Sacto Dems Dump Prop. 13 Reforms
By Tom Elias, Columnist For more than 40 years, Democrats in Sacramento have talked fervently about reforming the 1978 Proposition 13 and some of its landmark limits on property taxes, but time and again they’ve […]
Low-Cost Housing? State Keeps Ignoring the New Realities
From Sacramento comes word that the median price for a single-family home in California skyrocketed by 24 percent over less than one year, topping $810,000 in May, a rise of almost 30 percent from the […]
Is Permanent Housing the Real Homeless Solution?
The ultimate goal of city and county agencies trying to solve California’s homeless problem is to get this transient populace into permanent housing. But it turns out many of the homeless don’t want the kind […]
Cities Chip Away at R-1 Zoning
It’s become like a rite of spring: Every year, state legislators reject the most radical of many proposals set forward by Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco to make housing far more dense […]
Column: Would Prop. 20 Help Against Wildfires, Crime?
Anyone examining the unintended consequences of California’s many past ballot propositions cannot possibly ignore what was accomplished by the 2014 Proposition 14 and its follow-up measure, 2016’s eponymous Proposition 16. This fall, Proposition 20 is […]
More Visitors Needed to Stem COVID in Nursing Homes
More than six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, no one has done much to stop the near-constant toll the coronavirus has taken among those most vulnerable to it: people living in nursing homes. It’s well […]
Worst Housing Bills Fail; Solution via Market Forces Now Possible
By Tom Elias, Columnist Evidence keeps mounting that California’s longtime housing shortage can be solved by market forces set loose by the lifestyle and workplace changes created by the coronavirus pandemic. Now the failure of […]
Has Coronavirus Killed the Mass Transit Boom?
For most of the last 30 years, California saw a mass transit boom stretching from San Diego to Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay. Both light and heavy rail joined existing bus systems, providing […]
Virus Proving How Disastrous SB 50 Could Have Been
As Californians shelter at home, eagerly awaiting the eventual reopening of myriad businesses and hoping for the quick rehire of millions of the virally unemployed, at least they can be thankful state legislators had the […]
Column: Newsom Loses Transparency, Unity It Brought
Californians have shown with great clarity during the coronavirus pandemic that if they’re convinced something needs to be done, they’ll cheerfully do it even when it’s uncomfortable and terribly expensive. So when Gov. Gavin Newsom […]