Wall Street In My Back Yard
What Californian’s have learned over the last 3 years fighting Sacramento’s plan to destroy single family homes is that there is an unholy alliance of Wall Street, Big Tech and Main Street Media behind that plan. They have been aided by YIMBY shock troops to pass this radical agenda that will destroy a staple of the American Dream, the Single-Family Home.
Growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, was a mainstay for our family. Where we grew up, like much of America, was still small town centric and helping hands were needed and welcomed. Today there is a new Golden rule, whoever has the gold makes the rules and the only part of the hand it offers is the back. It is at the center of what is wrong with California and explains the State mandated destruction of single-family housing in California and the Wall Street connection that is enabling it.
Growing up neighbors looked out for neighbors. They lent that helping hand to fix a roof or passed a hat for a basket of food when necessary. Businesses were the same way. They knew who worked for them and they knew their families. They were somewhat better off financially than their workers and some drove Caddy’s while the workers drove Fords and Chevys, but they lived in the same neighborhoods and their children went to the same schools.
That has all changed and we are poorer as a country for it. Neighbors still help neighbors, that has not changed but the business part of the equation is totally missing. Gone, gobbled up by global corporations are the mom-and-pop businesses that employed so many of our parents and some of us.
The consolidation of companies and whole industries has resulted in giant corporations that transcend national boundaries and allegiance. Their concerns are about market share and a neighborhood in California is interchangeable with any neighborhood worldwide. They will move from one place and invest in another without a thought of the wreckage they leave behind. They demand and receive tax breaks from cities and counties to build new offices and factories that often overwhelm the local infrastructure and housing capacity.
The big push for more housing came about originally because of all the tech companies moving into or expanding campuses in Norther California. Much higher wage earners soon gobbled up the existing housing and THE TECH 100were the backers of the original bill, SB 827 that began the assault on single family neighborhoods. They sent a letter to the state legislature saying they needed more housing to expand their businesses.
The devastation caused by the financial crisis of 2008 has turned out to be a tremendous boon to Wall Street. Wall Street companies and banks like (Blackstone, Invitation homes, Deutsche Bank) snapped up foreclosed homes and then turned around and converted them to rental properties, effectively taking them off the market. This practice continues and first-time buyers looking for a starter home find it difficult to compete with financial institutions and their ready cash. Senate Bill 9 will allow them to move off of commercial corridors and move into long standing African American and Latino neighborhoods to continue their gentrification and destroy generational wealth building for peoples of color.
Another casualty of globalization is the news business. Growing up I remember all the different newspapers we read (Wash Post was a big metropolitan paper we read) but each small town had its own newspaper that covered really local news. There were the 3 main TV stations and radio. When I moved to New York City I was met with a dizzying amount of newspapers and on Sunday’s we would get half a dozen copies of the Times, bagels, lox, Cream cheese, and a bunch of friends and pour over what was going on in the world and share tidbits. During the week there was the ever-present contest between the Times, Post and Daily News with the Voice and so many other publications that did really good investigative work. Los Angeles was the same way for years with the LA Weekly serving as the West Coast version of the Voice. Globalization and the explosion of the internet eventually mortally wounded print and to a degree the kind of investigative reporting a complicated world requires.
Tell me how you get your news, and I can pretty much tell you what you think about most major issues. It is the things that fly under the radar, that are not going to garner a huge number of clicks. That is a huge problem when the average time a person spends on a blog post is 96 seconds. Add to that any kind of pressure big business brings and if you hear about something it will strictly be the party line. The party line that Globalist corporations, banks and big development brings.
So it should come as no shock that the absolute devastation SB 9 and 10 will bring to California went unnoticed by so many in the public. We in the community are getting better at communicating and we will do it smarter, and faster.
The politicians in Sacramento do not have your back, they have the back of the Corporate elites who fund their campaigns. They lied about what these bills will do to all Americans but especially about what they will do to people of color. The destruction of generational wealth is criminal. That is why everyone needs to go to www.communitiesforchoice.org and get involved with this peoples initiative, “Stop the Sacramento Land Grab”.