Bay Area – Page 3

Is a California Housing Revolution on the Horizon?

February 25, 2018 By Michael Hendrix 8 Comments

From downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica, train commuters on the Expo Line journey from asphalt to ocean through some of the most expensive real estate in the United States. Each train pulls into stations of low-slung buildings that soon fade into vast expanses of single-family homes. The view from Los Angeles is hardly unique. Commuters from San Diego to the Bay Area and Sacramento see low-rise suburbs as the norm. And everything costs a fortune.

That might begin to change if the state legislature passes a bill addressing local land-use regulations. Introduced by Scott Wiener, a Harvard-educated attorney and state senator, Senate Bill 827 would effectively abolish zoning restrictions in Wiener’s district of San Francisco and for significant portions of the state’s most populous areas — and likely produce a boom in new housing construction. SB 827 sweeps away many local limits on height, density, and design within a half-mile of a train station—such as for BART or CalTrain—and within a quarter-mile of stops on high-frequency bus routes. So-called transit-rich zones would see local height limits lifted to anywhere from 45 feet to 85 feet—roughly from four to eight stories—depending on factors such as street width and station proximity. Cities could build taller, but they could not require that buildings be shorter. New projects built near transit hubs would also be exempted from minimum parking requirements. And as long as a particular project is up to code, no municipality could introduce design standards preventing developers from including the maximum number of units possible in a building.

Wiener hopes to fight sprawl by allowing Californians more opportunities to live closer to public transit, and to address climate concerns by reducing their need to drive. To Wiener, a liberal Democrat, housing is also about social justice. He believes progressives have “lost their way on housing,” as he told Forbes recently. Young people, the poor, and the elderly are demanding shelter only to find its supply limited by stringent regulations. “Gentrification is fueled by a lack of housing,” Wiener argues. “When there isn’t enough housing and rents skyrocket, landlords have an economic incentive to push out long-term renters by raising the rent or evicting them.”

Nearly a third of households in California’s metro areas can’t afford rent, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. A majority of these rent-squeezed households—some 3.7 million—are in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. In San Francisco and Oakland, even making $90,000 a year barely puts one above the affordability threshold. California’s affordability crisis is rooted in a housing crisis: not nearly enough homes are being built to keep up with demand. “We under-produce by about 100,000 housing units every year, and we have a housing debt that’s growing,” Wiener says. The most feasible way to pay off that housing debt, he believes, is to let developers build more units in concentrated areas.

Housing is the most pressing issue in California politics. Last year, Governor Jerry Brown signed 15 bills aimed at tackling housing affordability. Senate Bill 35, for instance, forces almost all of California’s cities to approve projects that complied with current zoning rules. Another bill placed a measure on the 2018 ballot directing nearly $1 billion a year to subsidize new low-income housing. These efforts are part of a growing trend in Sacramento to preempt local restrictions on housing. Some of these measures, such as a 2016 law easing the approval of new “accessory dwelling units” statewide, appear to be working. Los Angeles is seeing a 20-fold rise in applications for these so-called “granny flats,” built in backyards or above garages.

Transit-oriented development has assumed sacred status among Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) progressives popping up across California. The ideal scenario for lowering the barriers to housing density near transit is to get more with less: more housing and affordability with less displacement and sprawl. The result is a traditional Main Street for the twenty-first century. After all, compact, mixed-use developments, accessible by foot, were the norm until the rise of the automobile and institution of zoning laws.

Building more housing is broadly popular in California. Sixty-four percent are in favor of more housing in their cities, according to a PPIC poll of the state. In San Francisco, some 70 percent support building more housing to alleviate cost burdens. Leaders in Los Angeles have formulated a plan to add 6,000 new homes within a half-mile of Expo Line stops between Culver City and Santa Monica.

Of course, building in someone else’s backyard is always more popular than construction in your own. Most instances of transit-oriented development, such as the kind that Arlington, Virginia, has pursued, take the shape of a corridor running through—but not impinging on—preexisting tracts of single-family homes. Los Angeles’s Expo Line housing plan up-zoned 250 acres while leaving the surrounding 2,000 acres of homes untouched.

Wiener’s proposal is more aggressive: it would immediately up-zone nearly all of San Francisco, as well as South Los Angeles’s sprawling landscape of single-family homes. Transit corridors in Oakland, San Diego, San Jose, and Sacramento would be able to build for demand. Nearly 3 million housing units could be situated within a half-mile of transit hubs throughout California. With fewer permitting rules, units could be built faster and with a greater variety of housing types between a home and a high-rise.

Critics of SB 827 fear displacement. Los Angeles city councilman Paul Koretz has labeled SB 827 “devastating,” telling the Los Angeles Times that his Westside neighborhood of “little 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s single-family homes [would] look like Dubai 10 years later,” and without any public say in the matter. Damien Goodmon, founder of the Crenshaw Subway Coalition in Los Angeles, calls the bill a “declaration of war,” seeing it as a mask for large-scale gentrification. Laying on the hyperbole, Goodmon calls Wiener “a modern-day Andrew Jackson” pushing “a legislative agenda to enact a 21st century Trail of Tears.” Housing availability does not mean housing affordability, these critics say; only subsidies and public housing can achieve that.

Wiener acknowledges that his bill is a “heavy lift and isn’t guaranteed to pass” in its current form. There will likely be revisions as it winds its way through committee, with added provisions addressing housing displacement and demolition. Observers believe that Governor Brown, in his final year in office, would likely sign such a bill if it reached his desk. But whether it passes or not, SB 827 shifts the window of acceptable discourse dramatically in favor of market-oriented reforms of housing policy. On that basis alone, Scott Wiener has positioned himself as a visionary reformer of California’s housing crisis.

Michael Hendrix is director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute.

This article was originally published by City Journal

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, Scott Wiener

Housing bill with $230 million cost estimated to save renters only $20 per month

February 21, 2018 By Chris Reed 2 Comments

State Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, and 16 co-sponsors have introduced legislation that sounds like a bold move to address the high cost of housing. Glazer’s Senate Bill 1182 would double the state tax credit for renters. But that turns out to only mean a maximum annual savings of $240.

The last time the rental tax credit was increased, in 1979, it set the credit at $10 per month for an individual filer and $20 a month for joint filers, with eligibility capped by total income. Senate Bill 1182 would increase the cap to $20 per month for individuals and $40 per month for joint filers. To be eligible, individuals have to have gross incomes of $40,078 or less and joint filers have to have incomes of $80,156 or less.

One-bedroom apartments routinely go for $1,700 or more per month in most metropolitan areas and the average home sale is above $500,000 in most of Southern California and over $1 million in the Bay Area. Glazer’s credit would mean that joint filers paying the average rent go from spending $20,160 in a year to spending $19,920 – a 1.2 percent savings. Individual filers paying the average rent would drop from $20,280 a year to $20,160 – a 0.6 percent savings. The percentage savings on a typical mortgage would be much lower.

In his news release announcing the legislation, Glazer noted attempts by the Legislature on many fronts to make it easier to build more housing, starting with streamlining regulations and giving qualified projects guaranteed approvals. He said these efforts could take years before they began helping Californians.

“None of those measures directed relief to the monthly budgets of struggling renters,” Glazer said. “The renter’s tax credit does.”

Three Republicans among co-sponsors

The news release listed these lawmakers, including three Republicans, as co-authors: Sens. Jim Beall, D-San Jose; Steve Bradford, D-Gardena: Bill Dodd, D-Napa; Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton; Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo; Ben Hueso, D-San Diego; Connie Leyva, D-Chino; Josh Newman, D-Fullerton; Janet Nguyen, R-Fountain Valley; Richard Pan, D-Sacramento; Anthony Portantino, D-Glendale; Richard Roth, D-Riverside; Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley; Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont; Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita; and Assemblyman Tom Lackey, R-Palmdale.

Glazer’s office said the higher renters’ tax credit would cost the state $230 million in annual revenue.

There are other restrictions on eligibility for the renters’ tax credit besides income caps, the Franchise Tax Board’s website notes. They include:

– Tax filers need to have paid rent for at least six months for shelter that served as their principal residence.

– The rented property was not on a parcel exempt from state property tax.

– The property was not shared for more than six months with a parent or a guardian or any individual who could claim the tax filer as a dependent.

– The tax filer was not a minor living with a legal guardian, parent or foster parent.

Glazer, 60, a former political and development consultant and aide to Gov. Jerry Brown, won a May 2015 special election to fill the final 19 months of Mark DeSaulnier’s state Senate seat after DeSaulnier was elected to Congress in 2014. He won a full four-year term in 2016.

This articles was originally published by CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Bay Area, Housing affordability, Jerry Brown, Southern California, Steve Glazer

Bay Area Takes Police-State Approach to Tobacco

November 25, 2017 By Steven Greenhut 2 Comments

The 2014 death of Eric Garner spurred Black Lives Matter protests. In fact, Garner’s final words — “I can’t breathe” — became a rallying cry for the movement designed to combat overly aggressive police behavior. Garner was approached by police for allegedly selling “loosies” — individual cigarettes sold without the proper tax stamps. He died after being held in a chokehold.

The ensuing national debate — if you can call a series of protests, riots and football-game kneeling a debate — has been remarkable given the degree to which both entrenched sides have avoided discussing the main causes of the problem.

Conservatives instinctively defend the police while ignoring the way police unions (which often back Democrats, by the way) protect bad behavior and bad policies in the same way as teachers’ unions make it nearly impossible to fire incompetent and misbehaving “educators.” Progressives would have us believe that such problems are entirely the product of racism.

And progressives are unable to answer the obvious question: What were police doing arresting someone for possibly selling a few loose cigarettes? It’s simple: New York City and other liberal locales are intent on regulating virtually every aspect of human behavior. The more piddling rules they pass, the more those rules invite potentially dangerous police encounters.

Think of that in the context of New York’s leftist Mayor Bill de Blasio, a harsh police critic who recently held a press conference with the city’s police leadership announcing a crackdown on that budding “menace” of people who ride environmentally friendly electric-assisted bicycles. We’ve reached the point where it’s impossible to tell which things the professional uplifters want to subsidize — and which things they want to punish and ban.

This brings us to the nation’s other progressive bastion, the San Francisco Bay Area. One can count on that region’s progressives to protest some of the questionable policing techniques that have been in the news in recent years, but they can’t seem to comprehend the way their own policies contribute to the problem.

For instance, San Francisco, Oakland, Novato, Contra Costa County, and elsewhere have recently approved far-reaching bans on the sale of flavored tobacco products. The definition of tobacco is broad and includes electronic cigarettes, which contain nicotine but not tobacco. They also ban many smokeless tobacco and snus — other products that former smokers use to help break a dangerous habit. But more on that point in a moment.

Throughout most of the Bay Area, then, it will soon be illegal to sell a wide range of otherwise legal and popular products. The main target is menthol cigarettes, which are popular in the African-American community. I attended an Oakland City Council meeting where the ban was debated. Several residents raised that very point — that police might increase their presence in city neighborhoods to combat the sale of now-outlawed cigarettes. Council members dismissed the concern by arguing that it’s only illegal to sell menthol cigarettes, not to possess them.

Well, yes, but consider the process by which people will come into their possession. Menthol cigarette sales are banned in two of the largest area cities and a major county. This means that residents who don’t switch to other, equally dangerous forms of tobacco will have to drive outside of the area to buy them. Many will buy them in bulk and — you got it — sell “loosies” on street corners and cartons out of their car trunks. Police will set up sting operations and … there you go.

Bay Area politicians are inviting problems. Once again, we see that despite its façade of humanitarianism, progressivism is mainly about using the force of government to crack down on the things progressives simply don’t like. And they really don’t like Big Tobacco, so other progressive ideas get tossed aside as well.

The attack on tobacco use is based on some legitimate public-health concerns, of course. You’d be hard-pressed to find any sentient being who doesn’t understand that smoking combustible cigarettes is a sure path to an early grave. But California’s health officials refuse to acknowledge what Great Britain’s main health agency has found — that vaping is 95 percent safer than traditional cigarette smoking. The Brits urge policymakers to encourage vaping.

California officials, and Bay Area zealots in particular, consider vaping just another dangerous form of cigarette smoking. Bay Area “vapers” will find it particularly difficult to buy e-cigarettes and vaping liquids. If it’s too hard to find them — or if they don’t want to head to the streets to buy them illicitly — they might stick with the far-more dangerous smoking habit. That undermines public health. But there’s no reasoning with people on a crusade. Next summer’s referendum of the new San Francisco law will determine if city residents are as unreasonable as their leaders.

It’s pretty ironic, though. Bay Area cities have long been proud — to the point of smugness, actually — about their progressive approach toward “harm reduction” in the area of sexual behavior and drug addiction. Harm reduction calls for practical strategies that reduce the ills of the bad behavior rather than insisting that those engaged in the bad behavior go cold turkey.

It’s why San Francisco has touted “safe sex” rather than abstinence and needle-exchange programs rather than a police-driven drug war to deal with the city’s heroin-addiction problem. From a public-health standpoint, these strategies are quite effective. They are also wise from a taxpayer standpoint, given that it’s such a waste of police resources to focus on social ills rather than serious crime.

But just as Californians have voted to legalize marijuana for recreational uses, some of its biggest cities are determined to send tobacco sales into the black market. Doesn’t this unmask the hypocrisy of the Left? They want to ban, arrest, prosecute, and harass. And they won’t have any idea what happened the next time someone is tragically killed or injured as they peddle black-market menthol cigarettes in a Tenderloin alley.

This article was originally published by the American Spectator

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Bay Area, Law Enforcement, Police, Tobacco

Oakland Mayor Urges Residents to Take in Homeless

November 5, 2017 By Adelle Nazarian 16 Comments

During her annual State of the City address on Thursday, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf called on her constituents to open their doors and residences to the city’s homeless, as union workers picketed against her for her administration’s handling of the city’s rampant housing problem.

“Give up that Airbnb. Fix up that back unit,” Schaff said, encouraging property owners to lease apartments at more affordable rates to recently homeless individuals, according tothe San Francisco Chronicle.

“In Oakland, we don’t step over the homeless we step toward them,” Schaaf said.

The city’s uptick in vagrants is tied to a general gentrification in the Bay Area, stemming from San Francisco, where artists and innovators unable to afford skyrocketing rents have migrated to Oakland.

In May, the Chronicle noted that a survey by Everyone Counts found that the number of homeless persons in Oakland had increased by 25 percent since two years ago.

Outside Schaaf’s Thursday event and planned festivities, hundreds of Service Employees International Union (SEIU )Local 102 union workers — ranging from librarians to street cleaners to city employees — reportedly picketed against the mayor. According to the Chronicle, their stated aim was to draw attention to “the real state of Oakland,” as opposed to the one Schaaf presented on Thursday.

All eight City Council members reportedly said they chose not to attend to because of the demonstration.

Despite their protests, the Chronicle noted that Schaaf said she had great respect for the protesters who were “expressing Oakland values” and speaking “truth to power.”

Schaaf also took the opportunity to rail against President Donald Trump, specifically choosing to hold her event at the Islamic Cultural Center. She did so, she reportedly said, to send “one clear message. And that is that Oakland welcome and honor all people, all families, and all communities.”

Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

This article was originally published by Breitbart.com/California

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Bay Area, Homeless, Libby Schaaf, oakland

Progressive Cities: Home of the Worst Housing Inequality

October 18, 2017 By Wendell Cox Leave a Comment

America’s most highly regulated housing markets are also reliably the most progressive in their political attitudes. Yet in terms of gaining an opportunity to own a house, the price impacts of the tough regulation mean profound inequality for the most disadvantaged large ethnicities, African-Americans and Hispanics.

Based on the housing affordability categories used in the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey for 2016 (Table 1), housing inequality by ethnicity is the worst among the metropolitan areas rated “severely unaffordable.” In these 11 major metropolitan area markets, the most highly regulated, median multiples (median house price divided by median household income) exceed 5.0. For African-Americans, the median priced house is 10.2 times median incomes. This is 3.7 more years of additional income than the overall average in these severely unaffordable markets, where median house prices are 6.5 times median household incomes. It is only marginally better for Hispanics, with the median price house at 8.9 times median household incomes, 2.4 years more than the average in these markets (Figure 1).

The comparisons with the 13 affordable markets (median multiples of 3.0 and less) is even more stark. For African-American households things are much better than in the more progressive and most expensive metropolitan areas. The median house prices is equal to 4.6 years of median income, 5.5 years less than in the severely affordable markets. Moreover, for African-Americans, housing affordability is only marginally worse than the national average in the affordable market.

Things are even better for Hispanics, who would find the median house price 3.8 times median incomes, 5.1 years less than in the severely affordable markets. This is better than the national average housing affordability.

Among the four markets rated “seriously unaffordable,” (median multiple from 4.1 to 5.0) the inequality is slightly less, with African-Americans finding median house prices equal to 2.2 years of additional income compared to average. The disadvantage for Hispanics is 1.5 years.

In contrast, inequality is significantly reduced in the less costly “moderately unaffordable” markets (median multiple of 3.1 to 4.0) and the “affordable” markets (median multiple of 3.0 and less).

The discussion below describes the 10 largest and smallest housing affordability gaps for African-American and Hispanic households relative to the average household, within the particular metropolitan markets. The gaps within ethnicities compared to the affordable markets would be even more. The four charts all have the same scale (a top housing affordability gap of 10 years) for easy comparison.

Largest Housing Affordability Gaps: African American

African-Americans have the largest housing affordability inequality gap. And these gaps are most evident in some of the nation’s most progressive cities. The largest gap is in San Francisco, where the median income African-American household faces median house prices that are 9.3 years of income more than the average. In nearby San Jose ranks the second worst, where the gap is 6.2 years. Overall, the San Francisco Bay Area suffers by far the area of least housing affordability for African-Americans compared to the average household.

Portland, long the darling of the international urban planning community, ranks third worst, where the median income African-American household to purchase the median priced house. Milwaukee and Minneapolis – St. Paul ranked fourth and fifth worst followed by Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Chicago (Figure 2).

Largest Housing Affordability Gaps: Hispanics

Two of the three worst positions are occupied by the two metropolitan areas in the San Francisco Bay Area. The worst housing affordability gap for Hispanics is in San Jose, a more than one-quarter Hispanic metropolitan area where the median income Hispanic household would require 5.0 years of additional income to pay for the median priced house compared to the average. Boston ranks second worst at 3.9. San Francisco third worst at 3.3 years. Providence and New York rank fourth and fifth worst. The second five worst housing inequality for Hispanics is in San Diego, Hartford, Rochester, Philadelphia and Raleigh (Figure 3).

The San Francisco Bay Area: “Inequality City”

Perhaps no part of the country is more renowned for its progressive politics and politicians than the San Francisco Bay Area. Yet, in housing equality, the Bay Area is anything but progressive. If the African-American and Hispanic housing inequality measures are averaged, disadvantaged minorities face house prices that average approximately 6.25 years more years of median income in San Francisco and 5.60 more years of median income in San Jose.

Moreover, no one should imagine that recent state law authorizing a $4 billion “affordable housing” bond election will have any significant impact. According to the Sacramento Bee, voter approval would lead to 70,000 new housing units annually, when the need for low and very low income households is 1.5 million. The bond issue would do virtually nothing for the many middle-income households who are struggling to pay the insanely high housing costs California’s regulatory nightmare has developed.

Smallest Housing Affordability Gaps: African-American

Tucson has the smallest housing affordability gap for African-Americans. In Tucson, the median income African-American household would pay approximately 0.4 years (four months) more in income for the median priced house than the average household. In San Antonio, Atlanta and Tampa – St. Petersburg, the housing affordability gaps are under 1.0. Houston, Riverside – San Bernardino, Virginia Beach – Norfolk, Memphis, Dallas – Fort Worth and Birmingham round out the second five. It may be surprising that eight of the metropolitan areas with the smallest housing affordability gaps for African-Americans are in the South and perhaps most surprisingly of all that one of the best, at number 10, is Birmingham. (Figure 4).

Smallest Housing Affordability Gaps: Hispanic

Among Hispanic households, the smallest housing affordability gap is in Pittsburgh, where the median priced house would require less than 10 days more in median income for a Hispanic household compared the overall average. In Jacksonville the housing affordability gap for Hispanics would be less than two months. In Baltimore, Birmingham, St. Louis and Cincinnati, the median house price is the equivalent of less than six months of median income for an Hispanic household. Detroit, Memphis, Virginia Beach – Norfolk and Cleveland round out the ten smallest housing affordability gaps for Hispanics (Figure 5).

Housing Affordability is the Best for Asians

Recent American Community Survey data indicated that Asians have median household incomes a quarter above those of White Non-– Hispanics. This advantage is also illustrated in the housing affordability data. Asians have better housing affordability than White Non-– Hispanics in 37 of the 53 major metropolitan areas (over 1 million population).

The Importance of Housing Opportunity

Housing opportunity is important. African-Americans and Hispanics already face challenges given their generally lower incomes. However, by no serious political philosophy, progressive or otherwise, should any ethnicity find themselves even further disadvantaged by political barriers, such as have been created by over-zealous land and housing regulators.

Cross-posted at New Geography.

Wendell Cox a is visiting professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: affordable housing, Bay Area, Development, Housing, Housing affordability, san francisco, Wendell Cox

Taxpayers pay for lobbying in Sacramento

August 22, 2017 By Jon Coupal 3 Comments

The latest lobbying reports are out in Sacramento, showing how much special interests are spending to influence lawmakers. After reading the reports, you can’t blame taxpayers for feeling like the man who has been unjustly condemned to the gallows and is compelled to pay for the rope that will hang him.

When asked who spends the most currying favor with members of the Legislature, many folks will say “Big Oil” or maybe drug or insurance companies. Not even close. Those who name government employee unions as the big spenders would be wrong, too, but at least they would be getting warmer. (Unions, which thrive on involuntary “contributions,” have a huge influence on the activities of the biggest spender of all).

Far and away, the lobbying champs are California’s myriad of local governments. Through the first six months of this year, cities, counties, schools and other special districts have spent $24.3 million on influencing Sacramento lawmakers. And it is a safe bet that these governments are not spending this taxpayer money to promote tax cuts for average citizens. In fact, in many cases, they are spending tax dollars to advance their objective of wringing even more out of already beleaguered taxpayers.

Local government officials use high-sounding rhetoric to justify not spending these millions of dollars on fixing potholes, hiring first responders or addressing other pressing needs of the local community. To best serve their constituents, they will argue, it is important that they have a voice in lawmaking that may impact local jurisdictions.

Closer to the truth would be that local governments want to make sure they get a share of the “spoils” in our very high-tax state. And sometimes they seek more than a share of state revenue, they want special exemptions to allow them to increase local taxes beyond what state law allows.

A number of jurisdictions have sought and received exemptions from laws limiting the local sales tax, and in one case, nine Bay Area counties asked for, and received, an OK to create a huge taxing district to impose a parcel property tax on all residents, even though some lived many miles from the improvements for which they are being charged.

However, one of the motivators that keeps local government officials constantly scrounging for more revenue is, just like their brethren in Sacramento, so many are beholden to the most powerful political force in California, the government employee unions. Just like many state legislators, they owe their election to union support. These unions provide campaign cash and boots on the ground in election season. So, when it is time to sit down and discuss pay, the unions are represented on both sides of the table and taxpayers, if they are considered at all, are an afterthought.

With this constant pressure to raise funds for pay, benefits and pensions for local government workers, it should come as no surprise that local officials are willing to spend millions in the hope that state government will funnel more money back into local coffers and smooth the way for increasing the already exorbitant taxes locals are paying. Of course, savvy taxpayers understand that debates about where tax money comes from — be it state, local or even federal dollars — are a ruse. Every penny comes from the same location, our pockets.

The question local taxpayers must decide is whether or not money that could be used to solve local problems should continue to be spent “wining and dining” the Sacramento politicians. Certainly, the government employee unions think that this investment in Sacramento by local officials is a good deal for them.

Jon Coupal is the president of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

This article was originally published by CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Bay Area, HJTA, Jon Coupal, taxes, Taxpayers, unions

San Francisco’s ban on menthol cigarettes is liberalism at its worst

July 8, 2017 By Matthew Walther 11 Comments

In San Francisco, megalomaniacal tech millionaires gorge themselves on exorbitantly priced plates of nettle fazzoletti while thousands of people live in unimaginable squalor. If you are interested in dropping some coin to attend a live performance of something called Public Disgrace, featuring “sex between male dominant and female submissive; domination by female and male dom; secure bondage, gags, hoods, fondling, flogging, and forced orgasms with vibrators,” the City by the Bay has you covered.

If, on the other hand, you are one of the city’s lucky homeless, yuppie public health fanatics might graciously allow you the privilege of soiling yourself in public without the risk of a jail sentence.

But as of next April, it will be illegal to purchase menthol cigarettes in San Francisco.

For the knowledge workers indulging in “burgundy-braised lamb cupcakes with beet-whipped mashed potato frosting and chive sprinkles,” this arbitrary and capricious prohibition of a substance that offers less rarefied pleasure to thousands of their fellow citizens will not seem like much of a setback. Nor will they find fault with the reasoning of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that menthols are “starter products” that are “typically marketed to vulnerable populations including children and young adults, African Americans, and LGBTQ people.” I mean, like, seriously.

How many of these cauliflower popcorn-eaters and consensual BDSM aficionados have ever taken a big drag from a Newport Menthol 100? The assumption that African-Americans enjoy menthol cigarettes because they are the hapless dupes of Big Tobacco is the sort of risible condescension characteristic of liberalism at its worst.

It never occurs to me the 30 or so times a day when I put another tube of brown leaves in my mouth and flick my lighter to say, “Man, this is so good for my health.” But the fact that cigarettes are bad is not exactly occult knowledge. Millions of us smoke anyway and will never quit, San Francisco do-gooders be damned.

Has it ever occurred to self-satisfied liberals that some people smoke menthols, or any other kind of cigarette, because they find it enjoyable, the same way that some of their fellows get a kick out of watching women being contractually beaten and spat upon, albeit without the consequences to their immortal souls?

I also find it impossible to make sense of the city’s argument that the “financial cost to San Francisco in direct health-care expenses and lost productivity from tobacco use is estimated at around $380 million a year.” Never mind the rune-casting arithmancy involved in assuming that every person who has ever taken so much as a puff of a cigarette and then in the course of his three-score years and ten gone in for a routine physical is costing the city money directly attributable to the existence of the demon leaf. Far more mystifying — indeed mystical — is the notion that it is possible to calculate “lost productivity.” How do they know that people aren’t working harder because they have smoke breaks to keep them going?

But this isn’t only a question of public accounting jujitsu. It is far more sinister and pernicious. To say that smokers can ever ipso facto “cost” their fellow citizens money in “lost productivity” is to claim that they are not human beings made in the image of God but rather specimens of Homo economicus — animate clusters of matter whose telos is contributing to the increase in our per capita gross domestic product. It is the same argument that used to be made by General Motors against line workers who, before the Great Flint Sit-Down Strike, were haughty enough to imagine they might be allowed to have conversations at lunch time. People are not economic variables — they are, well, people.

The consequences of the menthol ban are as predictable as they are unfortunate. People will not simply give up their cherished habit, especially when the product in question is available in nearby jurisdictions. Instead, this over-taxed consumable will become an illicit substance, and a black market for menthols will flourish. Is this really a prudent public policy decision at a time when selling loosie cigarettes can get you killed by the police on the opposite coast? This is exactly the point that Al Sharpton argued earlier this year at a series of public forums that banning menthols would only give law enforcement another excuse to lock up minorities.

I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with the good reverend here. Banning menthols is class warfare at its ugliest.

This article was originally published by The Week.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Bay Area, cigarettes, Nanny State, san francisco, Smoking

The California Economy’s Surface Strength Hides Looming Weakness

May 31, 2017 By Joel Kotkin 2 Comments

If you listen to California’s many boosters, things have never been so good. And, to be sure, since 2011, the state appears to have gained its economic footing, and outperformed many of its rivals.

Some, such as Los Angeles Magazine and Bloomberg, claim that it is California — not the bumbling Trump regime — that is “making America great again.” California, with 2 percent job growth in 2016, gained jobs more rapidly than most states. The growth rate was about equal to Texas and Colorado, but behind such growth centers as Florida, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Utah and the District of Columbia.

Bay Area: Still the tower of power

Over the past few years, the Bay Area has grown faster in terms of jobs than anywhere in the nation. But this year, according to the annual survey of the nation’s 70 largest job markets that I do with Pepperdine University public policy professor Michael Shires for Forbes, there is a discernible slowing in the region. For the first time this decade, San Francisco lost its No. 1 slot to Dallas, which, like most other fastest-growing metros, boasts lower costs and taxes, and has created more middle-class jobs than its California rivals.

The San Francisco area, which includes suburban San Mateo, remains vibrant. More troubling may be the weakening of the adjacent San Jose/Silicon Valley economy, which dropped six places to eighth — respectable, but not the kind of superstar performance we have seen over the past several years.

This partly reflects an inevitable slowdown in information job growth. As the startup economy has stalled, and the big players have consolidated their dominance, sector growth has dropped from near double digits to well under half that. Perhaps more telling has been a shift in domestic migration, which was positive in San Francisco earlier in the decade, but has now turned sharply negative. These are clear signs of a boom that is cooling off.

Southern California: Stuck in second gear

Southern California continues to lag. San Diego managed only a mediocre 29th-place finish. That’s better than Orange County, which managed an even less impressive 37th, and Los Angeles, by far the state’s largest job market, which reached only 40th place.

In Southern California, many seem to mistake high housing prices for economic vigor. High prices do create a wealth effect for those who own property, and this creates ancillary jobs in home repair and real estate. The area has also benefited from something of a boom in hospitality, medical and educational jobs.

But this does not make up for less-than-stellar creation of high-wage jobs. Los Angeles has expanded information jobs, much of them tied to Hollywood and the media-oriented “Tech Coast” corridor along coastal Southern California, but it continues to lose blue-collar manufacturing jobs. Professional business growth has been weakening since 2013. Lower-wage jobs in the health and hospitality industries, meanwhile, have enjoyed more robust expansions. Poverty in Los Angeles, particularly in South L.A., is arguably worse than during the riots a quarter-century ago.

Orange County suffers less from poverty but also sees rapid growth in low-end sectors like hospitality, which has grown almost 20 percent since 2011. Unlike Los Angeles, professional and business service employment — the largest of the high-wage sectors — has seen steady growth, up 20 percent since 2011, but information growth has been weak and manufacturing continues to decline.

Perhaps the biggest surprise may be the 14th-ranked Inland Empire, which has benefited from, among other things, the soaring home prices along the coast. Outside of information jobs, which have declined, the region has seen steady growth in manufacturing, wholesale trade and professional and business services. As much as the middle-class economy still exists in Southern California, it is now solidly ensconced in this region.

Future prospects

In the coming years, California’s claim of being the economic exemplar of the country may be further undermined by legislative overreach. The statewide rise in the minimum wage will hit the lower-wage sector, particularly outside the coastal enclaves. Various plans to boost the welfare state, such as a single-payer health care system that includes the undocumented, and a host of union-driven initiatives, seem certain to drive up costs and impose an ever-heavier tax burden on the state’s struggling middle class.

Perhaps most threatening, over time, may be a host of new environmental laws which will impose enormous burdens on affordable housing, energy prices and industrial growth. The slowdown in tech growth, coupled with a looming decline in the markets as the Trump agenda unravels, could weaken the capital gains juggernaut that has sustained the state through the past decade. Gov. Jerry Brown, under whose watch spending has risen 45 percent, is already predicting a large deficit for next year.

So far this decade, California has defied economic logic, largely due to the explosive growth of Silicon Valley, as well as the effects of rapid real estate appreciation. Yet, these gains have failed to reverse, and in some ways have even exacerbated, the state’s highest-in-the-nation poverty rate, growing inequality and a mounting outmigration of middle-class families. These facts suggest that it’s time to end the celebration and start focusing on how create a more expansive, less feudal California.

Originally published in the Orange County Register.

Cross-posted at New Geography.

Joel Kotkin is editor of NewGeography.com and Presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University.

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