When left-leaning Bay Area pols unite behind candidates, trouble often arises.
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According to citywide neighborhood group Families and Homes, SJ’s greatest long-term planning challenge is not simply a housing shortage—it's an imbalance between housing and jobs. While the proposed Missing Middle program would add significant residential capacity, it does not include a strategy to create the employment needed to support that growth. The result could be greater fiscal strain on an already financially constrained city.
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California’s tax system is designed with a measure of humanity, diverting money back to low-income, working-class families. But a local sales tax for transit on the ballot in five Bay Area counties this November will punish the region’s poorest, with no rebates or any other kind of offset to ameliorate a sudden jump in prices on almost everything. Below are three ways the regressive transit tax hurts the least deserving.
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The town known for single-family homes on spacious acre-lots could soon see a 30-unit townhome development. The Glenwood Avenue project relies on a new state law which allows multifamily housing near transit stops.
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Families and Homes examines potential environmental impacts of the “Missing Middle” Planning Commission recommendation.
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Despite mountains of data to the contrary, the local Housing Industrial Complex is still busy filling local media op-ed pages with dubious and false arguments supporting Housing First, and disputing the success of provisional housing for the homeless. The data speaks for itself, below.
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Sometimes it's so obvious you can't help but laugh. The SF Standard, a large, well-funded online media outlet in that boutique suburb to the north, recently beclowned itself by employing a sad assortment of vulgar media-bias tricks in an effort to smear anti-transit tax advocates. Our Susie Murillo explores the comedy in this Opp Now exclusive.
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How do we save the Bay's troubled transit system? Proponents of a five-county sales tax are peddling misinformation to convince Bay Areans that making everything more expensive is the only solution -- while The SF Standard and KQED take their deceptive talking points at face value. We caught up with Gregg Dieguez, spokesperson for the opposition, who debunks three of their most glaringly unquestioned claims.
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In response to plans to upzone all of San Jose to high-density, multi-unit neighborhoods, the community group Families and Homes warns that the plan could lead to a dramatic loss in the city's tree canopy.
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On the heels of downtown SJ World Cup watch parties devolving into violence, the city of Morgan Hill is reeling after a shooting at an out-of-control, social media-inspired party killed one and left six injured. Morgan Hill Times reports, below.
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Five decades. More than $40bn (no typo) in taxes. And for all this, we get the worst-performing transit agency in the country. Prof Pete Constant chronicles the lost time and money, and how regional transit agencies keep peddling the same dishonest arguments in their quest to keep their grossly mismanaged agencies afloat. An Opp Now exclusive.
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Scanning local media, it sometimes seems like everybody is always in favor spending more taxpayer money on gov't "services," even if those services don't deliver. We highlight some local leaders who advocate for professional fiscal restraint.
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