any here) and sent their children to public school without further ado. I myself worked alongside these employees with young families for many years and was in this demographic myself. Even the “professionals” I worked with bought homes in Spring Valley, El Cajon, College area, Chula Vista, Escondido, etc and sent their kids to public school and there were very few zone and interdistrict transfers issued back then. They did NOT expect to buy their first home in Coronado or La Jolla!
Kotkin even states a Utah family making $200K today would likely have to send their child to public school! What is he “lamenting” here, exactly?
Because of CA’s unchecked urban sprawl of the last 20 years, many new residents are now thoroughly confusing themselves with a plethora of housing choices all over the map, which have caused their housing expectations to soar thru the roof!
Kotkin would do well to jog his memory a bit back to ’72, when he was likely living in a rat-infested 2 br Berkeley walkup with 3 other guys or his first 1150 sf Oakland “bungalow” in ’78 (where he lived when his first child was born, lol), and ask himself if HIS expectations as a newly-minted college graduate and new parent were the same as those similarly-situated residents of today.
