Then why are our cities so damn dirty?
We're talking about AIR quality.
But okay...
Why are our cities so dirty? Because CA has the great weather and that attracts a lot of ne'er do wells.
The PERMANENT side effect of having weather that others dream of having is: Others dream of having our kind of weather, and they come here in pursuit of that dream.
Without injecting
any emotion or politics into this, let me clarify:
1) People have been writing folk songs and ballads about going out to California and living "the HOBO LIFE" since the 19th century, since before California was EVEN A STATE.
2) Recognizing that California has ALWAYS had what used to be called a "hobo problem", let's fast forward to the urban version, the Chronic Bum or Drifter. When you live in paradise, one of the by products is, you attract all the chronic bums, drifters and grifters.
3) In recent years, housing has priced low skilled and unskilled labor out of the housing market.
***
NOW ADD THOSE DISPLACED WORKING POOR PEOPLE TO THE ALREADY SWOLLEN CHRONIC BUM POPULATION.
See? So, we not only now have a significant number of chronic bums and hobos, we now also have all the people who USED to have a place to live but got priced out. When a ONE bedroom 14 foot by 30 foot TRAILER costs as much as a HOUSE in most other parts of the country and the lot rent is equal to an apartment or condo in other parts of the country, that's where all the displaced working homeless are coming from.
Why are our cities so dirty?
Because a crap ton of displaced people are "generating" even more "dirt" than the already large number of "professional bums" that already have been living here since time eternal.
It was just BARELY manageable when it was just the chronic bums and hobos. It is no longer manageable because that population tripled in the last ten years, maybe even quadrupled.
In 1984, I was renting a four bedroom house in the artsy fartsy section of Venice Beach for $750 a month, AND...it was "rent to own", meaning if we all paid on time for two years, the rent would have become a mortgage and we would eventually OWN IT.
Last year that property SOLD for FOUR MILLION DOLLARS, but before that, the RENT on it was $4200 a month.
As you can see, they removed the lovely front porch and turned it into a business property. There is now only one remaining residential property on that entire street. All the rest are now businesses, HIGH PRICED businesses.
This is a wide shot of what it looked like back when we lived there:
(Corner of Abbott Kinney and Rialto, Venice Beach)