Why do conservatives keep saying California has "collapsed"?

[Associate Justice PiT]

The median home costs more than half a million dollars. What more do you need to know?

That's the inverse of collapse. It's an indication of extreme growth, in which housing supply has not kept up with demand.

California is not growing any faster than the rest of the country in terms of GDP, population, or wages per worker, and it's growing much more slowly compared to other Sun Belt states. States like Texas that have actually experienced "extreme growth" over the past couple of decades have built large numbers of new homes. About the only kind of growth in which California now leads is in its homeless population.

Anyway, "collapse" as applied to California refers to dysfunction and quality of life, not population size. It ranks 49th in the country in housing supply and is building tens of thousands of units per year when market analysts are calling for hundreds of thousands. Home ownership is completely unaffordable for the median family. Renting consumes an enormous portion of working people's incomes. Group housing arrangements and extreme commutes have become common. It may not be the Crisis of the Third Century, but it's a f*cking disaster nonetheless.

     Indeed, the housing situation in the Bay Area is completely out of control. I am buying a house now, and I just got in under the wire in terms of being able to afford it. Prices in the City of Richmond (where I am buying) are increasing at a rate of $50k/yr. It is closer to $100k/yr in SF. I am saving $1,200/mo by going from renting to owning, simply because of the difference that exists between the stratospheric prices of SF and the merely exorbitant prices of western Contra Costa County. And as I say that, I fully recognize that being able to purchase marks me as "one of the Fortunate Ones" in the grand scheme of things. The Bay Area is rapidly becoming unfavorable to anyone who isn't a tech bro, while, as shua pointed out, the tech bros are trying to eliminate everyone else's job.

     To put not too fine a point on it, I agree with others in this thread that it is incorrrect to say that California is not collapsing, but the state is facing deep systemic problems that are hard to identify among traditional indicators of economic performance, but are obvious if you live in the Bay Area (can't comment on SoCal). If these problems are not addressed, it is possible that we could see some fashion of a collapse in the medium-term future, when critical sectors of the economy that happen to not be tech get squeezed out as nobody can afford to live on the pay that they offer.

[Associate Justice PiT]

What is the median housing price in Richmond these days (a city that used to be something of a slum)?

     This page is very informative. The median home value is $503,200, with the median selling price at some $20k higher. Looking at the graph on that page, there was a time earlier this decade when a house in Richmond was worth one-third of as much.

     Now Richmond is a big place and some parts are still quite slummy. I have no concrete statistics to back this up, but my perception of the situation having spent the past couple of years looking at housing prices is that the bad parts have remained pretty stable in prices, while the desirable areas are exploding in value. I used to see many houses in the neighborhoods I wanted to buy in close at sub-$500k, but today almost none do and many that are listing in the high-500s are now closing at over $700k!

[Associate Justice PiT]

I bet that Bart line that goes right into Richmond, that is a 40 minute ride to downtown SF, has a lot to do with the feeding frenzy. Was that line there 10 years ago?

It was built about 45 years ago. Richmond used to have very high crime, but crime went way down under their Green party mayor, and their policies of paying people to stay out of trouble. Richmond is still going to be cheaper than most areas because it has pretty bad pollution from a refinery. Around a thousand people had to go to the emergency rooms a few years ago because of a leak from it.

     A lot of the weakness that does exist in the Richmond market is a matter of reputation as well, holding over from the serious problems that long plagued the city. Just across the tracks in El Cerrito, similar houses go for a couple of hundred thousand more. Not far enough away to actually change anything, but the mere difference in city name carries a significant dollar premium.