The Great Divide (Cont'd)
The LAT's My-Thuan Tran reports on one result of the policy divide I discussed in my November Atlantic column (free link). Vietnamese-Americans are leaving Orange County for Houston, which also has a large Vietnamese community, in search of housing priced for middle-class families. The story's lead:
Lan Nguyen had dreamed of owning a house since she immigrated to Southern California from Vietnam 11 years ago. But she and her husband could never scrounge up enough money for a down payment, spending most of their paychecks on rent for a cramped Garden Grove apartment.
Now, Nguyen has moved to a suburb of this Gulf Coast city, where the 28-year-old owns a new four-bedroom house with a spacious game room and access to a pool with a water slide -- all for $200,000.
Nguyen is one of many Vietnamese Americans from California who have flocked to Houston, lured by cheap real estate, a lower cost of living, bountiful business opportunities and a thriving, growing Vietnamese community.
Houston offers a slice of the American Dream to Vietnamese Americans who couldn't find it in California.
In San Jose and Orange County, home to the country's largest Vietnamese enclaves, skyrocketing rents and staggering housing prices -- even in a down market -- have become too much for some.
"At first, we thought California is the best," Nguyen said. "It's sad to move from a place we know so well. But here we own a beautiful house and are very comfortable."
Meanwhile, in housing-hostile California, I noticed a mention in passing that the Santa Monica powers-that-be had nixed the Santa Monica Mall's "an ambitious plan to replace its struggling indoor mall with an outdoor shopping venue topped with three 21-story condo towers, an apartment building and an office complex." The mall will simply remodel to integrate better with the bustling 3rd Street Promenade, and the people who might have occupied those new condos and apartments will continue to commute from parts east. (Via L.A. Curbed.)
Critics of my column thought I was too broad brush in characterizing the populations of cities like Dallas and cities like L.A. Obviously, there are still (some) middle class people in Southern California, but you don't have to be Vietnamese to feel the pull of Texas. The number of Californians moving out is larger than the number moving in, with the trend pronounced among families, and the state is losing losing native-born college grads to other states (a shortfall so far mitigated by immigrant college graduates).