Essential California

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Friday, Dec. 27, and here’s a look at the year that was. We asked our readers to tell us about how this year’s headlines affected their lives, and more than 70 of you wrote in to share your experiences. Here’s what people said. [See also: “In 2019, California was rocked by earthquakes, blackouts and wildfires” in the Los Angeles Times] Fires and blackouts From Granada Hills to the North Bay and beyond, readers wrote in about the pervasive smell of wildfire smoke, the fear of evacuating homes, the wait for possible evacuations to come. “It feels like there’s an entire season where Californians call each other and say, ‘If you have to evacuate, I have a guest room,’ which is crazy, but totally normal,” said Lindsay Coony from Santa Barbara. K.J. Kovacs in Los Angeles said that “the fires in particular and the climate crisis in general” had “sharpened an already pervasive sense of ‘Time is running out.’” Many people who grew up in California but have left, or whose children have settled here, told us how they had followed the coverage with “sympathy and horror,” as Kathleen Lawrence, whose family still lives in Santa Barbara, put it. The blackouts and fires also had economic impacts for many, like Paul G. Smith of Calistoga, who said his tasting room had lost money as wine country suffered blackouts and had seen fewer tourists. In a variation on one of the year’s most common refrains, Bry McKown of Oakland expressed anger at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. “It was infuriating to get instructions by PG&E to ‘make a plan’ when that investor-owned utility had obviously ignored real fire safety and maintenance programs for decades,” he wrote. “I learned PG&E’s business model is obsolete in an era of climate change.” Gun violence In a year marred by multiple mass shootings in California, many of you wrote about how they shattered your personal sense of safety. Writing from San Luis Obispo, Beth Anderson said the July shooting at the famed Gilroy Garlic Festival had been a “tipping point” for her. “My whole life I’ve been a pragmatic optimist,” she wrote. “The Gilroy slaughter darkened my entire worldview. I bought a handgun & took shooting lessons. I’m wary of everyone I encounter … in parking lots, in traffic, in the grocery store.” Macy Kwon, a student in Sherman Oaks and a member of the Los Angeles Times High School Insider team, said gun violence had had a “profound effect” on her school community, which has faced two recent gun threats. But it was November’s deadly shooting at Saugus High School that “truly wrecked me,” she wrote. “With the shooting in Santa Clarita, fear became a creeping companion at the back of my mind.“ Earthquakes Many readers wrote in about how they felt the Ridgecrest earthquakes in July. For John M. Kelley in Bakersfield, they echoed the many other temblors he’d experienced during his more than eight decades in California. He recalled the 1933 Long Beach earthquake when he was a 5-year-old boy, and being dispatched with his pump truck to fight potential refinery fires after the massive Tehachapi quake in 1952. Homelessness We asked you about the biggest change you saw in your city or town this year. From Silicon Valley to the San Fernando Valley, up and down the coast, in big cities and small towns, your answer was overwhelmingly homelessness. The crisis seemed to affect every corner of California, but it also elicited wildly divergent responses. While some readers were angry about the presence of nearby encampments, others were radicalized into action to help their unhoused neighbors. Anita Coleman from Irvine said the reactions in her community had changed her life. “For the last 13 years I’ve been a stay-at-home wife and mom, contented with my life in Irvine,” she wrote. But after witnessing the vitriol directed toward homeless people at a March City Council meeting, she was moved to use her professional skills as a former professor and digital librarian to launch a community education campaignabout homelessness and advocate for more housing in her city. The broader housing crisis For many readers, the high cost of housing came paired with the sense that California has become an increasingly unequal place, where families like theirs can no longer easily carve out a life. “To think that in my lifetime California has become the state with the greatest level of inequality is tragic to me,” said Fritzi Lareau, who said she was born in Santa Monica in 1947 and was writing from Redwood City. “My daughter cannot afford to live in the Bay Area (she is a teacher) and moved to Mendocino County.” “Every day I live in fear that I’ll get a letter or phone call from our landlord saying she’s selling the house,” April Martin wrote from West Oakland. “I think I’m gonna start living in a van because I no longer want to spend more than half of my income on rent. The Bay Area is unlivable for artists like myself.” Tyler Jensen in San Diego said that even with a six-figure salary, he still found himself putting about half of his net pay toward rent, making it difficult to save. Affording health care In an issue by no means unique to California, several readers wrote about how the high cost of healthcare — specifically prescription medication and hospital stays — had affected their lives. Gretchen Webster in Carlsbad, who has a heart condition, talked about how she had had to turn down numerous drugs she had been prescribed because of the cost. “I see other senior citizens who live on Social Security, depriving themselves of food to afford these outrageously priced drugs,” she wrote. All news is local Sue Chehrenegar in Beverly Hills wrote that the biggest change this year in her city was “a new traffic light at an intersection near my home.” Edith Goetzman, an 87-year-old in Yorba Linda, answered the same question with a response about a new shopping center that had been erected at the intersection of Lake View Avenue and Yorba Linda Boulevard, which brought “a glut of fast-food vendors and an overpriced grocery store.” But the year wasn’t all bad for her: It also brought a brand-new public library to town.