Turning Asparagus Fields into Subdivisions: Stockton, unpayable debts, and the myth of “free money”

Keywords: municipal finance, austerity urbanism, financialization, cultural history, Stockton, California
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 21

Abstract

This paper considers the aftermath of the global financial crisis as it has played out in Stockton, California, a city I’ve been visiting regularly over the last ten years. In January 2008 the CBS tabloid TV show 60 minutes dubbed Stockton the “ground zero of the financial crisis”. Through popular narratives such as the 60 minutes story, Stockton became a mythologised space for representing the housing bust, revising an earlier account of the housing boom as an opportunity for upward mobility and a chance to finally seize the good life, into a moral fable about greedy subprime borrowers who naively wanted “free money”, wouldn’t repay their debts, and then selfishly walked away from their underwater homes. Post-crisis, the financial logics the city and its would-be homeowners had embraced were ruthlessly reversed, enacted as punishment and “fiscal discipline” for the city’s fecklessness. In addition to its financial experiments with TIF financing, pension-obligation bonds and other non-conventional financial instruments, more recently the city has conducted an experiment in the Universal Basic Income, which again has revealed the capricious dynamics that are folded into the real estate/finance/money nexus.