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Adelanto California

Originally published in NSFWCORP on April 16, 2013.

When I first started reporting on the subprime suburb of Victorville, I little expected that the neighboring town of Adelanto would become ground zero for a fight between billionaires on one side, and poor, vulnerable minority parents and children on the other.

I first heard about the fight through the local right-wing paper, the Victorville Daily Press, which gleefully announced on its front page that a local school, Desert Trails Elementary, had just made history as the first school in the nation to be privatized under California’s new “parent trigger” law. The paper described the takeover as “promising a fresh start to the failing elementary school,” and claimed it had received widespread support from parents. (more…)

December 5th, 2015 | Comments Off on Pulling the Trigger: School Privatization in California’s Subprime Suburbs

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eXiled TV: Ghetto Bird Watching with Yasha Levine

High desert living in Victorville offers outstanding opportunities for plentiful, secure employment, home ownership, higher education, safe neighborhoods and nearby desert, lake and mountain recreation. Victorville has 20 parks, two municipal golf courses, highly rated schools, truly affordable housing and…

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June 23rd, 2009 | Comments (22)

Depression Porn: The New Taxpayer-funded Subprime Market No One Wants You To Know About

Everything the real estate industry tells you is a hustle. No industry is more geared toward pumping up the positive and burying anything remotely negative, leaving you — and truth — out in the cold. The crash has not made…

June 16th, 2009 | Comments (17)