Feb 12, 2025 | Bills, Housing, Taxes
By Kate Talerico
February 19, 2025
California voters could soon be asked to authorize spending billions of dollars on new affordable housing. East Bay Assemblymember Buffy Wicks and state Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, a Yolo County Democrat, this week brought back a proposal to place a $10 billion bond for affordable housing programs on the June 2026 ballot after failing to get the measure on the November 2024 ballot.
Feb 12, 2025 | Safety, Housing
By ETHAN VARIAN
UPDATED: February 12, 2025
Bay Area homeowners likely will be on the hook for a share of a massive bailout of California’s insurer of last resort after it ran out of money to pay claims arising from the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
State regulators announced this week that they will allow the program, known as the FAIR Plan, to collect $1 billion in emergency payments from private insurers — who are expected to pass a significant portion of those costs on to policyholders across the state.
Feb 7, 2025 | Opinion, Housing
By JOHN MCCAULEY
February 7, 2025
Given recent tragic wildfires in Los Angeles and Maui, fire danger is naturally on everyone’s mind. Evacuation readiness planning was a top priority during the nine years I served on the Mill Valley City Council.
In its zeal to promote more housing, the California Legislature passed numerous laws taking away local control of housing-development decisions irrespective of fire danger. Local jurisdictions like Mill Valley must comply with new state building mandates that appear to ignore fire risk.
Feb 2, 2025 | Housing
By Christian Leonard,
Feb 2, 2025
In the Bay Area, where the typical home costs seven figures, affording a monthly mortgage payment is increasingly out of reach for many. But in a few of the region’s wealthiest ZIP codes, most buyers are avoiding those costs entirely — by buying their home in cash. That was the case for nearly two-thirds of home sales in Atherton, which has some of the most expensive homes in the country, in 2024. The percentage was up from 2019, when roughly 59% of sales in the city were made in cash, according to data from real estate company Redfin.
Jan 31, 2025 | Housing, Politics
Housing Is A Human Right
January 31, 2025
For the 2024 election, Big Real Estate raised a whopping total of $171.6 million to kill Proposition 33 and pass Proposition 34 in California. Several of the top contributors are the country’s largest corporate landlords. Through its multi-million-dollar misinformation campaigns, the real estate industry was able to keep statewide rent control restrictions intact and push through an initiative to damage AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s housing advocacy work in California.
Jan 30, 2025 | Opinion, Housing
Dario L.
January 30, 2025
For anybody that doesn’t think incompetence and misplaced priorities had a role in how bad the Palisades fire got… listen to the comments of this ex- Palisades resident at the DWP board meeting And nobody is saying that nothing would have happened if there was more water… but it surely would have made a difference in the severity.
