LOCAL CONTROL BACKERS ATTEMPTING NEW INITIATIVE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 2023, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

         "LOCAL CONTROL BACKERS ATTEMPTING NEW INITIATIVE”

 

        Immediately after state legislators passed the landmark SB 9 and 10 in 2021, taking most local land-use decisions away from city councils and county supervisors, resentful local officials vowed to run a referendum campaign and kill those new laws.

 

        The two measures essentially eliminated R-1 single family zoning everywhere in California, allowing up to six housing units on lots formerly limited to one and making approval automatic for high rise residential buildings on all streets reasonably close to mass transit.

 

        That meant easy permitting, for example, for buildings up to five stories on any street where officials suddenly open a new bus line. It was not limited to areas in walking distance of rail or subway stops.

 

         But the referendum mounted by dozens of local officials never got off the ground that year, partly because the coronavirus pandemic drove the cost of gathering initiative petition signatures to unprecedented heights – as much as $16 per signature in some parts of the San Francisco Bay area.

 

        So the promised anti-density referendum never made the 2022 state ballot and the landmark laws remain on the books. Neither has produced much action as yet, in large part because no one has demonstrated that the authorized new housing would be profitable. There’s also a shortage of construction workers.

 

        By contrast, a previous law allowing “ADUs” – additional dwelling units often called “granny flats” – on virtually all onetime R-1 properties has produced major results. It is hard to find a significant home remodel or rebuild in this state that does not include one. Some cities are making ADUs major policy instruments in efforts to satisfy state housing density requirements.

 

        No one knows whether most of these are occupied by renters or family members of the property owners. But some longtime property owners are downsizing into new ADUs, allowing their adult children and families to move into their properties’ main houses.

 

        Into this picture now step some of the same folks who vowed in 2021 that they’d repeal SB 9 and 10.

 

        They hope to circulate petitions for a new initiative aimed not only at those two laws, but the other housing density requirements now being imposed around California via a spate of new laws passed by pro-density legislators led by Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, who has spearheaded this movement for most of the last decade. Wiener claims only massive new construction can solve the state’s housing shortage, variously estimated at anywhere from 1 million to 3.5 million dwelling units by state authorities over the last five years.

 

        That, of course, ignored the vast store of vacated office buildings, mini-malls and big box stores created by the pandemic. It’s much cheaper and faster to convert them to housing than building new units while fighting off lawsuits and ever-inflating costs for materials, land and labor. Held up by labor unions and legislators until recently, conversions are now taking off.

 

        The putative new initiative would likely not interfere with those changes, because they cause little variation in building footprints and won’t alter neighborhoods.

 

        But it could stymie more attempts by the state to take over land use decisions long the purview of local governments and local ballot measures.

 

        “We’d like to fix the ambiguities some people saw in our previous proposed initiative” said Anita Enander, a city councilwoman and former mayor of Los Altos Hills, near San Jose. “Our new effort should be more generally supportable. It would simply say that when state law and local land use laws conflict, the local ones will prevail. A lot of people don’t want extreme dense housing. They just want to live in their own homes.”

 

        Added Dennis Richards, a former longtime member of the San Francisco planning commission, “Taking this field away from local government is a way of wiping out democracy. People like Wiener are saying it does not matter what local residents think about their own cities, or how they’ve voted.”

 

        Historically, local control has usually won out over centralized planning when Californians have voted on it.  Sponsors of the hoped-for measure say polling indicates 60 percent to 65 percent approval.

 

        Even if it’s not actually that high, don’t bet against this effort once it gets going.

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net 

DANGEROUS PRECEDENT IN NEWSOM’S PG&E PLAN

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2020 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “DANGEROUS PRECEDENT IN NEWSOM’S PG&E  PLAN”

          The devil, goes the old saying about any complicated deal, is always in the details. In the ultra-complicated deal between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the bankrupt Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the potentially perilous devil may lie in one key detail that could cost electric customers around the state many billions of dollars over decades to come.

          Newsom bragged the agreement designed to bring the huge utility out of bankruptcy marks “The end of business as usual for PG&E.” He said this while preoccupied with imposing more and more rules to fight the coronavirus pandemic, but said nothing about one tax provision that immediately duns PG&E’s customers for $1.4 billion.

          This deal certainly could cause big changes for the felonious, twice-convicted PG&E. There would be no dividend paid to stockholders for at least three years, depriving share owners of $4 billion. That’s a major blow to the many small investors who bought PG&E shares for the steady income they once produced.

          The company will also pay about $7.6 billion at no charge to its customers to repay or refinance utility debts. A state observer will monitor PG&E’s safety performance. And the state can buy or break up the company if it doesn’t leave bankruptcy by July 1, selling off the pieces if Newsom and the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) he greatly influences should so choose.

          All this has to be approved by the PUC before the company can escape bankruptcy. Also, victims of the fires started at least in part by PG&E equipment will have to vote to accept an alleged $13.5 billion settlement or federal Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali says he won’t okay the deal.

          The July 1 date is vital because PG&E must be on its own by then to be covered by the state’s new Wildfire Fund, paid for by all electric consumers in the state. Created by a 2019 law known as AB 1054, the fund will reimburse privately-owned utilities like PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric up to $20 billion for fire damage they cause starting this year.

          It’s an unprecedented bailout for corporate wrongdoing and negligence.

          But the tax provision in the out-of-bankruptcy deal sets an equally dangerous precedent. Under the plan, all $1.4 billion in tax benefits PG&E will get from losses during the fires of the last few years will become part of the funding for the victim settlement.

          This would set a pattern the always utility-friendly PUC could follow whenever PG&E or the other utilities propose new settlements with their fire victims, past, present and future.

          For the past 109 years since the PUC began under the Progressive Republican Gov. Hiram Johnson, all outside financial benefits gained by any utility have gone toward keeping electric rates down. The huge PG&E tax writeoff is just such an outside benefit, not resulting directly from gas or electric operations.

          Giving that money to the settlement fund will raise rates for all PG&E customers, piling atop the $2.50 per month they and other electric consumers will pay for the next 15 years for the Wildfire Fund. Customers would pay both for that fund and some of the settlement with victims.

          Newsom has not publicly mentioned this new cost to PG&E’s customers. If anyone could be sure this is a one-time thing, it might not be such a big deal, costing each customer about a buck a month for years to come. Not much if you have money; a problem if you don’t.

          But no so-called consumer advocate except former PUC President Loretta Lynch has complained about the provision. She rightly notes that it marks “the first time a(n outside) revenue stream goes anywhere but to the ratepayers.”

          This provision alone ought to be reason for the PUC to reject the deal. But since current PUC President Marybel Batjer has a history of aiding PG&E, including helping design both the Wildfire Fund and the latest deal, that won’t happen. This arrangement appears greased.

          Which leaves electricity users all over California at far more future financial risk than ever before.

                  

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

REAL ESTATE PRICES DRIVING MOVES FROM STATE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “REAL ESTATE PRICES DRIVING MOVES FROM STATE”

          If you’re a millennial, now aged 18 to 35, there’s a good chance the only major city in California you’re very much interested in moving to is San Francisco. That’s because it’s largely walkable, with plenty of amenities like singles bars and gorgeous parks. And also a lot of high-paying, high-tech jobs if you qualify.

          Millenials may be willing to double- and triple-up so they can live where they like despite high rents, but that same cost factor is driving an unprecedented share of them away from California, says a new study from the Apartment List website (https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/millennial-population-trends/).

          When they get ready to buy, those same millennials are forced out of high-priced cities like San Francisco, Santa Barbara and the coastal parts of Los Angeles, adds the CoreLogic data analysis firm (http://www.corelogic.com/blog/authors/archana-pradhan/2016/11/where-are-households-in-high-cost-markets-buying-homes.aspx#.WDx2TVwl3mc).

          This scene is not unique to California’s higher-priced cities, but also occurs in New York, Chicago’s tonier areas, Boston and Washington, D.C. But it could lead to serious problems for California companies wanting to hire or retain the brightest members of the young-adult generation.

          In San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, where prices have skied in the last three years, 50 out of every 100 households that apply for new home mortgages are buying in nearby counties like Alameda and Contra Costa, where prices are significantly lower. Contra Costa’s median sales price over the last year, for example, was less than half San Francisco’s for comparable properties.

          Now this problem is spreading to nearby Alameda County, home to cities like Oakland and Berkeley, where 34 percent of home loan applications    are for areas even farther from the Bay Area’s urban core.

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, the millennial population decreased by 7.4 percent between 2005 and 2015, with many 18-to-35s decamping to places like Austin, Tex., Charlotte and Houston. The technology industry is strong in those places, but real estate prices and rents are half or less than for comparable properties in the most trendy parts of Los Angeles.

          Overall, says CoreLogic, home prices were up 71 percent in California in that time, with the median statewide home price in mid-2016 reaching $428,000.

          There is no backlash yet, mostly because of foreign buyers, who tend to be among their countries’ affluent, seeking a safe place to invest their riches. The leading buyers of this type have lately been mainland Chinese.

          “This makes it harder for the average person to make a living (in California),” said Sam Khater, a CoreLogic economist. “That means less teachers, fire fighters, retail workers and more. It’s causing the entire state to be more expensive.”

          Or, as a Silicon Valley executive complained earlier this year, “I pay some of my people with master’s degrees $70,000 and $80,000 a year and they still have no hope of buying a house anywhere near where they work.”

          Some locales are trying to compensate for this by subsidizing teacher housing, from kindergarten to the college level. For sure, real estate prices are a recruiting barrier when companies and schools seek to hire top talent from places like Texas and Arizona, where median home prices are barely half California’s level.

          Some places are trying to solve the problem with affordable housing, generally apartments or condominium units that builders are required to include in new developments along with market-rate housing. This kind of affordable property usually bears a resale price limit, with city and school employees often getting priority on the long waiting lists for them.

          But those same new developments, when placed in already crowded urban areas, add to traffic volume which is not notably reduced even by new public transit that has opened in parts of Los Angeles and other areas.

          It’s a real quandary for California: The state needs talented young workers to fuel its innovative industries, but even those who earn more than $200,000 yearly have difficulty qualifying for mortgages on homes selling for more than $1 million, increasingly common in this state.

          But acting to artificially reduce real estate prices would impact the resources of millions of Californians who have lived here for a generation or two.

          So far, there is no answer to this dilemma, which sees more and more companies forced to open satellite facilities in more affordable states.

         
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     Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

DESALINATION LOOKS BETTER AS WATER PRICES RISE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2015, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“DESALINATION LOOKS BETTER AS WATER PRICES RISE"

          "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink…”  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798, in the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

          The reality confronting millions of Californians as they cope with yet another lengthy episode in a seemingly endless series of droughts is that – like Coleridge’s mariner – this state has billions of acre feet of water clearly visible every day in the form of the Pacific Ocean and its many bays and estuaries.

          But that’s briny salt water, containing an array of minerals that make it almost as inaccessible today as it was to that parched, fictitious sailor of 200 years ago.

          But it doesn’t have to stay that way. As the price of water goes up, desalinating Pacific waters becomes ever more enticing and it will become more so if the price of taking salts and other impurities out of salt water falls. In short, if the rising price of fresh water ever comes to match a falling cost for purified sea water, expect desalination to begin on a large scale in California.

          It appears things are moving that way now. Over the winter, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California – largest urban water district in the state – paid Sacramento Valley rice farmers an average of $694 per acre foot of water for 115,000 acre feet to be sent south via the state Water Project. For some farmers, selling water is now more profitable than growing crops.

          This sounds like a lot to pay for one acre foot, the amount needed to cover an acre one foot deep and about the quantity used by two typical urban families in the course of a year. But at that price, water costs still costs only about one-fifth of a cent per gallon. Well water, by comparison, averages about $293 per acre foot.

          Meanwhile, ideas for new methods of desalinating water arrive frequently at the state Department of Water Resources, where analyst Michael Ross checks to see which might have real promise.

          “The cost of desalination will come down,” Ross says. “The price of other water is coming up, as we can see from the Met’s purchase. Right now I have a basket-full of proposed processes on my desk.”

    Traditional desalination via the process of reverse osmosis (RO) will vastly increase later this year, when Massachusetts-based Poseidon Water opens a $1 billion facility at Carlsbad in northern San Diego County. The plant will make 48,000 acre feet yearly, about 7 percent of San Diego County’s supply, at a cost of about $2,200 per acre foot. A smaller RO plant opened four years ago in Sand City, near Monterey. Santa Barbara plans to reopen a similar plant that was mothballed for years.

          But some believe reverse osmosis, which uses a series of membranes to filter sea water, is too expensive.

          One idea Ross has reviewed comes from a Texas firm called Salt of the Earth Energy, which would use water from perforated plastic pipes eight to 15 feet beneath the ocean floor, mixing gases and chemicals into sea water from which ocean-bottom silt has filtered almost all marine life. The process would also produce industrial chemicals like phosphates, carbonates and hydroxides, helping bring down the cost of the water produced.

          The firm’s consultant, James Torres of Rancho Cucamonga, says the high end of water cost using this process would be $650 per acre foot, less than the Met is now paying for some of its supply.

          “This idea is at a proving stage,” said the DWR’s Ross. A test facility is planned along the Gulf Coast of Texas and if it proves promising, the method could solve many current problems with RO, including the fact only half the water RO plants take in eventually becomes potable; the rest is returned to the sea as heavy brine harmful to marine life.

          “Our process uses 90 percent of the intake,” said Torres. “And we’ll use only about half the power of an RO plant.”

          Another possibly promising technology called “Zero Discharge” is currently being tested in the Panoche Water and Drainage District in Central California, using solar power to evaporate and then collect water from irrigation discharge, with about a 93 percent recovery rate.

          Which means drought has not brought despair. Instead, it’s spurring an inventiveness that may soon put the lie to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net