> This is a weird article. It seems to confirm that things used to be better - nobody would call the Central Valley “the good life” now. But its concerns are smog, sprawl, and decreasing share of agriculture. These seem like the problems of somewhere that’s growing - local NIMBYs complaining that too many people want to move in. Today the problem is more that everyone in the Central Valley wants to leave.
> Sometimes well-off residents of California coastal cities get houses in the Central Valley and commute. It’s about 2 hours from LA to Bakersfield, or 1.5 from Stockton to San Francisco, so it’s not worth it for most people. But Central Valley houses cost between 25% and 50% the cost of coastal houses, so I guess it’s worth it for some. I don’t know whether this is good (because these people bring money in and create jobs) or bad (because these people bid up land values).
Your two assumptions here- that it's the rich buying second houses and commuting, and that this isn't a significant number of people- are wrong.
Anecdotally, I live in the South Bay and have spoken with multiple random workers who have multiple hour commutes from the Central Valley. I can't find statistics on this, but this more-or-less matches what I'd expect- the people getting pushed out of the Bay Area due to housing prices are the poorest, not the richest.
The article calculates that ~130,000 workers commute from the Central Valley into the Bay Area. If the average family has 4 people, one of whom commutes to the Bay Area, that's 500,000 people who have been pushed out the Bay Area. The Central Valley has a population of 6.5 million; if you exclude the 2 million who live around Sacramento (the state capital, an exception as you discuss in the article), over 10% of the Central Valley's families have somebody commuting to the Bay Area. I know much less about LA, and couldn't find good stats from google, but if it's similar then that's ~20% of the entire population of the Central Valley who live there in large part because lack of housing pushed them out of the coastal cities.
> This is a weird article. It seems to confirm that things used to be better - nobody would call the Central Valley “the good life” now. But its concerns are smog, sprawl, and decreasing share of agriculture. These seem like the problems of somewhere that’s growing - local NIMBYs complaining that too many people want to move in. Today the problem is more that everyone in the Central Valley wants to leave.
> Sometimes well-off residents of California coastal cities get houses in the Central Valley and commute. It’s about 2 hours from LA to Bakersfield, or 1.5 from Stockton to San Francisco, so it’s not worth it for most people. But Central Valley houses cost between 25% and 50% the cost of coastal houses, so I guess it’s worth it for some. I don’t know whether this is good (because these people bring money in and create jobs) or bad (because these people bid up land values).
Your two assumptions here- that it's the rich buying second houses and commuting, and that this isn't a significant number of people- are wrong.
Anecdotally, I live in the South Bay and have spoken with multiple random workers who have multiple hour commutes from the Central Valley. I can't find statistics on this, but this more-or-less matches what I'd expect- the people getting pushed out of the Bay Area due to housing prices are the poorest, not the richest.
Regarding the sheer number of commuters, here's an article: https://extras.mercurynews.com/megaregion/
The article calculates that ~130,000 workers commute from the Central Valley into the Bay Area. If the average family has 4 people, one of whom commutes to the Bay Area, that's 500,000 people who have been pushed out the Bay Area. The Central Valley has a population of 6.5 million; if you exclude the 2 million who live around Sacramento (the state capital, an exception as you discuss in the article), over 10% of the Central Valley's families have somebody commuting to the Bay Area. I know much less about LA, and couldn't find good stats from google, but if it's similar then that's ~20% of the entire population of the Central Valley who live there in large part because lack of housing pushed them out of the coastal cities.