News

While Prop. 13 may keep California property taxes low for many folks, the overall financial burden remains relatively high. My trusty spreadsheet tells me we’re 10th worst among the states.

But now there’s push-back against this tidy assumption about what’s driving the housing crisis, and from an unlikely source: Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor. In “Do Communities Adequately Plan for Local Housing?” – a report prepared by LAO staff but carrying Taylor’s byline – the first central conclusion is that the process under which the state Department of Housing and Community Development works with cities and counties on their general plans to ensure adequate housing isn’t working. It cites little follow-through from many local governments on past promises and notes that many development plans are badly outdated and unusable. It offers suggestions on how the process might be improved to speed construction of housing stock.

Individual income taxes are a major source of state revenue (36 percent of collections).Their prominence is increased by the fact that taxpayers file their individual income taxes directly, unlike the sales tax, for example. For many, the personal income tax is practically synonymous with their own tax burdens.

California’s cities and counties make most decisions about when, where, and to what extent housing will be built. For decades, many California communities—particularly coastal communities—have used this control to limit home building. As a result, too little housing has been built to accommodate all those who wish to live here. This lack of home building has driven a rapid rise in housing costs.

Assembly Bill 199 was introduced in late January and authored by Kansen Chu (D-San Jose) and the California Building and Construction Trades Council, a labor union group. The bill requires workers to be paid “prevailing wage” on residential projects that have any agreement with “the state or a political subdivision” — a provision that extends the requirement beyond the redevelopment agencies, public agencies and low income housing projects covered under existing state law.

My trusty spreadsheet tells me that in 2016 an average 47.2 percent of households in the L.A.-O.C. metropolitan area lived in homes they owned vs. 49.1 percent in 2015. In both years, those percentages were the lowest ownership rates among the nation’s 75 largest metro areas.

One of the impediments to housing production in California is a state environmental quality act that requires developers to assess the local environmental impacts of new housing. The result is that little new housing has been built in California, forcing people to move to places like Arizona and Texas. But California’s temperate climate means that greenhouse gas emissions there are far lower than in interior states. “If California’s restrictions induce more building in Texas and Arizona, which require far more artificial cooling,” says the paper, “then their net environmental [effects] could be negative in aggregate.”

The measure would also accelerate the state’s goal of reaching 50% renewable energy. Legislation approved two years ago set a deadline of 2030 , but the new proposal would move that up to 2025.

Gas prices in the Los Angeles/Orange County region stood near $3 a gallon Monday while they topped $2.90 in the Inland Empire — up more than 50 cents from a year ago as OPEC production cutbacks worked their way to local pumps. . . It’s normal for gas prices in Southern California to increase this time of year as the state switches over to summer blend gasoline. The gas is 8-12 cents a gallon more expensive to make than winter blend gasoline, according to Automobile Club of Southern California spokesman Jeffrey Spring. Down refineries also cause gas prices to rise in the spring.

The unaffordability problem affecting the Bay Area-Silicon Valley region of California is a serious statewide crisis that Sacramento isn’t taking seriously.  But this problem isn’t the Bay Area’s alone.  California’s most populous region – Greater Los Angeles – is also plagued with unaffordable homes and rentals. And March 2017’s consolidated Los Angeles election has housing affordability front and center.

Fueled by a dated system that does not always respond to market incentives or pressure, costs and surpluses of energy have both grown in California, raising pointed questions about what residents should expect from rates and regulations alike.

The technology industry’s job growth in the nine-county region has dramatically decelerated, according to this newspaper’s analysis of figures released by state labor officials and Beacon Economics. Tech’s annual job growth throttled back to 3.5 percent, or 26,700 new jobs, in 2016. That’s much slower than the 6 percent annual gain of 42,300 jobs in 2015, or the 6.4 percent gain in 2014.

And while the industry’s 3.5 percent growth last year is still a sturdy annual pace, Bay Area technology companies have already disclosed plans to slash about 2,000 jobs in the first three months of 2017.

Utilities must buy back the electricity at market rates, but they still have this vast – and growing – infrastructure of power plants and utility lines to finance and maintain. The more the utilities raise their rates to pay for these “stranded costs,” the more consumers opt out and install solar panels. That raises the per-capita costs of maintaining that infrastructure, which raises electricity prices – and leads to more people opting out of the system. Advances in battery storage could further diminish the need for power plants that are financed 30 or 40 years into the future.

San Diego County’s poverty rate of 13.8% vastly undercounts the number of families living in economic insecurity. Fully a third of all households headed by people under age 65 have incomes below the cost of living in the region. Based on the costs of basic family budget items, the Self-Sufficiency Standard indicates the yearly income families need just to get by. The basic budget starts at almost $28,000 a year for a single adult, which would require an hourly wage of at least $13.23 if working full-time all year long. The budget grows with family size and differs according to the ages of children in the family. Self-Sufficiency is the ability to afford the bare-bones costs of living without public or private assistance. The calculation of the standard includes only no-frills items like housing, food, transportation, child care, healthcare, and taxes.

California has a big — and growing — glut of power, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times has found. The state’s power plants are on track to be able to produce at least 21% more electricity than it needs by 2020, based on official estimates. And that doesn’t even count the soaring production of electricity by rooftop solar panels that has added to the surplus. . . Californians are paying a higher premium to switch on lights or turn on electric stoves. In recent years, the gap between what Californians pay versus the rest of the country has nearly doubled to about 50%.