Southland's Census Story, in a Word: Boom!
Southern California picked up an estimated 1 million new residents over the last three years as the Bay Area — a population magnet during the dot-com boom — stagnated, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. The figures show Southern California's pace of growth accelerating from the late 1990s — a finding that has significant consequences for a region already confronting congestion in everything from freeways to classrooms. In a reversal of past trends, most of Southern California's recent growth came from births — particularly in older, immigrant-heavy cities in Los Angeles and Orange counties — rather than from resettlement of adults seeking work, demographers said.Still, Southern California continues to attract new families — particularly to inland communities from Antelope Valley to Temecula, where homes cost less than in crowded coastal counties. "Cheap dirt … cheap houses," said John Husing, a Redlands economist. "No matter what anyone says, people continue to want a single-family detached home, and they will crawl over the hills from Orange and Los Angeles counties on their hands and knees to get it."


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Indeed. So we have the Southern California population swelling by one million in three years, much of the growth being not in-migration of job seekers, as in the post-WWII years, but instead representing the high birthrate of immigrant families. That is very expensive growth because kids have to be educated, and that means pressure on the public schools and other public services. Note this from the article: "Andy McCue, director of the UC Riverside Center for Sustainable Suburban Development...predicted that swelling school-age populations in Riverside County alone over the next decade will require the construction of 36 elementary schools, 11 junior highs, and 10 high schools — costing an estimated $1.34 billion."

And the money to do that will come from...where, exactly? Homeowners? I don't think so.

As the article notes, traffic congestion is already beyond belief and getting worse. The cities, especially Los Angeles, are becoming unliveable for people who want the American Dream (as Husing notes above). So people are moving out to what was once the desert, where they end up in an HOA-run new development more often than not, that gives them at least the promise of suburban living--if you don't mind an ambient temperature that runs around 110 Fahrenheit in the summer and a four hour commute to work.

When I was a teenager I would ride my Yamaha 125 Enduro out in the desert around Palmdale and Lancaster. There was nothing anywhere to be seen but desert, and nobody complained about the howling of dozens of unmuffled two-stroke dirt bikes, because nobody could hear it. But now that whole area is full of houses, with the occupants driving two hours each way to LA and Orange County for work. The population explosion in Southern California is pushing people out to Pluto in search of a place to live a decent life. How long can this continue? What are the limits of this process? More to the point, is it the case that nobody in or out of government has the power to stop, slow, or even rationalize it?