It’s hard to overstate how important the Central Valley is to the past, present and future of California. The Valley is urban, suburban and rural California all at once. The Valley is a place where we can truly see the amazing infrastructure and terrifying contradictions that are literally and figuratively built into our state. As someone from Northern California, the Center of that center is the Northern San Joaquin - Merced, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties, places like Patterson, Manteca, Lathrop, Los Banos and Gustine, or the cities of Modesto and Stockton, the 109th and 59th largest cities in America. There is Tracy, home of both my amazing producer and one of today’s guests, NPH Policy Director Abram Diaz.
In Northern California Area Code speak, this is the 209, a semi-legendary place known for toughness, amongst other things. Add all these communities together and you find a place with more than a million and a half people, mostly people of color, living in small unincorporated communities and big cities and sprawling suburbs and everywhere in between.
A while back, I was sitting in my yard with Muhammad Alameldin, a friend and policy associate at Terner Center, talking about Stockton, where he is from. I don’t remember whether it was before or after Muhammad went to work for David Garcia, the Terner Policy Director who is also from Stockton, but this interesting coincidence led us to start to play “who else in California housing is from the 209 geography game”? This led us to the aforementioned Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California’s Policy Director, Abram Diaz and to Melanie Morelos, the California Strategy Senior Program Manager at the Greenlining Institute.
It was clear to both of us that having key voices in the next generation of California housing policy makers be from the 209 meant something. We weren’t sure exactly why it matters - is it about representation from a historically marginalized and misunderstood part of California, or is it more than that? Is there something about the Northern San Joaquin and how it was built and who lives there that prepares people to see the full California, and perhaps make a more complete and inclusive housing policy?
This is the subject of today’s debut of Housing After Dark, the Where We Go From Here podcast. Housers from the 209. What we can learn from them, and housers can all learn by paying more attention to the Central Valley.
To read the transcript of this podcast, please visit https://alexschafran.substack.com/.
