Sonoma County, CA here. We've lost more people from our county than any other in the state between 2017-2018 [1], and it is only continuing.
From the few of these people I have spoken with - anecdotally:
- None left because of the fire risk, specifically. [though some obviously did - 2]
- Most left because of the cost of living: $600k avg home price.
- Some also left because of political and human environment: We have homeless encampments on our bike trails. We have fires caused by illegal cooking fires at these encampments. Petty crime is increasing, and state laws are only enabling this - people are sick of it.
> Petty crime is increasing, and state laws are only enabling this - people are sick of it.
I wonder if people considered voting the politicians who made these laws out. Judging from CA voting patterns, probably not. And then when it gets really bad, they move to another state and likely vote for the same policies that caused them to move in the first place.
I first heard of this phenomenon the other day from a coworker that lives south of Atlanta, near the major movie/tv production area. People, from what are typically blue areas, are moving in and radically changing the political landscape according to him. He wasn’t necessarily against liberal ideas but his complaint was that they seem to vote for taxes just for the hell of it because every tax proposed is still significantly less than where they came from.
This is a real problem, and a real concern IMO. People move from their home cities and states to nice areas with low tax, then continue voting for the same policies and ideologies that led to their home becoming awful in the first place. I live in a rather conservative area that sees an influx of New Yorkers every single year. They all seem to complain about two things: the high taxes they left, and Republicans. I'd laugh if it weren't so mindnumbingly sad.
Reminds me of the saying, something like "if it smells like sh*t everywhere you go, maybe it's time to check your own shoes."
There is a very pronounced trend of people migrating away from states that are controlled by Democrats for reasons that are potentially ideologically driven policy failures. This raises a a very real and material question for the new host community - do the migrants understand why the situation became so intolerable that they felt they should move?
Migrants bring new ideas so a certain amount of discomfort and change is expected. But judgements and assumptions need to be discussed to work out if there is any merit to them. There is a risk there that shouldn't be glibly ignored.
So I suppose I'd call on you to flesh that out with some alternatives that fit the facts or some challenges to the assumptions rather than just calling a spade a spade. We all know it is a spade. If the spade is inappropriate suggest a better tool instead.
Statistically, people are moving from rural areas and to urban areas. Rural areas tend to be conservative and economically depressed. Urban areas tend to have high paying jobs and be liberal or progressive.
Aside from a few state/city couplings(Omaha, NE comes to mind) a US "State" is a poor indicator of differentiated policy or ideology. People in Atlanta or Miami or LA or Seattle have a lot more in common with each other than some might think.
Moreover, it seems like you're attempting to paint the picture that a typically Democratic State is somehow worse off than a conservative one. I'm positive that a person born in Washington or California almost always has a better statistical and economic outcome than someone born in the Deep South, for example. So, it seems if I were correct(and I'm almost certain I am), the spade is doing something right.
After the 2016 election while my friends were freaking out and moping I went and drilled down into the fine grained election results. You are absolutely right. The difference is really between 'the city' and exurban. Notable the size of 'the city' doesn't matter. In thinly populated areas the city might only be 15-20,000 people. But they all voted for liberal/progressive/left leaning candidates.
I think there are a lot of issues where the republican/democrat divide is very directly influenced by rural/urban environments.
(please do not assume any of the following takes a stance on these issues. Also don't imagine I know what I'm talking about)
On gun control, rural areas can have more than one gun per person with virtually no impact on an already negligible violent crime rate, while urban areas have fewer guns that are all much more likely to be involved in a homicide. So rural people see the issue as taking away rights for no benefit and urban people see that resistance as tacit support of gun violence and an attack on human life.
On abortion, cities have a lot more opportunity for promiscuity and have more unwanted pregnancies as a result. In the country, abortions are a much rarer concern; eliminating them would have little impact and resistance seems like tacit support of an attack on human life.
On taxation, city wages are higher. This may, citation needed, also influence positions on immigration.
Pollution is a greater concern in the city. Law enforcement corruption is a greater concern in the city. Cost-of-living and therefore necessary minimum wage are higher in the city.
I could go on (I can't, but fun to say so anyway).
Except no one talks about guns that are used for hunting when talking about gun control policy (maybe the idiots who use massive powered automatic rifles for shooting deer may be slightly affected).
Politicians use gun control policy to create divisions in people, but the actual gun control policies being considered themselves almost always poll very well amongst all Americans including those in rural areas and hunters.
It’s like Obamacare, where the actual policies within are supported by overwhelming majorities, but obamacare barely breaks even.
> Except no one talks about guns that are used for hunting when talking about gun control
Not only is that untrue, it’s so untrue that a common trope among gun types is to display two pictures of the same gun, one with a wooden stock, and observe the disparity in reactions. Most people can’t define what a “hunting rifle” is, and certainly can’t define legislation that would ban one kind of gun without impacting the other. One of the biggest complaints about California‐ or 1994 AWB‐style gun laws is that they target cosmetic but “scary” features like barrel shrouds or pistol grips far out of proportion with their actual impact on safety (in contrast with the real elephant in the room, handguns).
> maybe the idiots who use massive powered automatic rifles for shooting deer may be slightly affected
The poster child for moral panic when it comes to guns is the AR-15, which is significantly less powerful than a typical deer hunting rifle, so much so that some states ban it specifically against large game; it’s more appropriate for smaller game like coyotes and hogs.
If you’re trying to get rid of black rifles, then at least say openly that you want to ban semi‐automatic rifles and magazines. Talking about an AR‐15’s “massive power” is nonsensical, especially if you’re claiming your gun control proposals won’t affect deer hunting rifles.
I don't know if you meant to reply to the other response to my comment, but my point is a little broader than that. Hunting be damned, you could fill up wyoming with automatic weapons granted with no background checks and not see a serious uptick in gun violence. It is just a non-issue. Proposals to increase gun laws appear, from that environment, to be a useless power grab by the government. Again, not an endorsement.
To address your main point though, even if a majority of republicans would be okay with the gun control on the table, republican politicians are incentivized to represent the minority that are opposed until an equally signifcant minority actively votes for those policies. That incentive structure is probably for the best given our lack of proportional representation.
Just of note, automatic weapons where ban in the early 80's those that are left in the US are tightly regulated and require a FFL class 3, have strict rules on transfer and the local sheriff must approve the transfer. Many sheriffs will not allow class 3's in their county. If they will not, the resident is out of luck on getting one of the few automatic weapons left. Those remaining weapons sell for upwards of 10 to 20K and not one has been used in a mass shooting in recent history. People buying automatic weapons are by and large collectors.
What you are referencing is semi-automatic weapons, which require you to pull the trigger each time you want a bullet to fire. Many hunting rifles are semi-automatic. The difference between a semi-automatic hunting rifle and a semi-automatic black rifle is the difference between a Corvette and a Corvette with a Ferrari body kit. It's all cosmetic they are at the core the exact same rifle. A Remington semi-auto .223 hunting rifle is in spirit the same gun as a AR-15.
Handguns and homemade explosives are a much greater public threat and that is the reason most gun rights advocates see no value in compromise. The issue is completely a emotional issue and the facts, which advocates are well versed in, weight out contrary to the arguments that gun control advocates are making. The reality is that other than the occasional mass shooting people are just not being killed by rifles of any kind. Handguns are used in orders of magnitude more than rifles to commit violent crimes. A sincere effort to remove guns from criminals would focus on handguns and not rifles. Therefore rights advocated jump to the conclusion that the effort is to disarm the legally owned, armed population as that is the majority of rifle owners. The simple fact is the majority of criminals use handguns, they are more easily concealed, easier to wield and easier to reload.
The only exception to this is mass shooters who want to LARP Call of Duty. Which is why they choose rifles if FPS's and movies used handguns, mass-shooters would use handguns because in their crazy minds they are role playing. That being said, you have a slightly higher chance of getting killed in a mass shooting than you have getting hit by lighting. By the number it's just a non-event. In saying that, I am not trying to minimize them, just stating the facts, they are horrible events and we should certainly do something about them. But disarming millions of law abiding citizens to prevent a lightning strike event punishes the masses for a statistically small problem.
Common sense gun control would have at it's core handgun controls as well as mental health protocols. If they don't then they are conceived via emotion rather than statistical fact.
As a "self proclaimed" centrist, this is well stated. There's nothing wrong with anyone's line of thought, they obviously hold it for a reason. Problems only arise in this arena when one group tries to force beliefs on the other. A hunter trying to convince say, Chicago, that guns are good is going to have a hard time. Same with the Chicagoan that tries to convince a hunter that guns are bad. Neither are wrong, in reality...
Up until recently Dallas / Ft. Worth and Miami where conservative. The Cubans that fled communism held Miami as a conservative metro up until about 15-20 years ago. Orlando and Tampa where the same. Orlando for different reasons but Tampa was largely due to the conservative Cubans as well.
Texas and Florida are two of the states that are experiencing meteoric growth and to imply that those moving in are not shifting the political climate to that in which they came from is to ignore the fact that both went from solidly conservative states, with conservative large metros. To toss up states where the metros became in flux. To ignore that those moving in are not voting in the same failed policies that they are fleeing ignores the fact that both states policies are in fact starting to trend towards taxation, lowering of property rights and large scale social programs. The spade is a spade.
The same happened to Denver over the past 20 or so year.
On a note related to the main topic, I live in FL in the Florida Keys, it is a paradise I spearfish on the weekends and am usually out on a boat. Prices have gone up here, but one can still purchase a home on the water for under 500k. I could barely get a decent apartment in the valley for what I paid for my 7 acres of oceanfront land and home. I mention this to make the point that I can certainly see the draw, you get so much more for your money if one sells out of a major CA metro and moves to one of the growth states.
The biggest thing in those states' favor is easily housing policy. They tend to permit much more sprawl, so housing prices in general, and especially the cost of a detached single family home stay more reasonable. Aside from Houston, they're still not great on allowing housing density though.
Meanwhile, blue states have a "worst of both worlds" kind of policy. They don't permit much sprawl, and also don't permit much density, thereby pushing people to states where they do permit sprawl. Then they tell you that this is good for the environment, somehow.
That said, while it makes for cheap single family homes, sprawl has a LOT of negatives. Strong Towns explains how it basically functions like a Ponzi scheme in the long term, and within older cities the sprawlier parts are usually subsidized by the denser ones. There's also more cost to the environment, to health, to noise, to safety, and for transportation costs for both the government and the user. There's a reason the US has an unusually high traffic fatality rate per 100k people for a developed country, and there's an impact on our collective national waistline as well.
> Meanwhile, blue states have a "worst of both worlds" kind of policy. They don't permit much sprawl
Many states smaller (and less populated) than the expanse of sprawl in the LA basin. The only parts of CA that has much limit to sprawl are places with hard natural geographic barriers, like SF and the Peninsula.
Driving on the east coast or west coast, I see hundreds upon thousands of miles of sprawl. Californian sprawl even extends across natural barriers, with houses clinging to steep hillsides, houses built on ridiculously unstable land, houses built in shrub forests that obviously have an annual fire season. If people want to live that way, it’s fine. But they leave, and they build more sprawl wherever they go...
Miami has never been conservative, at most they had some conservative Cubans, who hardly ever had a plurality in the area. Dallas has never been co see stove either, that is what Ft. Worth and it’s suburbs were for.
Texas really wants a tech industry, which is why it is importing lots of liberals. By that I mean these people don’t move to Texas to be in Texas, rather they were lured their by great job opportunities.
Can you cite a single source of Texas "importing" workers, vs people fleeing to Texas and pretending they did so for Texas's own good? Texas was a tech hub before most of us were born.
Uhm sure? All the people that I know who’ve moved to Austin have done so for the career opportunities...no one just picked Texas and said they were going to find a job later. They were pretty mercenary about where they were going. Some were even forced their (eg when IBM closed Boca and moved everyone who didn’t want to quit to Austin).
> Texas was a tech hub before most of us were born.
Sure, they’ve also been importing liberals since before most of us were born. I mean my dad lived near San Antonio sometime in the 60s for that reason, again it wasn’t his choice (even being in the Army wasn’t).
The last two mayors of Miami have been Cuban Republicans. The city manager is a Republican, several of the commissioner seats are occupied by republicans. One could argue that currently Miami leans conservative. Marco Rubio represents Miami, to claim that Miami does not, at times, swing conservative is to ignore the clear facts that it does and much of that is due to the conservative Cubans.
plenty of the most populous areas in the world are not liberal and progressive. There are at least 20 cities in China larger than NYC. I'm sure India has it's share. So does the middle East and south East Asia. Let's not make assumptions based only on majority populations of European descent.
It is on a relative spectrum what’s left and right in those countries . In Europe for example the U.S. left would be considered moderate or conservative and not really liberal.
Also the reason for urban areas being more liberal , is usually because closer you live to ton of people , better you need and appreciate collective/ liberal policies better
> There is a very pronounced trend of people migrating away from states that are controlled by Democrats for reasons that are potentially ideologically driven policy failures.
This observation may actually indicate the opposite, it is conservative policies that are failing. To see this, consider two potential reasons why people move away from urbanized progressive areas into more conservative areas:
1. Progressive policy failures (as you suggest)
2. The conservative areas are under-developed, and therefore have a greater potential for growth, which creates incentives to move there.
Under the first hypothesis, liberal policies ruin things. But under the second hypothesis, conservative policies ruin things. There is a pretty simple way to test out which is true: if the first is true, and progressive policies are at fault, then a conservative area would become more conservative as it becomes more popular and more people move there. If the second is true, then conservative areas would become more liberal as it becomes more developed.
Pretty much every originally conservative area that becomes developed later becomes more liberal (hello Texas). It's pretty clear that your hypothesis is false.
This feels like some bizarre version of 'white savior complex.'. The truth isn't 1 or 2, but somewhere in between. Conservative areas don't need you, and progressive policies aren't all failures.
> There is a very pronounced trend of people migrating away from states that are controlled by Democrats for reasons that are potentially ideologically driven policy failures
People who have worked in California until retirement taking advantage of it's strong economy to secure retirement income and then moving elsewhere to further maximize retirement dollars are a big part of the trend; to the extent that's about policy outcomes, it's policy success.
> do the migrants understand why the situation became so intolerable that they felt they should move?
For California, it's mostly having a very successful economy combined with terribly stupid housing policy.
Conservative areas are 'better' on the latter on some level because they permit more sprawl, which does provide for more supply, which means lower housing prices. Car-dominant sprawl is a disaster in other ways, though: environment, pollution, health, noise, danger, cost to government, cost to user, etc.
And conservative areas are usually even worse at allowing density, despite being ostensibly free market. I have a lot of conservative FB friends, and it's always amazing how quickly they're suddenly in favor of strict government regulation when it's for keeping housing density low; when it's their favored lifestyle at risk, free market principles are apparently no longer an issue.
There is no pronounced trend. In fact, this very article says so. The trend is for people to move from conservative rural areas to liberal urban areas. In fact, a deeper look at the data will actually prove the opposite. That Democratic controlled locations are thriving and people are moving to it. For example, within New York, NYC population is actually growing.
It isn't unreasonable to those of us that have lived over practically half of the country. Try moving every year or two, see what that does to your preconceptions and notions.
Atlanta was never a “nice area” until “liberals” moved into it.
Atlanta, the city, was a shithole ridden with crime until the “liberals” moved in.
Which is, for better or worse, the reality of all these cities that seem to complain about “liberals” moving in. They are shitholes because the “conservatives” are all cooped up in suburbs, and so no one pays any tax to maintain the city which ends up being somewhere that is just where the people come in to work and leave in the evening, until the “liberals” move in.
As someone who never mentioned Atlanta, I don't know what you are talking about. As someone who has been to Atlanta over the course of decades, I don't believe you.
Huh. I feel the same way in the opposite direction.
People move from their home states and rural areas to nice areas with civic services and permissive cultures, and then continue voting and advocating for the same policies and ideologies that led to their home being unwanted in the first place. I live in liberal areas that see a steady influx of people all the time, and distressingly large amount of them seem to complain about two things: The ineffectiveness of government (including the underfunded ones they left behind), and Liberals. I'd laugh if I wasn't so concerned about the displacement of my home cultures.
Makes me want to say something like, "if it smells like shit everywhere you go, stop shitting all over everything you find."
I would absolutely sympathize with you, if this were a true story. Believe it or not, I'm not a registered Republican, after all. To be fair, I've never heard of conservative folks overtaking a liberal city, only vice versa. If you have a true story to share, I'd love to hear it.
Instead, it feels like you're just reversing everything I said for argument's sake.
Reasonable. It's anecdotal, and no, none have been "taken over". What I'm predominantly responding to is this weird way people seem to look at these liberal cities and go "oh, they've succeeded in spite of their liberalness" instead of those being part of why they became desirable places to live in the first place.
The few examples that come the most to mind are what "Keep Venice Weird" is reacting to, and the lamenting of SF at the impact "tech bros" (vague, loaded term I know, but I don't have another) has had on the local culture. Which definitely don't fit cleanly onto the usual political spectrum, but AFAIK do roughly approximate it. And yeah, I wouldn't say these places are being taken over, and I would still say there's an influx of people complaining about things that went into making these places desirable in the first place.
I did deliberately match my phrasing to yours, and part of it is for argument's sake. There are both statistics and vibes, but there's not a great way to poke at anecdotes and vibes outside of reversals.
If the statistical reality is that liberalism takes over, but the emotional interpretation of that is... I don't know, that it shouldn't; that's weird to me. If one thing is taking over, it's generally because it's out competing the others. It's almost like when people believe in working together to make places better for everyone... they get better for everyone.
As an aside, sounds like you should be a registered republican. They need people with good heads and something like that set of views, and those sounds like what you have. In case it's in any way unclear, I do mean that as a compliment.
>What I'm predominantly responding to is this weird way people seem to look at these liberal cities and go "oh, they've succeeded in spite of their liberalness" instead of those being part of why they became desirable places to live in the first place.
Why would you think so? For example California used to be if not a Red State then a heavily leaning Republican: since 1880 until 2000 it has not voted for a Democratic president who has not also won the national election (and the 1880 election was extremely close). In the same time period it voted for a Republican candidate who lost the election multiple times (e.g. it voted against JFK and Carter).
Do you really believe that California had not been desirable before it started voting exclusively D (in 1992 the earliest)? I had not been living in the US at the time but judging by the popular culture it does not seem to be the case.
Well asked! I've been trying to understand why I do.
I think it comes to this: Good places to live come from encouraging and empowering people to make those places their own, as communities.
What it means to be a democrat or a republican changes from place and decade to decade. What is effective in actualizing that community participation then also changes as a place changes over time (ironically, that's also why it's important to have that community participation).
AFAIK, the Republican party _used_ to stand for small, decentralized government; now they stand for ineffective and centralized government (despite the talking points).
I'm less clear on what the Democrats "used to be" (except racist, way back in the day), except that in this era and in these places, community participation is hampered by unaffordable housing, unaffordable and/or inaccessible healthcare, and a lack of living wages.
I know I haven't fully answered your question, but I've been at this for far too long. Thanks for asking so effectively!
If you think it's just the parties that have changed, then how about actual policies? Prop 187 has been passed in 1994 with 59% majority, can you imagine anything like that happening in California nowadays? No matter how you see DNC and GOP of 1990s, you surely can see that the California's attitude towards illegal immigrants has completely reversed now.
It's definitely not just the parties that have changed.
I have no idea whether that law would've passed today; everyone hears "California" and thinks about SF/LA, forgetting about the large conservative areas. Look how long weed and gay marriage took.
Gay marriage was never passed by popular vote in California, it was a result of judicial activism both on the state level and on federal. In fact, CA voted against gay marriage in Prop 8.
However, the fact that party vote in California changed in 90s, when it's been already a prosperous and desirable state remains. So it does not seem plausible that liberal policies turned it into one. The opposite though, is completely believable - in a rich locale, with a lot of money, politicians who use the money to "buy" votes will eventually rise and will remain in power until the money's gone.
The issue is the lack of dimensionality on your axis. If the political spectrum recognized more dimensions, you would find it that high tax vs republican is only one small dimension, thus not necessarily a contradiction.
But that's not what the data shows. People from blue states are moving to blue cities in red states. Left leaning people are moving to similarly left leaning areas. Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, when was the last time these were Republican bastions? Look at the areas experiencing huge population growth. Texas might be red but the populations centers haven't been for years.
I think in the particular case of my co-worker the blue is spilling into the traditionally red rural areas. The population centers inevitably must expand to handle the migration.
This is a good point, but it would be intellectually disingenuous not to acknowledge that they've been drawn by the policy of the red states, specifically by housing policy that's made housing costs more reasonable than the blue states.
Not that I'm a big fan of sprawl, but it's undeniable that blue state housing policy that strictly limits both sprawl AND density has been an utter disaster for cost of living anywhere where the economy is good.
The sprawl has massive hidden costs; it's a similar situation to stadiums. The city centers end up paying for it, but not reaping the benefits in tax bases / revenue.
The housing costs - while they do have a lot do with policies that prevent massive new construction - also have a lot do with a lot of people moving and wanting to move to these places.
So, question for you: What about the blue state policies is that results in their economies being good, so that these problems exist in the first place?
California has largely become a single party state. I'm not trying to start an argument between Democrats and Republicans here, but we can clearly see a pattern everywhere in the world. Once single party rule is institutionalized the politicians are no longer accountable to voter interests.
It's like having a monopoly and not having to compete.
Really you want both sides to be strong and for there to be a healthy push and pull. So the best ideas from each rise to the top and then do battle via good faith debate. With the ability and willingness to steelman each other's arguments.
Instead what we tend to see is an eagerness to interpret everything in the worst way possible, attacking strawmen and talking past each other. Which accomplishes little aside from increasing polarization.
Ideally, you want more than two sides , there are nuances to everyone’s beliefs, forcing them to choose just red/blue is reducing choices and doesn’t reflect real preferences
This is why I really wish we had ranked choice voting (or approval voting). That way we'd have more political parties and a healthier political climate.
> Ranked choice voting isn't what's stopping a third party. Majority-wins / first-past-the-post is.
Uh, ranked choice / IRV is a different system than majority / FPTP. Having the former means not having the latter (for any given office.)
But state and federal offices don't use RCV, and local offices are formally nonpartisan, so there are no partisan offices that SF's use of RCV effects.
Maybe I used the wrong terminology. More specifically, I think our issue is with winner-take-all, rather than proportional representation (see: all(?) parliamentary systems).
It is worse than that. With the passage of the "Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act" California has open primaries (anyone can vote for anyone on the ballot in the primaries) and only the top two get to be on the main ballot. So many times only two Democrats are on the ballot with no Republican candidate at all. Not a good situation in my opinion.
It would actually work in favor of Republican-inclined voters, though not necessarily the party itself.
By allowing anyone to vote, Democrat candidates are incentivized to be more moderate, because a vote from a Republican is as good as another from a Democrat. Without open primaries, a Democratic-only primary pretty much decides the winner, and a candidate only has to appeal to fellow Democrats.
Jerry Brown was a conservative by any historical understanding of the term, and he won in a landslide. Gavin Newsom is also relatively moderate. For example, he's made it clear that it's simply not economically feasible to throw money at homeless housing (because he literally tried that in SF as mayor). And hit the pause button on high-speed rail (which is basically a death sentence). Newsom rose up through the San Francisco Democratic political machine, which while liberal on social issues has been until recently predominately controlled by right-of-center politicians and interest groups. The last three mayors, including Newsom, have been opponents of the self-styled "progressive" faction. Unfortunately, Newsom has ambitions for higher office so he's not providing much leadership at the moment; just refereeing squabbles and trying to avoid bad press.
A large contingent of Republicans wanted the top-two primary system, believing it would benefit them. (Though the GOP opposed it.) It didn't work out that way. But it didn't really change the dynamics in the other direction, either; that train had been accelerating for years.
California is a one-party state because of term limits. Running for office is expensive and difficult. Few sane people, unless they're independently wealthy, wish to expend all that time and effort to serve a mere two terms. They want a political career. With term limits the only way to have a political career is to jump office every two terms. The best chance of accomplishing that--of achieving career "progression"--is to work closely with a political party, which can ensure a spot in various low-level offices if you don't make the cut for a bigger office. Term limits make the party system more important. What ends up happening is that the party with more offices and better electoral chances in the near future when this process starts will quickly build on that initial advantage, while the other parties will quickly wither. If Texas enacted term limits I have no doubt that Houston, Austin, Dallas, etc, would quickly become, nominally at least, Republican.
That said, California may be a one-party state, but there are absolutely liberals, moderates, and conservatives within the party. What difference does the label "Democratic" or "Republican" make, so long as there are free and open elections? From a foreign country's perspective, most American politicians behave alike regardless of whether they're Democratic or Republican.
One benefit of being an all-blue (or all-red) state is that there's less political grid-lock. At least, less grid-lock from naked partisanship. Grid-lock from the electorate demanding conflicting and contradictory policies... alas that doesn't go away.
> A large contingent of Republicans wanted the top-two primary system, believing it would benefit them. (Though the GOP opposed it.) It didn't work out that way.
It does benefit them, by giving Republicans more influence on what candidate is elected in districts where they have no chance of electing one of their own.
> California is a one-party state because of term limits.
No, it’s more because the California Republican Party followed the national party to the far right over the last couple of decades, while the California electorate didn't.
California is a “one party state” because Gov Pete Wilson and the CA GOP went after the racist vote in the mid 90’s to get re-elected by heavily supporting Prop 187, which denied all state services to undocumented immigrants. Until then, it was relatively conservative.
Turns out that (thankfully) there aren’t enough racists for keep control of the state government, and since then the CA GOP has become basically irrelevant.
In the long term I think the national GOP is doing this by going after racists, extreme fundamentalists, and other fanatics.
The fanatic vote is political cocaine: temporary high, then you need more and more, then your non coke head friends drift away, then you are strung out.
> then your non coke head friends drift away, then you are strung out.
Alas, that may be more wishful thinking than reality. :( There are countless countries around the world, both in modern history and today, that prove the dynamic can be sustained indefinitely.
I don't know about Dallas, but Houston and Austin are solidly liberal, and I don't think term limits would change that. Most people would still vote the same way for mayor and city and councilman.
I would say it’s your own bias which is informing your opinion. California has only gotten more “progressive” with each election.
If that makes you happy, I hope you understand that it’s “progressive” policy which has caused crime to explode, housing prices to rise, and people to leave the state.
> hope you understand that it’s “progressive” policy which has caused crime to explode
Crime has not exploded in California. California’s violent crime rate rose in 2017—but it remains historically low. The statewide property crime rate decreased in 2017. Crime rates vary dramatically by region and category. Violent crime increased in a majority of counties but property crime decreased in most counties. [0]
I don't trust any property crime "stat" in any moderately sized city. Every single person I know whose had property crime happen to them which is in multiple cities and states doesn't even bother reporting it because the cops won't do anything so it's just a waste of time.
Sounds like you’re the property criminal, because the odds of every single person you know having property crime committed against them is ridiculously low, unless you’re the one committing it.
Most of the property crime is see from various places around here the past couple years has been theft and damage under $500 - not enough to make it worth filing an insurance claim, and police reports don't seem to do much around here, sometimes they tell you to call back in a day or two if you do call.
So there is plenty of crimes posted on the fbook / nextdoors / stuff like that were people are feeling victimized / but these are not going to show in any crime stats anywhere. Unless fbook has some AI run through and tabulate this stuff and report it by area one day..
You also can't see the impact from some stats. A neighbor recently had a naked guy pounding on her back door, they did get cops out for that one, arrested him from hiding inside here storage shed... with screenshots of the whole ordeal posted in a group - lots of people were a bit traumatized, yet you would see in the crime stats '1 arrested for trespass' - which does not give you a good idea of the impact on the community of this data point.
trying to reply to comment below, but I guess the thread is at max threshold.
I like to point to data for calming things down sometimes like the gun violence debate.. but often times there is much missed in looking at data from a far.
Plus, a couple of mayors ago, our city mad all the cops change how they report crimes (choose the softer things to charge people with so the stats look better) - and, officers were actively asking people not to press charges for things, go so far as explaining the process, and how we would spend hours in court and they would be off the streets doing important stuff for hours if we pressed charges, and that the person was not going to be in jail anyway..
Maybe things are different elsewhere and maybe in some places they have some of the same tricky data reporting, until we have all robot cops that run the same software in all cities, some of these things are going to be difficult to compare.
I would say it’s the lack of mental healthcare and a social safety net that causes all of the above. And it’s not possible to address on a state level as all the other states would ship the problems to the state that tries to offer the benefits.
> California has only gotten more “progressive” with each election.
That is different from "damping the extremes".
Why is it so difficult for those on the "conservative" side to believe that the election outcomes reflect the will of the populace when they actively reject "conservatism"?
> I hope you understand that it’s “progressive” policy which has caused crime to explode
This is a dog whistle way of saying "homelessness" as most crime has not exploded.
However, I have yet to see a conservative solution to homelessness short of "round them up and ship them somewhere else". aka part of the reason for California's homelessness is other, generally conservative, states shipping them in.
> housing prices to rise
A fair argument. And this is also a contributor to homelessness. Prop 13 is going to have to fall before anything really helps with this.
> and people to leave the state.
I'm still waiting for all these Republicans in Southern California to head to Texas. Any time now ...
What the article points out is that most people leaving California are, unfortunately, on the lower end of the income range. Conservatives like you should welcome this as they are generally Democratic Party folks.
Do you know California is also the top state destination for people leaving Texas ? You know why ? It is because these are two largest states and they exchange population. The per year net migration to Texas is less than 0.1% of CA population.
There are plenty of republicans in california, they just run as democrats. Even Reagan used to be a DINO until he came out of the closet in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential run.
>How is a jungle primary different from no primary and a free for-all-election with a run-off?
Majority/runoff with no primary would mean if a candidate gets an absolute majority on the first ballot, they win. You can't win at the primary in the jungle primary.
This is very wrong. Drive the 5 sometime. Outside of LA/SF it gets very red, very fast. Even within those areas it's only the centers that are truly "blue"; (AFAIK) Orange County is particularly conservative, for example, and it's always been my impression that places like Marin, Palo Alto and Orinda are the same way. It's where the term "California Republican" came from.
Look how long it took to legalize gay marriage and weed!
It's not even that it's one party. Since there's only two parties, there's a lot of variance within each, and you can be a Democrat without trying to make freelance work impossible, petty crime routine, streets smeared with human excrement and a trip in public transportation both rare and dangerous. I don't see why even somebody who would never vote Republican still can't choose not to vote for somebody like politicians who pushed through the idiotic AB5, for example. Or the ones who have been in charge for so many other ills plaguing modern California. I don't think it's party-against-party thing. If CA voters wanted, they could vote for much saner policies still well within the mainstream of Democrats (or at least something that has been mainstream of Democrats before 2016), but for some reason they do not.
California is a single party state in name only. There are plenty of conservatives who call themselves democrats in all levels of government. Many city councilmen in LA lean very conservatively in everything but the common sense stuff like not being a bigot, so they fly under the radar and people see the D by the name and vote them back in without reading a word of policy.
Reno resident here. Policy change is something I tend to worry about given there's been a huge influx of Californian "refugees" over past the several years. If California continues its trajectory with housing costs and homelessness, it could definitely "bleed over."
Homelessness isn't as big of an issue here than it is in California (I expect in part because of the colder weather), but housing costs have definitely been affected.
Are you sure homelessness isn't as big an issue? I was in Reno last winter and the banks of the Truckee River were basically one big homeless encampment stretching for miles.
Crime peaked when Pete Wilson was governor and California was a swing state. Since then, under Davis, Schwarzenegger, Brown, and now Newsom it has decreased significantly.
I know quite a few fairly liberal people who moved explicitly because they wanted to do this. To a lot of people in my social circle, it seems inherently unfair that at a federal level your vote counts for more in a lot of conservative rural areas.
Poor people are broke and don't have good jobs with livable wages, so the average life quality is less for people at the very bottom. A fraction of people will turn to self-/other-harming-distractions like drug use, crime and mischief when things aren't good. Couple that with upstanding citizens being unarmed and helpless unless they're billionaires, judges or Laurie Smith's buddies, criminals are going to see most Californias as "easy pickin's." "Tough on crime" hasn't worked, the War on Drugs has failed miserably and hating on poor people isn't going to solve anything.
Former Sonoma County resident from 2009-2017 here. Three break-ins in my last year and a half caused my exodus. A new skate park had been built across the street that included bathrooms and a bus stop. A homeless camp immediately sprang up in the woods behind it, and I started getting robbed.
That combined with the fact that the garden I had was 100% legal locally until the state legalized recreational cannabis and the county went for the cash grab. What Sonoma County did to their small cannabis farmers is another huge reason people are heading elsewhere.
It left me in the position of leaving or having an illegal garden that was being robbed. I can tell you that I didn't move to Northern California to grow cannabis illegally and I didn't move to the woods to get robbed, so the choice to leave was tough but unambiguous.
Forcing homeless services into an area and the subsequent homeless people entering your neighborhood is the politically correct 21st century version of blockbusting[1]. I suspect this is probably why Amazon, not exactly a friend of poor people, is putting homeless shelters in their offices, so they can lower the surrounding real estate prices and more easily expand[2].
Drifting the topic but I've wondered why they don't section off some good wilderness land to let homeless people make a kind of wild west type town for themselves. If I was homeless I'd certainly rather live off the land in that setting with a nice cabin even without electricity, catch my own meat, and generally be able to be self-sustaining than sleep on concrete and panhandle.
But more than a few of them would be disruptive and ruin the land and ruin it for everyone else.
There are plenty of articles and videos about what ends up happening to these encampments- they turn into dumps with piles of used needles and lots of human waste. The last thing you'd want is something catching fire and spreading.
Generally, most habitable 'live off the land' type of places are spoken for already, no nearby property owners are going to approve of such a 'zone'.
I work remotely but just moved to Sonoma county because my partner got a job here. The house prices are really insane. Seems most people here are either rich retirees or people whose families have lived here for a long time and made a ton of money with real estate bought before prices exploded. I don’t see any jobs here that would even remotely justify the house prices. It’s a beautiful area but the economy is pretty weird.
I'm born and raised Sonoma County (as is my wife) and we are about the only people we grew up with who still live here. We saved/worked through college bought a house at a decent time (2014), and our mortgage payment for 3BR/2BA is less than many friends pay for a room. If my wife wasn't a winemaker we would most likely not be living here either. I cannot begin to understand how or why people would move here, and many people have come from out of the area to work at the City I work for only to leave after a year or two of living in a home 1/4 the size of where they come from and saving absolutely no money despite their pay increase. We've had 3 people hired for the same position all decline after a month or so of looking for housing, saying they cannot find a place where they could afford based on the salary (and the salaries are high).
It’s hard to beat CA weather, scenery, and access to outdoors. And be a drive from a major city like SF. Hence lots of rich people are willing to pay a lot for housing. Plus, CA has some decent socially liberal laws that set it apart.
If one can afford to live here I get it - sorry writing during short breaks at work. I don't understand how someone who is young and in an entry level service industry job could make the decision to live in Sonoma County, however with my wife supervising 10-40 seasonal interns a year (shes worked in different sized wineries) I have become friends with a lot of them. I wish them the best but more often than not I see them give up after a year or two and move home. This has led to a lot of well loved restaurants slowly decreasing in quality and closing, or offering limited menus (I eat out only a few times a year so I am not decrying the loss of restauarants, but rather pointing out a visible expression of the rising cost of living).
Weird is certainly the word for it. The SF real estate catastrophe is pushing up prices here, particularly the south end of the county, while (in the small tech scene at least) salaries haven't adjusted. I've lived here since 2011 but I don't think I would start here today. But of course, anyone who bought a house 20 years ago is just fine since their costs are fixed. Renters and recent buyers pick up the tax bill. Thanks a lot, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association!
Housing prices are going up in Sonoma because nobody is building houses (in SF, Sonoma, or any of the other counties in the 9-county Bay Area). Sonoma needs to build as much (well, more thanks to PG&E) as anywhere else out here.
Yes, absolutely. I'd add that this area loves its urban growth boundaries, so the only way to add lots of housing is to build up. This makes the carve-out in SB-50 for counties with a population under 600,000 problematic, in my view.
>Seems most people here are either rich retirees or people whose families have lived here for a long time and made a ton of money with real estate bought before prices exploded
Yep - I lived there between 2015-2017 and this about sums it up.
Sonoma county needs to clean up. Rampant drug abuse, crime(prop 47) and homeless encampments everywhere. I can’t even begin to explain the hassle I had to deal with my farm there. My farm business is literally trashed due to Sonoma county’s lack of law and order.
Are they really? An honest question - suppose the housing does a nosedive to 100K. I still find it hard to believe that those living on the streets in tents with no jobs will rush to buy houses.
The other category of “invisible” homeless - those living in cars and at friends places/garages will of course benefit if the average price of the housing drops
That would be the most naive interpretation of the relationship - what if, for example, the invisible homeless also burden charities and other support systems in a way that leads to more visible homelessness? What if, given that high prices are a sign of lack of supply, visible homelessness is just a symptom of lack of construction in the county?
"Suppose the house price drops" is a very non-specific hypothetical. Why would the house price drop, and what impact could that have on homelessness?
I think "linked" is probably the right term. It's certainly a spectrum of people with issues (substance abuse, mental health, opportunity, bad luck).
A drop in housing prices doesn't immediately fix any of those things, but it unlocks some options. Looking at Zillow, rent of a 1 bedroom unit is around $2000/mo (put another way, that's 100% of the income of a person working at minimum wage), that's just an impossible situation.
If housing prices come down, rents come down, the most functional 1/3 of the homeless population gets off the street, resources can be applied to the more difficult cases, etc.
Not an economist. But many of us perceive that in the US today the middle class is contracting. A few people from that class may migrate to the upper class-- good for them-- but probably the overwhelming majority of folks migrate downwards.
So if OP means that in a context where there is a lot of quite expensive real estate you would expect also to find a good number of people who are so marginalized that they are living in their cars or on the streets, then yes, they are linked.
Obviously people with no real income will not be rushing out to buy houses... however, lowering home prices would help prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place. If you only have to manage to pay for a $100,000 home, it's going to be much easier to keep those payments up.
For those already homeless, special assistance will be required to get them back into "moneyed" society. However, a lower entry point to homeownership would make this assistance less costly.
I’d say my point still applies, perhaps with a smaller degree. If rents drop 3x (an economic disaster pretty much) are tent encampment inhabitants rushing to rent, coming up with deposits and getting pre-approved?
> If rents drop 3x (an economic disaster pretty much) are tent encampment inhabitants rushing to rent, coming up with deposits and getting pre-approved?
If we're dealing in hypotheticals, why do you seem to be asserting that they would not do so? If they can hold down some sort of job, and they can afford the lower rent why wouldn't they go for a real roof over their head?
Or are you saying that campers simply don't want that? I have no idea what you're on about with these questions...
People we know are leaving (I have been in SoCal -- Santa Barbara, LA, and Orange counties -- for the last 12 years) but are clearly being replaced, and then some, by am influx of migrants and immigrants.
I don't expect that you intended it this way, but be aware that the way you've phrased the question is likely to offend --- homelessness is complex and most homeless folks aren't criminals.
I certainly didn't mean to intend, only wondered if the parent intended to conflate the two issues and was trying to find out. I find the issue of homelessness a fascinating puzzle of many issues and wonder how it might be solved.
Prop 47 is a ridiculous red herring. It raised the threshold for felony [whatever] to $950. To my knowledge that threshold hadn't changed in my lifetime, which is to say that the intent of the original statutes was that there should be a significant barrier to a felony charge. Meanwhile a misdemeanor can be punished by up to 364 days in jail. However police are generally unwilling to enforce misdemeanor statutes.
A couple weeks ago one of my cars was vandalized (hood was etched). The last time I talked to a body shop about getting a hood repainted I was told to expect to pay at least $600-$800. I'd expect by now the total cost will be over a grand. For all of the whining about Prop 47 (not from you specifically), do you really think the vandal was cognizant of the threshold for felony vandalism? Do you really think that they were trying to create just under $950 worth of damage? I sure don't. Hell, I don't even think that person deserves to spend in excess of a year in jail over this.
Prop 47 only encourages crime because we've moved into "police won't enforce the laws on the books" territory.
Oh it was one of my neighbors, not a gang. ~$800 was the quote for a car with cheaper paint. This car has metallic paint (more expensive and more difficult to respray well), I'd be very surprised if I could find a competent shop to fix it for less than a grand.
I'm not a lawyer so here's how I interpreted these lawyers:
Petty theft is up to six months in jail + up to $1,000 fine. Prop 47 added a misdemeanor shoplifting statute with a max. incarceration to one year. Previously this was considered burglary where a defendant could be charged with either a misdemeanor (up to a year in jail) or felony (up to three or so years).
The existing burglary statute (which otherwise covered what is now called shoplifting) carries a sentence of up to one year in jail (misdemeanor) or more (felony). The gangs taking less than $950 worth of goods are taking advantage of police apathy. So, sure, maybe Prop 47 resulted in an increase in shoplifting/burglary. However, if the police were to see these things through repeat criminals would still be subject to the same felony statue as before.
I am not a lawyer too but, from what I know, the police do not prosecute crimes. They bring their reports to a DA who decides to charge or not. And the DAs, being an elected official and seeing what is the public opinion of these crimes from the prop 47, do not want to charge them. And if the DAs are not going to charge these crimes anyways there is no point for the police to catch the criminals.
The police don't prosecute crimes, correct. As long as they're not making arrests it's not even a matter of what the DA or judge does.
And if the DAs are not going to charge these crimes anyways there is no point for the police to catch the criminals.
And there it is. There is absolutely a point in making misdemeanor arrests. Making misdemeanor arrests allows the rest of society to focus on the next step in the process.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So for the police more "lenient" sentences for first time offenders is offensive. They want to crack skulls. If they can't then they don't care.
The SF POA, for instance, threw a ton of money around to defend capital punishment in California while the residents of San Francisco elected a DA (Kamala Harris) who campaigned on a platform of staunch opposition to capital punishment. It was a lot of the same crap with the three strikes law. Non-partisan analysis pointed out that the California statute was excessively punitive and expensive but police and prosecutors across the state came out swinging against proposed reform.
Same thing with the new DA (Boudin). One of his planks was focusing on gangs (a.k.a. organized crime) that are breaking into cars versus and focusing on getting addicts and homeless people into diversion/treatment programs. Of course there was plenty of outrage about how property crime was going to get even worse under Boudin's reign of apathy. Whatddya know, someone posted a video the other day of a break-in at an Embarcadero parking lot. Was it a junkie looking to score? No, it was a group of people in a car, wearing masks going about their task very methodically.
Not sure how is capital punishment and a car break in video related to shoplifting so I will ask again: what changed from the point of view of police? They did not get to crack skulls before. From their POV nothing has changed at all - they arrest, book, and put the suspect in jail either it's a misdemeanor or a class A felony. No skull cracking happens at all.
The only difference I can see is that making arrests which do not end with charges will show up as the police harassing the citizenry in the statistics so the police, rightfully, avoids making those. The link I posted quotes a police officer saying as much:
While misdemeanors, in theory, can bring up to a year in county jail, Fresno Police Sgt. Mark Hudson said it’s not worth it to issue a citation or arrest a suspect who would likely be immediately released because of overcrowding.
Capital punishment is an example of police demanding to use violent tactics.
I will ask again: what changed from the point of view of police?
Their egos got bruised.
They did not get to crack skulls before
If you mean literally, sure they did. If you mean metaphorically then again sure they did. They're literally throwing a tantrum because things that could've been charged as a misdemeanor or felony (at the discretion of the DA) can now only be charged as a felony for a repeat offense. Note that a lot of the anti-Prop 47 rhetoric misses this. Theft of $950 can still be charged as a felony under a variety of circumstances (including the case of simply being a repeat offender).
While misdemeanors, in theory, can bring up to a year in county jail, Fresno Police Sgt. Mark Hudson said it’s not worth it to issue a citation or arrest a suspect who would likely be immediately released because of overcrowding.
So what? Jails and prisons across the state are overcrowded. The state is exporting prisoners to counties and other states. The overcrowding is a not so subtle hint that simply locking people up is not a solution. Prop 47 doesn't change this dynamic, if anything it would reduce the overcrowding (which is a good thing except for those who would like to see petty theft carry a life sentence).
> We have fires caused by illegal cooking fires at these encampments.
Be careful about tossing around this kind of rhetoric. I heard the same story about a fire in my old neighborhood in LA. It turned out that the son of the head of Chamber of Commerce started it trying to firebomb an encampment.
Please research the facts before posting this. The fires have been caused by people using Propane tanks with attachments to heat their flammable tents.
The Kincade Fire was started by PG&E, but somehow whenever wildfires get mentioned, people immediately point to the homeless...
I only made this comment because it seems to be feeding into exterminationist sentiments among the wealthy and homeowners. As I pointed out, this led to an attack on an encampment in my old neighborhood.
My view is that this is not the homeless fault either - people have to eat and shelter. What we need is a right to shelter or similar approach to actually address the root problem. Medical care and development (lack of it) are also contributing issues.
I am sympathetic to the plight these people are in and truly believe the only reason I'm in a house and not in one of these camps is that I somehow avoided the misfortune that has befallen these individuals. A lot of those who find themselves homeless are only there due to a precipitating crisis that they were unable to get out from under. That being said, they do not belong on the only east-west connecting bike path between two towns, where the only other alternative for cycling is to be on the shoulder of roads that are 35-55 MPH. They shouldn't be using open fires to heat tents.
Ever since the Boise ruling cities have been aware that they cannot arrest homeless individuals for camping on public land if there are not enough shelter beds for them within the municipality. The failure of the county to act on this in a timely manner is the big problem here; this camp existed in a smaller capacity in previous years and it should have never formed a second time. They should have made funds available proactively to have the temporary housing they are putting up available before the rain season began in November. Santa Rosa and the county waste time fighting over who is responsible for the camp, as its county own land within the Santa Rosa city limits.
I'm sure I'll get some hate for this but we need to cut our losses with the SMART train and not extend the $0.0025 sales tax in march. SMART is up and running and should now be able to operate on their own revenue. They should cancel any plans to extend further north the Windsor, Healdsburg, and Cloverdale as this expansion will probably cost close to a billion dollars based on the current state of the track through Healdsburg and beyond (failed bridges, completely washed out sections along Foss Creek, etc). We should develop a more efficient bus bridge from these locations to the airport and invest in ending the homeless crisis now.
Yeah, they are blocking a transit corridor. On a floodplain. It's not good.
And I agree --- the county response has not impressed. In that sense it's actually great that the encampment is in such a prominent location. The county can't keep playing their inhumane game of whack-a-mole. They have to actually do something.
The SMART financing situation is certainly a mess, but I don't think that it's reasonable to expect revenue neutrality from a public transit agency. I think it's reasonable for it to see a public subsidy proportionate with automobile infrastructure. However, I am personally very frustrated about the gaps in the bike path.
I'm mostly inclined to blame the situation on the ridiculous way we fund transit development in this country. Everything is funded from a mix of sources --- local, state, and federal --- and the federal funds are often "matching" funds. So SMART has to carefully break projects into bits to match the available funds and grant criteria. It's ridiculously inefficient. But of course, this complaint isn't really actionable given the political gridlock at the national level.
Thank you for being an informed and thoughtful presence in this thread!
"Be careful about tossing around this kind of rhetoric."
It's literally the cause of every fire in Riverside County so it is FAR from rhetoric, it is FACTUAL. It starts in the riverbottoms, from homeless cooking fires.
From the few of these people I have spoken with - anecdotally:
- None left because of the fire risk, specifically. [though some obviously did - 2]
- Most left because of the cost of living: $600k avg home price.
- Some also left because of political and human environment: We have homeless encampments on our bike trails. We have fires caused by illegal cooking fires at these encampments. Petty crime is increasing, and state laws are only enabling this - people are sick of it.
1 - https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9149705-181/sonoma-county...
2 - https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/04/2...