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Hey, everybody. Just talked with a friend of mine who's renting an apartment in Sacramento. I forgot which area, but I believe it's kinda near Auburn Blvd. I live in Grass Valley (an hour away from Sacto, but am currently East for school), and the stories she shared with me was horrifying. Dead bodies, shootings, police cars everywhere, helicopters, and the extremely ghetto-ization of Sacramento. As I only pass through Sacramento, I don't know if it really is that bad. I did explore around a bit on Google Street View, and noticed many neighborhoods were starting to put up fences and some windows were either boarded up or had bars on them.
When I was a kid, Sacramento seemed okay...boring but safe. Is it now different and becoming a mini-LA/Richmond? In some ways, I kinda see many suburbs becoming into what Back to the Future II's alternative 1985 was, and fear for the future. Do you think Grass Valley/Auburn/surrounding areas has a chance to become that way too?
We recently left Sacto after living downtown just a few blocks from the Capitol for 11 years, and other areas of Sacto before that. Along with the fact that the city seems to have created the pedestrian, K Street Mall for a homeless hangout, we saw things really begin to deteriorate even more downtown the last five or six years we lived there. Sirens, gunshots and the getto bird became far more common, as did the proliferation of homeless wandering the streets.
While the new south line of the lightrail was a boon to people in the south area who work in the city, it also permitted non-fare paying troublemakers and gang-bangers easy access to the downtown with predictable results.
On the plus side, there has been some gentrification with new lofts, restaurants and entertainment venues downtown and on weekends the streets are very walkable in the evenings, especially on Second Saturdays, for most of the time but I'd certainly avoid the later and early morning hours.
Still, the economy, or what passes for it, has markedly increased those in need of homes and services and the close proximity of Loaves and Fishes and other social service agencies has been like a magnet attracting them to the downtown area. City "planning" is fraught with politically correct, progressive "inclusion" and the end result, in my opinion, has run counter to developing a truly vital and SAFE downtown.
We enjoyed our early years there but are happy and relieved to be elsewhere now.
Most of Auburn Boulevard isn't in the city of Sacramento proper; most of it is in the unincorporated county and in Citrus Heights. Curmudgeon's statements about social service agencies kind of ignores the fact that, over time, social service agencies and housing for the poor has been moving out of the central city, with massive cuts in social services--resulting in a massive increase in homelessness.
Some of the suburbs outside Sacramento's city limits, especially areas like Arden-Arcade, have become demonstrably worse in recent years. Many of these were boom areas during the real estate bubble, and have been hit hard by the crash--their lack of planning of any sort (due to not having a city government) meant that many have been dramatically overbuilt, and some are starting to resemble ghost towns.
For those who think K Street's troubles have only happened in the past few years, here's a YouTube video of K Street in the 1970s--showing vacant buildings, "for lease" signs, porno theaters, piles of trash, and winos in Plaza Park.
Most of Auburn Boulevard isn't in the city of Sacramento proper; most of it is in the unincorporated county and in Citrus Heights. Curmudgeon's statements about social service agencies kind of ignores the fact that, over time, social service agencies and housing for the poor has been moving out of the central city, with massive cuts in social services--resulting in a massive increase in homelessness.
Some of the suburbs outside Sacramento's city limits, especially areas like Arden-Arcade, have become demonstrably worse in recent years. Many of these were boom areas during the real estate bubble, and have been hit hard by the crash--their lack of planning of any sort (due to not having a city government) meant that many have been dramatically overbuilt, and some are starting to resemble ghost towns.
For those who think K Street's troubles have only happened in the past few years, here's a YouTube video of K Street in the 1970s--showing vacant buildings, "for lease" signs, porno theaters, piles of trash, and winos in Plaza Park.
Ah, yes. The ever popular "Wino Park" in front of City Hall. As for the rest, I first visited Sacramento from SoCal, on state business, in 1984 and was impressed by the cleanliness of it, which was a part of why I wished to, and did, move there in 1989. Regrettably, I think it's gone down-hill since.
The pendulum does swing, doesn't it? K Street Mall of the 70s isn't a far cry from what it's becoming again with all the store front and building closures in the last 10 years. Again, Sacramento exhibits a singular lack of planning ability and foresight.
Really? This particular pendulum seems to be swinging for the whole country--it's just swinging especially hard in places that were strongly affected by the housing boom, which is this region as a whole, not just the city of Sacramento. Somehow, if the rest of the country is facing fabulous economic times and we're the one exception, maybe my TV just doesn't get the channel where they're reporting all that.
Plaza Park aka Cesar Chavez Park has its ups and downs. There are a lot of homeless people who hang around there, because, as I mentioned, most of the places where poorer people used to live in the central city are no longer there, leaving them on the street. But it's still pretty clean, and both the Wednesday farmer's markets and the Friday night concerts (in warmer months, at least) are very well-attended. So, in a way, recently there has been both an up and a down. I have seen more homeless on the street and a lot of "for lease" signs, but I have also seen a lot of properties in the central city being fixed up (generally by homeowners rather than investors), a lot more foot traffic in Midtown (areas that used to be kind of sketchy are occupied and safe) and even new construction continuing and new businesses opening--and thriving.
In 1984 and through the eighties, prostitution was rampant along T Street in Southside Park and along J Street in the teens. Today, Southside is a quiet residential neighborhood that has seen steady improvement, and J Street in the teens has become a "restaurant row", including Lucca, long the governor's favorite local dinner spot, with nary a streetwalker to be seen.
Second Saturday is a mixed bag. During the Second Saturday hours, things are pretty safe, but after the galleries close a different crowd arrives--those who want to get very, very drunk, and the predators that have started prowling for unsuspecting drunks who think Midtown is Disneyland to roll. And of course when the un-mugged drive home, they're doing it while under the influence, adding another danger.
So, I wouldn't really say things have gone downhill--they have changed, some for the better, some worse.
I wasn't around in the 80's and in the 90's I spent most of my time in south Sacramento but I'd have to say, at least for a young person, downtown/midtown/central city Sacramento has done nothing but improve dramatically over the past 5-6 years or so.
It just depends where you are and what you are into.
If you are older and wish Sacramento stayed a clean/safe/sleepy town (Curmudgeon), its worse.
If you're young and like for Sacramento to go the other direction (me), it's better.
I wasn't around in the 80's and in the 90's I spent most of my time in south Sacramento but I'd have to say, at least for a young person, downtown/midtown/central city Sacramento has done nothing but improve dramatically over the past 5-6 years or so.
It just depends where you are and what you are into.
If you are older and wish Sacramento stayed a clean/safe/sleepy town (Curmudgeon), its worse.
If you're young and like for Sacramento to go the other direction (me), it's better.
Not quite, Kemosabe! Downtown Sacramento has made great strides in terms of living space, if you like lofts, dining and entertainment. That's undeniable. Where it has continued to fail is in terms of livability when it comes to crime, noise and parking. It's all well and good to be relatively safe during prime early evening and weekend evening entertainment hours but after the workers have left on weekdays and during the days and late nights/early mornings on weekends the streets are turned over to the homeless and lawless and sirens and ghetto birds proliferate, as do the loud cars with louder stereos, the street corner drug deals, the rattling and crashing of shopping carts filled with bottles and cans, gunshots, yells, screams, profanity, etc.
But of course, you'd have to live in the middle of it to understand it. We did for 11 years and it just got progressively worse despite the other obvious improvements.
And please don't forget what the local news <cough KCRA cough> cheerfully refers to as "haze" on the weather report. Let's call a spade a spade shall we? -- it's called smog. It seems the grotesque brown gunk that we're forced to breath in much of the year has also become much worse as well.
Sacramento has always had its crappy locations, but as a kid you probably weren't spending a lot of time in them. I doubt as a child in the 80's you weren't spending a lot of time in Oak Park, Meadowview or Del Paso Heights.
The Sacramento region is getting bigger. Some of the new growth has created neighborhoods that are nicer than anything that the Sacramento region had in the past. 25 years ago, there really wasn't anything in the region like Los Lagos. The new growth has definitely fixed up some places. 25 years ago Folsom was known mostly for its state prison and Roseville was a railroad town with a lot of biker bars and tattoo shops. So new growth has improved some parts of the region.
But as the region got bigger, the bottom half of the income distribution needed a place to live too. 25 years ago, Florin Road still had a functional Mall and a lot of auto dealerships. The middle class basically abandoned large parts of S. Sac. Today, Citrus Heights, North Highlands and South Natomas are a lot more diverse and a less affluent than they were 25 years ago. Today you are going to find a lot less chain stores and a lot more ethnic grocery stores in those neighborhoods.
Caltrans does long term socio economic forecasts for various counties in the state. Sacramento is in Sacramento County. Auburn is in Placer County, Grass Valley and Nevada City are in Nevada Counties.
They forecast that Sacramento County is going to be poorer on a per capita basis than the rest of the state through 2030.
The other thing to think about is what are the consequences of the housing boom and the consequences of the housing bust. During booms, older neighborhoods can get significant investment. During the boom, owner occupants who had been priced out of more expensive neighborhoods started looking at sketchy neighborhoods like Oak Park, Meadowview, West Sac, Del Paso Heights and you saw proposals for high rises in downtown.
But in busts, some neighborhoods get much worse. When the military bases closed in this area after the end of the cold war in the 90's, the neighborhoods near them were hit particularly hard. When a neighborhood has lot of foreclosures it can have a lot of empty homes. Empty homes are magnets for social ne'er do wells. Rio Linda and North Highlands went downhill substantially when McClellan closed. South Natomas was being built out during that period. Before the bases were closed the neighborhood looked like it might be an upscale neighborhood near downtown. But when the builders couldn't sell the homes to owner occupants, they sold them to investors who rented the homes out, the schools went downhill and the neighborhood never recovered.
This region just went through the mother of all housing booms and housing prices are again falling so it is not at all clear that we are through the worst of this.
My hunch is that we are now going through the mother of all housing corrections. Even today after median prices have fallen 50%, real housing prices are higher today than have ever had been before the housing boom. Real prices today are higher than they were at the peak of the last housing boom in 1990. The housing correction is only now starting to effect the neighborhoods where prices are above 300k.
Before I declared that certain neighborhoods are good or bad, I would like to see how the rest of the housing bust shakes out.
Downtown has gone through a couple of supposed turn arounds. When Joe Serna was Mayor, downtown was promoting Thursday nights, the K Street Mall had been remodeled, and the Hard Rock Cafe was supposed to herald the transformation of downtown into a 24 hour destination. During this time, Phantom galleries were showing up on Del Paso Blvd, that area was declared the arts district and a bunch of high end furniture stores and restaurants were moving into the neighborhood.
But as the economy got worse, the turnarounds fissled. Today most of the high end furniture stores in the arts district are gone, the art galleries in that area are gone. On K Street, the top level of the mall is empty.
What I am getting at is that changes that seem like they should be permanent often aren't that permanent. It would be nice if the downtown grid does turnaround permanently, but I could see it going downhill quickly too. The region is getting poorer, there are fewer people with money to go out, shops and restaurants are closing. You still have areas in the grid that are troubled (Alkalai Flat, Southside Park) and those troubled neighborhoods tend to expand during down periods.
There are a lot of neighborhoods and communities in this region that I think could go either way, West Sac, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova and the grid. These are all neighborhoods where if the economy turns around next year probably will become nicer places to live, but if the economic pains goes on those are neighborhoods that could also get much worse quickly.
"There are a lot of neighborhoods and communities in this region that I think could go either way, West Sac, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova and the grid. These are all neighborhoods where if the economy turns around next year probably will become nicer places to live, but if the economic pains goes on those are neighborhoods that could also get much worse quickly."
Being a resident of Rancho, I think the determining factor will be whether there will continue to be a lot of low income housing available to draw people in who (and I'm not making a value judgment here) end up making the place unattractive to attract new stores, restaurants, etc. People don't want to live where there are no stores, no decent restaurants and long stretches of major roads that look like Ghettoville (Folsom Blvd.) This in turn lowers demand for housing which makes it attractive for low-income people to live here which keeps the amenities from coming in. It is sort of a vicious circle.
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