How Neoliberalism Masquerades as Pragmatism, and Why It’s Failing Everyone Except the Donors
If you want to see neoliberalism in action, look no further than Pomona. From homelessness to land use to public-private partnerships, the city’s policies are a case study in how neoliberalism masquerades as pragmatic governance. As Part 1 explained, the real snake isn’t liberalism but neoliberalism, a corporate-friendly ideology embraced by both Democrats and Republicans for decades. But thanks to slick political branding, liberals are taking the heat for policies that were never meant to help regular people in the first place.
Homelessness isn’t a failure of the system. It’s a feature. Pomona’s entire governance model is a masterclass in shifting responsibility away from the state and onto nonprofits, private contractors, and ultimately, the residents themselves. And just a few blocks north, Claremont offers a quieter version of the same playbook—one that hides its exclusions behind college-town charm and progressive aesthetics.
The Neoliberal Blueprint: From Homelessness to Land Use
Homelessness: Managing Symptoms, Not Causes
Pomona’s approach to homelessness mirrors neoliberal strategies at the national level: decentralize responsibility, privatize services, and make sure the state doesn’t have to foot the bill. The city leans heavily on regional partnerships, outsourcing key services to nonprofits and faith-based organizations like the Tri City Mental Health Center and the Pomona Continuum of Care Coalition.
These partnerships might make services look efficient, but they’re really just a way to manage homelessness without addressing its root causes. In 2023, Pomona’s Point-in-Time Homeless Count showed a 14 percent increase in unsheltered individuals, exposing the limits of these stopgap solutions. Meanwhile, affordable housing construction continues to lag, with the city falling short of its Regional Housing Needs Assessment targets for very low-income units.
It’s a familiar move: rebrand cuts and outsourcing as innovation while ignoring the structural causes like rent hikes, wage stagnation, and the commodification of housing. And it’s not just Pomona. Claremont has consistently failed to meet its affordable housing goals as well, despite having more money, more land per resident, and far fewer excuses. Where Pomona outsources services to underfunded nonprofits, Claremont keeps poverty out of sight altogether through restrictive zoning, token planning efforts, and the quiet preservation of exclusivity.
Land Use: Privatization and Profit Over People
Neoliberalism isn’t just about outsourcing services. It’s about reshaping cities to serve private interests. Pomona’s land use policies are a textbook example. The city has prioritized commercial developments—parking lots, strip malls, and luxury housing—over public spaces or affordable housing. Community spaces that could serve the public good are instead converted into profit-driven developments, fueling gentrification and displacement.
This isn’t just bad planning. It’s a deliberate strategy to maximize profits for developers and private interests, often at the expense of the very residents who need housing the most. By treating land as a commodity rather than a shared resource, Pomona’s policies reflect the logic of deregulation and speculation.
Claremont’s version is subtler but just as damaging. Its charm is built on decades of exclusionary zoning and aesthetic preservation that keeps dense or affordable housing from entering the market. That’s not an accident—it’s policy. While Pomona gets blamed for visible poverty, Claremont’s affluence depends on limiting who gets to live there in the first place.
Public-Private Partnerships: Outsourcing Accountability
Pomona’s reliance on public-private partnerships extends beyond homelessness services. Essential public functions like fire protection and animal control are increasingly managed through private contracts rather than directly by the city. While this might look like efficiency on paper, it’s really about offloading responsibility and reducing public accountability.
The City Manager’s role now centers on contract oversight rather than public service. It’s a management style that treats residents as customers and government as a business. The result is a patchwork of services, each with different standards, limited oversight, and no one to blame when things go wrong.
And again, Claremont is not exempt. It outsources sanitation, contracts out landscaping, and delegates housing policy through technical consultants and planning workshops designed more to check boxes than build equity. Even when it has the power to lead, it prefers to manage from a distance. Both cities rely on the same operating system. They just wear different skins.
The Influence of Private Interests in Local Politics
If you want to know who really runs Pomona, follow the money. Campaign contributions from developers, contractors, and business associations shape local elections and drive the city’s priorities. Time and again, decisions favor commercial projects and privatized services over public goods.
This isn’t just a local trend. It reflects the national pattern of corporate influence in politics, where elected officials are forced to choose between their constituents and their donors, and the donors usually win. These policies are then rebranded as centrist compromises, when in reality, they are market-driven decisions that offload risk onto the public.
In Claremont, campaign donations are less obvious but just as decisive. Political caution, donor class preferences, and homeowner associations act as quiet enforcers of the same agenda. Protect property values. Avoid controversy. Keep things the way they are. Even progressive candidates learn quickly which fights they’re allowed to pick.
The Consequences: Fighting the Wrong Battles
Blaming leftists—or liberals—for Pomona’s policy failures is exactly what the real culprits want. It keeps the conversation focused on tone, rhetoric, and personalities while the underlying system continues to funnel resources upward. The same people who rail against government waste are often the first to privatize public services into oblivion. And the same voices who mock social programs are perfectly fine with taxpayers funding bloated contracts for private firms.
Meanwhile, the people advocating for real solutions—affordable housing, living wages, and public services that aren’t siphoned off by middlemen—are dismissed as naive or unrealistic. That’s the hustle. Any demand for systemic change is labeled radical, while business as usual gets to parade around as common sense.
Name the Real Enemy
Pomona’s policies are not mistakes. They are predictable outcomes of a political system designed to offload risk, shrink public responsibility, and transfer wealth into private hands. Claremont plays the same game with different aesthetics. Both cities are symptoms of a broader crisis.
The first step to fixing it is naming it. This is neoliberal governance, not liberal failure. And until we call it what it is, the same cycle will repeat: nonprofits stretched thin, contractors cashing in, and cities treating their residents like liabilities instead of people.
But it doesn’t have to stay this way. We already know what works. Cities that invest directly in housing, pay people living wages, and provide services without middlemen are not utopias—they’re just places where policy follows need instead of donors. It takes will. It takes organizing. And yes, it takes the guts to stop pretending that tinkering around the edges will fix what’s broken at the core.
Real solutions exist. We don’t need more blueprints. We need the courage to build.
Because if we don’t, the billionaires won’t just keep laughing. They’ll keep winning.
REFERENCES
Foundational Texts on Neoliberalism
Wendy Brown — Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution
David Harvey — A Brief History of Neoliberalism
Thomas Frank — Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
A scathing look at how Democrats embraced meritocracy and markets while abandoning working-class politics.
Adolph Reed Jr. — “The Limits of Anti-Racism” (essay)
Argues that elite liberalism uses symbolic politics to dodge material redistribution.
Lester Spence — Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics
Julian Lucas, is a photographer, a purveyor of books, and writer, but mostly a photographer. Don’t ever ask him to take photos of weddings or quinceaneras, or any other events because he will charge you a ton of money you couldn’t even make payments on.
