A ‘nice cheap residence?’ Housing issues have plagued SLO County from the start
Exponential growth has been part of California’s DNA since the Gold Rush made it a state almost instantaneously.
Even in those early days, there were complaints that there wasn’t enough cheap California land. Much of the prime property was tied up in large Mexican land grants.
How much did housing cost back then?
Barrett and Russell Real Estate advertised in The Tribune on June 4, 1886, about a “House and lot on Buchon street, nice cheap residence, good garden, lot 150 feet square, fenced, 20 bearing fruit trees, 100 bearing blackberry vines, good well; price $1,000.”
The real estate firm also had two large lots for sale on Santa Rosa Street that were priced at $325.
Housing has been part of The Tribune’s editorial and advertising coverage since the beginning. The newspaper’s founder, Walter Murray, was involved in real estate and real estate law, among other ventures.
Even then, people were concerned about the “high cost of living.”
The phrase first pops up in The Tribune in Feb. 18, 1910: “It is not only the high cost of living, but also the cost of high or even brainless living that is our problem. And it is for each of us to apply his brains to the task of living within his means.”
The tone — a real “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” attitude — was a reflection of then-editor Benjamin Brooks’ outlook as a Republican business owner.
He operated the Tribune on a shoestring. When hard times hit and cash was hard to find, he sometimes took subscription payments in produce from local farms.
There wasn’t a lot of cash flowing into the isolated rural region in the early 20th century.
Cal Poly was in danger of funding cuts from Sacramento. The major employers were Union Oil and Southern Pacific Railroad.
During World War II, the region experienced a housing crisis as the military bases experienced rapid expansion but building materials were hard to find due to wartime restrictions.
As Cal Poly expanded after the war, but still lacked dorms, G.I. Bill students were housed in trailers.
After a post-war building boom in the area, environmental limitations began to shape the pace of development. California Valley was once touted as the next big community but development never boomed as expected in the 1960s.
One creative solution to expensive housing was Tierra Nueva, a 27-unit co-housing community on five acres in Oceano. Management and ownership at the instant village, profiled in the Telegram-Tribune in June 1988, was based on consensus.
Meanwhile, the state’s population soared. Between 1960 to 1980, the population grew by almost 20% each decade.
Gov. Jerry Brown was the first California governor to say unfettered consumerism and growth might not be the right default setting for state policy when he was elected in 1975.
Statewide population growth rate has leveled off over the past decade, growing slowly.
Not everyone wants a ranch-style house on an acre of property; lot sizes have grown smaller over the years as needs have shifted. And many people can’t afford to buy a home.
The paper has had several stories over the years about People’s Self Help Housing. Families, many of whom had never built a house, banded together to train and put in the sweat equity of building their neighborhood.
Some of the most heartbreaking stories have been those of people who have worked all their lives, only to fall out of housing due to health setbacks.
On Dec. 29, 1997, Jeff Ballinger wrote in The Tribune about Don and Gail Smith, who were living in a 1982 Chevrolet Celebrity station wagon.
They lost their mobile home after health issues took them out of the workforce. Don, then 61, was battling angina, diabetes, hypertension and was in need of heart bypass.
Gail, then 48, was being treated for fibromyalgia.
“We just spend all our resources staying alive,” Don, a former pastor, told The Tribune then.
They were trying to qualify Don for disability payments but had to survive on $576 a month
“Well, we’re in the cracks now,” Gail said. “This was where we were going spend the rest of our lives. It was where I wanted to rock my grandchildren to sleep, and now we have nothing.”
Homeless services have become more organized since the 1990s but housing for those at the edge of the economy remains a critical issue.
