Here's a look at the dilemma facing many parts of California. As the state's population keeps increasing, it's driving out many people who grew up and lived most of their lives in some of these picturesque smaller towns. At the same time, the people who do live there don't want their picturesque scenery and open spaces transformed into a suburban jungle like it has become in many other parts of the state, and understandably so, so they are limiting the construction of new buildings. But that only exacerbates the shortage of housing. It's gotten so bad even police and firefighters can't afford to live there. A few thoughts: It seems to me this increase in population didn't result from natural population growth, so where did all the people come from who moved into this town? Were they very wealthy people moving in from other places? Or is it like how it is in other parts of the state where some of the lower end houses are being jam packed full of 20 people, and these are the people who do the low paid work? To get just a regular suburban sized house in Santa Barbara costs around $750-850,000 so even a household earning $100,000 a year is going to have difficulty affording that. This used to be a beautiful quaint middle class beachside city. If they do allow developers to come in, that may ease up the housing shortage for a short period of time, but then the city's going to fill up with more people and the housing shortage will happen all over again, and it will permanently ruin the city. Many of you might not be able to understand that, but it's happened in many other areas of California. It's very understandable why they want to maintain open space and prevent the roads from becoming clogged with more cars. Perhaps the fundamental problem is there are too many people.
California is pour third largest state in area but a good portion is desert.It already has over 12% of all the residents of the USA,so it's probably at saturation point.
Well the state has a population of 40 million people, more than Canada now, and to compound the problem the geography of the state (mountains and arid deserts) concentrates most of the population that is there into narrow regions, which you can see in population distribution maps. Actually that's part of the reason there are more than twice as many people overall in the Eastern half of the U.S. than there are in the West, because there are fewer areas in the Western half geographically suitable to sustain populations. In the East there is more of the population more evenly spread out, which you can see in one of the maps in another thread here. What I'm saying is that if California were on the East Coast, so to speak, with the same population and the same total state land area, the people living there probably wouldn't be so closely crammed together.
we really just need a fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage, unemployment compensation for being unemployed on an at-will basis in our at-will employment States, and Industrial Automation to help with social costs. Labor needs to circulate money.
