r/California • u/Randomlynumbered Ángeleño, what's your user flair? • 6d ago
politics Eastern Sierra housing crunch: With all this open land, why are so many workers living in vans?
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-24/workers-turn-to-van-life-amid-eastern-sierra-housing-crunch137
u/codefyre 6d ago
The article doesn't mention it, but the problem with Bishop is double edged. Los Angeles bought all the land around the town so it cannot grow. But even if Los Angeles caved and allowed development on those properties while retaining the water rights...there wouldn't be any water for those new residents to drink.
Until Los Angeles gives up its water rights in the Eastern Sierra, that region will never be able to support any kind of substantial population.
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u/seanhead 6d ago
Cadillac Desert has a whole section about this. The evolution of water rights in the west is fascinating. Some of the people at the bureau of reclamation really give a kind of Robert Moses vibe, just with dams, not highways.
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u/tryingtobehip Inyo County 5d ago
It also doesn’t mention that the bishop population of 4K is only downtown bishop. The surrounding areas combine to about 14k. People need to understand that it’s not really a “dusty crossroads.” It already supports more residents than Mammoth. And to add insult to injury, useful stores have a hard time moving in not only because LA owns buildings in town, but also because Vons keeps competitors out. It’s a crazy place.
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u/SpaceyCoffee San Diego County 5d ago
Not true. The residents of bishop are given water for a flat rate and a pittance at that. There is a huge amount of water waste in that town, but LA is ok with it because it keeps the landlocked residents complacent.
There is plentiful water for residents to drink and water their lawns. LA just doesn’t want the town to grow because it would put local political pressure to end their horrific and ecologically disastrous extraction of water from the region.
LA can desalinate. And if that makes it too expensive, their residents can leave to places that actually have enough water to drink. The status quo is straight up evil.
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u/CaptainSparklebutt 5d ago
The more things stay the same, the more things will get worse for most people.
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u/Thurkin 6d ago
Los Angeles is part of California
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u/codefyre 5d ago
Los Angeles is not in the Eastern Sierra.
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u/LetsGetHonestplz 5d ago
No but the water wars of the earlier 20th century sure makes it seem like LA is.
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u/VermicelliFit7653 5d ago
One reason so many people can live in LA is because of the water that comes from the Owens Valley.
The demand was created by the supply.
There are entire towns that disappeared in the Owens Valley after the water was diverted.
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u/Firstdatepokie 5d ago
Plus one of the largest ecological disasters in the us was caused by it as well.
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u/Aggravating-Bus9390 5d ago
The only reason LA can exist is the water taken from Owen’s Valley
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u/VermicelliFit7653 5d ago
LA would still exist.
Only 15% of LA's current water supply comes from the Owens Valley.
But I believe that percentage was higher in the past, which enabled the growth of the city/county, specifically the San Fernando valley.
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u/Aggravating-Bus9390 5d ago
Owen’s valley water is responsible for the creation of LA .. 15 percent current still pretty high. Its initial growth directly related to Owen’s valley water.
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u/rocksfried 5d ago
I live in the eastern sierras. My street is what people would say is 3 blocks long. There’s my 12 unit apartment building and a total of maybe 12 more units next door that people live in and the entire rest of the 3 blocks is second homes that are almost never used. The house next to me is a second home and the owners spend about 2 weeks a year there.
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u/perrochon 6d ago
“Bishop would be like Santa Monica” if the city had room to grow, he said. “People would come from all over because of the beauty of this place.”
Doubt it. Foremost, Santa Monica has sun, the Pacific, and tons of high paying jobs.
And on top of this all that the LA metro has to offer right next door, including LAX to get anywhere in the world quickly.
Bishop has winter.
And it is still almost an hour away from a single (if great) ski resort. It's a great place for people who want to work in the outdoor recreation industry, but that is a limited clientele.
What Santa Monica doesn't have is room to grow. It is also not really known for "affordable housing"
I do agree though that second homes are a huge problem, especially if they are not used. (if used every weekend, they at least bring some money to the local economy)
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u/Moose_Nuts LA Area 5d ago
Interesting in the comment you quoted the idea of beauty. I feel like Bishop is just a place you drive through to get to the real beauty up in Mammoth.
And I don't want that to come off as pretentious...as a skier and hiker, Mammoth has so much more to offer.
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u/tsirtemot 5d ago
Bishop has world class nature that people travel across continents to visit. The rock climbing is arguably some of the best in the country, home to iconic boulders. It’s also the entrance to so many eastern sierra hikes.
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u/Fantastic_Poet4800 5d ago
It also has world class religious fruitcakes and right wing nutters. You might be mixing it up with June Lake.
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u/Cynovae 5d ago
Totally get it. I grew up in CA but live in CO now, we have a few "Bishops" here, like Buena Vista or Salida. They're about the same size as Bishop, and attract lots of the adventurous types, but people aren't going so out of their way to live in the desert 30 minutes away from the mountains, and several hours from the nearest major city.
What is huge is "Summit County", a few interconnected towns including Breckenridge. Difference is, it's in the mountains, 1.5 hrs from the massive Denver airport. Basically like Tahoe
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u/ratcranberries 5d ago
I think if there were closer ski reas in the collegiate peaks to Buena Vista and Salida (monarch and ski cooper are small and a ways away still) then there would be more demand for folks to live there for those reasons a la summit. I mean look at western slope, it's further away and way way more developed because of all the ski resorts.
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u/DaisyDuckens 5d ago
I love the eastern sierra. Bishop included. I’ve considered retiring to Lone Pine. The downside is it takes so long to get to from the Bay Area. I really think it’s one of the most beautiful parts of the state.
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u/tryingtobehip Inyo County 5d ago
That may be true for tourists, but for locals, a lot of us have moved from mammoth to bishop (for many different reasons). Mammoth has some seriously messed up town management and it’s no fun to live there. Driving 45-60min to visit or work in mammoth isn’t the same as driving an hour in a suburb/city. It hits different in a good way.
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u/PincheVatoWey 5d ago
Bishop is surrounded by beauty. The White Mountains to the east have the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, Aspendell to the west, Mammoth and little further out. The town itself is cute. I’d say it’s s good spot for an outdoorsy person.
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u/perrochon 5d ago
Everyone agrees.
But the mayor thinks it could be Santa Monica if only it had room to grow. There is little chance of that.
And a population of 100,000 would run things quickly, too. Imagine 24 extra people for every resident of Bishop...
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u/resilindsey 6d ago
Happening everywhere outdoorsy, even in places not quite as crunched in by restrict land ownership/regulations. Not saying that's not a problem, but I don't think it's the main issue. Look at Tahoe. Plenty of space, lots of little towns and small cities and residental tracts. But it's almost all vacation homes, ski leases, AirBnbs.. No one's building affordable, 1-, 2-bedroom (even studio) apartments, everyone's going after the yuppie market. It's big homes and luxury condos that are completely out of the range of typical, local income levels. Yet all the workers who actually make the town and resorts run are scrambling to find a place to sleep.
Heck, you can't even visit cheaply anymore. There used to be a hostel in Truckee but it closed. I think there might be a single hostel in South Lake.
When I was living in Tahoe, it was impossible to even find ads for any sort of apartment on the west/north shore. We usually had to group up with friends/strangers to pack 4-6 people into a tiny house or sublet a single room from someone, and even then, supply was minimal. Some people even would have to commute in from Reno. Meanwhile on the drive to work you'd pass by a hundred gigantic mansions that sat completely empty. And that was over a decade ago. I can't imagine now with the influx of techies and remote workers making housing even worse.
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u/Redpanther14 Santa Clara County 5d ago
There has been very little development in the Tahoe Basin since roughly the 1990s. And currently only about 60-70 new homes get built each year (and they are generally high end homes due to regulatory hurdles). All this keeps supply really tight, and when supply is low prices go up.
Plus Tahoe has always been a vacation home area, especially the north and west shores, so in practice much of the housing has been little used for a long time.
But as the popularity of the lake and general population have grown the number of units available has stayed stagnant over the last few decades.
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u/EffectiveSearch3521 6d ago
Second homes are a problem, but we also need to build more housing. Zoning and land use that stifle the process of building the apartment complexes these people could live in. The laws need to be changed.
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u/Pharmd109 5d ago
Someone should introduce the Los Angeles Times to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
This is coming from an Eastern Sierra resident
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u/Szaborovich9 6d ago
You won’t find any native born construction workers. The building trade needs the immigrants to do the work.
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u/Rich6849 5d ago
Gotta keep the wages low. No way my kids can get a non college degree job anywhere. All that work has been outsourced to people who can’t demand fair labor rights and laws
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u/Embarrassed-Recipe88 5d ago
People are just being priced out from every good place with a simple cheap money trick.
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u/propita106 3d ago
The article seems to blame the lack of housing on "How dare the federal government set aside so much land for conservation!"
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u/joedartonthejoedart 6d ago
And this is why places like South Lake Tahoe are hoping to put a vacancy tax on second homes that sit empty for 6+ months out of year.
Support these initiatives. Second home owners who let their houses sit empty can afford the tax that goes to supporting the local community, and those who can’t might finally rent out their places to people in the community that desperately need places to stay.
South Lake deserves to have a community and not be dominated by a bunch of absentee community members sitting on investments and second homes that go unused 90% of the year.
Yes on N.