Calif recall: a trivial question

[David Walters <dwalters@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, Tom, it's changed. Like the ENTIRE Bay Area, including now parts
of eastern Contra-Costa County, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakly, and even
Stockton, are being yuppified with tract housing the likes of which are
unbelievable in scale. Remember going to Brentwood to pick fruit?
Gone...all subdivisions now. Just 10 years ago we used to go our
shooting in the empty fields, not anymore, likely to hit a star bucks.

The County remains the industrial heartland of northern California (or
North California if one is inclined, like me, for a splitting of the
State)with all but one of the areas oil refineries (the other being in
Solano county across the Straights in Benicia), has more power plants
in it than any other part of state (new and old ones), even has a steel
mill. In this sense it's socially stratified between lower and upper
working/middle class sectors, a slight decline in Latino's as farms
have been pushed out, an increase in Blacks as upwardly mobile and more
privileged sectors of the black working class  move east into the
sub-divisions (from Richmond, already in the county, and Oakland, in
Alameda Country). Also, there has been a shift to validating State
supported Section 8 housing (subsidized low cost housing) that has
brought lower income blacks into what was once almost exclusively
"Oakie" white territory  in the eastern half of the County.

I've seen the figures on Latino's but I don't know how reliable they
are. Part of the reason is that Contra Costa County has not seen in big
increase in "service" industry jobs that other Bay Area counties have,
and  has had it's growth mostly in new power plant construction,
industries that have not seen growth of Latinos in,due in part to union
constraints and language issues in the plants. But if you ask is still
mostly working class, I'd say yes.

The western part of the County, meaning the areas you mention are
losing it's working class base as the workers sell their homes...we're
talking $700,000 for a tree bed room post-WWII GI house in Concord, and
Walnut Creek is only a little less...and move.

David
Happily living in San Mateo County


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