The north San Joaquin Valley's dubious distinctions

Why do three adjoining counties in the northern San Joaquin Valley -- San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced -- continue to top the national ranking for highest mortgage foreclosure rates while continuing to contain some of the least affordable housing in the nation. The press dutifully reports month after month that these counties do top the charts with this dubious distinction, but do not dwell on any reasons.

This essay makes an awkward beginning to trying to describe some of the ideas, political and economic forces around the north San Joaquin Valley at the time the critical land-use decisions resulting in the dubious distinction were made. Some of these policies have been discussed on Badlands as soon as they emerged sufficiently to be seen. Others reflect hindsight, far form 20-20 even now.

The credit crisis sweeping through world financial markets, caused by mortgage foreclosure, progressed through 2007 in synch with alarming news of the accelerating velocity of environmental destruction due to global warming.

Perhaps it is so apparent it hardly needs comment. These counties until recently were represented by two congressmen, representatives Richard Pombo and Dennis Cardoza. Following the Democrats victory of that year, the House Resources Committee, which Pombo had chaired before his defeat, was renamed the House Natural Resources Committee, and Cardoza was reassigned elsewhere. During the height of Republican Party power in Congress, Cardoza and Pombo made repeated assaults on the Endangered Species Act for the
benefit of finance, insurance and real estate special interests (FIRE) intent on reducing as much wildlife habitat in the region to residential subdivision as possible.

But, they did no more than reflect the drift of political and business regional and national leadership in the at that time, from Wall Street and the White House down to the city-planning director level, throughout city councils and boards of supervisors, planners, chambers of commerce and special non-governmental organizations like the Great Valley Center (GVC) and various "One Voice" lobbying delegations dispatched to the state Capitol and to Congress to lobby the government to pay for streets and roads that growth would not pay for, despite the rhetoric to the contrary.

The regional result has been a dys-economic combination of unaffordable housing and the highest foreclosure rate in the nation. As late as the fall of 1998, the director of the Central California Building Industry Association argued before the Merced City Council against the city raising the amount of developer fees it would charge per residential unit because market analysis had shown developers that the affordable range for a single-family dwelling there was about $115,000. Even as the speculative housing boom crested a year ago and news of foreclosures began to leak, the median price for a home in this region had tripled from the BIA break-even price of 1998. Local wages did not keep up. In 1998, although legislative candidates in that fall's election were saying that the arrival of the Great Anchor Tenant for the Great Boom, UC Merced, was a "done deal," in fact it wasn't yet a done deal. Even when called on it, politicians continued this ritual "misspeaking" on many development issues, leading the public to conclude their elected officials deeply believed that residential sprawl was inevitable, desirable and impossible to politically oppose.

The overall impression was of the arrival of a huge gravy train down the tracks that link the three counties. The problem of information was made much more difficult by the entry of the University of California into the boom because the many important decisions involving its arrival and planning were made almost entirely in the state Capitol behind closed doors and so local officials were genuinely as uninformed as the public. To this must be added the enormous wave of embarrassing UC propaganda that buried Merced during
those years.We were fed the image of a "green university" yet one planted in the middle of the nation's densest concentration of remaining seasonal wetlands, the vernal pools of eastern Merced County, home of 15 endangered plant and animal species. "Mud holes," said the local leadership as UC extolled the architectural design of the campus.

The only possible check to the "development" that occurred and has now achieved such distinction in national economic tables, were the local land-use authorities, the city councils and boards of supervisors, objects of a FIRE full-court press. If the sheer amount of lobbying and speculation concerned these elected officials, the public saw little of it and the press, largely controlled by the McClatchy Co. and busy collecting
real estate ad revenues did not dwell on these possible concerns.

Written political opposition and legal briefs leave a record, in fact a history of events. This record differed greatly from the constant propaganda theme: that destruction of the present environment and quality of life for the actual public was necessary for the accommodation of future residents even if they did not yet know that they will be moving to the northern San Joaquin Valley. These presumed home buyers were not to be
confused with the posterity whose environment has been degraded and will be more degraded if development continues after this economic pause. Politicians and planners confided to important, doubtful citizens not just that growth was inevitable but that rapid growth was upon us. One corollary to this logic was selling Merced County inclusion into the Agricultural Preserve allowing Williamson Act contracts was to be "mitigation for UC." Supervisors who knew better were voted down.

Land-use authorities firmly rejected each challenge to its views. The special interests, with a few exceptions, won. The speculative real estate land boom went on until it busted, leaving the northern San Joaquin Valley spectacularly at the top of the nation's foreclosure rates.

The inherent insecurity of agricultural markets may have created among decision makers a psychology based on the history of agricultural booms and busts. There is a long line of natural disasters -- drought, flood, blights, mites, the Med Fly, etc. -- coupled with economic disasters -- principally the cling peach industry in this region, that have formed the boom/bust cycle of agricultural economics in the San Joaquin Valley. These cycles have been accentuated by Valley agriculture's historic commitment to monocropping over diversification of farm products. Seen in light of the problems with the Honey Bee, the necessary pollinator of 80-percent of the world's supply of almonds located in these three counties, serious economic problems could develop. The cement spire on SR 140 near Planada memorializes the owner of nearly a thousand acres of cling peaches.

It is significant that the University of California has restricted its public statements on the Honey Bee problem to admitting it exists and that it is complicated. Facing a real crisis in the natural world that requires exploration, UC has shown itself, if not impotent, at least subject to laws of nature like everyone else. If miraculous "scientific breakthroughs" had happened on the Honey Bee problem, we would have heard about them. However, its scientists feel all-powerful when exploiting nature totally under control in lab conditions -- from a chimp to a strand of DNA. We read about these biotech "breakthroughs" weekly. Unfortunately for the validity of the exploitive science, we do not yet live under totally controlled UC lab conditions, nor do the bees or the almond trees.

It is recognized that criticism of UC risks being associated with a general anti-intellectualism or opposition to a UC campus in the San Joaquin Valley. Neither are true in this case and it is well understood that without UC biologists, much less would ever been known about the vernal pools and associated species UC Merced has threatened. The forces compelling the present decisions of UC administration are beyond the scope of this essay beyond the suggestion that UC administrators may not be concerned about understanding their decisions.

Another possible paradigm was the developer-driven "colonies" of the 1880s in the Valley. Steven Stoll caught the spirit of their advertising in The Fruits of Natural Advantage, in the chapter, "Orchard Capitalists":

Agents for irrigated land in the Tulare Lake region understood the embarrassment of
fallen status, addressing themselves to 'business men and society women of San Francisco
who are hanging by their eyelids over the ragged edge of business and social anxieties,
fretting their souls and gizzards out in expedients to keep up appearances and make both
ends meet. -- p. 35, Fruits of Natural Advantage.

Merced has had its own experience with colony-style development, to name just one example, in Stevinson At the moment, the Stevinson family descendants appear to be trying to develop a new town subdivision on land originally colonized in orchards by their progenitor. Over-irrigation of the Stevinson colony plots caused a massive eruption of salts to the surface. This turned the proposed "garden" colony into an alkali flats. Stevinson area farmers have been reclaiming land from alkali ever since.

The normal hucksterism of California development, its enormous political/financial power, the addition of UC Merced, hyped to the max by the incredible power of contemporary media propaganda, produced perfect conditions for a boom/bust cycle. Local land-use officials, whose authority was the only possible check, apparently had no awareness of what they were doing, beyond drowning out all criticism in the usual "one-voice" Valley Whine. The Whine, the Valley's only political pitch, is effective only when the regional political machine has delivered the votes for the incumbent governor. The spiel is that because those who control the Valley economy have created such a skewed distribution of income that the Valley ranks economically worse than Appalachia by significant measures, state and federal government must contribute more money for the impoverished victims of the Valley economy. Seasonal farmworkers, overwhelmingly Hispanic, provide the face for the victim, although poverty in the Valley is a multi-cultural event. But, the Hispanic victim plays well in the state Capitol as the number of Hispanic legislators grows (two recent Assembly speakers have been Hispanics from Los Angeles.) The UC Merced propaganda at the Capitol also emphasized "the historically underserved" Valley Hispanic students. At times it sounded like President McKinley's compassion for the "little brown brothers" in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. The Valley Whine and the UC Merced variant were inexplicably barbaric and exploitive propaganda for development by the perpetrators of the economic system that produced the victims on behalf of which the pitch was being made. This propaganda reached its highest pitch when UC claimed. It went unchallenged until 2006, when anti-immigrant congressional legislation and a sharp increase in federal raids on illegal aliens produced strong political demonstrations by Hispanics throughout the Valley.

The Whine, it must be noted, is most effectively made by people who otherwise espouse in public economic doctrine straight out of the Gilded Age, raising the interesting question whether anyone in America any longer remembers the Great Depression and the contribution of that doctrine to its creation and duration. As the Bush flak machine ground on in the wake of the al-Qaeda attack, World War II was invoked frequently, yet without a word on the wage and price controls that prevented the typical wartime inflation.

Developers erected subdivisions that further impacted what is already the worst air quality basin in the US, a health and human safety problem that affects every income group. Their latest plans for commercial developments such as the WalMart distribution center will have more negative impacts on air quality. There is also the more complex issue of water quality, particularly the quantity and quality of groundwater recharge.

From the beginning, eco-justice, which has been an active concern in the Valley for 30 years, has taken natural resources not to mean solely wildlife habitat but also the natural resources needed by the public to maintain a healthy life. Local land-use decisions in the north San Joaquin have contributed to the worldwide credit and global warming crises by damaging the local environment and finance system.

There is evidence, at least in the press, that the land-use officials are oblivious about their national distinction. This may indicate another feature in boom/bust psychology -- total denial of the bust-- the Marivaudian Complex.

The Marivaudian being is, according to Poulet, a pastless futureless man, born anew at every instant. The instants are points which organize themselves into a line, but what is important is the instant, not the line. The Marivaudian being has in a sense no history. Nothing follows from what has gone before. He is constantly surprised. He cannot predict his own reaction to events. He is constantly being overtaken by events. A condition of breathlessness and dazzlement surrounds him. -- Donald Barthelme, quoted in The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch, p. 1

A final explanation, in terms of the ancient history of cosmology and what people feel at the "end of the world," suggest that millennia have produced Armageddon complexes in the past and did so, unconsciously, in "Y2K." Locally, this may have received greater impetus under the death-star banner of the University of California, whose nearby nuclear weapons facility won the most recent federal government bid for design of a new generation of nuclear weapons, mitigated by another stream of UC propaganda emphasizing eternal life through biotechnology. When these special features of the cultural landscape are added together with the mood created by rightwing fundamentalist Christian preachers and the crusader invasions of the Middle East, perhaps we have an approach to the question: why did the north San Joaquin Valley produce the among the greatest concentrations of unaffordable housing and the highest foreclosure rate in the nation.

There have been a number of distracting, erroneous notions in the air.

Political and business leaders in the north San Joaquin Valley are in the grips of the most powerful, self-destructive myths in American society: omnipotent technology promising both total destruction (nuclear weapons) and a boundless cornucopia of satisfaction of our deepest fantasies of domination over nature through biotechnolological manipulation, primitive, millenarian religious cults, pre-Keynesian economic doctrine and religious wars. The great immediate political challenge everywhere is to limit the careers of the great god, Armageddon, and his adherents. Our future still depends on how we treat our natural resources. The political and economic slogans of the finance, insurance, real estate and the science and technology bureaucracy special interests are an inadequate vocabulary for the task.

In the coming year, local governments charged with land-use decisions will be in straightened economic circumstances caused by imprudent expenditures presumably based on the erroneous notion that the speculative housing boom would not bust, if it wasn't just looting the public treasury. Local land-use officials will be presented a number of commercial development proposals they will be urged to approve by representatives of "sound business judgment." These public officials will be tempted to forget that that same "sound business judgment" produced the boom and cares no more for the welfare of the communities of the northern San Joaquin Valley than it ever did. If some new idea were to get an edge in wordwise in these smooth pitches to come, we would suggest that the Public Trust Doctrine be considered for study, along with state and federal environmental law and regulation and the regulation of public meetings found in such laws at the state Brown Act. These laws and regulations are not the enemies of government. They exist as public defenses against the excesses of special interests.

Bill Hatch