Welcome to Hooverville1, California
HÉCTOR TOBAR
JULY 6, 2015
LOS ANGELES — A GENERATION ago, this West Coast metropolis2
became a “third world city.” At least in the rhetoric of certain East Coast
thinkers. (1)
A 1991 book by David Rieff cited visitors who were stunned by “seeing
nothing but brown faces, hearing nothing but Spanish on the streets.” The
arrival of coffee-colored3 Latino4 masses (like me and my Guatemalan5American family), together with the spread of Mandarin and Korean
logograms6 on street signs, led Mr. Rieff to call this the “capital of the third
world.” (2)
Hooverville: noun: a shantytown built by unemployed and destitute people during the
Depression of the early 1930s
1
metropolis: noun: the capital or chief city of a country or region;
a very large and densely populated industrial and commercial city
2
3
“Ojalá Que Llueva Café.” Café Tacvba. Avalancha de Éxitos.
Latino: noun: (in North America) a person of Latin American origin or descent, especially
a man or boy
4
Guatemala: noun: a country in Central America that borders on the Pacific Ocean and has
a short coastline on the Caribbean Sea; pop. 13,276,500 (est. 2009); capital, Guatemala City;
official language, Spanish. A former center of Mayan civilization, Guatemala was conquered
by the Spanish in 1523–24. After independence, it formed the core of the short-lived United
Provinces of Central America 1828–38 before becoming an independent republic in its own
right.
5
logogram: noun: a sign or character representing a word or phrase, such as those used in
shorthand and some writing systems
6
2
As a native of the city, I was offended to hear it tagged with such a
denigrating7 label. But in recent years, and for different reasons, I’ve come
to believe that a metropolis of the “developing world,” to use a more polite
expression, is being born here. (3)
Its center is not in East Los Angeles, or any other Latino neighborhood;
nor in our recently christened “Little Bangladesh8.” The third world exists
everywhere here — in the spread of inequality. (4)
The deepening gap between rich and poor is both a sociological9 fact and a
state of mind. The cost of housing is up dramatically, and so is
homelessness. (5)
“If it feels like there are people living on the streets and under bridges
everywhere you look, it’s because there are,” Bianca Barragan wrote for the
website L.A. Curbed last month, after a survey by the Los Angeles
Homeless Services Authority found an 85 percent increase in the number
of people living in tents and cars over the past two years. In all, the
census10 counted more than 25,000 homeless people in the city, up 12
percent over the same period. (6)
In my hillside neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles, the value of a twobedroom home has climbed to $750,000 or more. Buy in, and you could
get a nice view of a valley with sycamore trees and a homeless camp. On
7
denigrate: verb: criticize unfairly; disparage
Bangladesh: noun: a country in southern Asia, in the Ganges River delta, on the Bay of
Bengal; pop. 156,050,900 (est. 2009); capital, Dhaka; official language, Bengali. Formerly
part of British India, the region, as East Pakistan, became one of the two geographical units
of Pakistan. After civil war, the independent republic of Bangladesh was proclaimed in
1971. Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal cause repeated devastation to the country.
8
sociological: adjective: related to the study of sociology which is the study of the
development, structure, and functioning of human society; the study of social problems
9
census: noun: an official count or survey of a population, typically recording various
details of individuals
10
3
social media, I hear my neighbors demanding that city officials intensify
indigent11-removal efforts. (7)
“The problem is not gone,” wrote a resident on a neighborhood website in
May, after city officials cleared out scores of homeless people. “Saw 6
people or more on the hillside. Tents and cooking! Looks like more work
needs to be done.” (8)
California has both the most “ultrarich” (people worth more than $30
million) and the worst poverty rate in America. Even though San Francisco
recently overtook Los Angeles in ultrarich residents, ostentatious12
affluence13 and permanent poverty live side by side here. (9)
“Look, Papá,” my 10-year-old daughter said as our old Subaru puttered
past a local intersection that’s been occupied for ages by homeless veterans.
“A Maserati!” (10)
Silver, sleek, an apparition14 from the French Riviera, it glided past a
lumbering city bus. A few days later, we saw a Tesla — the new status
symbol of our eco-glitterati15 — driving along the Arroyo Seco Parkway,
past the huts of wood, wire and blue tarpaulin that lined the roadway.
(11)
11
indigent: adjective: poor, needy; noun: a needy person
ostentatious: adjective: characterized by vulgar or pretentious display; designed to
impress or attract notice
12
13
affluence: noun: the state of having a great deal of money; wealth
apparition: noun: a ghost or ghostlike image of a person; the appearance of something
remarkable or unexpected
14
glitterati: noun: the fashionable set of people engaged in show business or some other
glamorous activity; eco-glitterati: the fashionable set of people who buy expensive items to
show that they are ecologically conscious
15
4
The paradox16 of increasing homelessness and rising prosperity has finally
got Los Angeles talking about inequality. But the gap between rich and
poor has been building here for 40 years. Every boom and bust simply
accentuates17 the trend. (12)
Bill Boyarsky, a retired city editor at The Los Angeles Times, dates the
beginning to the decline of industrial Los Angeles in the 1970s: “We lost a
huge number of middle-class jobs.” At the same time, the tax revolt led by
the businessman and politician Howard Jarvis cut funding for public
education. “We ended up limiting the ability of kids to move ahead of their
parents,” said Mr. Boyarsky. (13)
Los Angeles still has a much larger middle class than your average
developing-world city. But privilege and inequality are spreading in all sorts
of public places. (14)
Rich and poor have long suffered on the freeway together: Porsches and
pickups alike, gridlocked. Now we have new toll roads; on some freeways,
you can literally buy your way into the fast lane. (15)
Dodger Stadium used to be one of the city’s most democratic
entertainment venues. In 1962, the most expensive seat was $5.50, about
four times the price of a bleacher (or pavilion) seat. These days, field-level
seats can cost up to $1,000, more than 30 times the price of a bleacher seat.
(16)
Thirty years ago, a family of four at poverty level lived on about $10,650 —
about double the annual tuition at the city’s top prep schools. The
equivalent federal poverty line today, $24,250, would barely cover twothirds of this year’s tuition at schools like Harvard-Westlake or Polytechnic
in Pasadena. (17)
paradox: noun: a situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or
qualities
16
17
attenuate: verb: reduce the force, effect, or value of
5
In the cities of the developing world, class differences this wide are fixed.
Homelessness is a kind of caste, and the poorest city dwellers live in
permanent squatter communities. In Buenos Aires18, where I once lived,
their homes are often built with discarded bricks and tiles. (18)
Los Angeles doesn’t have neighborhoods like that yet, but homelessness
has become semi-permanent in many places. (19)
A decade ago, a man created a shelter under a bridge across the street from
my in-laws in South Pasadena; a series of homeless people has occupied it
ever since — most recently, a white man of about 65 nicknamed the
Cowboy. He told me he worked in aerospace until an accident left him
with a brain injury. (20)
The Cowboy (he declined to tell his real name) is proud of his home
improvements: a modest retaining wall, a wood-chip floor. He’s earned the
trust of his property-owning neighbors. Once, he said, they passed around
a petition to keep the police from kicking him out. As long as Los Angeles
holds on to such compassion, it won’t be a true “third world city.” (21)
The Cowboy asked me to visit again soon. “Like a bad habit,” he said, “I’ll
keep coming back into your world.” (22)
Buenos Aires: noun: the capital city and chief port of Argentina, in the eastern central
part of the country, on the Plata River
18
6
Participation in Democracy
Kailua High School
Social Studies Requirement
2015-2016
Mr. Wilson
INSTRUCTIONS: Write the class heading, skip one line, and then write a citation for
“Welcome to Hooverville, California.” After writing a citation, skip a line and then
answer the provided questions in complete sentences. After your answer to question
11, write out each foot-noted vocabulary word, its part of speech, its definition, and
then write a sentence that uses the word correctly.
1. What does the word “Hooverville” mean? (See footnote 1.)
2. What are the reasons that David Rieff “call[ed Los Angeles ‘the capital of the third
world’”? (3)
3. What is the reason that the author sees Los Angeles as “a metropolis of the ‘developing
world’”? (see paragraphs 3 and 4)
4. Why “does it feel[ ] like there are people living on the streets and under bridges
everywhere you look”? (6)
5. “[O]ver the past two years,” how large was the “the increase in the number of people
living in tents and cars” in Los Angeles? (6)
6. About how many “homeless people” are in the city of Los Angeles? (6)
7. Describe the sociological paradox in “California.” (9)
8. For how many years has “the gap between rich and poor has been building “ in Los
Angeles? (12)
9. Describe the impact of “Howard Jarvis[‘s] cut [in] funding for public education” during
“the decline of industrial Los Angeles in the 1970s.” (13)
10. Approximately, how many “times” more do the rich earn than the poor? (16)
11. Provide an example of “semi-permanent” “squatter communities” in Los Angeles. (20,
21)