I've been through Stockton several times a year since 1970, and I worked the city on a regular basis as a federal investigator from 1981-1999, so I know the city quite well. Yes, the city has a large number of illegal aliens, and I suppose some of them found ways to buy housing. There's lots of substandard housing in Stockton, and much of it could be picked up cheaply before the recent housing boom. Not too long ago, you could pick up a fairly decent house for a fairly decent price in Stockton. It would seem to me that only a small percentage of foreclosures could be traced to illegal aliens - that's what I'll believe until I see data that proves otherwise.

Stockton has always been a rather disgusting city. It's hot and dusty in summer, and foggy and damp in winter. There are a few older parts of town, especially around the University of the Pacific, that are really nice, but most of the older part of the city is a slum, and the newer part of town was mostly lower-class tract housing until just recently. Three other cities in the Central Valley of California, Modesto, Fresno, and Bakersfield, are similar - but not as disgusting as Stockton. Some say Sacramento fits with those other four cities, but I lived in Sacramento for 20 years and found it a heck of a lot better than my previous home in Fresno. However, all of the Central Valley cities have had an inflated housing market, with Stockton the most inflated of them all.

When the housing in the San Francisco Bay Area got too expensive for most people, developers started building in Stockton, and in the sleepy neighboring agricultural towns of Lathrop, Manteca, and Tracy. The electronics industries of the Bay Area were booming, and new employees bought houses in Stockton and commuted 50 to 75 miles to work ing the Bay. All of a sudden, prices for housing in the area went sky-high. The prices weren't as ridiculously high as the Bay Area, but I kept thinking that nobody in his right mind would pay so much to live in such a disgusting place. So, when the economy faltered, it was inevitable that housing prices in Stockton would drop dramatically. It's my understanding that the price of a house in Stockton has dropped 50% in the last few years. Houses are probably underpriced there now, but it will take a long time for the housing market to recover.

I'm sure that many of the Bay Area workers who moved to Stockton were the first ones to lose their jobs when the high-tech industry took a downturn, since senior employees were more likely to have been able to buy housing in the Bay Area back when it was affordable.

So, I think it was the hugely inflated cost of housing that caused the dramatic foreclosure rate in Stockton, tied to the downturn of the electronics industry and layoffs that likely hit hardest among the younger and newer employees who were likely to have moved to Stockton.

And yes, Stockton and the rest of the Central Valley have a lot of illegal aliens - but I don't see a connection between the aliens and the housing market and foreclosures. I'd like to see data on that.

-Joe-