Rural Legal Scholarship: Michele Statz on "The Scandal of Particularity"

 Here's the link to Statz's latest article, and the abstract follows.  The title is "The Scandal of Particularlity: A New Approach to Rural Attorney Shortages and Access to Justice," and it is forthcoming in the South Dakota Law Review:   

This article adds necessary dimension to prevailing understandings of the rural attorney shortage and proposed solutions to it. These solutions include efforts to recruit and retain rural attorneys; to advance “non-lawyer” practitioners; and to create distance-spanning rural access to justice technologies. While many of these initiatives are based in careful, empirical analysis and have strong evaluative components, they often start with an answer: More attorneys. UPL Waivers. Legal help apps. Legal empowerment. This makes sense, particularly when we consider that many of the individuals at the forefront of addressing the rural access to justice crisis are themselves law scholars or legal professionals who feel real, understandable urgency toward finding a solution. What happens, however, when we approach rural attorney shortages not with a proposed initiative, but with more, and different, questions? Instead of a solution-centric or even person-centered approach, what if we sought to understand the subjective, relational experience of legal problems in rural places? How might honoring the lived reality of rural community members who are and who are not legal professionals unsettle what we believe about professional hierarchies, expertise, and who is best suited to address attorney shortages?

Drawing on over seven years of mixed-methodological, collaborative research in diverse rural settings, this article proposes a new epistemological approach to rural access to justice and professional shortages. It provides empirically based principles for students, scholars, and practitioners to consider as they explore rural justice gaps and efforts to address them. It demonstrates that a deep, considered acknowledgement of crisis, trust, home, care, time, and relationships—in short, the embodied particularities of rural place and how they feel—offers a kind of knowledge that necessarily exceeds familiar metrics and indicators of “success.” Finally, this framework ensures that practices and policies aimed at solving rural attorney shortages are relevant, collaborative, and sustaining.

What you can learn in a small town (according to a Brooklyn hipster)

Sam Kahn recently wrote for Persuasion (and his own Substack) about what he, as a documentary filmmaker living in Brooklyn, learned when he visited small towns/the flyover states. The headline is, "A Reckoning is Coming for the Democrats." Here's an excerpt:

I always felt a lot wiser every time I returned to my Brooklyn coffee shop or neighborhood bookstore; I always felt like I wanted to start getting into arguments with everyone around me. It wasn’t that my politics were so different from my coastal brethren, but after even a few days in Decatur or Lubbock or Clovis or wherever I was, it would be clear to me that there was a great deal about the country that liberals and progressives—however well-intentioned they might be—were just missing.

Politics would almost never come up on these shoots, but it would just be screamingly obvious that the people I talked to would have had no chance of voting Democratic. The cultural markers were all off. People liked to drive and to shoot. People liked their chain stores. People hated the feeling of being scolded, which was above all what they associated with the Dems. On one of the very first shoots I ever did, a rancher in Clovis, New Mexico, told me, “People like to have a real independent lifestyle around here” shortly before he urinated right off of the bed of his truck. But that general attitude could have stood in for just about any of the shoots I did. People were friendly and interesting, they were eager to form cultural bridges—those same ranchers really wanted to let me know that they knew every word of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Rolling Stones songs, maybe thinking that I assumed they listened to Gene Autry or something—but I strongly felt myself having to shed anything “Democratic,” anything “liberal,” in order to fit in.

In the places I was visiting, the Democratic Party meant, above all, taxes. It really wasn’t much more complicated than that.

* * * 

In the coastal enclaves where I lived, being an “environmentalist” was something like a candidacy for sainthood, but in the places where I was shooting it was a dirty word—and the environmental advocacy organizations seemed really to not get that.

* * * 

And strike three was wokeism. 

There's more to the essay, of course, including an expansion on what the author means by wokeism, which references racial issues, among others.

Returning to the theme of the headline, the author concludes that, "at the national level, [Democrats] seemed to have lost all ability to communicate simply and clearly to hinterland voters."

Don't miss the essay in its entirety here. 

Art Cullen turns his attention to rural poverty

This is from Cullen's Substack today, "Iowa's unique sort of rural poverty."  Cullen recently traveled to New Orleans and back from northern Iowa (and he did so in an electric Ford pick up truck, no less).  Here's a rumination that begins as he passed from northeast Arkansas into southeast Missouri.  

Coming from relatively prosperous Iowa, I continue to be stunned by the scenes of grinding rural poverty when you get off the freeways and revisit Hwy. 61 or its cousins.

Drive the edge of gorgeous Mark Twain National Forest enroute from Jonesboro, Ark., to the Gateway to the Ozarks, Poplar Bluff, Mo., where the downtown is dead empty on a Saturday afternoon but for an open sports bar with no customers. A sign on the bar proclaims it is doing what it can to save the downtown.

The action is out on the highway in a town of 16,000 whose population steadily declined since 1980, set in the prettiest hills you could behold.

Shacks line the road in Arkansas, Black and White folks. You see the same in South Dakota off Interstate 90 (substitute Native American for Black), or in eastern Colorado, or in a Kansas cowtown time and progress passed by.

You get back to Iowa where the farmsteads look better, the dirt blacker, the machinery shinier. Yet the rust sets in here, too.

Nationally, the rural poverty rate is about 15% compared to an urban rate of about 11%. Those statistics do not reflect the extremes you see in the little burgs waylaid by the freeways.

Cullen goes on to offer further comparisons of that Arkansas/Missouri area to northwest Iowa, where he lives,  The entire post is well worth a read, not least for its discussion of the significance of immigration and race--and, of course, what freeways have done to downtowns, including those like Poplar Bluff. 

Rural hospitals in the news, again

Axios' Northwest Arkansas newsletter led yesterday with the travails of rural hospitals.  Here's the scoop:  

71% of rural hospitals in Arkansas are running in the financial red, according to a recent report from health care consultancy Chartis. The same is true for half of America's rural hospitals.

Why it matters: Millions of Americans, especially those in rural states like Arkansas, rely on local hospitals for emergency and other forms of care.The report also points out: "Within many rural communities, the hospital is often among the largest employers and thus a major contributor to the local economy."

Driving the news: While COVID-era government aid helped alleviate financial pressure on rural hospitals, such support has largely ended.The growth of Medicare Advantage enrollment is also taking a toll. 

"The Medicare alternative's popularity with seniors is cutting into a typically better funding source for rural hospitals — traditional Medicare — as hundreds of rural hospitals face financial calamity," Axios' Arielle Dreher reported last August.

Stunning stat: The jump from 43% of rural hospitals operating in the red last year to 50% this year is the single largest change in percentage in a one-year period that Chartis reports seeing.

What they're saying: "When you see all of this negative pressure, what you're really talking about is loss of access in the places where we need it — one could arguably say, most," says Michael Topchik, partner and executive director of the Chartis Center for Rural Health.He points to problems like suicide, opioid overdoses, alcohol-related deaths and more that plague rural America in particular. 

"I'm focusing on data on the providers, on the hospitals. But in the end, what we're really talking about is the communities served — and these are the most vulnerable communities in America."

Of course, you'll find a great deal more content on rural hospitals here on Legal Ruralism.  

Rural folks resist having their land become a carbon sponge

The Washington Post reported yesterday on a proposal to make land in eastern Montana a carbon sponge because it is home to"thousands of acres of porous rock where oil company executives say greenhouse gas could be piped in from afar and stored forever."  The headline is "Biden and oil companies like this climate tech. Many Americans do not."  Here's an excerpt from Evan Halper's story: 

In the ranching community of Carter County, Mont., the prospect of shipping in all that carbon pollution and injecting it underneath an area called Snowy River is about as popular as an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease.

“The question I keep hearing is, ‘Why are they making us the dumping ground for the rest of the country?’” said Rod Tauck, chairman of the Carter County Board of Commissioners and a descendant of homesteaders who more than a century ago settled his family ranch. “Not a single constituent I know wants this.”

Carter County lies in the state's far southeast corner, and has a population of just 1,415.

Halper mentions other places similarly resisting energy company plans:

Hostile community reception is undermining plans from the Gulf Coast of Louisiana to the prairies of South Dakota. Energy companies racing ahead are facing tough questions around safety, environmental impact and technological viability.

* * * 

Many in the local community see something else: big corporations looking for a payday partnering with an administration turning a blind eye to a flawed technology. They point to problems that carbon capture projects are encountering around the world, such as Chevron’s sprawling Gorgon operation at a massive natural gas field in Australia. It is not trapping even half the carbon dioxide planned, amid persistent technological troubles.

This is just one way the green energy transition is pitting rural against urban, and it's not so different from environmental injustices that have made rural places dumping grounds for essentially urban waste.  

Dollar Store entry has a bigger impact in rural markets than in urban ones

USDA ERS reports in Amber Waves under the headline, "Dollar Store Entry Affects Rural Grocery Stores More Than Urban":  

Independent grocery stores, or grocers whose owners operate fewer than four stores, have been a large part of the rural U.S. food retail landscape. In 2015, they represented about half of the food retailers in 44 percent of U.S. counties. Leading up to 2015, however, dollar stores were becoming increasingly visible in rural counties, experiencing the second-largest growth behind supercenters among food retailers from 1990 to 2015, according to research by USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS). Economists from ERS, North Dakota State University, and the University of Connecticut recently investigated the implications of the growth of dollar stores for more traditional, independent grocery stores using proprietary data from the National Establishment Time Series (NETS) database and the ERS Rural-Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) Codes.

NETS provides geographic, employment, and sales information for every year an establishment is open for all sectors of the U.S. economy. The researchers focused on dollar stores and independent grocery stores and combined these data with the ERS RUCA codes’ measures of population density, urbanization, and daily commuting to classify census tracts; in this research, all nonmetropolitan core or commuting areas were classified as rural.

The researchers examined what happened to the number of independent grocery stores, as well as employment and sales statistics from these stores, from 2000–19, when a new dollar store opened in the same rural or urban census tract. Results showed that when a dollar store opened in a census tract independent grocery retailers were 2.3 percent more likely, on average, to exit the market. Employment at independent grocery stores fell about 3.7 percent, and sales declined by 5.7 percent.

However, there was significant variation between the impact of dollar stores on independent grocery stores in urban and rural census tracts. For instance, the likelihood of an independent grocery store exiting a rural census tract after a new dollar store opened was 5 percent, about three times greater than in urban census tracts. Similarly, the decline in employment in rural tracts was about 2.5 times as large as in urban tracts, and the decline in sales was nearly double in rural census tracts.

Rural broadband in the news as Affordable Connectivity Program comes to an end

I've been hearing a lot about rural folks in relation to broadband the last few weeks because a federal program, the Affordable Connectivity Program, is expiring.  Here are a smattering of stories that acknowledged the rural angle on this event. 

First, here is some CalMatters coverage, which explains lots of basics and also acknowledges the rural impact. 

On April 30, a popular and widely used government program began the process of shutting down due to congressional inaction. With its demise, closing the digital divide becomes considerably more difficult.

The federal government first launched a broadband subsidy program during the depths of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, where internet connections became many peoples’ only window into the outside world. That effort, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), was made permanent as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. It offered a $30 monthly subsidy ($75 on tribal lands) to qualifying low-income households for broadband internet or cell phone bills. The program also offers up to $100 toward a computer or tablet.

However, it came with a major caveat: The $14.2 billion Congress allocated toward the program was a one-time thing. When the money ran out at some point in the future, Congress would have to infuse the program with more money or find a more permanent funding solution.

That future has officially arrived. More than 23 million American households, about 45% of all those eligible nationwide, will no longer receive the full subsidies that previously helped them get online. Two-thirds of those households had “inconsistent or zero connectivity prior to ACP enrollment,” a recent Federal Communications Commission survey revealed.

Partial subsidies of $14 ($35 for households on Tribal lands) will be available for some ISP customers for service in May, according to an FCC notice. But that will be the program’s last disbursement.

“Many recent press reports about the impending end of this program describe how ACP households across the country are now facing hard choices about what expenses they have to cut, including food and gas, to maintain their broadband access, with some households doubtful they can afford to keep their broadband service at all,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel wrote in an April letter to congressional leaders. “These press reports echo what the Commission has been hearing from ACP households directly, with many writing the agency to express their distress and fear that ending this program could lead them to lose access to the internet at home.”

Case in point: Alfredo Camacho, who lives in Guadalupe, California, told CalMatters that because he is no longer able to afford home internet service, he’s started taking his daughters to the parking lot outside a local library so the family can use the free wifi to do homework and look for jobs.

“This takes away grocery money,” said Camacho, who is one of around three million Golden State residents losing access to the subsidy. “Being a single father, $30 goes a long way.”

In anticipation of the shut-down, the program stopped accepting new sign-ups in early February. Participating households started receiving notifications about the program’s potential shuttering in January. After it ends, internet service providers are required to allow ACP-using households to cancel without termination fees.

The program has been an essential part of how millions of Americans get online, with nearly one-in-five U.S. households relying on the subsidy to keep their internet subscriptions active. Uptake has been especially strong in areas with high-poverty rates in both urban and rural areas.

Here is a Forbes story from May 6, 2024, with no acknowledgment of rural difference or disadvantage:

Congress first allocated $14.2 billion to the Affordable Connectivity Program in December of 2021, and that money—used to provide a $30 to $75 stipend toward internet bills per month and for a one-time discount toward the purchase of a laptop computer, desktop or tablet—is now running out.

The bill introduced to save the program would allocate $7 billion more to extend it through the end of the year and allow Congress to “work out the long-term changes that are needed for sustainable access,” according to Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.)

Before receiving the federal internet subsidy, almost 22% of program participants had no personal internet service and another 25% had only mobile internet, according to a 2023 survey by the Federal Communications Commission.

The same survey found that almost 77% of beneficiaries said they would need to make changes to their broadband plan if they stopped receiving the subsidy, with 30% saying they'd need to drop internet service altogether.

The New York Times reported on this pending wind-down in March.  

The program was tucked into the 2021 infrastructure law as a replacement for a pandemic-era program that provided certain households discounts on their internet bills. Although there is some bipartisan support to continue the subsidies, lawmakers have not passed an extension.

Interestingly, while it does not use the word "rural," it does include this somewhat counterintuitive quote from the Senator of South Dakota, a state popularly thought of as a rural place. 

But some Republicans have argued that the program is wasteful. In a December letter to the F.C.C., Senator John Thune of South Dakota and other Republican lawmakers raised concerns about the program subsidizing households that already had internet service. They have also pointed to findings from the F.C.C.’s Office of Inspector General, which has in recent months expressed concerns about some providers failing to comply with program rules and improperly claiming funds.

Finally, here's the Federal Communication Commission's webpage on the issue, which covers the basics, but/and also does not use the word "rural":  

The Affordable Connectivity Program stopped accepting new applications and enrollments on February 7, 2024. The last fully funded month of the program is April 2024.

All ACP households enrolled at the time of the enrollment freeze, February 7, 2024 at 11:59 PM ET, will be able to remain enrolled through the final month of ACP service if they are not required to be de-enrolled under FCC rules.

Households that are de-enrolled from the program, such as for failure to use their ACP-supported service, will not be able to re-apply or re-enroll in the ACP during the enrollment freeze.

ACP enrolled households are strongly encouraged to carefully review written notices from their internet company and from the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), the ACP administrator, about the ACP wind-down.

Households are also encouraged to consult their internet company to learn more about how the end of the ACP will impact their internet service and bills.

I'm glad that at least some of these sources recognize the rural angle on the digital divide.  

Developers of proposed new Bay Area city gather enough signatures to get re-zoning on November ballot

Solano County, California (April, 2024)
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

The Associated Press reported last week that California Forever, the group associated with secretly buying up farm land in southeastern Solano County, California (population 453,000), on the periphery of the San Francisco Bay Area, has garnered sufficient signatures to have placed on the November ballot whether the land can be re-zoned urban to permit its development.  Read more of the background on this matter here, here, and here.  A short excerpt from the AP story follows:  

Rio Vista Youth and Community Hall
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

A wealthy Silicon Valley-backed campaign to build a green city for up to 400,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area has submitted what it says are enough signatures to qualify the initiative for the November election.

The campaign submitted more than 20,000 signatures but would need only about 13,000 valid ones to qualify for the ballot. If verified by Solano County’s elections office, voters will decide in the fall whether to allow urban development on land currently zoned for agriculture. The land-use change would be necessary for the development to be built.

Child visitors to the sales office express
their desires for the new community 
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader who heads the company behind the campaign, California Forever, said at a news conference Tuesday that he heard from thousands of people who want careers and homes in the county where they grew up but can no longer afford because of high housing costs and a lack of nearby work.

I had the opportunity in early April to travel to the parts of Solano County that will be most affected if this new development moves forward.  Those areas include the town of Rio Vista (population 7,360), on the Sacramento River Delta, and along the Montezuma Hills.  I found Rio Vista to be a charming town with one of the most appealing (and highly utilized) small public libraries I've ever visited, among other amenities.  The town also has a pharmacy that isn't part of a national chain, which I thought was pretty cool.  Plus, there are small eateries and an auto body shop with a prime location on the waterfront.  

Poster in California Forever sales office, 
also featured in brochures
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Though it was not well publicized and not on my car's GPS, I did find the California Forever office in downtown Rio Vista--having taken up residence in the city's old Vista Cinema on Main Street.  Two California Forever employees were there, one who self-identified as a salesman.   They are collecting wish lists for community amenities, and I took a few photos of those lists--including one from what visiting children wanted.  (I list some of these at the bottom of the post).  

The salesman chatted me up about the project, noting that many residents of Rio Vista support it because, currently, there is "nothing" for their grandkids job-wise and in terms of activities.   If the city is built, it will provide not only jobs, but also many amenities for Rio Vista residents.  The salesman said some amenities are currently available to residents of Liberty and Trilogy, two nearby planned communities, but that the new city will make facilities and amenities available to those living in nearby Rio Vista. 

I raised with the salesman the issue of the lawsuit California Forever brought against some area landowners who had refused to sell and been accused of price-fixing.  He said those sued by California Forever were not family farmers but instead were large corporate farms--basically "BigAg."  I disputed that based on my personal acquaintance with one of those land-owning families.

California Forever Sales Office in Rio vista
in former Vista Theatre
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

At the end of my visit, the salesman asked me if I was on board with the project, and I told him I was still undecided, but generally skeptical.  I'd already explained to him that I didn't live in Solano County and so could not vote on the anticipated ballot initiative.  

Here are some bullet points/highlights from the brochure I picked up at the California Forever sales office.  

Windborn Church,
Main Street
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt

The farmland in "East Solano County today" is "Rated among the worst for agriculture in all of Solano County." (I wonder about the quality of that farm land generally, in comparison to 

Auto Repair in Rio Vista
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

• The community California Forever wishes to build is a "new future for East Solano County, a new community for all of us." 
• "Middle-class neighborhoods.  Safe, walkable, and affordable.  $400 million in downpayment assistance for Solano County residents."
• "Good local new jobs.  15,000 new local jobs in manufacturing, services and technology paying $88,000 a year or more"
• "Parks and green space.  4,000 acres of park, trails and habitats.  The project affects less than 2% of Solano County's current agricultural production." 
• "Rio Vista Parkland.  A new 712-acre park between the new community and Rio Vista." 
• "Downtowns.  Major offices, entertainment, arts, shops, cafes, locally owned restaurants, apartment buildings and more"
• New Employers Zone.  New Manufacturing jobs and technology research labs in defense and other important industries.  A way to bring new employers and the good jobs of the future to Solan County."

Entrance to Marina
(c) L.R. Pruitt 2024

• Maker zones.  Workshops, art studios, and ohter light industrial spaces.  Also restaurants and entertainment, and loft-style homes."
• Open Space.  The plan requires at least 4,000 acres of parks and open spaces aligned with natural features, distributed across the new community, programmed with a variety of playgrounds, parks, and shared spaces for all ages and activities.
• Solar sheep are happy sheep.  Solar panels and grazing sheep make for great friends. The sheep happily eat the grass, greatly reducing wildfire hazards and  keeping weeks off the solar panels, as well as creating income for sheep farmers so they to rely less on meat sales.  The shade from the panels help the sheep stay cooler, rest more and experience less heat stress.  (This one incudes a reference:  New Scientist Magazine 2/1/2023)
• Solano Jobs Guarantee.  All new community growth beyond 50K residents is frozen, unless the new community creates at least 15K new jobs.  And each new job must be a good job, paying at least 125% of the average wage in Solano County (about $88K a year today).

Sign at Montezuma Hills area
along Highway 12
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

• Solano Homes for All.  We will provide $400 million to help Solano residents buy home sin the new community, and to build more affordable homes.  If $300 million is allocated to down payment assistance, that's enough to help 6K Solano families buy homes with a $50K each down payment grant.
• Solano Scholarships.  The new community will bring good new jobs.  To prepare, we will provide $70 million in funing to help Solano residents pay for vocational training, college, or to start or expand a small business.  

  

  Riverview Middle School
  Rio Vista, California
  Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

  
  
• Green Solano.  We are providing $80 million in community-benefits funding for public parks and trails, open space and natural habitats.  This funding will also help support Solano's agriculture economy, including family farms and workers.  We are exciting to work with the Solano community to help identify priorities for this funding, to nurture our county's strong connections to its lands.  
• Solano Downtowns.  We believe in investing in all areas of Solano--both in the new community in East Solano and in Solano's existing cities.  Why not just invest in existing cities?  We need more room for homes families can afford and for new industries.  We will provide $200 million in new investment in building and renovating homes, offices,  shops, and other mixed use projects in the downtown areas of Benicia, Dixon, Fairfield, Rio Vista, Suisun City, Vacaville, and Vallejo.  
• Smart Growth Guarantee.  Our initial commitments are to provide $500 million in community-benefits funding and $200 million for investments in Solano Downtowns over the build-out towards $50,000 residents.  But our commitment to Solano does not end there.  If our community grow beyond 50,000 residents, all of these financial commitments will continue to scale up in proportion to the growth of our community.  We are excited to grow with Solano, and be a good neighbor for generations to come. 

Downtown Rio Vista
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Water Guarantee. Before a brick is laid, we guarantee to provide our water supplies through the highly regulated and state-mandated Water Supply Assessment and Water Supply Verification process.  Regulated closely by the State of California, this process requires us to prove we can deliver water to the new community for many decades going forward, including through drought periods. 

• Transportation Guarantee.  We will provide right of way for upgrades for Highway 12 and 113, including the Rio Vista and Dixon bypass, and we will pay above our proportionate share to fund these upgrades.  
• Schools Guarantee.  We are required to ensure that new schools are ready in our new community when first residents move in. That way parens and teachers an be sure that existing schools are not overly burdened with new students.  Our schools remain in the existing school districts, but we will ensure that new schools are ready by the time the first children move in. We want the new community to be a big win for public education in Solano County.
• Solano Taxpayer Guarantee.  We will pay our own way through the significant tax revenue we will generate as the new city gains residents.  The initiative guarantees no new cost to Solano taxpayers, except to those new residents who live in the new community. 

Wind turbines and gravel road running 
South from Highway 12 between I-80 & Rio Vista
area known as Montezuma Hills
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

A significant part of one 12-page brochure addresses nearby Travis Air Force Base and a buffer zone that will lie between it and the new community. 

Til this weekend, the only billboard I'd seen promoting California Forever was on eastbound I-80 in Solano County, and it touted the 15K jobs paying more than $88K.  Then, on May 5, traveling westbound on I-80 , I saw one touting the $400 million in downpayment assistance for Solano County residents.  

Among the items on the crowd-sourced list of amenities folks had written on giant note pads in the sales office   

• Music events, dining destinations, emphasis on nature in the community
• Affordable housing--not market rate
• Smart growth
• Movie theatres (good for teens)
• Let's re-create our normal!
• Medical Center
• Big Box retailers
• Preserve wetlands
• Widen Highway 12 from Suisun
• Satellite junior college campus
• Archeological recognition (Native Americans)
• Nightclub!!!
• Chain Hotel (Nice!)
• Elderly/Alzheimers dementia care facility (home) with 24/7 nurse on site
• Quality restaurants on the water front

On the kids list, one wrote, "If I had my own city, I would want a dirt bike track, a Walmart, and lots of houses."  The child included a drawing of this place, complete with a dirt bike track and a church, along with a Walmart and several houses. 

Crowd-sourced list of desired amenities
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

California Forever has three sales offices in addition to the one in Rio Vista; the others are in Vacaville, Vallejo, and Fairfield.  

Another law enforcement shortage, this one in California's rural-ish Central Valley

Melissa Gomez reports today for the Los Angeles Times reports today from Merced County, population 281,000 under the headline, "‘Folks, it’s bad’: Merced sheriff warns of public safety crisis as deputy vacancies mount."  Here's an excerpt referring to Sheriff Vern Warnke: 

Warnke said the vacancies have mounted in recent months and his pleas to the county Board of Supervisors to increase his budget and give him control over how funds are allocated have gone unheeded.

At this point, just four deputies patrol the county’s nearly 2,000 square miles during daytime shifts. A lieutenant and two sergeants are covering dispatch shifts. If someone calls in sick, colleagues are asked to work beyond their 12-hour shifts. One dispatcher clocked more than 700 hours of overtime over the course of a year.

In a video, Warnke says: 

Our correctional bureaus are understaffed and overworked. Our patrol deputies are understaffed and overworked. Our communication center with the dispatchers — it could be to the point when you dial 911, we have nobody who can answer it.  And that’s not a joke. It’s not a threat. It’s a fact.

* * * 

Merced County, known as the gateway to Yosemite, has a larger budget than many rural counties because it encompasses both farmland and cities such as Merced, population 90,000. The county’s annual budget for public safety has grown in recent years and makes about $93.4 million available for the sheriff’s office, according to county officials.

But Warnke said it hasn’t been enough to retain deputies, who are leaving for other counties despite Merced’s $10,000 signing bonuses. Top deputies in some neighboring counties make at least $102,000, while Merced pays its top deputies $90,000.

The sheriff acknowledged that the competition for salaries and bonuses creates a “vicious cycle.” The department went through similar shortages during his first term, and deputies received a 20% raise in 2017. But here he is facing the same problem.

Here's another quote from Warnke: 

The issue is that the county doesn’t seem to want to put any planning into the future. They’ll put a Band-Aid on something and think it’s gonna hold for a long time. And it doesn’t.

A prior post about the shortage of deputies in Tehama County is here.  This week, Capital Public Radio in Sacramento reported from Stockton, about an hour north of Merced, that the City of Stockton had hired ten new police officers.  Here's a story by the same journalist in 2017 when the city was looking to hire 50 new officers. 

Places where you can get a home for $150K in California are all rural, remote

Entering Trona from the Southwest
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024 (February)

The Los Angeles Times published a story last week on 10 California housing markets where the median home price is $150K or less.  The one that jumped out at me was Trona, California, in the Searles Valley, which I recently passed through en route to Death Valley National Park.  

Southwest of Trona, near
Searles Valley industrial
infrastructure
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

According to wikipedia, Trona is a town of 1900 residents in San Bernardino County.  Adjacent to it is a census-designated place also called Trona, in Inyo Couty, with a population of 18 and an economy centered on marijuana cultivation.   

The affordability ratio in places like Trona is noteworthy, as journalist Terry Castleman explains: 

The ratio of median home prices to household income is less than 2 to 1, compared to nearly 10 to 1 in the rest of the state.  

Trona, California 
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

In the Searles Valley, the median household income was $54,000 in 2022, well below the statewide average of $92,000, according to census data. The poverty rate, however, was nearly 20%, far exceeding California’s 12% overall rate.

Here's what Castleman wrote about recent housing market trends there:

Sonney Berri, a real estate agent in Trona, has seen an uptick in prices since the COVID-19 pandemic, a trend he attributes to homeowners who previously lived close to city centers and sold their homes to buy properties in this unincorporated community in San Bernardino County.

Trona Senior Center
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Castleman also writes of the town's longer-term history: 

Old Guesthouse Museum, (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Trona, a “desolate area that was very much thriving back in the ’50s and ’60s,” was littered with abandoned homes after plants closed decades ago, said Berri, 49. Now, “people are fixing them up and making the community better,” he said.

Trona’s heyday was in the early 1900s, when it was a company town, established in 1914 and operated by the American Trona Corp. Early on, a central building housed many workers and all the town’s businesses, including a “pool hall, a barber shop, post office, library, grocery and department store,” according to the Searles Valley Historical Society.

Former dollar store is now
the Trona Food Bank
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

The story features some rich quotes from residents, like that of 80-year-old Ann Epperly, who said she likes being able to "ride horses all over town."  

It also explains how Trona's star waned as its industrial importance lagged and as Ridgecrest, 25 miles away, grew.  

Ridgecrest is now home to the closest Walmart.  I noticed that even a dollar store had closed--and been reappropriated as the Trona Food Bank.  The former pharmacy was boarded up, as was a relatively new looking Shell station.  

On the other hand, the town boasted a spiffy new, but spartan, branch of the San Bernardino County Library.   The Senior Center looks robust; boxes of produce were stacked outside it when I passed through on a Saturday morning, when the center was closed.  San Bernardino County offices, including a court, were just a street or two off Highway 178, as was the U.S. post office.  

Here's what Castleman reports about the eight other California towns where median home values are in the $150K range:

Some of the state’s lowest median home values — as low as $114,000 —are located near the Oregon border, in the towns of Dorris, Macdoel and Tulelake. Each town is home to less than 1,000 people and set amid agricultural fields.

Herlong, located along the border with Nevada, 90 miles north of Lake Tahoe, is another town with a low median home value. It’s an army town named after a World War II-era captain and home to a military storage facility.

San Bernardino County Library, Trona Branch

In Southern California, five towns round out the group of nine: Boron, Yermo, Hinkley, Johannesburg and Trona. Surrounded by desert, most were built up around the mining industry and all have lost population in recent decades.

Sign near Mohave
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024 (February)

The town of Boron is named for the element found in borax, and Hinkley is known for a groundwater contamination lawsuit that inspired the movie “Erin Brockovich.”

I look forward to opportunities to visit some of these other remote places with affordable housing.  I've been close to Johannesburg while en route to Trona and Death Valley.   And I've passed through Dorris and Macdoel when traveling between Weed on Interstate 5 in far northern California and the small city of Klamath Falls, Oregon.  Dorris is home of the Cedar Point Nursery, a strawberry nursery that was the origin of the 2021 U.S. Supreme Court case, Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid.  I've also driven through Tulelake, population just under 1,000, in the same region.  

According to wikipedia, Dorris, population 939, is home to 364 households and 414 housing units, of whom 248 are owner-occupied and 116 are renter-occupied.  Macdoel, population 86, has 43 housing units of whom 18 are owner-occupied and 23 are renter occupied.  The vacancy rate is 0%.   

California counties without nearby universities struggle to recruit teachers

Diana Lambert reported for Ed Source reported a few days ago.  Here's an excerpt: 

Nine rural California counties, most struggling with student achievement and teacher recruitment, are in teacher education deserts, according to a report released Tuesday from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools.

Alpine, Del Norte, Imperial, Inyo, Lassen, Modoc, Mono, Sierra and Siskiyou counties do not have teacher preparation programs within 60 miles of their county offices of education, according to the report, “California’s Teacher Education Deserts: An Overlooked and Growing Equity Challenge.”

“We know that research suggests that teachers are more likely to complete their student teaching and also secure employment close to where they receive their teacher training,” said Kai Mathews, project director for the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools.

As a result, six of the nine counties have a higher percentage of underprepared teachers than the state average of 4% to 5%, according to the study. Of the nine counties, Modoc and Lassen have the highest percentage of underprepared teachers at 14% and 17% respectively.

* * * 

There could be many reasons teachers are hard to find in rural areas, including fewer nearby institutions of higher education, which leads to a lower than average percentage of residents with bachelor’s degrees and therefore a smaller pool of potential teacher candidates, according to the study.

Counties that border other states and countries also have significantly higher teacher vacancy rates compared with nonborder districts, said Hui Huang, a researcher on the project. All nine of the California counties classified as teacher education deserts are bordered by either Oregon, Nevada, Arizona or Mexico.

Here's a related post about the struggle to recruit K-12 teachers in Modoc County. 

Here's a CalMatters story about the needs rural California schools have for state assistance. 

Inside Higher Ed writes here about the economic returns of a rural education.  In it, Sara Weissman writes of a report arguing that "rural-serving institutions offer meaningful benefits to their students, including quicker times to degree and lower prices."