The 6th episode of Catalysts in California Times pulls key points from elected officials and community leaders. Individually and collectively they make the point: These bills fail to meet the needs for affordability, increase the cost of housing, ignore water and environmental safety, and take away local control.
Elected officials Lydia Kou and Peggy Huang talk about the impact of misguided state legislation on cities. Whether in northern California or southern California, the overreach of regional and state laws is taking its toll on cities’ capacity to serve the constituents who elected them.
Rick Johnson spent 40 years with the San Francisco Water Department and retired as Senior Water Inspector, overseeing the work of ten other water inspectors.
Johnson describes the growing water emergency in the context of Sacramento’s push to build housing. Johnson sums it up like this: “If you don’t have water, you’re not going to have housing.”
Hydee Feldstein Soto, candidate for Los Angeles City Attorney 2022, and John Heath, president of the United Homeowners’ Association based in Los Angeles, describe their efforts to get solutions-based housing policy from Sacramento legislators.
Feldstein Soto says, “Dictating from on high will not work.” Heath adds. “Sacramento is facilitating a massive transfer of wealth from low-income communities to Wall Street.”
Mike Griffiths, Torrance City Council member and founder of California Cities for Local Control doesn’t think state legislators set sound housing policy when they make sweeping mandates for communities they have never stepped foot in and know nothing about.
Griffiths and his all-volunteer team have recruited dozens of cities and hundreds of city council members to sign a Resolution objecting to the state’s top- down, one-size-fits-all mandates.
Susan Kirsch, founder of Catalysts, and Guy Meyer, 5-year host of Marin Cable-TV’s eclectic California Times, announce a new, six-part series of 30-minute interviews focusing on housing called “Catalysts in California Times.”
“Thousands of Californians are in the dark about Sacramento’s ambitious housing legislation that strips away local control,” says Kirsch.