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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 18 2017, @08:08AM   Printer-friendly
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?


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 18 2017, @06:53PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday April 18 2017, @06:53PM (#495960)

    Not that simple, sadly.

    If you build up wildly, you'd better outlaw cars and use all the roads for public transport.
    People need to move around. The denser you make the city, the less people can move, and therefore the less they can breathe, or be rescued when they stop breathing.

    "I own this land, I'll build what I want" doesn't work very long. Urban planning is required to avoid choking the whole city.

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