From NPR:
Americans Are On The Move, But In The Wrong Direction
Moving to San Bernardino from Los Angeles may help with housing costs, but the area doesn't have much economic opportunity.
Jamika lives in a two-story apartment complex surrounded by a 10-foot-high security gate in San Bernardino, Calif. The yellow paint on the buildings' outside walls is peeling.
She doesn't want to use her full name. She doesn't want too many people to know about her situation.
Jamika and her siblings had to leave the house her family was renting in South Central L.A. when the property went into foreclosure. With money so tight, Jamika moved to San Bernardino, along with three of her siblings.
All around the country, the cost of housing is driving people out of places with the most economic opportunity, like L.A. They, like Jamika, are leaving cities with better job markets in search of a cheaper place to live.
That is, like, part of The Plan. I mean, perhaps it should have been a giveaway when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti drove Jamika and her three siblings to San Bernardino personally and helped lug their couch up the stairs. *
Jamika, who works in food service at a nearby hospital, says she probably won't go back to L.A.
In San Bernardino, she says, she can actually save some money. And she says there's no way she could do that in Los Angeles.
Cheap To Live, Tough To Work
Between 2007 and 2011, more people moved from Los Angeles County to San Bernardino County than between any other county-to-county pair in the nation.
The median home value in San Bernardino County is about $235,000, according to the real estate company Zillow. In L.A County, it's almost twice that. So it makes sense that people would move here to save money on housing.
In the city of San Bernardino, where Jamika lives, not much looks good besides the housing prices.
"San Bernardino is bankrupt," says City Council member Jim Mulvihill. "Because of that, we've cut back. We had 340 on our police force, now we're down to 240. And given all that, we've had a high crime rate."
* Just kidding (I think).
I thought NPR was for smart people. This seems pretty obtuse. Sure, there's more economic opportunity in Los Angeles for folks like Mark Suster, whose portfolio company Maker Studios was just bought out by Disney. But, obviously, there's not more economic opportunity for Jamika, because, if there were a high-paying job for her in Los Angeles, she wouldn't have left to work in a hospital cafeteria in San Bernardino.
ReplyDeleteIt helps to get jobs at NPR if your name is Shapiro.
DeleteObtuse economic reporting has a Shapiro Quotient. Much like a bombing has a Mohammed Quotient.
It isn't just inner city NAMs. I'm a younger GenXer living in Seattle, and the majority of people I grew up with left for cheaper options. Those who stayed are either childless or held off on kids until near 40. The ones leading comfortable lives generally inherited property from family in the city.
ReplyDeleteReasonable houses cost over 500k and rent for a family-sized apartment in a "good neighborhood" starts at around $2,000/month. Add the lack of job security to that, and it's a risky place for all but single professionals and DINKs. San Francisco, which I just visited, is even worse.
Eastern Washington is looking a lot better to me, despite the lack of "opportunity." You'd live better out there on 75% of the pay. Also, here in WA, unlike California, the less diverse the population the cheaper the housing (in general). Leaving the city looks like a twofer.
Property inheritance is a key factor in hanging on.
DeleteMy grandparents had a lovely house with 4 bedrooms in Oxford and fucking well sold it in 1989! If it had been kept in the family it could have paid for college/grad schools for each of 4 grandchildren.
Now Tarquin rents it out to Penelope and her chums.
Jamika is saving up money despite working a low-wage job. That's why she doesn't want "too many people" to know about her situation.
ReplyDeleteSounds like there's enough economic opportunity for her, just not an army of leeching friends and relatives. She's an up-and-outer. They aren't all poor whites.
... Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti drove Jamika and her three siblings to San Bernardino personally and helped lug their couch up the stairs.
ReplyDelete"Non-sequitur, non-sequitur!"
Dave Pinsen said: I thought NPR was for smart people.
ReplyDeleteHunsdon said: You've gotta be pretty smart to be that dumb.
As others have said, clearly Jamika is making a good economic decision for her family. Even saying there is more opportunity in LA is misleading because you have to consider the net income. There is less opportunity in LA for most people, especially people like Jamika. The only people who gain from Jamika making more and spending more is the government, because then they get to take more.
ReplyDelete"The median home value in San Bernardino County is about $235,000, according to the real estate company Zillow." If you ask me, that's pretty steep for San Berdoo...
ReplyDelete"All around the country, the cost of housing is driving people out of places with the most economic opportunity, like L.A. They, like Jamika, are leaving cities with better job markets in search of a cheaper place to live."
ReplyDeleteWhat need for opportunity when they got welfare?
This explains the drop in crime in L.A. Jamikas are leaving.
ReplyDelete"Eastern Washington is looking a lot better to me, despite the lack of "opportunity." You'd live better out there on 75% of the pay. Also, here in WA, unlike California, the less diverse the population the cheaper the housing (in general). Leaving the city looks like a twofer"
ReplyDeleteI've two sets of friends in Eastern WA who left the Seattle area for sunshine.
They're much happier. The constant gloom and rain of Seattle makes for lush greenery and mushy brains, not the only reason for the silly "progressivism" of the place.
So there's "more economic opportunity" in LA but people are moving away because they can make more money (net) elsewhere? What?
ReplyDeleteWhat you have to understand is that liberals LOVE cities. Like, really really really love them. They love them so much they can't understand why anyone could possibly not want to live there. Seriously.
ReplyDeleteOn top of that, they have a rather antiquated view of what kind of economic opportunities a city actually holds. They seem to still think it's 100 years ago and big cities were teeming with factories always in need of uneducated schmoes.
And they call us old fashioned.
My idea for NYC is for it to purchase a wasted Upstate city, and there are many(say Kingston), and make it NYC's Sixth Borough! Then move all public housingites up to the exciting acquisition. The Times can laud them as pioneers.
ReplyDeleteThis is happening in other cities too. Wealthy developers from the nice part of town build apartment complexes in ring counties, which quickly get filled with voucher-bearing Section 8 tenants. The locals in these areas are only beginning to notice and are appalled by it. If people let progressives build bus stops or commuter trains in their suburb or exurb, they are unwittingly allowing the necessary infrastructure for big city elites to move their generally car-less underclass out to them. You even have some developers write newspaper editorials describing a need for legally binding cross-county "regional planning" that mention Detroit and the Atlanta Braves new suburban stadium being built north of town. Cant have that, so we must spread diversity out to the sticks.
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteYou are missing the true meaning of the term 'The Plan' unless that has changed over the years.
I first became aware of the term as it is used in the Black community when some of my black coworkers referred to The Plan. I was confused as to what it meant and they explained, 'white people have a plan to keep black people down. To keep us poor and on drugs and keep us in bad neighborhoods.'
I am paraphrasing because it was almost thirty years ago. I said, "I've never even heard of such a thing and I am and was poorer than most of you. I grew up with an outhouse for goodness sakes!"
They became a little embarrassed and said, 'we don't mean white people like you. You're like us. They're trying to keep you down too.'
Now I got along very well with my coworkers nearly all of them black and they semi-adopted me as one of their own. They joked I had to have black ancestry due to certain physical features. I heard quite a lot over the years about The Plan and 'The Uprising'. I believe 'The Plan' listed in wiki is probably deliberately incomplete and doesn't include what blacks believe to be the full 'Plan'.
Bill,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you do for a living? That will help determine where in Eastern Washington you'd like to look at.
Also some areas are much greener than others. I like the high desert areas but not everyone feels the same.
This demographic change is visible within San Bernardino County itself, as well as Riverside County and the San Gabriel Valley part of LA County, too. The nice parts (Redlands, Upland, parts of Riverside) are getting wealthier (and whiter) even during the endless recession, and the rest of these counties (San Berdoo itself, Rialto, Fontana, Covina, etc.) are descending into a South LA level of dystopian dysfunction.
ReplyDeleteThe good news is, if you extrapolate the trends we see in the west San Gabriel Valley, eventually unchecked Chinese immigration will gentrify the area so much that our imported peasant class will have to move again (see, e.g., Rosemead, Temple City, Arcadia).
Say hi to Potato-Head Bobby ...
ReplyDeleteIf you ask me, that's pretty steep for San Berdoo...
ReplyDeleteVeiled Creedence reference!
Saw the gypsy man, 'way down in San Berdoo.
Well I saw the gypsy man, 'way down in San Berdoo.
Five dollars on the table, Ooh,
Keep me 'way from my tomb.
One of the greatest of the lesser known Creedence songs. Love the part where Fogarty hits the same single guitar note 32 times in a row. Whoo!
Anonymous 8:51 AM "My idea for NYC is for it to purchase..." And incorporate it into the city? Those people would then be entitled to *representation.* No, what is *already* happening is that people are handed Section 8 housing vouchers and put on the bus to Newburgh. And then they're someone else's problem. Bloomburg boasted about reducing the city welfare rolls--how do you think he did it? A few short years ago, Orange County was the fastest growing county in the state--and where were most of the newcomers coming from? The Bronx.
ReplyDeleteYou are seeing this in part of Orange County too, a battle of the Chinese influx vs. the pushed out of Long Beach South Central Black influx.
ReplyDeleteI don't see much happiness and rainbows among the Chinese and Blacks in Orange County. Particularly since the Chinese are mostly mainlanders connected to the Communist Party who want a bolt-hole and are not known for multicultural enthusiasms.
"They became a little embarrassed and said, 'we don't mean white people like you. You're like us. They're trying to keep you down too.'"
ReplyDeleteI'd think that is funny except the last time the US ran a trade surplus was 1975. The last time wages ("median compensation", to be precise) kept up with productivity growth was 1973. Your black coworkers were on to something.
"My idea for NYC is for it to purchase a wasted Upstate city, and there are many(say Kingston), and make it NYC's Sixth Borough! Then move all public housingites up to the exciting acquisition. The Times can laud them as pioneers"
ReplyDeleteNewburgh would be better for that. It's already a ghetto.
The IE is also becoming a mini-India (or Philippines) here in Los Angeles' backyard. LA continues to host swanky business professionals while the distasteful and unfashionable clerical forces can be shipped about 50 miles inland.
ReplyDeleteThe pay scale in Ontario is a fraction of what it might be in Hollywood or Toluca Lake or Century City or even Santa Monica.
"Dave Pinsen said...
ReplyDeleteI thought NPR was for smart people."
NPR is for people who think they are smart. The sort of people who will maintain that IQ is unimportant while at the same time insisting that theirs' is higher than yours'.
Whiskey used a term I'd never encountered before - 'bolthole'. Would most literate people over 50 know this term?
ReplyDeleteMick said -
ReplyDeleteWhiskey used a term I'd never encountered before - 'bolthole'. Would most literate people over 50 know this term?
Yes I am over fifty and the word used to be more common. I imagine it has fallen out of favor over the last few decades.
Perhaps Steve could work his magic to see if the word is becoming more commonly used as people have been preparing for some form of society wide disaster?