Recovery and Its Problems
The signs of prosperity have been increasingly apparent in the last several years, but the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. at its 12th annual business forecast conference this month, made the official pronouncement: The San Fernando Valley is back.
Hit hard in the first half of the 1990s by the nationwide recession, the decline in defense spending, the closing of the General Motors plant and the Northridge earthquake, the Valley spent the second half of the decade rebuilding.
Judging from the economic markers unveiled at the conference, that process is finished. “The recovery,” Cal State Northridge economist Daniel R. Blake told the gathering of business, community and political leaders, “is complete.”
Where residents once couldn’t move away fast enough, leaving a housing and apartment glut in their wake, today, the Valley is a seller’s--and a landlord’s--market. Housing prices are up 50% since 1995. The 10% apartment vacancy rate of five years ago is now 3%. Industrial and office vacancy rates are down. Employment is up.
But recovery, it turns out, brings a new set of problems: How to manage the region’s growth so that the prosperous times continue. The challenge, not surprisingly, is more easily raised than answered.
* Housing. The housing market’s rebound is without question good news to Valley homeowners who saw values plummet during the hard times. But the downside of a tight housing market is that many of the workers who are fueling today’s economic boom are having a hard time affording rent or a house down payment, a problem that increasingly worries Valley business owners.
* Space. A shortage of available land extends beyond the need for houses and apartments to businesses, which lack room to expand and, as everyone by now surely knows, schools.
* Congestion. Anyone who has been stuck in traffic on the Ventura or San Diego freeways--and is there anyone who hasn’t?--knows this problem firsthand. Throughout the Southland, drivers waste a staggering 1.8 million hours a day, according to a survey released last month by the Southern California Assn. of Governments.
* Schools. Employers worry that crowded schools with low performance levels will be another deterrent to attracting employees. They also worry about the quality of the work force produced by these schools.
* Overdependence on a few industries. The Valley has too much retail capacity and too many retail jobs that pay minimum wage. And although the entertainment industry is thriving in the Valley, employing more than 100,000 residents directly and many more as ancillary workers, speakers worried about the effect on Valley payrolls if actors and writers go on strike next year. Some predicted a downturn even without a strike because studios have stockpiled so much work this year in anticipation of one.
The speakers at the VICA conference didn’t just forecast problems. They suggested solutions, although not easy ones. They talked about planning developments with more density--fighting words in a region founded on the sanctity of the backyard barbecue. They talked about using--or, in some cases, reusing--the land left in the Valley more wisely and more creatively. They talked about alternative transportation that takes into account changing commuting patterns as more businesses locate in the West Valley.
These are among the challenges facing the Valley in the next decade as it ends one stage and enters another. Given last week’s state Senate and Assembly elections and the Los Angeles City Council and mayoral elections to come, it’s the right time to be looking for answers.
