Napa- There Are Better Options Out There.
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4/25/2021
I have lived in Napa for 20 years. In that time, Napa has changed dramatically. Today, Napa is very much a Hispanic community. Many Latinos don't or won't speak English and Spanish is the most common language you'll hear spoken around town. That change alone is driving much of the change in Napa. Schools are poor and underfunded due the vast resources devoted to educating kids for whom English is a second language. The majority of Napa's students are now Hispanic and it shows in a multitude of way, from Spanish being spoken first at graduating ceremonies to the ubiquitous presence of Mexican flag. Hispanic interest groups now drive local politics and have threatened to sue the city to force a change in the city council composition so that Latino interests have a greater voice. The council caved to this threat and carved the city up into voting blocks that ensure Latino areas stand separate from non-Hispanic areas, guaranteeing votes for Latinos on Council.
A great deal of the demographic change is driven by California's huge influx of illegal immigrants and the sanctuary policies of the San Francisco Bay area. In Napa, the illegal immigrant situation forms an underground economy and culture. Many of the agricultural workers helping to make expensive bottles of wine are illegal. It is sort of the dirty little secret that Napa wineries won't ever talk about. While the workers are, for the most part, well treated and reasonably paid, it creates its own counter-culture. These workers are "half-residents"; here for economic reasons only and not planning to stay when they're older. They have no real interest in the quality of life in Napa or working toward the betterment of the community. Their sole focus is to earn as much as they can and send much of it back home to Mexico or wherever. They live in cheap, overcrowded housing that during Covid resulted in very high Covid cases amongst them. Rather than call it for what it is, the very progressive and increasingly far-left Napa city council blames "systemic racism" for the high rates of Covid among Hispanics- using a "woke" lie to deny the truth about our local economy.
Napa also still has many good things about it. While it is an extremely expensive town to live in that primarily caters to tourists, it still is a small town where you always meet people you know and everyone has only one degree of separation from everyone else. It also has great civic spirit and there is a lot of community volunteerism from the "core" community. There is also no denying the natural beauty of Napa's rolling hills of vineyards. However, crime is increasingly becoming a problem and traffic to and from Napa is becoming very bad. Fires have become almost an annual disaster that leaves the community on edge every summer and we all live with the knowledge that the next devastating earthquake could happen at any time (the last big one in 2014 damaged much of the city).
If you are quite well off ($200,000/year and up) and very liberal in your views and don't mind living with all these factors Napa just might be the ticket for you. For everyone else, however, there are much better options out there.
Rich | Napa, CA