[aggregation-styles] The New York Times Subscription Statistically speaking, Idaho is one of America’s greatest economic success stories. The state has low unemployment and high income growth. It has expanded education spending while managing to shore up budget reserves. Brad Little, the state’s Republican governor, has attributed this run of prosperity...
Walters: Housing Crisis Hasn’t Gone Away
A year ago, California’s most pressing political issue was, by common consent, a housing crisis. Despite declining population growth, California had for years been falling short of building enough housing to meet demand, especially from low- and moderate-income families. The state had set ambitious housing goals approaching 200,000 new units...
How Newport Beach Ended up With 2 Affordable Housing Units in 8 Years
They say you get what you pay for, but when it comes to affordable housing, wealthy Southern California cities are paying to get almost nothing. And that’s exactly the way they want it. Between 2013 and 2021, the state of California allocated the city of Newport Beach a total of two...
Real Estate Prices Soar During Pandemic, Climbing 25% in Parts of California
When Colette Barss sold her Seaside home this spring, her new east Garrison-area home had been sitting on the market for about 190 days. She ended up buying it for about $60,000 under asking price. Today, that would be extremely unlikely. The price of real estate has soared across the country since the...
Real Reforms Needed to Deal With Affordable Housing
California’s housing costs have been rising for decades, making buying a home a dream very few families can afford. The California State Auditor’s scathing report about the $2.7 billion in wasted affordable housing funds demonstrates yet again that the Democrats’ attempts to spend our way out of the housing crisis will not...
Walters: High Housing Costs Keep Californians Poor
Congratulations California, you’ve done it again. The Census Bureau has once again found that California has the highest real-world poverty rate of any state, 17.2% over the previous three years and much higher than the national rate. The “supplemental” poverty rate includes factors ignored by the outdated “official” poverty rate, such...
Walters: New Housing Goals Stir Opposition
As this much-troubled year began, the twin crises of homelessness and a broader housing shortage were, by common consent, California’s most pressing political issues. Gov. Gavin Newsom devoted almost all of his State of the State address to them in February and legislators introduced dozens of housing bills. Within a...
California Exodus: An Online Industry Seizes COVID-19 to Sell the Red State Dream
At first, Stephanie Morris was nervous about leaving Modesto. She’d lived in the Central Valley her whole life, but her family couldn’t keep paying $850-a-month for her sons to share a living room while she, her husband and the baby slept in their apartment’s only bedroom. The anxiety faded by...
Walters: Legislature Leaves Much Undone
When the Legislature reconvened in January, the stage was seemingly set for a year of sweeping action on California’s most vexing political issues, such as a chronic housing shortage, homelessness and an embarrassingly high poverty rate. Democrats enjoyed overwhelming majorities in both legislative houses, the Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, was...
California Farming Country Buckles Under COVID-19. Will Pandemic Make or Break the Valley?
By Dale Kalser, Manuela Tobias, and Tony Bizjak She was afraid of catching the coronavirus – so fearful, in fact, that she switched jobs to pack tomatoes for an employer who seemed to be taking the right precautions. But Maria Claudia Garcia got sick anyway. A farmworker from Venezuela living in the San...