Nestled between two mountain ranges at the crook of central California\u2019s coastline sits a valley known as the \u201csalad bowl of the world\u201d.<\/p>\n
Farm workers stoop over neatly lined rows of crops off Highway 101 to harvest more than half of the nation\u2019s supply of lettuce and nearly a third of its strawberries. The soil here is so rich that author John Steinbeck<\/a> made the Salinas valley the promised land in his literary depictions of people chasing the American dream: immigrants, farm workers, westward-moving hopefuls, hungering for a better life.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a story that continues to capture the American imagination: Netflix has adapted Steinbeck\u2019s 1952 blockbuster novel, East of Eden, into a limited series starring Florence Pugh, released 1 October.<\/p>\n \u201cThis will be a valley of great richness one day,\u201d Steinbeck wrote of the farmland in East of Eden. \u201cAnd happy people will live here, thousands and thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n The Salinas valley in California. Photograph: Pgiam\/Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n But Steinbeck also understood just how difficult it can be to achieve that elusive American dream. Even after some his characters found their way to Salinas and other parts of California\u2019s agricultural valley, many remained stuck in low-paying jobs, making barely enough to scrape by, let alone own their own land.<\/p>\n That reality persists in the Salinas of today \u2013 an area at the sharp edge of a national affordability crisis that is reshaping politics across the US, and much of the rest of the world.<\/p>\n A recent Brookings Institution analysis found that Salinas is the least affordable city in the US for the middle class, defined as the middle 60% of income earners. Nearly 60% of the middle class in the Salinas area \u2013 which spans households making $38,000 to $193,000 \u2013 can\u2019t afford basic necessities, double the national average, according to the analysis. And for Salinas\u2019s Latino middle class, which make up 40% of all middle-class households, three-quarters struggle to afford everyday life.<\/p>\n Residents specifically say that homeownership, the modern symbol of the American dream, is out of reach. It\u2019s an issue that is playing out across the country: half of all renter households and about a quarter of homeowner households spend more than 30% of their income on housing, according to the latest data from the US census.<\/p>\n \u201cIt really calls in question: what is the middle class?\u201d said Andre Perry, a senior fellow at Brookings who oversaw the study. Many towns like Salinas that served as havens for the middle class are now out of reach. \u201cPeople go to Salinas as a reprieve from San Francisco and some of these high-priced cities, but in actuality, they\u2019re finding it more difficult to live,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Solutions are not easy to come by. The rising cost of living has torn Salinas apart. New housing has grown at a snail\u2019s pace, and a rent-stabilization policy has bitterly divided residents.<\/p>\n If life in places like Salinas becomes too expensive for American families, where do they go next?<\/p>\n \u2018Everything\u2019s changed\u2019<\/p>\n Steinbeck had a conflicted relationship with his home town, said Gavin Jones, chair of the English department at Stanford University and a Steinbeck scholar, one that he often reflected in his writing. For many of Steinbeck\u2019s characters, California and its farmland ultimately prove to be gutting disappointments after everything they sacrificed to get there.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of the promised land. It\u2019s this realm of richness,\u201d said Jones of the role Salinas played in Steinbeck\u2019s magnum opus. \u201cBut then of course, it\u2019s also a fallen paradise \u2026 it\u2019s not quite Eden, it\u2019s east of Eden.\u201d<\/p>\n Steinbeck was born to a solidly middle-class family and was raised in a turreted, Victorian-style house that still stands just a few blocks away from Salinas\u2019s downtown. He was long critical of the hypocrisy and \u201cunderbelly\u201d he saw in his social demographic, Jones said, and worked alongside immigrant workers on nearby farms while dropping in and out of Stanford University. <\/p>\n The house in Salinas, California, where author John Steinbeck was born, seen on 25 February 1978. Photograph: Chris Pizzello\/AP<\/p>\n Steinbeck was also \u201cvery American\u201d in his idealized vision of social mobility, ascendancy and agency, Jones added, and would have likely been outraged at the affordability struggles many still face in the US, accentuated by the increasingly<\/a> \u201cK-shaped economy\u201d with the rich getting richer as the poor slide down the other side.<\/p>\n \u201cOne wonders if the conditions are that much different today in the central valley, especially for agricultural workers \u2026 from the conditions that Steinbeck represented in the 1930s,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n Gaye Freedman, 75, and her husband had been searching for somewhere affordable to live for years before they moved to Salinas in 2017, where their son was raising a baby as a single dad. Though they passed up more affordable cities in northern California, the beautiful, year-round weather \u2013 cool, foggy mornings that give way to balmy afternoons \u2013 as well as proximate medical care for older adults made their decision easier.<\/p>\n But Freedman, who earned a doctorate degree in educational psychology from the University of Southern California, was unable to find much work in Salinas that paid much beyond minimum wage. She currently works part-time at a school.<\/p>\n Between part-time jobs and social security, Freedman and her husband make about $75,000 total and pay $1,850 for their one-bedroom apartment, which became a rent-stabilized unit in 2024. After rent and Medicare payments, they don\u2019t have much left to spare on groceries, gas and unexpected maintenance on their 14-year-old car. The balance on their credit card, she said, keeps climbing.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time in my life I\u2019ve actually had to think about what I\u2019m cooking, because I can\u2019t afford to cook what I usually would,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re eating a lot more stews and spaghetti and chicken. I\u2019m definitely thinking of what lasts more than one day.\u201d<\/p>\n Gaye Freedman in her neighborhood in Salinas, on 22 July. Photograph: Nic Coury\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Freedman and her husband have considered moving, but many of the affordable cities nearby lack medical care facilities or infrastructure that will be crucial for the couple as they get older.<\/p>\n Other residents cited similar concerns of getting pushed out by the cost of living. Salvador Herrera, 52, a former construction worker who grew up in Salinas, said gone are the days of his childhood where a family could raise their children in their own apartment unit or home. In Salinas, it is now common for multiple families to live together: garages are partitioned with curtains; single bedrooms are crammed with young children and parents; and bathrooms are shared among dozens.<\/p>\n Herrera supports his family using disability payments after an injury on the job left him unable to work. Rising rent has sometimes meant weeks where he has just $50 to spend on groceries for himself and his two children.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything\u2019s changed. Especially the housing, it\u2019s way too expensive. And the pay is cheap nowadays,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Salinas\u2019s close proximity to Silicon valley leaves it vulnerable to the same housing woes faced by the rest of the Bay Area, housing experts say.<\/p>\n Its surrounding farmland also makes it difficult to expand and build there, all of which has led to a persistent lack of housing supply that has pushed up prices for years. Meanwhile, the median household income in Salinas is just shy of $90,000, compared with a median of roughly $150,000 in San Jose or San Francisco.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got caught up early on Bay Area economics,\u201d Salinas mayor Dennis Donohue said at a Starbucks across from the Salinas Sports Complex, where he was attending an agricultural biotechnology conference. \u201cYou have all the economic challenges of the Bay Area impacting Salinas and this area without corresponding economic opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n All of this pressure comes even as California is home to some of the most progressive housing policies in the US, with rent caps on most households statewide and further protections at the local level. Still, residents face the highest median monthly housing costs in the country, according to the latest census data.<\/p>\n Critics on both sides of the political aisle have in part criticized the state\u2019s governor, Gavin Newsom, for the state\u2019s cost-of-living crisis, including sky-high housing costs. Newsom, who is considering a presidential run, has blamed Trump but may well find voters \u2013 and his opponents \u2013 put the blame closer to home.<\/p>\n Homes listed for sale in Salinas, on 26 July. Photograph: Nic Coury\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Meanwhile, housing is one of the most potent issues at the voting polls: a recent survey from CNBC<\/a> found that the high cost of housing was the most pressing concern for voters aged 18 to 34 years old.<\/p>\n Trouble in paradise<\/p>\n The Salinas city council sent Freedman and many more struggling households a lifeline in 2024, when it passed a rent-stabilization ordinance<\/a> that capped annual rent increases on certain multifamily rental properties to either 2.75% or three-quarters of the annual inflation rate, whichever is less. Freedman says she\u2019s saved thousands of dollars already because of the caps her landlord now places on her rent increases each year.<\/p>\n