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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @05:05PM
The first reason is that politicians will use this as an excuse to import the 3rd world. Democrats think they will get votes, and everybody thinks that businesses will get slave-like workers. (actually the votes ultimately go toward denying rights to women and LGBT, and the immigrants tend to end up on welfare -- they fight to resist assimilation and we aren't forcing assimilation)
The second reason is that people from fly-over country will fill the void. Heck, they do this today: people in San Francisco don't have children, partly because of the school lottery, partly because of high prices, and partly because two dudes can't make a baby. Despite the lack of children native to San Francisco, there is no shortage of people wanting to live there. It's a fantasy land that half the country wants to live in.
The third reason is evolution. Within our population, there are people who actively want big families. They are currently a minority. If the trait is inheritable by any means, it will become predominant. The natural state for all living beings is to live in squalor, at the carrying capacity of the resources provided by the land. (either stable, or with boom/bust cycles, depending on the variety of resources and diseases and so on)