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In a July 2015 report, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York observed a direct correlation between student borrowing and tuition levels, noting that “higher tuition costs raise loan demand, but loan supply .  .  . [relaxes] students’ funding constraints.” The Fed spoke of a “pass-through effect on tuition,” whereby for every dollar received in subsidized federal loans, tuition rises 65 cents. They report similar findings for Pell Grants (55 cents) and unsubsidized loans (30 cents). As the Fed study indicates, student debt isn’t rising simply because college is too expensive. Rather, school is too expensive because of rising student loans and grants. Research by economist Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, bolsters this argument. He found that “when someone other than the user is paying the bills, those bills tend to explode since the buyer is not sensitive to price.” In other words, the expansion of student loans and other third-party payments for college leads to higher prices by insulating students from the actual cost of tuition. This vicious cycle leaves many low-income students (who are supposed to benefit the most from financial aid) priced out of attending college.

But that electricity trend has changed recently. American households use less electricity than they did five years ago. The figure below plots U.S. residential electricity consumption per capita 1990-2015. Consumption dipped significantly in 2012 and has remained flat, even as the economy has improved considerably.

So what is different? Energy-efficient lighting. Over 450 million LEDs have been installed to date in the United States, up from less than half a million in 2009, and nearly 70% of Americans have purchased at least one LED bulb. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) are even more common, with 70%+ of households owning some CFLs. All told, energy-efficient lighting now accounts for 80% of all U.S. lighting sales.

Thirty-two percent of California households could afford to purchase the $496,620 median-priced home in the first quarter of 2017, up from 31 percent in fourth-quarter 2016 but down from 34 percent in first-quarter 2016.

A minimum annual income of $102,050 was needed to make monthly payments of $2,550, including principal, interest, and taxes on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at a 4.36 percent interest rate.

Forty percent of home buyers were able to purchase the $414,940 median-priced condo or townhome. An annual income of $85,270 was required to make a monthly payment of $2,130.

A recent count found a dramatic 104% increase in “tents and hand-built structures” located downtown, for a total of 418, compared to 2016. Driving through East Village, a gentrifying neighborhood on the edge of downtown, it’s tough to find a street that doesn’t have a tarp or tent – or dozens. People with neither tent nor tarp fashion makeshift shelters out of shopping carts, storage bins and blankets.

Only 32 percent of California households could afford to purchase the $496,620 median-priced Golden State home in the first quarter of 2017, according to a report issued Monday by the Los Angeles-based California Association of Realtors.

The state wants to slash greenhouse gas emissions so deeply in the coming years that oil refineries and other industries could face skyrocketing costs to comply with regulations, driving up gasoline prices until the system loses political support. If that happens, an effort touted as an international model for fighting global warming could collapse.

While “cap and trade” – the issuance and trading of greenhouse gas emission allowances – is a relatively small part of the state’s strenuous efforts to combat climate change, it has been the most contentious. It indirectly affects consumers by raising prices and is designed to raise billions of dollars that Capitol politicians can spend without directly taxing their constituents.

Developers are now adding homes, relative to population growth, at a far higher pace than in recent years. But it’s still below what experts believe would be enough to keep up with California’s growing population, which topped 39.5 million last year.

Operators of the natural gas wells in Aliso Canyon are warning California regulators they have concerns about meeting energy and electricity demands this summer and for the upcoming winter.

In this era of anti-Trump resistance, many progressives see California as a model of enlightenment. The Golden State’s post-2010 recovery has won plaudits in the progressive press from the New York Times’s Paul Krugman, among others. Yet if one looks at the effects of the state’s policies on key Democratic constituencies— millennials, minorities, and the poor—the picture is dismal. A recent United Way study found that close to one-third of state residents can barely pay their bills, largely due to housing costs. When adjusted for these costs, California leads all states—even historically poor Mississippi—in the percentage of its people living in poverty.

Those words—contained within a decision affirming the constitutionality of California’s policy of charging polluters—are causing a stir among some state budget experts, who wonder if the ruling could be used to could pry loose constitutional constraints that have long restricted lawmakers’ ability to increase taxes.

SB 700 would require utility companies to collect even more funds from ratepayers to help establish an Energy Storage Initiative, an ESI. This ESI would work in conjunction with the existing Self Generation Incentive Program that has been so successful in California. The ESI would need to be funded through 2027.

A measure that would allow local governments to force developers to include more low-income housing within their projects passed the Assembly Thursday.

Assemblyman Matthew Harper (R-Huntington Beach) argued that the bill would raise costs for developers and therefore reduce their ability to produce the broad housing stock the state needs to control prices.

If the net effect of our policies is to reduce California’s GHG footprint on the backs of California’s most vulnerable residents while increasing net global GHG, why would any other state or nation want to follow California’s example?

San Francisco and San Mateo counties in the Bay Area have passed a grim milestone reflecting extreme housing costs: The federal government now considers households in the counties which make $100,000 a year to be “low income,” making them eligible for federal housing programs for poor families, most notably Section 8 vouchers that allow more than 2.2 million U.S. families to pay only 30 percent of income toward rent.