Rezoning won’t solve the problem

Sep 24, 2021
Sep 24, 2021 Updated Apr 13, 2025
1

Editor,

Instead of rezoning the suburbs, how about dealing with income inequality and giving reparations for red-lining and denial of GI benefits so that people can have choices concerning where they reside.

(1) comment

Ray Fowler Sep 24, 2021 10:07am

Good morning, Michelle

Could you elaborate on how reparations would be paid and who would receive reparation payments?

Today, more than a quarter of the state's 40 million residents are foreign born. Would those migrants be required to pay reparations?

What of migrant workers of the past who were turned away at California's border, however, those who managed to enter the state that were allowed to live in makeshift camps but denied public services? They often could only find jobs involving physical labor primarily in California's agricultural industry. And those migrant farm workers also suffered the derision of government officials and the media.

That was the experience of displaced persons who arrived from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri and other states in that region much in the same fashion described by John Steinbeck in his novel, "The Grapes of Wrath." Would they and their descendants qualify for the kind of reparations you are calling for?

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