At The Palms Apartments on Marconi at Wright, if it's not one thing, it's another. As reported by CBS13 last night, the roof is failing, many of the windows are boarded up, there are padlocks on the doors. A person was shot there on Friday night and the suspect got away. Last January we posted about the devastating fire there in January of 2024 and the sad story of the remaining residents. By now, the residents are being told that they will be evicted because repairs to the place will take more than 30 days to complete. The residents fear they will wind up living on the street.

Why do those conditions exist? It seems that state laws tend to prioritize certain property owners and landlords over the protection of public health and safety. And that has provided cover for the County to do likewise. Deference is given to the business plans of owners of shabby rental housing like The Palms and mold-infested commercial property like Country Club Plaza. The immediate victims may be low-income renters, powerless tenants of commercial space or residents of a designated Environmental Justice Area like West Arden Arcade. In reality, though, all of us are affected - whether we live in disadvantaged or privileged neighborhoods. Our community image is one of disrespect, our property values are depressed, and our local economy is constrained. 

When your municipal government is a big county with a plate chock full of areawide challenges, you cannot really expect attention will be given to specific, ground-level municipal issues like deplorable rental housing. That's normally the job of an incorporated municipality - a city with a Mayor, a City Council and an administration focused on the well-being of the community. We don't have that here. Our communty of 100,000 people is just a small part of Sacramento County's vast, urbanized, unincorporated UnCity. Most of our Supervisors do not have a fire in the belly for us - we did not elect them, they do not live here and they are largely unfamiliar with our community.  We cannot recall them from office or elect better people to fill their seats. Compounding the problem, our Members of the Legislature represent far too many people, cannot find us within their bandwidth (unless we are serious donors), and rarely - if ever - show up here.

The best results we can get, it seems, are all talk, with little or no action. Our Supervisor even tells people in public meetings that the County is "not up to the job". While we can applaud him for his honesty,  what he means is that our municipal governance system does not work. The day-to-day issues and needs in our community are easily ignored and often go unaddressed. Our local economy is overlooked. Only squeaky wheels are greased, and the few squeaks that are heard tend to come from out-of-area, out-of-state and out-of-the-country property owners. The precious few "affordable" housing units here are typically old, substandard apartments like The Palms, occupied by renters who are routinely disregarded by those absentee landlords and our public servants at County Hall. Every now and then a media story or two will get traction and some improvements might follow, but that's like pouring a bottle of water in the ocean. Nothing will change unless our community acquires local control by becoming a city. Maybe you are OK with how things are. Yet if you are not happy about it, what - if anything - are you willing to do to change the situation?