Unincorporated living

Joe Matthews, Fellow at the Center of Social Cohesion at Arizona State and co-Author of California Crackup, explores the rising power of county governments, as city governments cede power. Many of his concerns are reflected in the changing relationship between local cities and Santa Clara County.

We are all unincorporated now.

Unincorporated communities—which don’t have their own municipal governments—live at the mercies of their counties, who may or may not provide vital services. The pandemic gave all Californians a taste of unincorporated life, since our county governments determine whether we can shop, play in a park, or send our kids to school.

Life under your county’s thumb is full of uncertainties and frustrations. The good news for most Californians is that county domination ended once COVID-19 receded. The bad news is that California’s thousands of unincorporated communities will have to keep on living like this. 

Unincorporated places can be islands of development within urban areas or small towns in remote areas. A few, like Rancho Santa Fe, are wealthy enclaves, with residents rich enough to fend for themselves. But most unincorporated places are full of people desperate for a place to live. Without municipal government, such places can lack sidewalks and sewage services. There are often no local police to call, much less defund. 

I’ve been thinking about unincorporated places while reading BuzzFeed investigative editor Jessica Garrison’s new book, The Devil’s Harvest, about the California-based contract killer Jose Martinez. In her spellbinding account, Martinez gets away with killing at least 36 people over three decades for two reasons. One was that he murdered people the authorities didn’t care about—poor, non-white migrants who might be criminals themselves.

The other was that he often committed crimes in out-of-the-way unincorporated jurisdictions, with little law enforcement. It also helped that Martinez lived in and around such communities, notably Earlimart, an unincorporated settlement of 8,700 along State Highway 99 in Tulare County.

In the past decade, California state law designated such places “DUCs”—Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities—and required local governments to identify and include them in planning. Residents of some unincorporated places have sued and organized for better services. In her book, Garrison recounts another hopeful phenomenon: young adults who grew up in Earlimart returning home to teach in the schools and build the community.

Still, it’s not clear if the state government is willing to invest enough to bring such communities up to parity. 

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.

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