The Sacramento Blight Flight

The Demise of California’s Redevelopment Agencies Could End a War Against Ourselves

The city of Sacramento, my adopted hometown, has always been at war with downtown blight. Do I exaggerate? It will not seem so to most Sacramentans, we who have arrived here, by birth or by choice, since city fathers first rolled out the big guns of redevelopment in 1950.

It started in the West End, the neighborhood sandwiched between the State Capitol and the Sacramento River. In old pictures, the West End is a jumble of Victorian houses, brick hotels, bars, eateries, garages, machine shops, groceries, clothiers, and barber shops …