Web Version [link removed] | Update Preferences [link removed] CBRT in the News Politicians Target Property Taxes To Squeeze More Money From Taxpayers Amid Recession

2020 has brought a great deal of hardship to many parts of the U.S., but particularly to Nashville, Tennessee. Music City was hit with an early March tornado outbreak that devastated property across swaths of the city. That was followed by the pandemic that shuttered businesses, some permanently, and tanked the economy.

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"California already has the worst climate for business and job creation in the country,” said Rex Hime, president of the California Business Properties Association. “A split-roll property tax will just increase pressure on many businesses that are already finding it hard to make ends meet.”

California Business Roundtable president Rob Lapsley says that if this ballot measure is approved, the Golden state is “going to have the largest tax increase in California history at exactly the wrong time in our economy to be able to afford it.”

Read More [[link removed]] Possibly De-Fanged, Controversial California Lease-Relief Bill Moves Ahead

Following significant pushback, a California bill that would have allowed hospitality tenants across the state to terminate their leases may now move forward with less stringent guidelines. The bill, SB 939, has a hearing before the California Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday but has reportedly been greatly altered.

A section that would allow some financially impacted hospitality tenants to walk away from their leases after 30 days of negotiations has been removed, Commercial Observer reports. Sponsored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat who represents San Francisco, and state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat who represents Long Beach, the bill has received criticism from the commercial real estate community, while receiving strong support from bars and restaurants.

Late last month, California Business Roundtable President Rob Lapsley said the business lobby would be prepared to sue to block SB 939.

Read More [[link removed]] Business Climate and Job Creation State Unemployment Rate At 16.3 Percent; Highest Since Great Depression; More Than 2.2M Jobs Lost

As the state’s economy begins reawakening from it’s more than 3-month slumber brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak, signs of the damage left behind from the shutdown continues to mount.

Over the last several weeks in-store retail, shopping malls, dining both inside and out and other sectors of the local economy have reopened with social distancing standards on place. But those actions were too late to help in May.

On Friday, officials announced that California’s unemployment rate continued to climb in May, reaching 16.3%. It’s the highest unemployment for the nation’s most populous state since the Great Depression more than 80 years ago.

Read More [[link removed]] US, California Unemployment Claims Continue To Decline, But Overall Picture Still Grim

Another 1.5 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, the Department of Labor said Thursday.

That figure, a modest drop from the week before, follows a pattern of declines in the number of new claims as the economy lurches toward reopening.

Still, the numbers remain astronomical, even when compared with previous recessions. Economists caution that while joblessness seems to be improving, the economic situation remains dire and far from a full recovery.

Read More [[link removed]] The Rich Have Stopped Spending And That Has Tanked The Economy

The wealthiest American households are keeping a tight grip on their purse strings even as their lower-income counterparts are spending a lot more freely when they emerge from weeks of lockdown. That decline in spending by the wealthy could limit the whole country's economic recovery.

Researchers based at Harvard have been tracking spending patterns using credit card data. They found that people at the bottom of the income ladder are now spending nearly as much as they did before the coronavirus pandemic.

"When the stimulus checks went out, you see that spending by lower-income households went up a lot," said Nathan Hendren, a Harvard economist and co-founder of the Opportunity Insights research team.

Read More [[link removed]] Coronavirus Is Hitting Black Business Owners Hardest

The coronavirus pandemic will shutter many small businesses. And early evidence shows it is disproportionately hurting black-owned small businesses.

More than 40 percent of black business owners reported they weren’t working in April, when businesses were feeling the worst of the pandemic’s economic consequences. Only 17 percent of white small business owners said the same, according to an analysis of government data by Robert Fairlie of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Many small businesses are struggling during the pandemic because they lack easy access to loans and cannot easily move their businesses online. Black-owned businesses tend to have fewer employees than other small businesses. They are also more likely to be in industries like restaurants or retail that lockdowns have hit especially hard.

Read More [[link removed]] Retail Sales Rebounded In May, But The Road Back Is Long

Retail sales rebounded sharply in May as thousands of stores and restaurants reopened after lockdowns were lifted and federal stimulus checks and tax refunds fueled a burst of spending, a sign that the United States economy is lurching back to life.

But while the 17.7 percent rise in sales reported on Tuesday is the largest monthly surge on record, the underlying data presents a more complicated picture and shows just how arduous an economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic will be.

The May numbers followed two months of record declines, and overall sales were still down 8 percent from February. Some categories, like clothing, were down as much as 63 percent from a year earlier. And many of the stores and restaurants that welcomed back customers last month did so with fewer employees, reflecting a permanently altered retail landscape and an ominous sign for the labor market.

Read More [[link removed]] Jobless Claims Fall Amid Coronavirus Re-Openings

Unemployment claims fell in California in the most recent week, federal officials reported Thursday, as the state’s economy battled to rebound from the effects of the coronavirus and businesses began to slowly re-open for customers.

Initial jobless claims in California totaled 243,300 during the week ended June 13, down 12,500 from the 255,800 first-time unemployment claims the prior week. But a jaw-dropping 5.43 million California workers have filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits, a milestone reached almost exactly three months after state and local government officials began to impose business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders to combat the deadly bug.

To make matters worse for California workers who have lost their jobs, the state’s Employment Development Department continues to struggle to deploy benefit payments to the unemployed.

Read More [[link removed]] Tracking How The Coronavirus Crushed California’s Workforce

The coronavirus outbreak decimated California's economy. Millions of workers lost their jobs following business closures and mass layoffs. Unprecedented numbers of people sought government assistance to pay their bills.

The Times is tracking the fallout as businesses begin to reopen. Here's what the data show:

The state's unemployment tally has towered in all 58 counties. The largest losses are in urban areas like Los Angeles, but workers in rural regions, such as the state's interior and far north, have also lost work due to the lockdown.

Read More [[link removed]] California’s Economic Recovery Is Among The Slowest In The Nation

California’s economic challenges are greater than every state in the nation except New York, a new study by the Community and Labor Center at UC Merced found.

“The economic problems in California are much deeper than most of the rest of the country,” Edward Orozco Flores, faculty affiliate with the UC Merced Center, told McClatchy.

A big reason for the state’s somber outlook could be that it shut down sooner than most states and has been somewhat slower to reopen, said Flores, who co-wrote the report with Ana Padilla, the center’s executive director.

Read More [[link removed]?] Kudlow Urges Replacing Unemployment-Benefit Boost With Return-to-Work ‘Bonus’

A senior economic adviser to President Trump said Sunday the U.S. needs to stop providing a $600-a-week boost in unemployment benefits instituted in response to the coronavirus pandemic and replace it with a smaller bonus for workers who return to their jobs.

Larry Kudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council, said the additional benefits might be dissuading some Americans from going back to work as businesses reopen across the country.

“We’re paying people not to work. It’s better than their salaries would get,” Mr. Kudlow said on CNN Sunday. “The jobs are coming back and we don’t want to interfere with that process.”

Read More [[link removed]] Signs Of A V-Shaped Early-Stage Economic Recovery Emerge

The first stage of the recovery looks V-shaped.

After bottoming out in April, economic activity has continued to rise into early June, recapturing some of the collapse that occurred when most of the country locked down to contain the spread of Covid-19, according to a range of private data.

Whether the recovery can continue at this pace remains clouded by uncertainty over future fiscal stimulus, resurgent infections and the drag of unprecedented job loss on consumer finances.

Read More [[link removed]] What Is The Stock Market Trying To Tell Us?

The United States has been grappling with a global pandemic, an economic meltdown and massive protests — and yet, until recently, the stock market basically shrugged it all off. Between March 23 and late last week, the market surged 45%, erasing the drop it had seen at the start of the pandemic. That is, until last week, when apparently the market rediscovered that there's a freaking pandemic still going on.

Public health experts have been warning for months now about the dangers of reopening without a solid plan for testing and tracing. But they're just uptight nerds, right?

Economists consider the stock market a "leading indicator" of the economy, meaning it often signals where the real economy is headed. But it's a notoriously faulty signal. The MIT economist Paul Samuelson famously joked that big drops of the stock market had predicted nine out of the last five recessions.

Read More [[link removed]] Newsom Defends Widescale California Reopening As Positive Tests Continue To Climb

Gov. Gavin Newsom offered his most vigorous defense yet Monday for reopening California’s economy even as thousands of residents each day test positive for Covid-19.

“There’s a certain point where you have to recognize you can’t be in a permanent state where people are locked away for months and months and months on end,” Newsom said, warning of the broader public health impacts of seeing “lives and livelihoods completely destroyed.”

California has in recent weeks authorized its 58 counties to recommence a cascading number of commercial activities, from dine-in restaurants to bars to nail salons. Newsom gave counties the green light after facing weeks of rising pushback from local officials who argued the economic fallout was eclipsing public health risks.

Read More [[link removed]] Will California Raise Taxes To Fix Its Budget?

As California lawmakers come to grips with a projected deficit running into the tens of billions of dollars, calls for more taxes targeted at high-earners are beginning to emerge among certain unions and advocates for social services.

“All revenue options should be on the table, because we cannot cut our way to safely and equitably reopening schools,” said Jeff Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers.

So far, top Democratic lawmakers have maintained that they’re not interested in considering taxes that would affect middle-class Californians, although some have suggested they’re open to new charges for corporations and wealthy households.

The dynamic echoes how the Legislature approached the last recession, when Democrats advocated for more revenue to save services while Republicans held up budget votes to protest new fees.

Read More [[link removed]?] SF Mayor Breed, Supervisors Seek New Business Tax Structure To Bolster City’s Revenue

San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Tuesday will introduce a sweeping proposal for the November ballot to reform the city’s complex patchwork of business taxes and potentially unlock around $300 million in revenue that has been collected, but remains off-limits and unspent because of ongoing legal disputes.

The measure largely reflects the conclusions of an examination of the city’s business taxes that began last summer. That review, reflecting input from city leaders and the business community, was intended to shape a ballot measure that would simplify and stabilize the tax system, while potentially bringing in more money.

But with the city and much of its business community confronting an unprecedented economic collapse brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Breed’s measure, which would raise an estimated $300 million for the general fund over the next two fiscal years, takes on added urgency.

Read More [[link removed]] Energy and Climate Change Climate Change Tied To Pregnancy Risks, Affecting Black Mothers Most

Pregnant women exposed to high temperatures or air pollution are more likely to have children who are premature, underweight or stillborn, and African-American mothers and babies are harmed at a much higher rate than the population at large, according to sweeping new research examining more than 32 million births in the United States.

The research adds to a growing body of evidence that minorities bear a disproportionate share of the danger from pollution and global warming. Not only are minority communities in the United States far more likely to be hotter than the surrounding areas, a phenomenon known as the “heat island” effect, but they are also more likely to be located near polluting industries.

“We already know that these pregnancy outcomes are worse for black women,” said Rupa Basu, one of the paper’s authors and the chief of the air and climate epidemiological section for the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in California. “It’s even more exacerbated by these exposures.”

Read More [[link removed]] As Oil Prices Crashed, Tankers Idled Off California—Spewing Pollution For Weeks

Giants ships lurked off the California coast for weeks in April and May, their bellies full of up to 20 million barrels of oil. This floating cache, enough to support the energy needs of the entire U.S. for a day, sat aboard an idling fleet that pumped out tons of pollutants, according to a new analysis performed by the University of College London and shared with National Geographic. These emissions could ultimately affect the long-term health of coastal communities—many of them already at risk and underserved—and they added tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Despite U.S. energy demand plummeting to record lows due to the coronavirus crisis, oil kept getting pumped out of the ground. The resulting oversupply taxed the limits of U.S. storage capacity. Oil trade groups spoke of a scramble to fill up empty pipelines or rail cars, but the most popular option was to charter and fill giant oil tankers. These tankers and their sea-size loads of oil began idling a few miles offshore from major shipping centers around the world, including Los Angeles and Long Beach, California.

Read More [[link removed]] California’s Gas Tax Is Going Up Again. Amid Coronavirus, Some Say Now Is Not The Time

California’s gas tax is set to increase July 1, but some lawmakers are calling for a freeze on the higher levy, citing the financial burden of the coronavirus-spawned recession on millions of the state’s residents.

The automatic increase pegged to inflation — the third increase in the last four years — comes as a long-simmering dispute over the gas tax law enacted three years ago has again flared up at the state Capitol.

The tax is set to increase by 3.2 cents, to 50.5 cents per gallon, and state officials estimate it will bring in an additional $440 million to state coffers in the coming fiscal year. The hike is triggered by the increase in the consumer price index and is built into SB 1, the legislation that boosted the tax by 12 cents per gallon in 2017 and 5.6 cents last year.

In all, the fuel taxes are expected to raise $7 billion during the new fiscal year to pay for road and bridge repairs. But a group of Republican lawmakers says this is the wrong time to raise taxes on Californians, more than 6 million of whom have lost jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read More [[link removed]] A War Against Climate Science, Waged By Washington’s Rank And File

Efforts to undermine climate change science in the federal government, once orchestrated largely by President Trump’s political appointees, are now increasingly driven by midlevel managers trying to protect their jobs and budgets and wary of the scrutiny of senior officials, according to interviews and newly revealed reports and surveys.

When John Crusius, a research chemist at the United States Geological Survey, published an academic paper on natural solutions to climate change in April, his government affiliation never appeared on it. It couldn’t.

Publication of his study, after a month’s delay, was conditioned by his employer on Dr. Crusius not associating his research with the federal government.

Read More [[link removed]] Marathon Petroleum In Talks With Potential Buyers Of Speedway Gas-Station Unit

Marathon Petroleum Corp. is in discussions with potential buyers of its sprawling Speedway gas-station unit, reviving a sale that fell apart in the early stages of the coronavirus crisis.

Possible buyers include Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., people familiar with the matter said. It couldn’t be determined how much the business might fetch, but Marathon indicated last fall that it could be worth between $15 billion and $18 billion.

Any deal is likely weeks away, and Marathon might opt to stick with a plan to spin off the unit instead.

Read More [[link removed]] Education and Workforce Development Will The Pandemic Reshape Child Care For Good?

When children enter Helana Pennywell’s day care, she scans each small forehead with a thermometer. If they’re free of fever, they’re welcomed inside, where she sanitizes their belongings and makes sure they wash their faces and hands. She’s lucky: Her day care, which she runs out of her California home, is full. “I’ve noticed an increase in demand from essential workers who need care for their children,” she told Intelligencer.

But many child-care providers are less fortunate. The pandemic struck them with particular force, as lockdown measures have kept many working parents at home and limited gathering in groups. As HuffPost reported last month, data points to a potential catastrophe. Centers are closing, workers are losing their jobs, and parents are adrift. Experts say that without swift federal intervention, the child-care sector may never fully recover, and neither would the people who depend on it for their livelihoods.

Read More [[link removed]] Parents Worry About Cost Of Child Care After Coronavirus Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the U.S. economy hard. In particular, parents are worried that the child care costs are just going to rise, according to a recent survey.

This week, Care.com released the results of two surveys. The first is the company’s “COVID-19 Childcare Survey,” and the second is its annual “Cost of Care Survey.”

In the coronavirus-focused survey, Care.com found that 52 percent of respondents expect that child care will be more expensive than it was before the coronavirus and 47 percent said they’re more worried about child care costs since the pandemic.

Read More [[link removed]] Gov. Newsom Agrees To Nix Budget Cuts For Child Care Programs

Facing an estimated $54.3 billion budget deficit because of the coronavirus, California lawmakers on Monday approved a state spending plan that rejects most of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed cuts to public education and health care with the hope that Congress will send the state more money by Oct. 1 to cover the shortfall.

But the budget likely won’t become law because it does not have the backing of Newsom, who has the power to sign, veto or alter whatever the Legislature sends him.

Lawmakers passed a budget anyway to make sure they met a constitutional deadline and will continue to be paid. Legislative leaders will continue to negotiate with the Newsom administration to reach an agreement before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

Read More [[link removed]] California Public Schools Fear Losing Millions From Lawsuits Over Masks, Infections

Computers, cleaning supplies, custodial staff and civil suits. COVID-19 has introduced both new costs and threatened funding for California’s schools, which are facing unprecedented questions about classroom safety as they plan for fall reopening.

How they answer those questions — including mask requirements, cleaning procedures and contact tracing — could lead to millions of dollars in lawsuits as parents attack local guidelines on civil liberties and public health grounds, South Bay Union superintendent Dr. Katie McNamara warned at an Assembly education committee meeting this week.

Without executive or legislative action for the state to assume litigation costs, said committee chair Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, lawsuits could devastate districts already running on razor-thin margins.

Read More [[link removed]?] Bay Area Public Schools Struggling To Respond To Next Big Health Crisis: Hungry Kids

Barely two weeks into the coronavirus shelter-in-place order, teachers and administrators noticed a crisis unfolding at Oakland’s Esperanza Elementary School.

Four out of 5 families at the school reported at least one parent out of work. Restaurants were closing, construction jobs had temporarily stopped, and caretakers and house cleaners were idled. As students and their parents slid deeper into poverty, school officials saw a level of desperation that seemed to have no end and no bottom. It had gripped the quiet East Oakland neighborhood surrounding Esperanza, and quickly spread throughout much of the Bay Area.

“We had started doing wellness checks,” Principal Cristina Segura said. “And within the first couple weeks we learned ... how much our families were struggling, and how much they were going to be dependent on any sort of assistance.”

Read More [[link removed]] L.A. School Board To Consider Phasing Out School Police Under Intensifying Demands

The Los Angeles Board of Education next week will consider phasing out the school police, essentially eliminating the department over the next four years, a proposal that comes after more than a week of intensifying demands to do so by student advocacy groups and the leadership of the teachers union.

Two other competing school board resolutions also call for a review of police operations, but not an outright termination of the department.

The proposal to eliminate the department over time is being brought forward by Monica Garcia, the board’s longest serving member, as an emergency motion to bypass the normal requirement that a board resolution be presented at one meeting and then acted on at a later meeting.

Read More [[link removed]] Students Struggle To Make Campus Housing Decisions As Colleges Make Reopening Plans

When the UC Irvine campus abruptly shut down in mid-March in response to the coronavirus — like many colleges across the country — Lori Sinanian immediately left her nearby apartment to shelter with her family in Los Angeles.

To break the lease on the Irvine Co-owned apartment, Sinanian and her three roommates ponied up nearly $2,000 apiece.

“It was a horrible situation,” said Sinanian, who is graduating this month. “We paid two months extra for an empty apartment.”

The situation isn’t unique to Sinanian. Dozens of students are now protesting Irvine Co.’s practices amid the pandemic and recently urged local officials to intervene. The company declined to comment through a spokesperson but pointed out that the company has offered temporary rent reductions.

Read More [[link removed]] Is Now The Time To Bring Back Affirmative Action In California?

Depending on your viewpoint, now is either exactly the right time or precisely the wrong time to take up a proposed change to the state constitution that seems certain to reignite a heated debate about race and justice in California.

At issue: a measure passed today in the California Assembly to ask voters if they want to reinstate affirmative action policies jettisoned by California electorate two decades ago.

For supporters, recent — city streets across the country filled with peaceful protesters and then scattered window smashing, thefts from store shelves and a few incidents of violence — show just how necessary it is to aggressively advance racial equity by fiat.

Read More [[link removed]] Infrastructure and Housing More People Are Paying Rent Despite The Coronavirus Pandemic

It looks like landlords’ fears that tenants would not pay rent during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been overblown.

At the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic in mid-March, mass layoffs caused tenants to worry whether they could pay rent. But three months later, rent payments have stabilized, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) survey of over 11 million apartments in the U.S., released June 16.

“For the first time since this research for the National Multifamily Housing Council was initiated, there’s an annual bump in rent payments across a significant block of metros,” wrote Greg Willett, Chief Economist of RealPage, a Texas-based property management software company that contributed to NMHC research.

Read More [[link removed]] Black Californians’ Housing Crisis, By The Numbers

California’s housing crisis is nothing new for many black Californians. Systemic racism in public policy and the private housing market has long made finding a safe, stable and affordable home in the Golden State a more difficult prospect for its roughly 2.2 million black residents than for white people.

The legacy of New Deal-era redlining — which deemed black neighborhoods undesirable for federally-backed mortgages — is demonstrably visible not only where black Californians live now but where gentrification and displacement pressures across the state are most acute.

Article 34, a still unrepealed clause in the state Constitution that requires local referendums before lower-income housing can be built in a California city, kept subsidized housing disproportionately utilized by black and brown residents out of affluent, predominantly white communities for decades.

Read More [[link removed]] Despite Protections, Landlords Seek To Evict Tenants In Black And Latino Areas Of South L.A.

Despite new anti-eviction rules passed in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, some Los Angeles landlords are still trying to oust tenants by locking them out of their homes, turning off their utilities and deploying other illegal methods, a Times analysis of data from the Los Angeles Police Department has found.

In the initial 10 weeks after L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti ordered a temporary moratorium on evictions in mid-March, police responded to more than 290 instances of potential illegal lockouts and utility shutoffs across the city, according to the data.

The Times analysis shows that the largest share of those police calls was in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in South L.A. such as Vermont Square, Florence and Watts — the same communities that have faced the greatest health and economic problems from the coronavirus.

Read More [[link removed]] Supporters Of Rent Law Reform Say Homelessness Will Get Worse Without Changes

Supporters of amending laws to help renters avoid evictions said Friday that if changes aren’t made at the state and local levels, homelessness will continue to increase.

The California Rent Afforability Act is a campaign that calls for expanding rent control on more residential buildings, repealing state law that prohibits local governments from keeping rent increases lower and repealing the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to get out of the rental market by evicting tenants.

The campaign is sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

Read More [[link removed]] California Rent Relief Plan Would Give Tenants Until 2034 To Make Up Late Payments

A Democratic plan to give struggling California tenants 10 years to make up rent gone unpaid during the coronavirus is taking shape in the state Senate.

The proposal, backed by Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, would send immediate relief, once it’s passed, to renters who’ve faced job loss or wage cuts amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senate Bill 1410 would encourage landlords and tenants to make a deal under a “rent stabilization agreement” before a homeowner could throw someone out for failing to make rent.

Read More [[link removed]?] Make No Mistake – Rent Control Laws Apply To Single-Family Homes

A recent California Appellate Court decision provided tenants with additional protections when it clarified that local rent control laws applied to a single-family home in which the landlord rented rooms in the home to separate tenants despite the landlord’s belief that single-family homes were excepted from rent control laws.

Specifically, in Owens v. City of Oakland Housing, Residential Rent and Relocation Board (“Owens”), Division Three of the First District of the California Court of Appeal clarified that the landlord’s argument that an exception to local rent control laws found in the Costa-Hawkins Housing Act (“Costa-Hawkins”) did not apply.

Read More [[link removed]] City Of Sacramento Asks Judge To Allow It To Keep Rent Control Initiative Off Ballot

The city of Sacramento has asked a judge to allow it to keep a rent control initiative off the Nov. 3 ballot.

The lawsuit, which the city filed Monday in Sacramento County Superior Court, names Michelle Pariset as a defendant.

Pariset is one of three women who were listed as “proponents” when their 2018 ballot initiative gathered more than 44,000 signatures, enough to qualify it for the city ballot.

Then last year, the city passed a rent control ordinance led by City Councilman Steve Hansen. Two of the proponents, Margarita Maldonado and Omega Brewer, signed a letter saying the city could remove the measure from the ballot as a result of the new ordinance. But the third woman, Pariset, did not sign it.

Read More [[link removed]] Construction Ramps Up In S.F. — For Now

Construction sites are coming back to life throughout San Francisco, but the surge in activity may not last long.

Builders pulled 334 permits last week, up from zero 10 weeks earlier as the coronavirus shutdown took effect. That puts construction activity at about 58% of normal. In the year leading up to Mayor London Breed’s mid-March order for construction to cease, City Hall received about 580 permit applications a week.

The number of permits has been on a slow climb since hitting zero, and began to accelerate on May 4, when Breed allowed construction to fully resume. The rise in activity largely reflects the revival of projects that were put on pause during the COVID-19 shutdown, some experts say.

Read More [[link removed]] SF Tenants Break Leases In Startling Numbers, Giving Renters Upper Hand

One in 13 San Francisco renters have broken their lease since the coronavirus stay-home orders went into place nearly 100 days ago, an astonishing out-migration of tenants in the city that could lead to thousands of empty rental units and give renters the upper hand in negotiations.

When measures to fight the coronavirus severely curtailed economic activity nearly 100 days ago, San Francisco landlords were fearful that widespread layoffs and income lost because of the pandemic would result in a wave of residential tenants unable to pay rent.

While that has not happened — only 3% of San Francisco tenants paid no rent in June, and another 2.5% paid partial rent — landlords are instead dealing with an unexpected problem: Rather than not paying, tenants are walking away from leases.

Read More [[link removed]] San Diego OKs New Housing Blueprint That Calls For Tripling Yearly Construction Through 2029

The San Diego City Council this week unanimously approved a comprehensive new plan to boost local housing production by tripling the number of units built each year.

The plan aims to help San Diego meet a state-mandated goal of 108,000 new housing units by 2029. That would require the annual number of units built to rise from 4,100 currently to 13,500.

City officials said such an increase would be ambitious even in a strong economy, so the recession sparked by the pandemic will make the goals of the new plan especially hard to achieve.

Read More [[link removed]] Proposed California Law Would Fast-Track Environmentally Sustainable Transit

Transportation projects focused on public transit, bikes and pedestrians — but not cars — would get fast-tracked for construction under a bill Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, plans to announce on Monday.

His goal is two-fold: ramp up sustainable transportation and stimulate the economy.

“If we’re going to claw our way out of this economic collapse, public investment in infrastructure is a crucial strategy, and we need to get that investment out and implemented fast,” Wiener said. “We can’t afford delays.”

SB288, the Sustainable Transportation COVID-19 Recovery Act, would exempt “sustainable” transportation projects from challenges under CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, which mandates environmental protection as part of decision-making for all kinds of construction.

Read More [[link removed]] Trump Team Weighs $1 Trillion For Infrastructure To Spur Economy

The Trump administration is preparing a nearly $1 trillion infrastructure proposal as part of its push to spur the world’s largest economy back to life, according to people familiar with the plan.

A preliminary version being prepared by the Department of Transportation would reserve most of the money for traditional infrastructure work, like roads and bridges, but would also set aside funds for 5G wireless infrastructure and rural broadband, the people said.

An existing U.S. infrastructure funding law is up for renewal by Sept. 30, and the administration sees that as a possible vehicle to push through a broader package, the people said. They asked not to be identified because the Trump proposal isn’t final and hasn’t been announced.

Read More [[link removed]] Editorial and Opinion Newsom, Legislature Build New Wall Of Debt

When Jerry Brown returned to the governorship in 2011, he pledged that fixing a deficit-ridden state budget would be his highest priority.

A big piece of Brown’s fix was taking down what he called “a wall of debt,” more than $30 billion in various kinds of loans that predecessor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature had taken out to cover revenue shortfalls during the Great Recession.

Brown coupled his budget maneuvers — including a hefty increase in sales and income taxes — and paying off the debts with annual warnings that another recession would inevitably strike. He persuaded voters to create a “rainy day fund” to cushion the impact.

That rainy day, more like a monsoon, is hitting the state hard, due to personal and business shutdowns ordered to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, and once again the state budget is awash in red ink. Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators are dickering over a fiscal plan for the current fiscal year that ends June 30, the 2020-21 fiscal year that begins on July 1 and, inferentially, two or three years beyond that.

Read More [[link removed]] Will Californians Pass New Taxes?

As Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature continue to negotiate a budget, some cities are floating new taxes to stave off cuts to public programs, while state tax hikes on the November ballot are taking on a new meaning in light of California’s projected $54 billion deficit.

Will California voters, millions of whom have lost their jobs amid the pandemic-induced recession and who already showed severe signs of tax fatigue in March, support taxes in November?

A June statewide survey from the Public Policy Institute of California found that 60% of likely voters oppose tax increases.

Read More [[link removed]] Not The Time To Gut Proposition 13 And Raise Taxes

Under California law, proposed initiatives must be presented to the California Legislature in an “informational hearing” open to the public. Legislators do not vote on the proposals because these are initiatives that have already qualified for the ballot. The hearings are mostly for the benefit of policy leaders and the public.

Because the infamous “split roll” initiative has now qualified, the Legislature held a hearing in the California Legislature on Thursday. I was pleased to be one of the individuals invited to testify and explain our opposition to the measure, which would remove Proposition 13’s protection from most commercial and industrial properties, sharply raising taxes.

Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is California’s largest taxpayer advocacy organization with over 200,000 members. We are strongly opposed to this initiative.

Read More [[link removed]] Wiener's Eviction Bill Would Be Destructive For Property Owners

An amended version of SB-939 will be discussed during a hearing before the California Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday. The appropriate focus of this bill should be to provide benefits to truly small businesses, with a particular emphasis on restaurants and bars, since these types of tenants are universally thought of as the classes of tenants that most need financial assistance due to the pandemic.

The bill, even as amended, continues to be extremely punitive to property owners, will create long lasting significant negative effects on property values, property owners, and property lenders, and will produce serious future problems for the very tenants that the bill intends to protect.

Read More [[link removed]] SB 939 Will Do Far More Harm Than Good

SB 939 is the poster child for a feel-good perception of a solution that would result in far greater economic harm than we are already experiencing. Veiled under the guise of helping restaurants and small businesses in response to the COVID pandemic, the truth is its passage would lead to a domino effect with monumental economic consequences including more business closures, more jobs lost, widespread property foreclosures and even less revenue for local and state coffers. The bill should be rejected by the Senate Appropriations Committee when it comes up for a vote June 18.

SB 939 would allow businesses large and small to withhold rent indefinitely regardless of how profitable they are and creates a new, special protected class of businesses that can to walk away from lease obligations altogether, transferring the debt to the property owner. While the bill has been characterized as applying only to restaurants and select small businesses, it in fact applies to virtually all California commercial leases.

Yes, small businesses are suffering due to the coronavirus, but SB 939 fails to recognize that property owners throughout the state are still expected to pay their mortgages, utilities, property taxes and other expenses and they’re doing it now with vastly reduced rental income.

Read More [[link removed]] Step Up Time For California's Billionaires

With the Movement for Black Lives raising the call to defund the police and redirect funding to programs more likely to enhance public safety like public education, housing, and mental health services, we should consider how these municipal issues play out against the backdrop of the pandemic-induced state budget crisis.

As California’s economy sails farther south than anyone except our oldest residents have ever sailed, it’s worth paying attention to a few ideas our elected officials haven’t considered, at least publicly, regarding what to do about the enormous hole in state revenues.

After some serious stock market wobbling while the pandemic took hold of the main street economy’s throat, Wall Street straightened out. As unemployment surged to Great Depression levels, and the working class headed to the unemployment lines, billionaires have been doing quite well, including the wealthiest Californians.

Read More [[link removed]] Normalizing ‘Hybrid’ Learning At UCSD Will Worsen Social And Racial Inequities

Two months ago, UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said that the COVID-19 crisis has catalyzed the need to shift higher education to a “hybrid” model that combines in-person and online learning. Remote learning “opens up more opportunities” for people “traditionally cut out of higher education,” the chancellor said on KPBS.

That online education makes higher education more accessible to underserved communities is, at best, naive, and, at worst, deceptive.

Read More [[link removed]] Referendum On SB 10: Vote ‘No’ To An Injustice We Can’t Afford

With a referendum, California’s Constitution gives voters the right to overturn unjust laws passed by the Legislature. This year, we have the chance to reject a law that will make our justice system even more racially biased and burden our counties with hundreds of millions in new costs when they can least afford it.

The law is Senate Bill 10, passed in 2018. SB 10 would eliminate the option for bail for people who are arrested and replaces our current discretion of judges and bail hearings with computer algorithms to determine who qualifies for release pending trial.

After its passage, more than half a million voters signed petitions to put its adoption up for a vote of the people, and thus it will appear as a ballot proposition in November. A “No” vote rejects SB 10, and I urge all Californians who care about civil rights and criminal justice reform to join me in voting “No.”

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