For generations, California’s racial minorities, like their Caucasian counterparts, embraced the notion of an American Dream that included owning a house. Unlike kids from wealthy families—primarily white—who can afford elite educations and can sometimes purchase houses with parental help, Latinos and blacks, usually without much in the way of family resources, are increasingly priced out of the market. In California, Hispanics and blacks face housing prices that are approximately twice the national average, relative to income. Unsurprisingly, African-American and Hispanic homeownership rates have dropped considerably more than those of Asians and whites—four times the rate in the rest of the country. California’s white homeownership rate remains above 62 percent, but just 42 percent of all Latino households, and only 33 percent of all black households, own their own homes.
In contrast, African-Americans do far better, in terms of income and homeownership, in places like Dallas-Fort Worth or greater Houston than in socially enlightened locales such as Los Angeles or San Francisco. Houston and Dallas boast black homeownership rates of 40 to 50 percent; in deep blue but much costlier Los Angeles and New York, the rate is about 10 percentage points lower.
Rather than achieving upward class mobility, many minorities in California have fallen down the class ladder. This can be seen in California’s overcrowding rate, the nation’s second-worst. Of the 331 zip codes making up the top 1 percent of overcrowded zip codes in the U.S., 134 are found in Southern California, primarily in greater Los Angeles and San Diego, mostly concentrated around heavily Latino areas such as Pico-Union, East Los Angeles, and Santa Ana, in Orange County.
The lack of affordable housing and the disappearance of upward mobility could create a toxic racial environment for California. By the 2030s, large swaths of the state, particularly along the coast, could evolve into a geriatric belt, with an affluent, older boomer population served by a largely minority service-worker class. As white and Asian boomers age, California increasingly will have to depend on children from mainly poorer families with fewer educational resources, living in crowded and even unsanitary conditions, often far from their place of employment, to work for low wages.
I would encourage Mike Schellenberger to work with the Cox campaign to oust Newsome and the entire corrupt “woke” CA establishment, by pointing out the insanity of the state’s energy policies, that hit minorities the hardest. A Cox win would be a political bombshell.
Federal Reserve policy of very low interest rates not only appear to be keeping the purchase price of either existing or new houses high, it appears that everything associated with a house — replacing the roof, the furnace or A/C, exterior painting — has also gotten much more expensive?
Starting from the premise that most people have little or no savings apart from home equity, their anticipated Social Security payment or various kinds of “forced” retirement savings into accounts with substantial early withdrawal penalties, most people view a major house project listed above in terms of a monthly payment. And when money is borrowed at a low interest rate, the monthly payments remain low?
There was a big runup in the price of a new car between the mid 80s and the mid 90s, but between the mid 90s (when I last purchased a new car) and now, it seems that the price of a midsize sedan has changed very little, maybe increasing 20 percent at most.
Last replaced the A/C unit in 1993, and when the guy who services it was making noises about 25 years being past the lifetime for such a thing in service in the Midwest, I looked up some online price information and it appears that a replacement would be double?
Last time I had the exterior painted was in 2000, and the same company wants 6-fold more money today? Yeah, yeah, long time between painting, bid influenced by condition of the house, but 6-fold increase?
Is it just me or is anything associated with home ownership getting that much more expensive?
I wrote requote that first quoted paragraph from the article, but I always considered that, like Harvey Weinstein’s open secret, the goal of Democrat party in California. Democrats are the party of slavery and later of Jim Crow. In California, they have accomplished through housing laws what would have been illegal via Jim Crow. The whole illegal immigration thing is to provide them with labor at near slavery prices.
My current business is very concerned with modern day slavery. As most of us live in 1st world countries, several coworkers find it odd to discuss modern day slavery at a company like ours. So I tell them of my experience working in California, where they would give H1B visas to very talented Asians. Then, when the white American employees would go home, the H1B talent would be told if they left without putting in extra hours, they might get fired and lose their visas. This was followed up with a reminder that corporate policy was to notify INS immediately of a change in employment status.
As a contractor, I had to stick around as well, but it was put in the contract that I got to leave the State for a week or two after two weeks in California. The normal work week for me there was 80-100 hours. The only positive was I paid straight-time for every hour worked. It was fine with me, but I also knew that if I got burned out, I could quit. My termination wouldn’t result in relocating my entire family out of the country.
I fled the state in 2008, and have no regrets whatsoever.
I’ve recently been looking to jump to a new job (search nicely successful, thank you!) and California was not high on the list, even though I’m in a tech area. The cost of living is quite high there. Ditto for the Seattle area.
This is not a new problem. Back near the end of my father’s career, he was offered a position with General Research in Santa Barbara. He calculated how much of a salary bump he would have needed to just break even (moving from Florida) and declined. Instead, he went off and formed his own consulting company. His only regret was he hadn’t done that sooner (he did analysis for radar and guidance systems; I was constantly hearing about Kalman filters growing up.)
Yes, if we didn’t own a house here for decades, I wouldn’t move here today. We’ve noticed that given the small amount of time we spend doing touristy things here, we could live elsewhere and just fly in for the occasional weekend.