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from the need-more-land-where-the-water-is dept.
California's Central Valley is best known for supplying nearly 25% of the country's food, including 40% of the fruit and nuts consumed each year. Yet today, backcountry places such as Patterson, population 22,000, are experiencing an increase in homelessness that can be traced, in part, to an unlikely sounding source: Silicon Valley.
The million-dollar home prices about 85 miles west, in San Francisco and San Jose, have pushed aspiring homeowners to look inland. Patterson's population has doubled since the 2000 census. Average monthly rents have climbed from about $900 in 2014 to nearly $1,600 in recent months, according to the apartment database Rent Jungle, compounding the hardships of the foreclosure crisis, the shuttering of several local agricultural businesses and surging substance abuse rates.
"The rents in Patterson are crazy," said Romelia Wiley, program manager of the local not-for-profit organization Community Housing & Shelter Services. "Why? I-5."
The freeway offers commuters access to high-paying job centers near the coast, and the number of people commuting to the Bay Area from the portion of the Central Valley that includes Patterson more than doubled between 1990 and 2013, to about 65,000 people, or at least 15% of the local workforce, according to an analysis by the University of the Pacific.
Why don't they build up instead of out?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @12:48PM (3 children)
haven't been in the SF area for awhile now. Are any of the big tech companies building offices outside the city to serve all these people that are now living an hour or more away? Seems like workers would be a lot more productive if they didn't have to spend hours/day on the freeway.
(Score: 2) by Uncle_Al on Tuesday April 18 2017, @04:57PM
"the city" is now 100 miles around the SF Bay
rents are $2000-$3000 a month pretty much everywhere now.
typical commutes are over an hour, it isn't uncommon for two hours for
people coming in from Tracy.
they have been tearing down blocks of 1 story tilt-ups, replacing them with
six story office buildings, which house thousands of workers.
housing, even the high-density warrens, aren't keeping pace
I'll be dead before BART makes it to the the SJ Diradon Caltrain station.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @05:19PM
If you think it's about productivity, you're missing the point.
Case in point: open office environments.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 18 2017, @06:16PM
TFA talks about tech workers displacing other people and creating a burgeoning homeless population on the periphery of the Bay Area, but I don't know that things are all that rosy for the tech workers either. I don't have any data from studies at my fingertips, but we visited some of my wife's relatives there last summer. One's a hardware engineer for Apple living in San Jose. He commutes 90 minutes each way to Palo Alto. The other one is a salesman for Facebook, who lives in SF and commutes down peninsula 1.5-2hrs each way on the Facebook shuttle. Each one has toddlers they hardly ever get to see because all that time sitting in traffic eats up the short spaces in the evening when the kids are still awake and they're home.
It beats being homeless by a long way, to be sure. I don't mean to minimize that because it's one of the most horrible things a person can experience. But if the folks in that area would get together and amend their zoning and urban development policies in a more sensible direction, maybe they could all win by not rendering people homeless, and not imposing ridiculous, crushing commutes and other hassles on the others. As a side benefit, having those two parties in closer proximity creates other mutual benefits like retail and service opportunities for both of them. You can see that in New York, where the population density means every block can support its corner deli and plethora of bars, restaurants, and shops.
Washington DC delenda est.