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Vote better and this region will get a lot nicer. Even as recent as 2018 things were much better.
The majority of the issues many of us are facing are completely local—like town and county. The president and even to a degree the governor races don’t matter much. Local politicians often don’t even have political parties but those elections are the most important.
Schools suck? Don’t vote for local politicians that establish your city as a “sanctuary city” and make sure the number of administrators, their salaries and pension obligations are easily findable by the public.
Police suck? Vote for private security companies that you can fire to do more work. Vote for distric attorneys that actually prosecute crime.
Homeless doing drugs everywhere? Vote for people that allow “stop and frisk.” People with heroin on them should be thrown in jail or rehab to “dry out.” Make it a crime to loiter in public.
Traffic terrible? Don’t vote for people like those in my county that think road expansions cause global warming and fight them tooth and nail
Last edited by njbiodude; 05-12-2024 at 08:50 PM..
L.A. is awesome if you have good real estate, more than enough money to live off and plan ahead for the future, enjoy mild weather, have pretty orthodox Democratic Party politics and also don't mind the sight of tents and garbage in many many public spaces (or simply have a great talent for just not registering unpleasant sights). I think all of those things apply to significant numbers of people, and those people will enjoy L.A. for all it has to offer, which still is plenty.
I keep seeing this in my coastal SoCal town. Except that the wealth accumulators moving in aren't just from the USA. There are a lot of foreigners moving in to town these days. We have a lot of Western Europeans--Germans, Dutch, Swedes. The latest wave actually appears to be Asian. The Chinese finally figured out that the ocean doesn't mean poor fishermen and drowning here. The last waves of PRC and ROC immigrants all settled far inland and made all the schools in Azusa 10/10's.
The new wave of Chinese multi-millionaires are moving to the coasts, though.
We do have a lot of elderly US transplants too. However they are just that; older. It seems like old rich people from the USA who are sick of snowbirding (or whatever they did in the past) are moving to the coasts here for the longevity of QOL from healthy outdoor living.
Most of the foreign transplants I know are highly skilled (think O visa) working-age adults with children. I have seen, but I don't personally know, the very rich Chinese.
A LOT of middle-to-lower-income townies have moved out since I moved here. My neighborhood used to be pretty solidly middle-class families or elderly adults whos kids had moved out. Now it is 90% upper class with most of the old guard empty nesters selling and moving out. It's been fun watching solar panels crop up on every rooftop and Teslas, Bentleys, Rivians, and Lucid cars fill every driveway.
So basically in affluent coastal SoCal, new buyers are Affluent Chinese and elderly snowbirds from out of state while upper middle class native born families are leaving?
The latest wave actually appears to be Asian. The Chinese finally figured out that the ocean doesn't mean poor fishermen and drowning here. The last waves of PRC and ROC immigrants all settled far inland and made all the schools in Azusa 10/10's.
Azusa Unified School District continues to rank among the lowest in the state.
You’re mentioning “safe” suburbs. Safe suburbs shouldn’t have people walking around screaming to themselves or doing drugs in public, or stealing mail packages of people’s porches, or catalytic converters from the car in your driveway. In NYC a 30 minute train ride has you in Summit, NJ. That’s not an issue for the most part. Wealthy Dallas suburbs same.
Where are the people walking around screaming in La Canada, South Pas, San Marino, Arcadia, Sierra Madre, etc? Those are all within a roughly 30 minute drive to DTLA. There aren't crazy people walking around the residential wealthy areas of Holmby Hills, Bel Air, Hancock Park, or Beverly Hills either.
Where are these people walking around screaming in Irvine, Newport Beach, Tustin, Villa Park, Orange, Mission Viejo, Lake Forest, etc. Those are all less than 30 minute drive to Irvine CBD/Fashion Island.
It seems you don't have a very good understanding of LA/OC suburbs.
Vote better and this region will get a lot nicer. Even as recent as 2018 things were much better.
The majority of the issues many of us are facing are completely local—like town and county. The president and even to a degree the governor races don’t matter much. Local politicians often don’t even have political parties but those elections are the most important.
Schools suck? Don’t vote for local politicians that establish your city as a “sanctuary city” and make sure the number of administrators, their salaries and pension obligations are easily findable by the public.
Police suck? Vote for private security companies that you can fire to do more work. Vote for distric attorneys that actually prosecute crime.
Homeless doing drugs everywhere? Vote for people that allow “stop and frisk.” People with heroin on them should be thrown in jail or rehab to “dry out.” Make it a crime to loiter in public.
Traffic terrible? Don’t vote for people like those in my county that think road expansions cause global warming and fight them tooth and nail
"You fools" have no clue what you're talking about.
Your understanding of how traffic works is 100% incorrect. Stick to biology or pharma or whatever it is you studied. It clearly wasn't traffic engineering or urban planning.
My schools don't suck. My police don't suck. My town doesn't have drugs and homeless everywhere. In fact it's hardly anywhere. You could probably lick the pavement outside my office. I'm more worried about the coyote and raccoon poop on my driveway / street.
Your understanding of how traffic works is 100% incorrect. Stick to biology or pharma or whatever it is you studied. It clearly wasn't traffic engineering or urban planning.
My schools don't suck. My police don't suck. My town doesn't have drugs and homeless everywhere. In fact it's hardly anywhere. You could probably lick the pavement outside my office. I'm more worried about the coyote and raccoon poop on my driveway / street.
So basically in affluent coastal SoCal, new buyers are Affluent Chinese and elderly snowbirds from out of state while upper middle class native born families are leaving?
Upper middle (for the region, not for the country) are just fine. It's the lower-middle and below that are under pressure and moving out. Anyone working retail or lower-end service industry jobs are in trouble. If you only got a HS diploma and a AA/BA, never left your coastal soCal hometown, and live in an apartment near your parents, then you're struggling. Lots of these type of young[er] people working multiple jobs and carrying a lot of debt (regular, not student). These people are cashing out and heading out-of-state when their parents die and leave them the house. Even the crappiest saltbox is worth north of a million these days, if it's within 0-3 miles of the coast.
Skilled tradesmen and professionals are all enjoying the gentrification.
The service industry is benefitting from the huge influx of tourists from Arizona, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, as well as foreign tourists from Europe and Asia. Of course, this means prices for things that tourists do (like dining out) are astronomical. So a service industry person willing to hustle can lead a comfortable life and still find time to surf and "hang with the cool kids." You're not going to be raising 2 kids and buying a house while working at Denny's though.
New buyers are rich (former) snowbirds, Chinese, Europeans, other Asians, and(or including) US executives / professionals (doctors, lawyers, and top-tier engineers). There's a lot of new R&D and advanced tech/industry relocating to the coast--following the highest-skilled labor. The towns around me have booming/expanding high-tech and R&D business parks.
Custom manufacturing is also exploding. Trendy industrial parks turning out custom doodads (or refurbishing classic cars and that sort of thing) are popping up all over.
Heavy industry and manufacturing is on the outs. Legacy plants are still operating, but you can practically smell the desire (of everyone, except the rank-and-file employees maybe) to move it out-of-town and maybe out-of-state to the Rust Belt or places with lower wages and less pollution controls.
It's easy to get people with highly-marketable skills to move TO SoCal. Not so much the other way around, as TSMC is finding out with their failing semiconductor fab in Phoenix.
Not many people with PhD's in cutting-edge pharma are excited about moving to Fort Worth, or wherever. Lots of second-tier companies are moving their manufacturing and operations centers out, but the R&D stuff is moving in.
Most of the younger people/families moving in are 30+somethings with established careers doing stuff like programming self-driving software, developing composite airfoils, battery tech, managing global distribution etc. They're the ones snapping up tract homes in the more "ordinary" subdivisions. The coastal and hillside mansions sell to multi-multi-millionaire executives or retirees.
It's crazy how many languages I'll hear spoken on a walk through downtown--or even in playgrounds or at school events. The SoCal polyglot is not just English and Spanish anymore.
Where are the people walking around screaming in La Canada, South Pas, San Marino, Arcadia, Sierra Madre, etc? Those are all within a roughly 30 minute drive to DTLA. There aren't crazy people walking around the residential wealthy areas of Holmby Hills, Bel Air, Hancock Park, or Beverly Hills either.
Where are these people walking around screaming in Irvine, Newport Beach, Tustin, Villa Park, Orange, Mission Viejo, Lake Forest, etc. Those are all less than 30 minute drive to Irvine CBD/Fashion Island.
It seems you don't have a very good understanding of LA/OC suburbs.
OC is fine for the most part I agree (Anaheim and Santa Ana maybe excluded) LA not so much. Even previously safe areas have homeless nutbags and far higher than average crime.
It's easy to get people with highly-marketable skills to move TO SoCal. Not so much the other way around, as TSMC is finding out with their failing semiconductor fab in Phoenix.
Not many people with PhD's in cutting-edge pharma are excited about moving to Fort Worth, or wherever. Lots of second-tier companies are moving their manufacturing and operations centers out, but the R&D stuff is moving in.
.
Houston TX is arguably the academic medical research capital of the U.S.
While I have found a niche that pays more a lot of PhDs in biology/chemistry are making only about 100-150k/yr in SoCal or the Bay (exceptions for management) and they can’t really afford to live here. Those salaries barely allow one to be able to afford a 1 bedroom condo and the jobs are located in extremely high cost areas where 1 bedroom condos start at 600-700k (and banks will laugh at you if you try to buy with that income to debt ratio without a very large down payment). Your options at that point are a very long commute or renting indefinitely.
Semiconductor fab companies aren’t unable to find people to work in Phoenix (especially foreign workers), so much as they’re having issues getting companies to take the money from the government to properly expand. You see all the subsidies require a ton of pork. Unionized ultra high paying daycare (which most PhD engineers don’t need as they can afford much better childcare options than union government daycare) on site, green mandates and carbon capture (that doesn’t exist in Taiwan), requirements for unionized construction labor to name a few. Most these plants are nowhere near ready and may not be ever fully capable of replacing their foreign counterparts. There’s also requirement for large amounts of water for certain processes which is a problem in the middle of the desert (most likely Arizona was chosen because it’s a swing state more than the fact it’s a good location for this work).
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