The Places That May Never Recover From the Recession

[llamaorama]

I know this is an Unpopular opinion with a capital U and impossible in the current political climate, but I think they should build a giant ass 12 lane freeway over the mountains between Lake Elsinore and Rancho Santa Margarita.

On one side of a narrow but unpassable natural barrier is a massive amount of employment demand and virtually no affordable housing, on the other side is a vast oversupply of housing and unemployed people. Gee....

The environment can just get over it.

[mhays]

Or, how about letting the side with the jobs grow. No reason to say screw the world and do stupid things.

[ocman]

Originally Posted by mhays

Or, how about letting the side with the jobs grow. No reason to say screw the world and do stupid things.

Because the stupid thing is that the side with the jobs refuses to grow.


In LA, a house costs $650,000, $760,000 in OC, and every new housing development is luxury condos with $400 HOAs, and TODs affordable housing developments are, like, 25 units.

No wonder people go further and further out. It’s not by choice. All of coastal southern California forces them out through an almost criminal restriction of the housing supply. People can’t afford to live in these job centers even with a job. The “norm” of having your home value increasing 150K in a couple years is not sane. SoCal enables a housing market where you buy a house with the intention of making bank when you resell it a couple years later. And those saving money for their first house just can’t catch up.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by ocman

Because the stupid thing is that the side with the jobs refuses to grow.

Not true. LA and OC continue to grow, but are already too big, with insane traffic and too many people everywhere, so obviously there's resistance to even more homes. There are 18 million+ people living in basically a desert, with barely any water.

My aunt fought against a proposed 5,000 home development that would have decimated her quality of life. It's now Crystal Cove State Park, which is gorgeous and open to all. If people didn't mobilize it would be a nightmare of tacky "Mediterranean" mansions and endless traffic jams.

[Easy]

Originally Posted by Crawford

My aunt fought against a proposed 5,000 home development that would have decimated her quality of life.

Of course she did. Get there first and shut the gate behind you. It’s the american way.

[Easy]

Originally Posted by montréaliste

Nothing a cookie-cutter slash wire cutter won't handle.

The gate in the photo isn’t the gate that they live behind. They’d have a substantial fence/gate. You’re a little smug to have not been able to figure that out.

[Easy]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

who cares? some cheap-2000s built exurb hours from anywhere, literally in the desert?

Heartless people on this forum. It’s not just homes, you know. There are actual people inside of them just trying to do the best for their family the way that you or I would. Yes moving there was probably a mistake, but as the article points out for people with marginal educations and incomes options are limited.

[llamaorama]

I suppose even if there was an effort to increase the supply of housing by changing zoning restrictions, progress would be excruciatingly slow. Like, every year a 140 unit low rise apartment block built on a former mall parking lot appears. Woo, at that rate there will be enough housing in only 500 years!

Every square inch of buildable land in Orange County is more or less already built on or has something planned. And its all unsuited to any kind of density, being mostly made up of cul-de-sac subdivisions and the like. Like the horribly unambitious and low density redevelopment of the military bases in Tustin and El Toro.

Also are some kinds of density more or less naturally affordable than others? Older cities in the East Coast and Midwest with a great deal of small lot rowhouses, bungalows, small apartments, etc can be affordable. But can West Coast style point towers ever be affordable, even if supply and demand equilibriate and there is a filtering/trickle down effect? Or will they turn into poorly maintained dumps due to the natural costs of upkeep of a high rise combined with the monolithic single owner/condo status?

Heartless people on this forum. It’s not just homes, you know. There are actual people inside of them just trying to do the best for their family the way that you or I would. Yes moving there was probably a mistake, but as the article points out for people with marginal educations and incomes options are limited.

Or they move out of California completely, to even more sprawling and environmentally unfriendly places like Houston.

I mean how dare some hardworking and moderately skilled person who'd dare call themselves 'middle class' if they lived literally anywhere else have a reasonable quality of life?

I guess if you can't get on the waiting list for your government subsidized affordable studio apartment in a mixed use development in Santa Monica you are a bad person for living in such a place like Riverside County.

[ChrisLA]

Originally Posted by Easy

the article points out for people with marginal educations and incomes options are limited.

I know plenty of people with six figures living in areas like these. It just proves how expensive it’s gotten to live in Southern California. I work with some in this income range that commute from Riverside county everyday to Camarillo in Ventura county because housing has gotten so expensive.

One colleague I had a conversation with recently said she gets home at 8pm and sometimes 9pm after getting off of work at 4pm. I thought my commute was bad at 45 minutes to 1 hour.

I live in an expensive area, but I rent a small townhouse, and my landlord is charging me way less than others ($800-$1000) of comparable properties in this complex. My wife and I are making a nice salary, but we certainly cannot afford to buy in this area, or near our job. If we wanted to buy, it would have to move far away, or down in south central in a high crime area. Now days even Watts is unaffordable to those with higher education and a decent salary. Those days are gone in Los Angeles.

[dubu]

Originally Posted by Easy

Heartless people on this forum. It’s not just homes, you know. There are actual people inside of them just trying to do the best for their family the way that you or I would. Yes moving there was probably a mistake, but as the article points out for people with marginal educations and incomes options are limited.

The kids are going to hate it if they don’t have a car. I didn’t have a car and kids now drive less. I could barrow a car to get to work but the rest of the time I was walking miles to get to a bus stop. I don’t think there’s heartless people on the forum they actually car about other people

[jd3189]

Stuff like this reminds me that we as a nation cannot depend on a few top metros for future growth. It's good that California's metros are very desirable and growing, but when people are forced to live like this, I start to ask what's the point?

This country has a lot of other cities, many asking for people to move in. Yes, California has the best weather and all, but it isn't the only place that exists. Same goes for NYC at this point as well.


Widespread development will not work because it will be too slow and NIMBYs don't want it. The only things left are far off suburbs like this, mass transit between coastal and inland California, more new dense development in the Central Valley, or leaving the state all together.

[mhays]

Orange county could growth massively if they'd allow it. A sizable percentage of the developed area can be easily redeveloped. Every strip mall and low-density rental complex is a chance for 200 units per acre plus some commercial use. Even some houses would be good candidates for redevelopment if not controlled by associations.

This isn't empty theory. This sort of redevelopment happens...it's actually fairly common in LA.

[Easy]

Originally Posted by ChrisLA

I know plenty of people with six figures living in areas like these. It just proves how expensive it’s gotten to live in Southern California. I work with some in this income range that commute from Riverside county everyday to Camarillo in Ventura county because housing has gotten so expensive.

One colleague I had a conversation with recently said she gets home at 8pm and sometimes 9pm after getting off of work at 4pm. I thought my commute was bad at 45 minutes to 1 hour.

I live in an expensive area, but I rent a small townhouse, and my landlord is charging me way less than others ($800-$1000) of comparable properties in this complex. My wife and I are making a nice salary, but we certainly cannot afford to buy in this area, or near our job. If we wanted to buy, it would have to move far away, or down in south central in a high crime area. Now days even Watts is unaffordable to those with higher education and a decent salary. Those days are gone in Los Angeles.

I guess. But we likely have different ideas of what a “decent salary” is if you think that a decent salary can’t afford Watts. The people that I know that have moved to the exurbs can all afford to live in LA. They moved to get that huge house with a big yard. Trying to live their american dream. I try to tell them that’s the wrong move. That white people and the money that follows are moving towards the city, but they act like I’m crazy. 😂

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Easy

Of course she did. Get there first and shut the gate behind you. It’s the american way.

It's not the "American way", it's the way of anyone who cares about their community.

Crystal Cove is absolutely spectacular. It's public land, forever. You would have to be insane to prefer a bunch of hideous McMansions and highways over unspoiled Pacific coastline.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Easy

I guess. But we likely have different ideas of what a “decent salary” is if you think that a decent salary can’t afford Watts. The people that I know that have moved to the exurbs can all afford to live in LA. They moved to get that huge house with a big yard. Trying to live their american dream. I try to tell them that’s the wrong move. That white people and the money that follows are moving towards the city, but they act like I’m crazy. ������

Economically you are probably correct and certainly not crazy but there are more than economicl reasons to want the room and safety and, usually, good schools etc of the suburbs. The correctness of your viewpoint in strictly ecnomic terms was pretty well proven in 2008/2009 when foreclosures and municpal bankrupticies in places like Stockton in the exurbs greatly outnumbered those in larger coastal cities (where there were NO bankruptices).

But still some people simply prefer the lifestyle and other attractions away from urban issues that most of the people on this site tolerate comfortably or even value.

[BnaBreaker]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I can't recall a thread that elicited so much blatantly elitist comment in this forum. It's true that these homes were probably not good investments for those who bought them but many of those people probably had little choice. They needed the room and simply couldn't afford homes with the room they needed closer to downtowns in major coastal metros.

It's so smug to simply say these places shouldn't have existed. And it's much more complicated. If you ask the question why they are filled with empty and rented homes, you find that in many cases it was because the original buyers couldn't afford to buy even here and shouldn't have gotten the toxic mortgage to do so. If you go further and ask why they did get it, you find a mixture of greed on the part of lenders and government policy that encouraged home ownership by people who should have remained renters.

One bit of the article attracted my attention: "After investors bought up single-family homes and rented them out in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Arizona, the neighborhoods had more service calls to police about violent crime. — The problem is not the influx of renters, necessarily, but instead the absentee landlords who don’t keep up homes. "

That's probably just wrong. The recession actually brught forth a whole new industry which was/is corporate ownership of large number of rental single family homes. There are now several REITs listed on the NYSE in this business where before the recession there were none. And these companies have both the finances and the management expertise to maintain their properties probably better than the Mom/Pop investors who formerly dominated this business. My guess is the vacant, boarded up properties are just that: foreclosed, empty and owned by a bank not in the rental home business but that just wants to be rid of them because it does NOT have the ability to manage them.

If you think it's "elitist" to suggest that we should build communities in environments that can actually sustain them, then so be it. But no amount of feigned outrage on your part will change the fact that there is very little water in the desert.

[ocman]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Not true. LA and OC continue to grow, but are already too big, with insane traffic and too many people everywhere, so obviously there's resistance to even more homes. There are 18 million+ people living in basically a desert, with barely any water.

My aunt fought against a proposed 5,000 home development that would have decimated her quality of life. It's now Crystal Cove State Park, which is gorgeous and open to all. If people didn't mobilize it would be a nightmare of tacky "Mediterranean" mansions and endless traffic jams.

LA/OC has enough land magnitudes bigger than NYC which itself supports almost 9 million people. LA, especially, already has the bones where it can transition to high density structures. The “too big to grow” LA narrative is just fiction. The population restriction to decrease water usage is also fiction (the water issues have never really been about city water usage, as much as exporting 80% of water in the form of agriculture. LA water use also declined with population growth since the 1980s) The idea that if you stop building, then the population will decrease, is another fiction, and never works.

California is actually decreasing resource efficiency by pushing people out to these areas in the desert rather than meeting their needs so they can live in the city. It’s in the state’s best interest environmentally and economically to provide housing in job centers rather than restrict it.

[mhays]

Water is an issue on some level, but it's down my list. Paving wilderness, inefficient and polluting transportation, and off-the-charts resource use are my larger problems with it.

[ocman]

Originally Posted by Easy

I guess. But we likely have different ideas of what a “decent salary” is if you think that a decent salary can’t afford Watts. The people that I know that have moved to the exurbs can all afford to live in LA. They moved to get that huge house with a big yard. Trying to live their american dream. I try to tell them that’s the wrong move. That white people and the money that follows are moving towards the city, but they act like I’m crazy. ������

Regardless, it’s Watts. If Watts is LA’s best defense that there are areas in LA where housing is still attainable as long as you ignore violent crime, that says a lot.

[Sun Belt]

It's strange that the article singled out Hemet of all places, so let's highlight Hemet.

The city continues to change.
Hispanic: 2000: 23%, 2016: 41%
White: 2000: 70%, 2016: 44%
Black: 2000: 2.4%, 2016: 7.2%

There are 4.3 million people in the MSA, up from 3.2 million in 2000. By 2046, there will be 7.2 million people in the Inland Empire and it will be a top 10 metropolitan region in the US.

From 2000 to 2016 Hemet grew by 36.1%, slower than the rest of Riverside County, but still steady growth and is forecasted to continue with strong growth over the coming decades. Metrolink commuter rail has been expanding in the IE with connections to LA and OC.

Since 2000, Hemet has become younger. The 65+ age group experienced the greatest decline decreasing from 33.1 to 22.2 percent. 21-34 age group saw the largest increase growing from 14.3 to 17.4 percent.

The median home price is easily half that of nearby Orange County.

Climate is typical inland southern Calif. Hot dry summers, cool wet winters. Average high temp 81 with about 12" of rain (or about 3x the amount of rain in Palm Springs, slightly less than LA).