Category Archives: Economy

CA, CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Economy, Housing, Politics, Transportation

The Fay: When Housing Policy Meets the Real World

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The Fay, 10 E Reed St, San Jose. Drone photo: Scott Keller, via C2K Architecture.

San Jose wanted to revitalize its downtown with more housing, and in 2022 the city waived nearly $9.9 million in taxes and fees for a fully market-rate development, The Fay. The concessions eliminated an $8.844 million affordable-housing obligation. The result was 336 market-rate apartments and no contribution of affordable units. The building opened to fanfare, but quickly proved a disappointment. Its studios leased out quickly, but the one- and two-bedroom units barely filled, leaving the building roughly 60% vacant.

With just 104 parking spaces for 336 apartments, city officials and renters both identified limited parking as a major factor that affected lease-up. The nearest garage was seven blocks away, and the only option was being continually ticketed for on-street parking. California housing laws have removed on-site parking requirements, both to reduce development costs and to encourage reliance on public transit. The Fay put that assumption to a real-world test. The policy removed the parking requirement. It did not remove the demand for parking, and transit did not make up the difference.

By January 2026, The Fay had gone through foreclosure and was valued at just $110 million. With 197 vacant units, the project was destabilized. San Jose stepped in to save it, committing $11.2 million from Measure E funds to master lease the 197 vacant units….

The city subsidized the 150 one-bedroom and 47 two-bedroom apartments, precisely the units that had failed to attract enough renters. The program serves middle-income tenants at 80% to 110% of Area Median Income — roughly $111,000 to $150,000 in annual earnings — with city workers bumped to the front of the applicant pool. It creates no low- or very-low-income units, and no permanently affordable units…

HOW THE CITY JUSTIFIES THE LIVE PROGRAM ON THEIR SITE

Continue reading The Fay: When Housing Policy Meets the Real World →

CA, Economy, Jobs

California’s political hopefuls remain silent on state’s job losses, unemployment

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BY DAN WALTERS : calmatters – excerpt

In two months California voters will elect a governor, fill several other statewide offices and choose a new class of state legislators and members of Congress.

The aspirants for those positions are making all sorts of promises to win voters’ approval. But few, if any, have mentioned a slow-motion menace affecting a fundamental facet of life: jobs.

The state has never fully recovered from the virtual shutdown of the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. It still has more than a million unemployed workers. Its unemployment rate continues to be the highest, or nearly so, of any state. And its signature economic sectors, such as high tech and film production, have been shedding jobs for several years.

As ominous as those data points sound, a deeper dive into employment data reveals an even darker reality.

“California’s labor market is holding up, but its foundations remain troublingly narrow,” Justin Niakamal, research manager at Beacon Economics, said in a recent overview of the state’s economy. Healthcare is the only sector with strong employment gains, he noted…(more)

CA, Economy, Housing, Politics

The Bay Area is ‘exporting’ the housing crisis to the rest of the state, report finds

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By Danielle Echeverria : sfchronicle – excerpt (audio)

California’s housing crisis is moving inland. 

A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California looks at political opinions across the state. Among the most striking findings: Concern about housing has risen most acutely for residents in the Central Valley and the Shasta regions, as well as, to a lesser extent, larger swaths along the Oregon and Nevada borders.

However, in coastal regions like the Bay Area — which have faced a dire housing crunch for decades — the sense that housing is a paramount problem is actually declining, the researchers found, as people who can afford the region’s high housing costs are increasingly the only ones left living here. 

“The Bay Area has been exporting the (housing) crisis to the interior,” said Eric McGhee, the report’s author.

To come to that conclusion, the researchers used data from their own previous statewide survey, collected from 2016 to 2019, and compared it with answers to the same question about housing asked from 2023 to early this year.

What it revealed is that the share of Bay Area residents who said that housing was a “big problem” declined by about 10 to 15 percentage points compared to nearly a decade ago. But in the Kern region as well as the North Central part of the state, that share increased by more than 20 percentage points.

The findings underscore how the Bay Area’s housing economics and politics have impacts far beyond the region. Those downstream effects are largely driven by people who were priced out of the Bay Area and moved into the more affordable, interior parts of the state, McGhee explained.

That migration in turn pushed prices up in those communities.

Many lower income people in those interior regions were already spending much of their earnings on housing; as Bay Area transplants moved in and further inflated prices, many have been left with little recourse. The areas where concern rose the most are some of the poorest in the state, McGhee said.

“If you’re poor and you’re housing stressed, what are you supposed to do?” he said. In order to avoid ending up on the street, some pile into homes with more people than can comfortably fit. Others simply leave the state…

A key difference is that on average, people currently able to afford living in the Bay Area are the least personally affected by the problem, McGhee explained. High housing costs already pushed people who couldn’t afford it out of the region years ago, leaving largely those that could absorb those costs.

According to Census data, renters in the Bay Area are among the least “cost-burdened” by housing, which is defined as spending more than 30% of one’s gross income on rent. In other words, Bay Area residents recognize that housing in the region is a big problem, but for the most part are still here because they can afford it…

“The interior can no longer consider itself immune” from the housing crisis, he said…

…(more)

CA, Economy, Energy, Farms, food, Housing, Planning, Politics

California’s clashes over business regulation rage on as legislative session nears end

By Dan Walters : calmatters – excerpt (excerpt)

Back room dealers

Keep an eye on these 5 deals as California lawmakers close out the legislative session

Assembly Bill 2564, carried by Assemblymember Christopher Ward, …would prohibit retailers from engaging in “surveillance pricing,” which is a form of algorithmic pricing in which sellers use personal information to tailor prices to specific consumers….

Assembly Bill 1776, authored by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, .. would broaden California’s anti-monopoly Cartwright Act, first enacted in 1907 to allow civil or criminal actions against corporations that monopolize markets….is aimed at collusion between two or more corporations to stifle competition and raise prices. But AB 1776 would also sanction actions against corporations that become dominant without colluding….The change was recommended by the California Law Revision Commission to curb monopolistic behavior framers of the original law never envisioned. It is backed by a long list of consumer advocates and unions…

RELATED:
Keep an eye on these 5 deals as California lawmakers close out the legislative session

Who does your representative work for?  How much help are the voters getting and how much help are our elected  representatives selling to the highest bidder?

Economy, Energy

Becerra says he’s figured out how to reduce electric bills. With a small catch.

By Anabel Sosa, Senior California politics reporter : sfgate -excerpt

During midday in California, the state’s solar grid produces so much energy that, sometimes, it can’t even use it all. It’s a good problem to have, and one that the leading Democratic candidate governor thinks could be a boon to low-income households. At a recent summit hosted by Politico, Xavier Becerra said he wants to offer free electricity from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. for those who qualify, possibly saving them upward of $1,000 annually…

Becerra’s program would apply to a few million households that already qualify for the state’s CARE/FERA program. Those customers receive reduced rates based on their income. A family of four earning less than $82,500 a year, for instance, would meet the requirements.

Texans have speculated online whether or not the free hours actually lighten the load for them financially. There’s no available data on the success of the program so far, which appears to have debuted for the first time in 2012.

This summer, the Australian government began offering its version of this initiative, which is most similar to Becerra’s “power hour” plan because it is also designed around midday power use. The program does not state any specific guaranteed annual savings, but it gives users three hours of free electricity per day… (more)

He must know that Governors set the rates through the CPUC.

Economy, Energy, Politics

Your PG&E rates are about to spike again. California pols have three ways to stem the bleeding

By Mark Toney : sfchronicle – excerpt (audio)

PG&E claims its rates are stabilizing. The numbers say otherwise.

According to an independent assessment by the California Public Utilities Commission’s Public Advocates Office, the state’s advocate for ratepayers, the average PG&E customer could pay $840 more annually by 2030, on top of the 69% rate increase during the past decade.

As California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom consider key electricity affordability legislation, including utility wildfire liability reform, state leaders should look beyond PG&E’s claims of rate stabilization and focus on the actual costs California residents and businesses are expected to pay.

PG&E is seeking to charge California ratepayers billions for outstanding costs, which will soon show up on our electricity bills. The utility has also requested and is expected to collect on several additional pending proposals to raise rates over the coming years and has $1.05 billion sitting in memorandum accounts that will be billed to ratepayers. This includes billions of dollars for wildfire mitigation, grid upgrades and other investments — as well as the hefty profit margins the utility is allowed to collect.

Some of these investments are necessary. Yet the independent Public Advocates Office found that PG&E has a pattern of chronic overspending.

Unless legislators and Newsom act, there is no end in sight.

Three bills before the Legislature in August could make a substantial difference in protecting your wallet…

  1. Senate Bill 905 from state Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, would stop rewarding utilities for overspending on infrastructure.
  2. SB1098 from state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Alhambra (Los Angeles County), would restore transparency to the rate-setting process.
  3.  SB886 from state Sen. Steve Padilla, D-Chula Vista (San Diego County), would ensure the artificial intelligence economy pays its own way… (more) 

Mark Toney is executive director of The Utility Reform Network…More on PG&E rates

Economy, Politics

Business and labor clash over antitrust proposal

by Yue Stella Yu and Maya C. Miller : calmatters – excerpt

Back room dealers are expected to decide the plight of the bill.

Lawmakers will determine the fate of a controversial bill that would give Californians the ability to sue large companies in state court for using monopolistic practices to stifle competition.

The bill, known as the COMPETE Act, has infuriated the business community and set the California Chamber of Commerce on a warpath. The powerful industry group has called Assembly Bill 1776 “the largest expansion of antitrust law in world history” and warns its members that th

e legislation would “leave every business of every size in California vulnerable to massive legal liability.”

Business advocates also argue that the bill gives predatory law firms a new way to shake down California businesses by opening the floodgates for what’s known as “private right of action” lawsuits. For years, business owners have complained about California laws that allow activists and a cottage industry of lawyers to bombard them with cash demands and lawsuits over disability access, product warning labels, labor complaints and consumer privacy.

The legislation, authored by Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, a Davis Democrat, has support from labor-friendly progressive lawmakers, but also some who have more moderate records such as Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains and Senator Melissa Hurtado, both Central Valley Democratic lawmakers.

Several of the state’s most powerful unions have lined up as co-sponsors, including the California Federation of Labor Unions, SEIU California and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

The bill is scheduled to be heard in the Senate appropriations committee on Aug. 10… (more) 

CA, deregulated housing bills, Economy, Housing, Planning, Politics

BUILT ON PROMISES, MANAGED BY CONTRADICTIONS – PRICE OF BEING POOR – PART 9

By Malik Washington : davisvanguard – excerpt

A federally subsidized “showpiece” of San Francisco redevelopment is telling its residents that mold, roaches, ventilation failures and a reported cluster of deaths are their problem – and that their overdue rent is the city’s. Before pouring billions more into Candlestick Point, the City and County of San Francisco owes the public an independent investigation into what has actually happened at Alice Griffith Apartments.

Editor’s note. This article distinguishes among documented facts, publicly reported allegations, and reasonable inferences drawn from the record. It does not accuse the John Stewart Company, McCormack Baron Salazar, the Tabernacle Community Development Corporation, FivePoint, RBC Capital Markets, the San Francisco Housing Authority, the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, or any city official of fraud. It argues that the public record, as it currently stands, justifies an independent fact-finding investigation – and it identifies the specific questions such an investigation should answer.

Editor’s note. This article distinguishes among documented facts, publicly reported allegations, and reasonable inferences drawn from the record. It does not accuse the John Stewart Company, McCormack Baron Salazar, the Tabernacle Community Development Corporation, FivePoint, RBC Capital Markets, the San Francisco Housing Authority, the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, or any city official of fraud. It argues that the public record, as it currently stands, justifies an independent fact-finding investigation – and it identifies the specific questions such an investigation should answer.

One of those tenants, alarmed by the notice they had found waiting for them at the threshold of their own home, contacted this reporter directly. That contact is how this investigation obtained the two notices analyzed in the pages that follow, and how the pattern documented here – a landlord that moves at scale when it is collecting from tenants, and moves slowly, if at all, when tenants are asking it to protect them – came into public view. This reporter has been covering conditions at Alice Griffith Apartments at length in previous installments of “The Price of Being Poor,” published in partnership with The Davis Vanguard. The July 14 door-notice campaign is the newest, and one of the most publicly visible, chapters of that continuing record.

For months before those envelopes went out, residents of the same buildings had been publicly reporting a very different set of grievances: mold, water intrusion, ventilation failures, roach and rodent infestations, broken elevators, malfunctioning fire systems, recent roof concerns, and – most gravely – a reported cluster of approximately ten deaths since January 2026, including community activist Dewayne Gaines. Those grievances have not, to date, produced a comparable operational response from the landlord, from the property manager, or from the City and County of San Francisco… (more)

 

CA, Economy, Housing, Planning, Politics

The Chron discovers, sort of, that Wiener’s housing bills are a con

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By Zelda Bronstein : 48hills – excerpt

Con man Wiener failed to sell SB50 because the men with the money did not believe his claims. Now they just don’t care whether he makes sense or not. He is working for them. Photo by sfbluecomics.

Finally, a story that mentions the real issue: Cities can’t force developers to build

In countless editorials and news stories, the San Francisco Chronicle has championed state Sen. Scott Wiener’s claims that city Nimbyism is the major culprit in California’s housing crisis, and that his legislation has finally brought growth-resistant local governments to heel.

California cities, for their part, have argued that Wiener’s legislation penalizes them for something they can’t control: developers’ willingness to build.

Given the Chronicle’s anti-city line, it was surprising to find the cities’ complaint reinforced by an article the paper ran on July 5. To be sure, that corroboration appears at the very end of the story and doesn’t mention Wiener. Moreover, the headline—“These Bay Area suburbs are the furthest behind on their housing goals”—suggests that, as ever, cities are to blame.

The piece is a bit confusing, because it considers two related but different sorts of local housing goals set by the state. Reporter Olivia Borgula briefly discusses the requirement that cities’ general plans include a housing element that’s certified by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Lack of certification triggers the “Builders Remedy,” which allows developers to do pretty much anything they want.

But Borgula’s main focus, and mine here as well, is on the state’s requirement that each city issue a certain of number housing permits or be forced to “streamline” (a euphemism for approval without a public hearing) certain housing projects. The required number of permits corresponds to each city’s “Regional Housing Need Allocation” or RHNA (sounds like ree-nuh)…

Behind the enormous RHNAs: Wiener’s bills…

The Chronicle’s unexpected exposé

Borgula concludes by citing David Garcia, deputy director of policy at the state Legislature’s go-to consultancy, UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation:

Garcia said the number of homes permitted in a city largely depends on the area’s economics, including construction costs and the availability of subsidies for low-income housing.

“A city can have a perfectly good housing element, perfectly good zoning, all geared toward getting housing built, but if the market is not really working for developers, then that stuff just doesn’t get built,” he said…(more)

 

 

Economy, Politics

A California city is torn apart by a recalled city council that refuses to leave

By Anabel Sosa : sfgate – excerpt

Avenal on the map

A small farm community an hour from Fresno is tangled up in an ongoing legal battle that has erupted into disarray after its mayor and city council, except for one member, were recalled in a special election that they claim was illegal. The councilmembers and mayor are now refusing to leave office.

A special election was held in April after a citizen-led campaign pushed to oust four of the five members of the Avenal City Council after disagreements over a new fire protocol policy boiled over, according to local reporting from the Fresno Bee.

During the April 28 special election, residents voted in favor of the recall. Kings County officially certified the results in May after more than 75% of voters agreed to recall Mayor Alvaro Preciado and councilmembers Leticia Gamez, David Reynosa and Pablo Hernandez.

The effort first came into swing last year after the council voted to create its own fire department and hire a fire chief, which would more than double the annual fire fees.

But those members refuse to leave office. They maintain that only the city, not the county, has the jurisdiction to call a special election. The last remaining councilmember called the election legitimate and asked for his colleagues to step down, according to local Fox news affiliate KMPH-TV.

After the members rejected the recall, they still met last Thursday for their normal meeting, resulting in an uproar. Residents were reportedly furious during that June 11 meeting. Some shouted at the councilmembers, according to KMPH-TV, which reported one person saying they were corrupt and “worse than Trump.”…

The only way for those members to permanently be removed is through a legal process called quo warranto, which is already underway, according to an update from the city on Monday, and approval from the attorney general. SFGATE reached Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office to ask if it was looking into the matter but did not hear back in time for publication… (more)

RELATED:

‘Netflix’ worthy dispute; What’s going on in Avenal?

What may this mean for other recall efforts in California if this case is not settled in favor of the citizens? And where will California Attorney General Bonta stand on this issue?