Feb 12, 2025 | Housing, Politics
By Jessica Flores, Reporter
Feb 12, 2025
As day laborers go into hiding, labor experts say the workforce withdrawal could exacerbate the labor shortage and worsen the housing crisis. Shirley Pablo and Annia Lopez walked down East 12th Street in Oakland on a cold Wednesday morning, each pulling a foldable wagon filled with oranges, water bottles, granola bars, disposable face masks and “red cards” listing a person’s constitutional rights. The outreach workers approached four men chatting on the sidewalk near the intersection.
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 2, 2025 | Housing, Legislation, Politics
By KATE TALERICO
UPDATED: January 2, 2025
Developers who have reaped millions of dollars from an affordable housing program for middle-income renters with sometimes little-to-no discounts from market rents have spent hundreds of thousands on lobbying and campaign donations in recent years in a bid to keep lawmakers from imposing regulations. The expenditures represent a fraction of the $32 million the California real estate industry as a whole spent on lobbying the state legislature and the executive branch in the past three years.
Dec 23, 2024 | Opinion, Politics
By DAVID NEWMAN
December 23, 2024
There is a startling contradiction at the heart of Bay Area politics. On the one hand, the Bay Area is an unabashed “blue” stronghold, defining itself by its support for diversity and tolerance. Yet its resistance to building new homes cuts against these values. Experts have proven that suppressing housing is fundamentally regressive, massively increasing segregation, per-capita carbon emissions and rents. The opposition to development is kneecapping the Democratic Party on a national level.
Dec 19, 2024 | Politics
By Zelda Bronstein
December 19, 2024
Berkeley’s new mayor, education consultant Adena Ishii, is a Yimby with scant experience in the town’s governance and politics. To be sure, Berkeley has had a Yimby mayor for most of the past eight years. But Jesse Arreguín’s Yimbyism was an acquired taste. He was first elected mayor in 2016 on an anti-Yimby platform. Shortly after taking office, he jumped onto the antidemocratic, “pro-housing” bandwagon.
Dec 8, 2024 | Politics, Opinion
December 8, 2024
Originally published February 3, 2023
Writing for American Greatness, Edward Ring makes the case that political optimism is a revolutionary defense against the radical Left’s fearmongering. Ring breaks down why auspicious outlooks on governance challenges lead to creative innovation and “everything good” — despite (as we see daily in Santa Clara County) pressures for local media outlets to emphasize reactionary, polarizing content.
