Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders have agreed to provide as much as $1,050 to millions of California families to help with rising gas prices and inflation, they confirmed Sunday night. The three-tier program would benefit an estimated 23 million California taxpayers, including individual filers making as much as...
White Households Get Bigger Property Tax Breaks Than Blacks, Latinos Under Prop 13: Study
While homeownership remains a challenge for people of color in California, those who do achieve it don’t equitably reap the benefits, a new report argues, because of the state’s landmark law limiting property tax increases. While homeownership remains a challenge for people of color in California, a new report...
Mark Your Calendar! California Leader Offers Clue on Gas Rebate Timetable.
For Californians concerned about sky-high gas prices and a looming increase to the state’s fuel excise tax: Never fear, the Assembly Select Committee on Gasoline Supply and Pricing is here! What exactly will the committee do? It will “investigate the gas price gouging that has inflated prices at a rate equivalent to...
Sending Your Kids to Day Camp? In California, Beware of the Risks
As summer kicks off, more than a million California children are gearing up for horseback riding, swimming, archery, computer coding, and hip hop day camps. As parents scout out fun activities for their kids, most are likely unaware of the risks. Unlike child care facilities and schools, children’s day camps are...
CA Prison Guards, Justice Reform Groups Support This Inmate Rehab Idea From Norway
California has a recidivism problem. Two-thirds of people incarcerated in the state will return to prison within three years, either through new offenses or parole violations, according to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation data. In Norway, by contrast, recidivism is down from 60%-70% in the 1980s to about...
State Bans Farmers, Cities From Pumping River Water in San Joaquin Valley, Bay Area
In sweeping water curtailments stretching from Fresno to the Oregon state line, cities and growers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed have been ordered to stop pumping from rivers and streams. The cutbacks, announced today by the State Water Resources Control Board, will affect about 4,500 water rights...
Assembly Speaker Rendon Fends off Rivas to Keep His Crown
After a weekend of lobbying, jockeying, and speculating, then a flurry of parliamentary maneuvers and a six-hour closed-door caucus meeting on Tuesday, California Assembly Democrats finally came to a decision about who ought to serve as speaker. The answer: The current speaker, Anthony Rendon. The announcement came not with...
Will Robert Rivas of Salinas Force Out Anthony Rendon as Assembly Speaker?
Et tu, Rivas? Late Friday, just as legislators — and everyone else in the state — were preparing to check out for the long holiday weekend, an earthquake rocked the California political world: Assemblymember Robert Rivas, a Salinas Democrat, announced that he had “secured enough votes” to become the...
Incentives Build More Affordable Homes Than Inclusionary Zoning: Opinion
California lacks an estimated 1.2 million units of housing affordable for those with lower incomes. One important approach to meeting this need is to induce developers to include affordable units in market-rate multifamily housing developments. Policies concerned with this outcome are commonly called “inclusionary zoning.” Such policies take two...
CA Budget Must Include Funding to Boost Homeownership: Opinion
There are growing calls to promote equity for those working Californians who, as a result of this state and nation’s history of discrimination, have higher levels of economic and housing insecurity and limited, if any, intergenerational wealth. California Realtors, Habitat for Humanity, and the California Building Industry Association —...