Tom Wolf, once homeless and struggling with addiction, now advocates for our unhoused neighbors as director of West Coast Initiatives for the Foundation For Drug Policy Solutions. In an op-ed for The Voice of SF, Wolf breaks down where he thinks Proposition 47 fell miserably short, and how Prop 47 reform could promote safety, accountability, and healing for those needing help in our communities.
Read MoreA year ago, the LA Alliance successfully sued LA City and County regarding hugely expensive and wildly ineffective gov't homelessness programs. Now, reports the excellent Berkeley Scanner, nine East Bay business and property owners have filed a lawsuit against Berkeley regarding the longstanding Harrison St. homeless camp.
Read MoreThe University of Austin, founded recently by classically liberal scholars, has turned heads for being an alternative to narrow-minded Woke colleges (hear that, SJSU?). In a moving convocation speech to UATX's first class ('28), president Pano Kanelos unravels why we learn, how true “revolution” is education's grail, and what Plato's Akademy can offer the Bay Area's world of fast news and free speech antis.
Read MoreFrustration is mounting among business owners in Santa Monica, where incidents of crime and widespread homelessness are affecting daily operations for the coastal community. LA Local TV 11 reports.
Read MoreIt's easy, after scanning the tenth article about who has access to keys to SJ Parks, to get skeptical about the status of our local political discourse. Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti finds a way out—reclaiming wonder—from his "A Coney Island of the Mind," 1958.
Read MoreThere's been a lot of discussion in the Opp Now community about the risks and benefits of AI—as workers, as writers, as artists, and as polemicists. Jacobin magazine's Marianela D’Aprile chimes in with an essay worrying about the potential anti-social elements of AI, as it might strip away our ability to think for ourselves and understand others.
Read MoreNot long after SJ's Housing Dept was blistered by an internal audit over lax oversight of housing nonprofits, a grand jury rips the County Housing Authority re: mishandling property transactions. The Merc reports.
Read MoreProp 5 would make it easier for local taxes and regional bonds like RM4 to pass in the future, by reducing the threshold for approval from two-thirds to 55%. In Part 3 of this exclusive Opp Now series, past mayor Lydia Kou warns that voters will lose their leverage—surrendering it to wasteful, out-of-touch Sacramento pols—if they choose to set a lower bar for approval. With pressure to meet the state’s "impossible" housing need assessment, bonds that don't even target affordability could require property owners to subsidize people who make more than them.
Read MoreSays past Palo Alto mayor Lydia Kou: Sacramento completely failed at promoting housing production, yet still wants cities to comply with the “un-compliable” Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). In Part 2 of this Opp Now exclusive, Kou explains how cities that fail to meet the RHNA cycle midpoint quota by 2026 will lose control of the approvals process. Expensive, lousy projects will fall short of RHNA but still plague midpen neighborhoods with traffic congestion, environmental havoc, and an unraveling of the social fabric.
Read MoreCalifornia is one of 10 states to employ a full-time legislature, while the remaining 40 others propose and pass bills part-time. In the OC Register, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association president Jon Coupal argues that full-time lawmakers—effectively “professional politicians"—haven't proved they're worth the extra cost to taxpayers. More beneficial than allocating extra time for legislature (a fair promotion?), says Coupal, would be ensuring they make informed, grounded decisions.
Read MoreAccording to former Palo Alto mayor Lydia Kou, it’s not only arrogance and sloppy math that undid RM4, the $20 billion housing bond that got unceremoniously yanked off the November ballot at the eleventh hour. In Part 1 of this Opp Now exclusive, Kou argues that the measure’s failure can be traced back to an impossible housing needs assessment figure, which was pushed through with little to no public input.
Read MoreGreg Totten, CEO of CA District Attorney's Association, spells out three of California's biggest crises that Proposition 36 seeks to ameliorate (via tougher crime legislation and mandated treatment protocols): retail theft, fentanyl, and homelessness. Totten's in-depth analysis of these problems, as well as Prop 36's proposed tweaks to Prop 47, reads below. From a chat with California Insider.
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