The End of the Dream
And so it goes….the lunacy of rural woodlands California that was fed by white flight AND unscrupulous developers.
I know. I used to live in Redding.
Redding was a town of about 28,000 when I was growing up. It’s industry was supported. by the timber business and recreation fed by Shasta Dam.
Then, in the 70s, with the end of the Cold War, thousands of “southlanders” immigrated in to Shasta, and Butte Counties.
They left the cities to run away from government regulation, many to retire, but many also to escape from “those people”..
The riots of L.A., the anti war demonstrations of he 60s and 70s caused a “white flight” north.
Meanwhile, the logging industry was declining. A combination of environmental regulations, over logging (cutting down all the trees) and the fact that the post war boom in housing ended, caused logging and lumber mills to cut way back.
And so the north state inherited city folks, who were running away from the growing diversity of the urban centers in the south and coast.
This meant a sudden sea change in the political dominance that Democrats had depended on in Northern California. It used to be, became the watchword phrase; rural Northern California used to be Democratic, urban Southern California right wing Republican.
And the white flight Republicans ran north, with lots of money to spend on homes. The average home price in Redding for example could be less than half or more of south landers homes for sale.
So the immigrants, could buy houses outright, with no mortgage payments, and plenty of money left over.
And the crooks were waiting. The developers bought dirt cheap land, in fire zones, in county jurisdictions, with volunteer fire departments meant for scarcely inhabited land.
Northern California Supervisors, hungry for tax dollars after the passage of Prop 13, looked away when developments were approved in impossible to defend from fire areas.
The list is almost endless, from out Highway 50 in Sacramento, to Paradise’s Skyway death trap, to Hwy 299 E and W and Hwy 44 out of Redding.
Trinity County saw an explosion in population along with Redding and other small towns.
Even without global warming, the housing developments were quite simply insane.
I mean insane.
And then the fires increased. And increased. And suddenly the “bargain mansion” was in ashes: or if your home survived suddenly insurance was astronomical.
All of a sudden the immigrants, who now were aged, could not find insurance…And the fire season, than even BEFORE climate change, was longer and much more lethal.
The bargain basement price people paid was now enhanced by fire insurance premiums that would not quit going up..or no insurance was available at all.
And whose fault was it?
Well, the right winger base who immigrated into the North Star sure as hell would not blame their party, the deniers party of Trump. Nobody would look at Prop 13, that starved counties for revenue, leaving them at the mercy of overbuilding in fire prone areas.
No, it was government’s fault for stopping the clear cutting of what was left of the boreal forest. It was lefties fault. To this day, that is the guiding principle of the right wing Republicans in the North State…It’s a governmental problem…we should have been allowed to clear cut it all down.
Of course, deforestation helps to make global warming many times worse; but science has never got in the way for denier Republicans.
In Shasta County you still see “State of Jefferson” signs, a half brained attempt to secede from California and attach parts of Oregon, in the crazy idea that a bankrupted State of Jefferson would somehow make things better.
Government is not the villain here. Neither is the environmental interests.
The fault is with all of the rural Northern California immigrants who should have stayed put. The fault is a lack of common sense!
Paradise is a perfect example of “Paradise Lost”. A dream of a home in the pines, that was ungoverned and very Caucasian, that died when Paradise burned down and when the Carr Fire almost took Redding out.
The Dream has died. And there are hundreds of thousands of suckers who are left holding the bag….