Golden City Recycled

6th November 2023

Dear Governor Newsom,

In my letter of October 31st 2023 I detailed my idea to build a homeless rehabilitation center in California City one hundred miles north of Los Angeles. I called this my Golden City Proposal and touched on the abundance of zoned land to use for this purpose.

Now I would like to make mention of the fact that there are more reasons that California city is ideal for this action. The primary employer in California city is a prison, it’s closer to the border with Nevada, and it’s still not too far from LA.

The “Not in My Backyard” people fight against the placement of homeless shelters and halfway homes in their neighborhoods. Well, a prison is another major thing they would rather not live near. Further, the prison makes California City useless for tourism but ideal for recycling, manufactory, and other businesses that may downgrade the local property.

Where I live we now have a garbage by rail system and it would be logical to concert this system with California City and bless it with the greater industry of eco friendly waste management. It’s close enough to LA, the ninth largest economy in the world, to receive its waste and recycling. No one wants to live next to a dump or recycling plant, but no one wants to live near a prison either.

The prison banishes the tourism dollar from this plot of land but welcomes in so many other forms of economic action. A good amount of what we Californians place in our blue bins just winds up in the trash and is never recycled. This is because we lack the infrastructure to recycle most of our waste.

Now, were we to install that infrastructure in California City we may be able to employ the prison population to do so. This would cut cost and give them valuable job skills. Further, anything that would give our felon population and opportunity to build the case for their parole or commute their sentence would have to be a good thing.

By improving the industry of California City, we would be bettering the lives of the people that live there and creating jobs in a place where there is ample housing. This would take stress off the housing market in LA. We would be hard pressed to create the jobs and housing units needed to resolve the homeless epidemic, but there would only be so many homeless who are willing to move out of LA anyway.

That in mind, many of our homeless are not native but bused in from other states and those busses pass through California City on their way to LA. Why not have them bused to California City where they could be cleaned up and their needs better met. We could then have a case manager work with them before they get to LA or any other place in California helping them secure housing and employment before they arrive.

I know this sounds like a big project and it is, but we are faced with a big problem that will require big solutions. The homeless problem will not go away on its own and it continues to choke the economy that will pay to resolve it. This is my best idea and I’d love to hear yours.

Best,



Richard Leland Neal

Estrada Real - São Guaratingueta

Guaratingueta is a well-established city in the state of São Paolo. It gets its name from a phrase in the Tupi language that means "many white herons" due to the abundance of herons along the Paraiba do Sul River that flows around the southern and eastern edge of the city.

Drawn to the minerals hidden in the Minas Gerais, the Portuguese arrived in the 16th century and settled the area. By the 18th century it became a supply station for those travelling from the interior and another century later grew as a coffee producer. For a period of time during the mid-1800s coffee was used as hard currency, increasing the city’s wealth and standing. Immigration in the city increased with the introduction of the steam railway, providing much needed manpower especially as slavery was abolished.

By the 20th century arable lands were depleted of their nutrients and coffee production was in decline. Economic attention was geared towards industrialisation, commerce, tourism and education. New universities sprung up with courses geared towards aeronautics, technology and engineering.

A notable figure from Guaratingueta was cardiologist Euryclides de Jesus Zerbini, who in 1963 established the internationally recognised Heart Institute in São Paolo and in 1968 performed the first heart transplant in South America.

Tucked away on the outskirts of the city is the Frei Galvão Sanctuary where a white life-sized statue of Friar Galvão stands on a pedestal outside the entrance. Born locally in 1739, the friar entered a Jesuit-seminary when he was 13 years old and later joined a Franciscan Order.

During his lifetime, the friar built a church, a hermitage and friary. He spent considerable time as preacher, confessor, spiritual leader, and friary porter, as well as drafting guidelines on how to live a religious life. Dedicated to his work, the friar grew within the Order’s ranks. However, his construction of the hermitage did not come without any challenges. Politicians who disliked the community intervened more than once, but the friar was committed to the cause and with the Portuguese Viceroy’s assistance the hermitage was finally completed. Today, the hermitage is a UNESCO site and a museum of sacred art. In 2007, the friar was canonised by the Vatican making him the first Brazilian-born person to obtain this status.



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