[quote=no_such_reality][quote=bearishgurl]
nsr, re: RIV Co, it is a classic case of the “chicken and the egg syndrome.” All that influx of hundreds of thousands of people would never have moved in there were it not for the abundance of cheap tract housing. In 1990, the bases were still very much alive but it didn’t have too much more “redeeming qualities” except tourism in select spots (Palm Sprs, La Quinta) .[/quote]
Well, I came in the 90s.
Nothing about CA housing was cheap comparatively, even at the bottom of the cycle in the 90s.
The CFDs didn’t cause the population boom. The California mystique did. It takes a few years for the reality versus mystique gap to become annoying.
Then those people flitter back when they realize the California they thought and the California that is, are two very different places. Meanwhile, Cali is importing poverty in droves.[/quote]
nsr, this “CA mystique” you talk about has been going on since the dawn of time. However, to non-residents, it only applies to “SF, Hollywood or SoCal beaches.”
Those three things are mostly what comes to mind when non-residents think of CA.
None of them are located within CFD’s.
The formation of the (now heavily-distressed) CFD’s (which were located at least 30 mi away from work centers) had the effect of redistributing poverty in CA from urban to exurban. In addition, it caused many enlisted military families (some non-residents) to decide to buy homes (to their detriment) when they could have instead availed themselves of military housing or taken the gov’t’s rental allowances on their paychecks. It also caused many longtime urban and suburban renters to buy houses who had no business becoming homeowners.
The development inside these distant CFD’s didn’t cause the longtime CA rural resident or non-resident to suddenly decide to move into them.
I have no doubt that many thousands who lost their homes in the IE DID “flitter back” to rent in their old ‘hoods in LA, Orange and SD Counties as the “commuting grind” had taken its toll on them by then.
Had the CFD’s never been formed, there would have been less rental vacancy and less on the market at any given time in CA’s populous counties (since their open space was preserved by their PTB).
Yes, SOME non-resident families would not have accepted jobs in CA because they couldn’t buy a *new* house. But that doesn’t mean CA “lost” a “taxpaying” resident as there are PLENTY of well-qualified locals EVERYWHERE in CA to take these jobs. If the CFD Act did not exist, SoCal counties would have been more like the Silicon Valley peninsula counties of SM Co and the northern part of SC Co, where there has been no room for subdivisions in the last 3+ decades, excepting Foster City (dredged out of the bay). Thus, the prices would have ALWAYS been higher for existing properties. And CA cities would not have had to file for BK because they wouldn’t have hired hundreds of extra employees in the first place!
Any boom/bust cycles would have been caused purely by greater US economic factors and would have been very short-lived, IMO.
Cali doesn’t need to “import poverty” and is not doing so. It already has enough homegrown (legal US-resident) poverty. Today’s “poverty” in the US and Cali is heavily disguised in Section 8 vouchers, free school lunches, Medi-Cal and CMS, Healthy Families, WIC, EBT cards, “lifeline” cell-phone plans, Head Start, DASH, 6 to 6 programs, private school discounts, etc, etc.
“Illegal” US residents are ineligible for these services.
Unlike in past generations, it is no longer very easy to determine who the “poor” actually are when out in public.
