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A couple of other points to consider. First the composition of the residents of the housing changed dramatically between 1950 and today. In 1950, a two bedroom cottage was a lot more likely to have had a family of four living in it. With say mom and dad sharing one bedroom and the two kids doubling in bunk beds in the other bedroom. Part of the change is that there are just fewer nuclear families today vs 1950 and second the composition of what types of people are deciding to live in downtown has also radically changed. Today, you have proportionately a lot more single and gays living in the neighborhood with a lot fewer families and dramatically fewer kids. So a one or two bedroom place is much more likely today than in 1950 to just have one occupant in it. These social changes mean that even if the existing housing stock in 1950 didn't change at all between 1950 and today, downtown would still have dramatically fewer residents today vs 1950. Its just very hard to convince people to live like they did in 1950, when people and families were just a lot poorer.
Second remember that the quality of the housing stock in the US was still surprisingly poor in 1950 and a lot of this older housing stock really did need to be replaced and upgraded. The US census bureau defined complete plumbing to mean hot and cold piped water, a bathtub or a shower and flush toilets. As recently as 1940, half the homes in the US didn't have complete plumbing. By 1950, that number was still 1/3 of the housing stock without complete plumbing. The neighborhoods that had the biggest issues with poor housing stock where the older neighborhoods, especially the older neighborhoods that had poor minorities who couldn't leave the neighborhoods because racially restrictive deeds still prevented them from living anywhere else, meaning neighborhoods like downtown.
What really got people worked up about the state of the housing stock in the US was a series of photos by Andrew Stern called Appalachian Portfolio taken from 1959 to 1963. These photos embarrassed the federal government and helped to convince it to fund the War on Poverty. But the poverty wasn't confined just to Appalachia. During the cold war when America was trying to argue that our system of government made us the wealthiest country on Earth it was embarrassing to have neighborhoods where the housing stock was still so poor. So a coalition of community activists, business and civic leaders set out to change that.
We tend to have a distorted view of the past because in general the housing stock that is the most likely to be preserved was the nicest of the existing housing stock where as the worst most decrepit housing stock was also the most likely to be pulled down, yet we tend to assume that what remains of the older housing stock was somehow representative of what the average housing stock was before some of it was bulldozed. But that simply just isn't true. A lot of what was bulldozed really was blighted and really did need to be replaced. I am not saying that urban renewal efforts during the 1950's and 1960's were some great success program. They weren't. The programs were far too heavy handed. Good intentions often create unintended and unforeseen bad results. But at the same time, I think its important to acknowledge that social activists at the time had identified a very real problem they wanted to do something to fix and its important to not sweep this very real problem under the rug with visions of an imaginary past that never actually quite existed.
Regardless of the quality of the housing (and having seen a lot of photos of the areas subject to demolition, a lot of it was as nice as anything in Sacramento's other historic central city neighborhoods) the main problem is that housing for 30,000 people was destroyed and not replaced with anything. As you mentioned, the newer neighborhoods were racially restricted, so the people displaced couldn't just move to the suburbs--they moved to other neighborhoods of the central city like Southside and Alkali Flat, and nearby neighborhoods like Oak Park and North Sacramento. This process was already underway by the late 1950s.
The housing stock of what is now Capitol Mall, the office/business district downtown, and the dozens of parking lots and parking structures around it, is gone. The only way to get a population back downtown is to replace the housing that was lost.
The depopulation of downtown was not an unintended consequence--it was what the business community wanted, in fact insisted upon, because it gave them control over the redevelopment funds and federal funds that came flooding in. For them, it was an absolutely successful windfall. For downtown, and the people who lived there, it was a disaster that still hasn't run its course. Now we are left with the choice of replacing that housing, at much greater expense, or having a downtown that continues to fail. The small downtown businesses that depended on the downtown population for most of their businesses fell first--then the bigger businesses started to jump ship or go out of business, because they were surrounded by vacant stores. The various revamps and reboots have done nothing to replace the lost housing stock, so the fundamental problem was never solved. And until it is, it will continue to occur.
Not to derail the ongoing discussion, but on the OP...I finally walked K St the other day at lunch time and it feels a little odd that this marketing idea attracted so much attention. Honestly, from street level, you just see a few, small, tastefully stylized signs that appear to just say "Kay" (you don't see the much-maligned "the" unless you look closely). I think it looks fine--definitely worth the money for the signs, probably not worth the money for the marketing consultants.
Another name for housing without complete plumbing without hot or cold water, without flush toilets without a shower or a tub is slum housing. A big reason for tearing down a lot of downtown was slum abatement. Remember what was going on in the 20 years before 1950. There was the Great Depression when a lot of the country was destitute, then after that there was a war and there wasn't time or resources to spend on upgrading bad housing because everything was being diverted to the war effort. 1950 was before the civil rights era and before the War on Poverty. This is why in 1950 1/3 of the housing stock in the country could be without complete plumbing. Moreover the problems were concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods. If 1/3 of the housing stock in the country was substandard in 1950, in the poorest neighborhoods of that time, the concentrations of substandard housing in the poorest neighborhoods had to be much higher than 1/3 of the housing stock in these neighborhoods. That is just math.
Look at who was living in the neighborhoods downtown at this time. Downtown is where the Mexicans, the African Americans, the Japanese and the Chinese were living. The Chinese Exclusion Acts were only lifted against the Chinese because China had taken our side during WWII. The Japanese were held in such low regard that they were subject to internment during WWII. How well do you think the Japanese in the US were doing 5 years after the War ended? What kind of housing do you think they could afford? What kind of housing do you think a Mexican or an African American would have access to in 1950? Downtown was also where first generation immigrants fresh off the boat escaping poverty from Ireland, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe found housing. Not all of the immigrants were poor. At the Italians immigrants entered the middle class they started moving out to East Sac, as the Irish started entering the middle class they were moving out to Tahoe Park. But the first generation immigrants who weren't moving out of downtown weren't doing as well. These were your Shanty Irish lived, not your lace curtain Irish. Downtown Sacramento in 1950 is where the poor in the Sacramento region lived. Downtown Sacramento was also were the slums in Sacramento were concentrated. When you have housing where people don't have access to hot and cold water, to flush toilets, to tubs or showers, you really do have a real problem that really did require a real remedy. A lot of this housing really did need to be torn down. Everyone in this country should have access to hot and cold water, to flush toilets and to showers and/or a tub. And to dismiss this issue as merely evil manipulations of the business community is to completely white wash the underlying very real problems of slum housing in this era and in this community.
The problem is, you're assuming that this "substandard" housing was replaced with housing that had all these amenities. My point is that it was not replaced at all. The housing was destroyed and nothing was provided to replace it--in essence, they were told that a clean sidewalk was a better place to sleep than a dirty apartment. The business community, in Sacramento and across the country, fought earlier versions of redevelopment law (which required one-for-one replacement of demolished housing with new replacement housing) tooth and nail, but they welcomed the 1954 revision (which removed the replacement requirement) with open arms. They said "the free market" would take care of housing--while the commercial sector received a fat subsidy. But that free-market solution never materialized, and the modern phenomenon of homelessness is largely due to this poor decision: homelessness IS the free-market solution to low-cost housing!
Neither is the overly pessimistic view of inner cities very accurate. My assessment of Sacramento's West End is based on my own research, including interviews with people who lived there. Downtown Sacramento was nowhere near as remote and without services as rural Appalachia, nor was it as crowded and overbuilt as slums in the oldest parts of Boston, New York or Chicago. Downtown Sacramento had electricity, gas, plumbing and sewage systems well before 1900, and adding such facilities to the handful of Sacramento buildings constructed before they were commonplace was no great insurmountable task. The term "blight" was invented to describe housing that was not yet a slum, but had the possible potential to become a slum. The most important factor in determining whether a neighborhood was "blighted" was race. Shelato put his finger on it when he identified these neighborhoods as poor and nonwhite: they certainly were. But while there were certainly buildings in the West End in rough shape, this was partially due to redlining and other policies that limited the ability of those in nonwhite neighborhoods to borrow money and reinvest in their own neighborhoods. Not that this stopped them--if you look at photos from the period, many of the buildings are well-maintained, and there was even some new construction and improvement of existing buildings by businesses and organizations (like churches and cultural associations) able to self-finance. The neighborhood also had a regional reputation as a center of nightlife and music.
But "blight" was considered a terminal and incurable disease, whose only remedy was a wrecking ball. The paint is peeling? Knock it down. Hot water doesn't work? Knock it down. People living inside are the wrong color? Knock it down. That was the mindset, and the excuse, used to dislodge 30,000 people from downtown Sacramento, take their homes, and replace them with nothing.
Not to derail the ongoing discussion, but on the OP...I finally walked K St the other day at lunch time and it feels a little odd that this marketing idea attracted so much attention. Honestly, from street level, you just see a few, small, tastefully stylized signs that appear to just say "Kay" (you don't see the much-maligned "the" unless you look closely). I think it looks fine--definitely worth the money for the signs, probably not worth the money for the marketing consultants.
Wow, they must have been very subtle indeed...I walked K Street yesterday evening (from 9th past the convention center) and didn't notice them at all! I did notice that the new Mediterranean restaurant near 10th and K (it has had an old sign for "Farley's Restaurant" on it for years) is almost ready to open. I also noticed the big sign for the upstairs sushi/karaoke place above the Cosmopolitan Cabaret, and there is also another sushi place opening at 9th and K above Marilyn's.
And, as is usual these days, I noticed that it was relatively busy, and relatively comfortable to walk home, around 8 PM on a Tuesday night. Just 2-3 years ago it was a lot more of a ghost town!
Wow, they must have been very subtle indeed...I walked K Street yesterday evening (from 9th past the convention center) and didn't notice them at all! I did notice that the new Mediterranean restaurant near 10th and K (it has had an old sign for "Farley's Restaurant" on it for years) is almost ready to open. I also noticed the big sign for the upstairs sushi/karaoke place above the Cosmopolitan Cabaret, and there is also another sushi place opening at 9th and K above Marilyn's.
And, as is usual these days, I noticed that it was relatively busy, and relatively comfortable to walk home, around 8 PM on a Tuesday night. Just 2-3 years ago it was a lot more of a ghost town!
Yeah--they're just above the existing city street signs on, I believe the NW and SE corners of each street from downtown plaza to at least 11th.
Okay, just saw them tonight and they are kind of subdued. And Estelle's Patisserie has extended their operating hours to 8 PM, at least on weekdays--there seems to be a lot more foot traffic in the early evening.
Neither is the overly pessimistic view of inner cities very accurate. My assessment of Sacramento's West End is based on my own research, including interviews with people who lived there. Downtown Sacramento was nowhere near as remote and without services as rural Appalachia, nor was it as crowded and overbuilt as slums in the oldest parts of Boston, New York or Chicago. Downtown Sacramento had electricity, gas, plumbing and sewage systems well before 1900, and adding such facilities to the handful of Sacramento buildings constructed before they were commonplace was no great insurmountable task. The term "blight" was invented to describe housing that was not yet a slum, but had the possible potential to become a slum. The most important factor in determining whether a neighborhood was "blighted" was race. Shelato put his finger on it when he identified these neighborhoods as poor and nonwhite: they certainly were. But while there were certainly buildings in the West End in rough shape, this was partially due to redlining and other policies that limited the ability of those in nonwhite neighborhoods to borrow money and reinvest in their own neighborhoods. Not that this stopped them--if you look at photos from the period, many of the buildings are well-maintained, and there was even some new construction and improvement of existing buildings by businesses and organizations (like churches and cultural associations) able to self-finance. The neighborhood also had a regional reputation as a center of nightlife and music.
But "blight" was considered a terminal and incurable disease, whose only remedy was a wrecking ball. The paint is peeling? Knock it down. Hot water doesn't work? Knock it down. People living inside are the wrong color? Knock it down. That was the mindset, and the excuse, used to dislodge 30,000 people from downtown Sacramento, take their homes, and replace them with nothing.
I looked up the 1950 Sacramento housing data by block data, which I attached below, on my computer the data for Sacramento came up at the end of the file pages 82-111. Its a large file which takes a while to load.
The City of Sacramento did better overall than I assumed. This is from table 2, Characteristics of Housing by Census Tract found on page 3 of the Sacramento Section of the report. Overall in the 1950 census 43,679 housing units responded to the plumbing question, of which 4039 housing units were identified as lacking a private bath or dilapidated moreover 1446 were identified as lacking running water or dilapidated.
According to the Introduction of the report, "The category 'with private bath' includes those dwelling units includes dwelling units reported with both a flush toilet and a bathtub or shower inside the structure for the exclusive use of the occupants of the unit. The category 'with no private bath' includes those dwelling units not having private flush toilet or not having private bathing facilities. The 'no running water' category includes units with only piped water outside the structure or with only other sources such as a hand pump. A dwelling unit is 'dilapidated' when its run down or neglected or is of inadequate original construction, so that it does not provide adequate shelter or protection against the elements or it endangers the safety of its occupants.
But as we look downtown the Census data pretty much supports the argument I was making. For 1950 Census Tract 7 which is identified as the Sacramento River to the West, 7th Street to the East, Capitol Ave to the South and the Railyard to the North, So H and I Street. In Census Tract 7 338 housing units responded to the question, 209 housing units lacked a private bath or dilapidated and 75 housing units were identified as lacking running water or dilapidated. So here almost 2/3 of the housing lacks a private bath and almost 1/4 lacks running water
For 1950 Census Tract 8 which was bounded by the Sacramento River to the West, Capitol Avenue on the North, 7th Street on West and R St on the South. In Census Tract 8 1025 housing units responded to the question, 461 were identified as lacking a private bath or dilapidated and 227 were identified as lacking running water or dilapidated. Again here 4 out of 10 units lack private baths and another 1 out of 5 lack running water.
For 1950 Census Tract 10, which is 7th Street on the West, H Street on the North, 12th Street on the East but doesn't include the State Capitol so it jogs down to 10th Street to meet up with Capitol Avenue on the South. In Census Tract 9 213 units responded to the question, 76 were reported to lack a private bath or dilapidated and another 4 lacked running water. So again a little more than 1/3 of the housing here lacked a private bathtub or a shower.
For Census Tract 9, which is 7th Street on the West, 12 Street on the East, Capitol Avenue on the North and R Street on the South and because the State Capitol is in the way of where 12 Street and Capitol Ave would meet up, the census tract bends over at 10th and N Streets to avoid the State Capitol. In Census Tract 9, 1102 housing units answered the question, 333 housing units were identified as lacked private bathrooms or dilapidated and 54 housing units were identified as lacking running water or dilapidated. So more than a quarter of the housing in this census tract lacked a bathroom.
To put these numbers in context for the city overall. In the City overall 43,679 housing units responded to the plumbing questions of which 2678 of those were located in these four census tracts meaning these four census tracts accounted for about 6% of the responses overall. Of the 4039 housing units in the City of Sacramento that lacked a private bath 1079 were found in these 4 census tracts or 27% of the Cities housing without private baths were found in these four census tracts. Lastly of the 1446 housing units identified in the City of Sacramento without running water, 360 were found in this four census tracts or 31% of cities supply of housing without running water was found in these four census tracts. This means that if you lived in these four housing tracts you were about 4.5 times more likely to not have a private bath or shower in your unit compared to the rest of the city and you were more than 5 times more likely to not have running water.
Wburg has been arguing "blight" was invented term with most important factor in determining whether a neighborhood was "blighted" was race arguing that the housing quality of these neighborhoods was comparable to the rest of the city, the census data simply doesn't support this argument. Who wants to live in housing without running hot and cold water, without flush toilets and without a shower or a bathtub? This really was slum abatement. A lot of this housing stock really did need to go.
Last edited by shelato; 11-02-2012 at 12:16 PM..
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