Web Version [link removed] | Update Preferences [link removed] CBRT in the News California Approves Statewide Rent Control to Ease Housing Crisis Image

California lawmakers approved a statewide rent cap on Wednesday covering millions of tenants, the biggest step yet in a surge of initiatives to address an affordable-housing crunch nationwide.

The bill limits annual rent increases to 5 percent after inflation and offers new barriers to eviction, providing a bit of housing security in a state with the nation’s highest housing prices and a swelling homeless population.

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The measure, affecting an estimated eight million residents of rental homes and apartments, was heavily pushed by tenants’ groups. In an indication of how dire housing problems have become, it also garnered the support of the California Business Roundtable, representing leading employers, and was unopposed by the state’s biggest landlords’ group.

Read More [[link removed]] Business Climate and Job Creation Sweeping Bill Rewriting California Employment Law Sent To Gov. Newsom

California lawmakers rewrote the rules of employment across a wide swath of industries Wednesday in legislation that could grant hundreds of thousands of workers new job benefits and pay guarantees.

After vigorous debates over what occupations should be exempted, Assembly Bill 5, which curbs businesses’ use of independent contractors, gained final approval in the state Senate and the Assembly and was sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has pledged his support.

The 6,700-word bill is one of the most controversial of the year. It could upend the relationship between workers and bosses across businesses as varied as ride-hailing tech giants, construction, healthcare, trucking, janitorial services, nail salons, adult entertainment, commercial fishing and newspapers.

The message of the legislation, said its author, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), is “we will not in good conscience allow free-riding businesses to continue to pass their own business costs on to taxpayers and workers. It’s our job to look out for working men and women, not Wall Street and their get-rich-quick IPOs.”

Read More [[link removed]] PG&E Reaches $11-Billion Deal With California Wildfire Insurers

PG&E Corp. and a group of insurers announced Friday they have reached an $11-billion settlement to cover most of the claims from wildfires in California in 2017 and 2018.

The utility said in a statement that the tentative agreement was reached with insurance companies holding 85% of the claims from fires that included November’s Camp fire, which decimated the town of Paradise and killed 86 people.

The insurers said in a separate statement that the settlement is well below the $20 billion the insurance companies had sought in Bankruptcy Court. However, it is more than PG&E offered as part of a filing in Bankruptcy Court earlier in the week.

“While this proposed settlement does not fully satisfy the approximately $20 billion in group members’ unsecured claims, we hope that this compromise will pave the way for a plan of reorganization that allows PG&E to fairly compensate all victims and emerge from Chapter 11 by the June 2020 legislative deadline,” the insurers said.

Read More [[link removed]] Nearly 3,000 Illegal Marijuana Businesses Found In California Audit, Dwarfing Legal Trade

California’s black market for cannabis is at least three times the size of its regulated weed industry, according to an audit made public Wednesday, the latest indication of the state’s continued struggle to tame a cannabis economy that has long operated in legal limbo.

The audit, conducted by the United Cannabis Business Assn., found approximately 2,835 unlicensed dispensaries and delivery services operating in California. By comparison, only 873 cannabis sellers in the state are licensed, according to the Bureau of Cannabis Control.

The figures are the latest sign of California’s rocky rollout of its legal marketplace, which promised better regulations and control beginning in 2018. Legitimate marijuana businesses have repeatedly criticized state leaders and law enforcement for failing to curb unlicensed dispensaries and delivery services, which sell cannabis at a much lower price by skirting state and municipal cannabis taxes.

Read More [[link removed]] Southern California Grocery Workers Approve Contract, Avert Strike

Southern California grocery store workers have approved a new employment contract with major supermarket chains.

The agreement for employees at Ralphs, Vons, Pavilions and Albertsons stores from Santa Maria to the Mexican border represents the most significant increases in wages and benefits in over 30 years, according to United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770.

The union said the contract includes:

Read More [[link removed]] U.S. Deficit Tops $1 Trillion In First 11 Months Of Fiscal Year

The U.S. budget gap widened to more than $1 trillion in the first 11 months of the fiscal year, the Treasury Department said Thursday, the first time year-to-date deficits have topped that amount in seven years.

Higher spending on the military, rising interest expenses on government debt and weak revenues early in the fiscal year combined to push the deficit up 19% from October through August, compared with the same period a year earlier. Government spending climbed 7%, to $4.1 trillion, outpacing higher federal tax receipts, which grew 3%, to $3.1 trillion.

That brought the total deficit to $1.07 trillion so far in fiscal 2019, which started Oct. 1, or 4.4% as a share of gross domestic product.

Read More [[link removed]] Energy and Climate Change California Has Gone Months With No New Fracking Permits. But Dozens Of Illegal Oil Spills Are Flowing

California has issued no permits for fracking since late June, according to records reviewed by The Desert Sun and watchdog groups.

But permits for sometimes risky "enhanced recovery" wells and related storage are up nearly 60% in 2019 so far under Gov. Gavin Newsom, compared to Gov. Jerry Brown’s last year in office. Regular oil and gas drilling permits are up 20%.

Dozens of illegal oil spills also are currently flowing in California, according to internal records and sources, even as two state agencies investigate the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources or DOGGR, the agency tasked with preventing spills.

Asked about the pause on fracking permits, Lisa Lien-Mager, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of Natural Resources, said Newsom's administration "has been working to develop a thorough understanding of the permit approval process to ensure all permits meet regulatory requirements." Newsom directed Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot to investigate the agency in July.

Read More [[link removed]] Most Ambitious US Law To Tackle Single-Use Plastics Faces Make-Or-Break Moment

The most ambitious US legislation to tackle the scourge of plastic pollution choking up oceans and piling up in landfills could pass in California Friday – or end up in the dustbin of history. Lawmakers are likely to vote on proposals that aim to phase out most single-use plastic packaging within the next decade.

The two identical bills – one introduced in the state assembly and one in the senate – commit to a 75% reduction in plastic statewide within 10 years. If passed into law, they would require manufacturers to ensure that all single-use packaging produced, sold and distributed in California is fully recyclable or compostable by 2030. Companies that fail to comply could face up to $50,000 a day in fines.

Environmental groups say the legislation is significant because it compels the powerful companies that have allowed cheap, disposable products to proliferate to help solve the pollution crisis.

Read More [[link removed]] Water Dispute Bedevils Bill To Blunt Trump’s Environment Aims

California’s campaign of legal challenges to Trump administration environmental rollbacks has been conducted mostly as a series of courtroom battles. Legislation now poised for final action would take that war with the president nuclear, by essentially adopting as California’s standards the environmental and workplace safety laws that existed at the end of the Obama administration.

It is the signature legislation from Senate leader Toni Atkins this year, and the only environmental proposal of such breadth. And — hardly surprising — controversy has surrounded it. Water issues and endangered species reside at the heart of the contretemps, and it’s not clear whether the measure, whose fate will be decided in the Assembly by midnight Friday, will pass.

Officials in the Newsom administration have been active in the intense negotiations. The governor’s fledgling efforts to forge amicable relationships with Central Valley agricultural and water interests have come up against his strongly stated opposition to the Trump administration’s environmental-deregulation agenda. If the bill arrives at his desk, it’s unclear whether he will sign it.

Read More [[link removed]] Workforce Development California Community Colleges Work To Solve Housing For Foster Youths

While California’s housing market poses problems for many college students, the challenge is particularly acute among former foster youth, as they prepare to leave the care system and enter the next chapter of their adult lives without built-in support from family.

The state’s community colleges are working to ease that transition through a variety of programs that provide financial assistance for housing, textbooks and supplies, as well as emotional support and counseling.

But they still fall short of meeting the need, and additional state support is urgently needed, say advocates focused on foster student success. Though California in recent years has placed a priority on helping foster students succeed in the K-12 system, the fear is that progress will be undermined if students aren’t able to cope with the real challenges — financial and otherwise — when entering college.

Read More [[link removed]] CA College Students Shell Out $2k A Month For Housing, Books, Food Alone

The price of college has become a hot-button issue at both the state and national level, but data has been scarce about how much, beyond tuition, California students actually spend on the housing, food, textbooks and other non-tuition items that they also need to earn a degree.

On Thursday, a state survey offered some answers: about $2,000 per month — and many say it’s a struggle. Nearly two-thirds of students polled by the California Student Aid Commission said the greatest obstacle to their success was either the cost of college or the need to balance work with studying.

The state survey on college costs, scrapped during the recession, was revived last year after a decade in which the commission relied on outdated figures to create the sample student budgets that many colleges use to calculate their cost of attendance.

Read More [[link removed]] Infrastructure and Housing HUD Secretary Ben Carson and top Trump officials to visit California As White House Ramps Up Homeless Push

Senior administration officials, including Housing Secretary Ben Carson, plan to visit Los Angeles in the coming days as part of President Trump’s push to crack down on homelessness in California, according to three people briefed on the plans.

The trip brings into sharp focus the Trump administration’s tightly held effort to spotlight and intervene in California’s growing homeless population. White House officials have not fully disclosed to local leaders the extent of their discussions, which have included probing the legality of razing tent camps and relocating large groups of homeless people.

Trump officials have expressed an extreme interest in the surge in the homeless population in the “skid row” area of Los Angeles. Trump has sought to blame Democrats for not doing enough to address the issue.

Read More [[link removed]] Poverty And Affordable Housing - California's New Rent Control Law Will Make Things Worse

The U.S. Census Bureau issued its annual reports on poverty in America on Sept. 10. Once again, California had the nation’s highest poverty rate, 18.2% over the last three years surveyed, using a measure of poverty that accounts for regional cost differences and a larger array of government welfare and expenses. California’s Supplemental Poverty rate was proportionately 38% higher than the national average, 13.2%.

California’s Supplemental Poverty measure has been improving as the state’s unemployment rate dropped from an annual average of 12.2% in 2010 to 4.8% in 2017. But, during that entire time California has logged the nation’s highest poverty rate. (The Official Poverty Measure tells a different story—but the half-century-old measure assumes the cost of living in Manhattan is the same as it is in Fresno.) The main reason why California’s poverty rate has remained stubbornly high—proportionately 13% higher than Mississippi’s 16.1% and 26% higher than arch-rival Texas’ 14.4%—is that California’s housing costs have remained among the highest in the nation.

Read More [[link removed]] Editorial and Opinion Turning Off Power To Combat Wildfires Could Harm The Very People Who Need Protection

California utility companies are increasingly triggering power outages by their own accord to try to prevent wildfires. But the practice may endanger elderly people and individuals with power-dependent medical devices.

While intentionally shutting off power may be a practical way to prevent power lines from sparking wildfires, is it worth the risks?

Indeed, planned power outages may be hurting the very populations they seek to protect.

California has had the 10 costliest wildland fires in the United States, with damage ranging from $1.3 billion to $10.5 billion.

These wildfires disproportionately affected older adults because older adults are more likely than other age groups to be socially isolated, to face challenges with evacuating, and to have chronic health conditions.

Read More [[link removed]] Four Ways To Fix The California Housing Crisis

Last week, I stepped down as director of California’s Housing and Community Development department after almost four years. I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly in housing — as a housing developer, senior official with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and, most recently, state housing director.

We implemented numerous historic housing investments and reforms during my tenure in Sacramento. Yet housing challenges throughout California continue to worsen.

I am convinced that we can and must take even bolder steps. Here’s how:

First, we need to drastically increase the amount of residentially zoned land.

Under new targets released by the state last month, Southern California cities and counties will have to plan to build 1.3 million new housing units — three times what local governments had proposed — over the next eight years. This is a good start, but we need to make sure cities surpass these ambitious targets in Southern California and in the Bay Area, whose targets are due from the state next year. And we must ensure the bulk of this new residential zoning is added to exclusive, job-rich coastal communities, not just inland exurbs.

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