CAN CASH PAYMENTS DENT DRUG ADDICTION AND HOMELESSNESS?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
     1720 OAK STREET, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA 90405
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2023 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
        “CAN CASH PAYMENTS DENT DRUG ADDICTION AND HOMELESSNESS?”

 

        “The business of America is business,” President Calvin Coolidge famously observed in 1925.

 

        Plenty of other American cliches support his view: “Money talks, (other stuff) walks,” goes one. “Show me the money,” says another.

 

        California authorities have now begun testing this principle on drug addiction, one of the state’s most obdurate problems. If it works there, they also ought to try it on homelessness, where high percentages of the unhoused either refuse temporary shelter or end up back on the streets after getting thrown out of housing for various types of misbehavior.

 

        The ongoing trial is a response to the failure of drug addiction to respond to the many millions of state and federal dollars that have been thrown at it. The idea is to toss some of that money toward documented addicts of substances from heroin to cocaine, methamphetamines, fentanyl and other opiates and stimulants.

 

        Deaths from these and related drugs quadrupled between 2011 and 2020, reports the California Health Care Foundation. Emergency room visits caused by amphetamine use rose 50 percent in just two years, from 2018 to 2020.

 

If addicts get highs from the drugs, one still unproven theory goes, perhaps they’ll be even more thrilled by receiving cash. Well, not exactly cash, but gift cards from a variety of retail and grocery stores.

 

These start with a $10 reward from Medi-Cal for the first clean urine test, rising steadily over 24 weeks to a total of $599, just below the $600 level where income sources must be reported to the Internal Revenue Service and the state Franchise Tax Board.

 

        This is definitely throwing money at a big problem, about $50 million in mostly federal funds, but in a much more direct way than via psychotherapy and other current tactics.

 

        Today’s main treatment methods will not be going away, nor will prescribed medications and counseling.

 

        The idea of the money is to provide positive reinforcement, with material results from constructive behavior and exercise of will power.

 

        Authorities see this as a tool that might somehow “rewire” addicts’ brains to make them more interested in material well-being than immediate highs.

 

        No one thinks cash-for-clean-tests can end drug addiction problems for everyone who suffers them. But if it works on a significant percentage, letting them sober up and stay that way for as long as 24 weeks, that would be progress and more than cover its costs by saving far more money in the costs of street crime and treatment.

 

        And here’s that other idea: If cash can work for addicts, could it help the homeless?

 

        Many of them refuse to enter shelters because they want to remain free of rules and are not interested in counseling opportunities usually provided in temporary shelters like hotels now being rented or bought by cities and counties around the state.

 

        But how about giving them a no-strings attached stipend for each week they spend seven nights in temporary shelter? Maybe raise rewards a bit if they seek counseling and are observed to be taking treatment seriously.

 

        If their acquaintances still on the streets see some of the unhoused getting food, shelter and money, some who now reject moving in may become motivated to accept a temporary hotel room of their own, even if it means controlling their behavior at least enough not to get kicked out.

 

        If this works and some of those involved move on to permanent housing or get jobs in today’s wide-open employment market, it would cost far less than the hundreds of millions of tax dollars now being spent for hotels and other temporary shelter.

 

        There’s also the fact that drug addiction and homelessness often involve the same individuals. Helping them through one problem might contribute to solving the other.

 

        The peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association has reported that 80 percent of studies of cash rewards for giving up use of stimulants showed they reduced drug usage, at least somewhat.

 

        In a way, this could be the ultimate test of the Coolidge observation about America. For if money can’t dry out a significant portion of drug addicts and move major numbers of the homeless to inside spaces, it’s hard to see what else might.

       
     -30-       
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

 

MASSACRE BOOSTS ANTI-SEMITISM ON CALIFORNIA CAMPUSES

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2023, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “MASSACRE BOOSTS ANTI-SEMITISM ON CALIFORNIA CAMPUSES”

 

        Everyone in academe knows anti-Semitism is the world’s oldest bigotry. But at colleges across California and the nation, this prejudice has become increasingly acceptable and visible in the days since the Oct. 7 massacre of hundreds of Israeli Jews by the terror group Hamas.

 

        In many campus demonstrations, students have screamed that the mass slaying of more than 1,200 men, women, children, babies, the elderly and unarmed concert goers was purely the fault of Israel. But it was not Israel that put maps showing the locations of baby nurseries and schools in the hands of killers from the Hamas terror organization.

 

Meanwhile, college administrators were exposing their own weakness and timidity.

 

        None of this is new in California, where members of a group called Students for Justice in Palestine (SPJ) have a long history of harassing Jewish students who express sympathy or support for Israel, the world’s only country that is expressly a Jewish homeland.

 

        Most such on-campus episodes have been conducted or supported by SPJ, whose first chapter, at UC Berkeley, was founded by “financial patrons…connected to Islamist terror organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. Listed among the founders is UC Berkeley Prof. Hatem Bazian.

 

SPJ has long claimed it is not anti-Semitic; merely anti-Israel. But applauding the murder of dozens of babies slain solely because they were born Jewish is a pure form of anti-Semitism.

 

        Among other episodes, SPJ once set up a fake checkpoint near Berkeley’s Sather Gate campus entrance, using cardboard guns to stop and frisk anyone they believed to be Jewish. No one was expelled or even reprimanded for this.

 

        At Stanford University, according to a federal discrimination lawsuit, a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program in the student counseling service “advanced anti-Semitic tropes concerning Jewish power, conspiracy and control, and endorsed the narrative that (most) Jews support white supremacy.” In fact, Jews were leading supporters of civil rights in America long before the Freedom Riders of the 1960s, where they made up about half of all white participants.

 

        After the Hamas massacre, SPJ members and supporters at Stanford hung banners on campus saying, among other things, that “The illusion of Israel is burning.” SPJ published a column in the Stanford Daily calling Hamas’ actions, including butchering of babies, “part of the ongoing struggle…”

 

        As on other campuses, there were also graffiti claiming “Israel was solely responsible.” This essentially accused the victims of responsibility for their own murders.

 

        Perhaps the most infamous October campus incident occurred in a Stanford freshman class where an instructor ordered Jewish students into a corner reserved for “colonialists.” The same instructor trivialized the murder of Jews, reportedly asking Jewish students how many died in the Holocaust. When one replied “6 million,” the instructor reportedly responded, “Oh, is that all?”

 

        Stanford quickly pulled the instructor from classes while it “investigates.”

 

What’s been the overall response of university leaders at the most sought-after California campuses, people charged with maintaining safety for all students, including Jews and Palestinians?

 

        Stanford’s top officials made a brief statement saying they were “deeply saddened by the death and human suffering.” They also said pro-Hamas banners were OK, but should be relocated elsewhere on campus.

 

        Lambasted for this response, Stanford’s acting president and provost later ate a Sabbath dinner in the Hillel Jewish student center to demonstrate their sympathy. Even so, the response amounted to little.

 

        UC officials were equally tepid. Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said “…We decry any calls for violence in any form or support for terrorism as we continue to mourn the loss of innocent life…”

 

        And UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said “…We must be vigilant that we do not allow anguish over what is occurring internationally to turn into resentment or mistreatment of our fellow Bruins…”

 

        None mentioned possible action against perpetrators of anti-Semitic actions. This was consistent with UCLA’s never acting against students who once hounded a Jewish student into resigning an elected campus government post she had won.

 

        And so, as is common around the nation, there is no sign yet that any major California campus will even try slightly to prevent the further spread of anti-Semitism. 

 

-30-

    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

HOUSING ‘SOLUTIONS’ NOT WORKING

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2023 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

        “HOUSING ‘SOLUTIONS’ NOT WORKING”

 

        Rarely has California seen so concerted and unified a campaign by its elected officials as the drive for housing density conducted by Gov. Gavin Newsom and allied state legislators over the past five years.

 

        All along, as legislators passed law after law easing the path to development of high-rise apartments and condominiums, there have been three major goals: One is to ease a housing shortage, another is to drive down the price of housing and a third seeks somehow to ease the obdurate problem of homelessness.

 

        In the eyes of state officials, these things are linked. By creating new housing and easing the existing shortage, real estate prices and rents were supposed to come down, thus relieving pressure on many folks having trouble paying their rent and allowing them to avoid eviction and homelessness.

 

        But three new reports make it clear this is not working. The more homeless who arrive in housing newly provided for them in many cities and counties, the higher the number of individuals living on the streets has risen. The more folks who migrate out of California, presumably vacating their previous homes, the more homeless numbers rise. And the greater the supply of housing, it’s now becoming apparent, the more it will cost to use it.

        These improbable results are not only the result of folks like Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, who openly advocates sending his city’s homeless to cities with warmer climates, like Los Angeles and San Francisco, before the Alaskan winter hits in earnest. Bronson is transparent about this, unlike officials in Texas and Florida who have used state money to send busload upon busload of recently arrived immigrants to California cities.

 

         But the number of Californians who now are housed but unable to buy homes far exceeds the unhoused populace.

 

        The latest official count showed California with about 170,000 homeless on any given night, while the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development now estimates the housing shortage at 2.5 million units. Those government estimates of housing need have varied over the last five years between 1.8 million and 3.5 million, but fewer than 10 percent of any of thosd amounts have been built in any one year.

 

        One reason may be that folks living in single-family residences have not seized upon the 2021 laws known as SB 9 and 10 to build either high-rise housing or dense apartment units on existing lots. Around the state, officials report only tepid results from those laws, which allow high-rises to be built on or near almost all “major transportation corridors” and give virtually automatic approval to construction of as many as six homes on almost all current single-family lots.

 

        For cities that do not get new plans for dense housing approved by bureaucrats at HCD, a 2017 law known as SB35 (or the “builder’s remedy”) denies local governments and their constituents the right to protest almost any building plan that includes significant amounts of “affordable housing” that would be made available to buyers with incomes at 80 percent or below an area’s median level.

 

        The UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation reports this law has so far caused construction of 18,215 units, a drop in the bucket of what HCD claims is needed to satisfy demand.

 

        Meanwhile, median home prices did not abate their rise. In Los Angeles County, prices are now up 30 percent over the last five years, according to a Zillow survey, with the median price just shy of $1 million. Several California cities have already crossed the million-dollar median mark (half the homes sold go for above and half sell for below that level), including San Jose, Santa Maria, Santa Cruz and San Francisco. The overall California median is second highest in America, behind only Hawaii, fueled only in part by inflation.

 

        The Zillow average home value index for California was $743,361 at the end of June, about five times the level in West Virginia, the nation’s lowest at $155,773.

 

        All of which demonstrates the need for far more conversions of vacant office, store and parking lot space to housing. An alternative would be to build far out into deserts and other ex-urban areas, a tactic that could contribute to climate change as it would force ever longer commutes for those who still work in offices.

       

         

    -30-

    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.

WHAT IF LAPHONZA BUTLER RUNS? (WHAT BUTLER SPARED HER FELLOW DEMOCRATS)

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023 OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

        “WHAT IF LAPHONZA BUTLER RUNS?”

 

        The pipe dream of some Black women in California for the last three years has been getting one of their number into the United States Senate.

 

        Black women have been there before, in the persons of Carole Moseley Braun of Illinois, who served from 1993 to 1999, and California’s own Kamala Harris from 2016 until elected vice president in 2020. But for almost four years after Harris’ accession to the nation’s nominal No. 2 political job, there were none.

 

        That left a void Gov. Gavin Newsom three years ago vowed to fill if another vacancy arose in a California Senate seat – and he named Laphonza Butler quickly after the pioneering Dianne Feinstein’s death in late September.

 

        Butler was sworn in less than five days after Feinstein’s demise.

 

        Newsom thus kept one promise. But by not requiring that Butler commit to being a mere caretaker, a seat filler, he broke another prior commitment.

 

        Newsomleft it to Butler to decide whether or not to seek a full term next year, breaking his commitment to name a mere interim senator.

 

        As of this writing, Butler had not decided what she'll do.

 

        If she entered the race, the former head of the EMILY’s List women’s political funding committee knew, she would be the fourth major Democrat in the race, which was also reported about to be joined by Steve Garvey, political neophyte and former all-star first baseman who won pennants with both the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres.

 

        Newsom’s stated reason for promising to name a caretaker was to avoid interfering in the ongoing campaign. But a Butler entry into the race held the potential for changing things radically.

 

        Every recent poll on that race showed all three Democratic Congress members running with substantial leads over all Republicans in the field. Those surveys had Burbank’s Adam Schiff, a longtime nemesis of ex-President Donald Trump, leading fellow Democrat Katie Porter of Irvine and Oakland’s Barbara Lee, the only Black person running before the Butler’s appointment.

 

        This appeared to ensure a Democrat-on-Democrat general election race next fall. But if Butler were to get in, Democratic votes, especially those going to Lee, could be further split, potentially opening a path to the runoff for Garvey, who has more name recognition than anyone in the race not named Schiff.

 

        It may be no accident that Garvey, who has “explored” a run since last spring, appeared ready to get in only after the Butler possibility arose.

 

        No statewide primary race with more than three Democratic contenders has produced an all-Democrat runoff election since California adopted its Top Two, “jungle primary” system via the 2010 Proposition 14. The party's voters have been too splintered for that. There appeared a good chance the pattern would continue if Butler opted to enter the race.

 

        As the former head of the nation’s leading women’s political funding group, Butler knows all this, but still was pondering the race. She also had to know that her fairly recent move to Maryland – one she reversed immediately upon getting Newsom’s nod – would harm her in a California Senate race.

 

        So a Butler entry into this contest was far from assured.

 

        But there was one other possibility, however slim it appeared: Lee could drop out and urge supporters to vote for Butler.

 

        This appeared very unlikely even though Lee has run a distant third in every major poll taken so far, her 7 percent share topping all Republicans, but trailing far behind Schiff’s 20 percent and Porter’s 17 percent.

 

        Lee, 77, adopted a beaming, almost celebratory look when Butler was sworn in as a senator by Harris. Her stated goal in running was to give black women representation in the Senate, and Butler was now there even if Lee was not.

 

        Political and mathematical reality is that if Lee (or Butler) wants to avoid diluting Democratic votes to the point where a Republican like Garvey could make next November’s runoff, this might be about the only open path. But it would require self-sacrifice from either Lee or Butler and no one yet knows whether either is capable of that.

       

-30-

    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.

Updated version:

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
     1720 OAK STREET, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA 90405
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

        “WHAT LAPHONZA BUTLER SPARED HER FELLOW DEMOCRATS”

 

        The pipe dream of some Black women in California for the last three years has been getting one of their number into the United States Senate.

 

        Black women have been there before, in the persons of Carole Moseley Braun of Illinois, who served from 1993 to 1999, and California’s own Kamala Harris from 2016 until elected vice president in 2020. But for almost four years after Harris’ accession to the nation’s nominal No. 2 political job, there were none.

 

        That left a void Gov. Gavin Newsom three years ago vowed to fill if another vacancy arose in a California Senate seat – and he named Laphonza Butler quickly after the pioneering Dianne Feinstein’s death in late September.

 

        Butler was sworn in less than five days after Feinstein’s demise.

 

        Newsom thus kept one promise. But by not requiring that Butler commit to being a mere caretaker, a seat filler, he broke another prior commitment. Now she has chosen to essentially be the caretaker, seat-filling senator he also promised.

 

        Butler’s decision was a favor not only to Newsom but to all the other Democrats in this Senate race: That includes the three Democratic Congress members running with substantial poll leads over all Republicans in the field.

 

Every survey has had Burbank’s Adam Schiff, a longtime nemesis of ex-President Donald Trump, leading fellow Democrat Katie Porter of Irvine and Oakland’s Barbara Lee, the only Black person running before the Butler’s appointment. Those polls were all taken before former baseball great Steve Garvey entered the race as a Republican and Donald Trump supporter and before Christina Pascucci, a longtime TV news anchor on Los Angeles station KTLA, joined as a Democrat.

 

        Newsom’s stated reason for promising to name a caretaker was to avoid interfering in the ongoing campaign. But a Butler entry into the race held the potential for changing things radically.

 

 

        Joint entries by both Butler and Pascucci might have splintered the Democratic vote even more than it now figures to be. What once appeared sure to be a Democrat-on-Democrat general election race next fall could easily have become any of the Democrats facing Garvey. Butler’s contribution to the splintering could have been to divide both the Black female vote now figuring to be Lee’s property and further fracture “we-want-a-female” voters, who still might be split among Lee, Porter and Pascucci.

 

     It may be no accident that Garvey, who had “explored” a run since last spring, actually got in only after the Butler possibility arose.

 

        No statewide primary race with more than three Democratic contenders has produced an all-Democrat runoff election since California adopted its Top Two, “jungle primary” system via the 2010 Proposition 14. The party's voters have been too divided for that. There appeared a good chance the pattern would continue if Butler opted to enter the race. A Republican/Democrat race remains a strong possibility.

 

        As the former head of the nation’s leading women’s political funding group, Butler knew all this, but still spent weeks pondering the race. She also had to know that her fairly recent move to Maryland – one she reversed immediately upon getting Newsom’s nod – would harm her in a California Senate race.

 

        So a Butler entry into this contest was never extremely likely.

 

        But there was one other possibility, however slim it appeared: Lee could have dropped out and urged supporters to vote for Butler.

 

        But that kind of move never materialized, as Lee has hankered for the Senate for many years.

 

        At 77, Lee adopted a beaming, almost celebratory look when Butler was sworn in as a senator by Harris. Lee's stated goal in running was to give black women representation in the Senate, and Butler was now there even if Lee was not.

 

     Perhaps Lee knew all along that if she did not drop out, Butler would. That is, after all, what happened.

  

 

        Political and mathematical reality is that by not running, Butler avoids diluting Democratic votes to the point where a Republican like Garvey would stand a good chance of making next November’s runoff and possibly squeaking into the Senate.

 

    Even if she were self-aggrandizing, which Butler has never been, that could have assured a future Republican Senate majority, something she has fought against for years.

       

-30-

    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.

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
     1720 OAK STREET, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA 90405
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

        “WHAT LAPHONZA BUTLER SPARED HER FELLOW DEMOCRATS”

 

        The pipe dream of some Black women in California for the last three years has been getting one of their number into the United States Senate.

 

        Black women have been there before, in the persons of Carole Moseley Braun of Illinois, who served from 1993 to 1999, and California’s own Kamala Harris from 2016 until elected vice president in 2020. But for almost four years after Harris’ accession to the nation’s nominal No. 2 political job, there were none.

 

        That left a void Gov. Gavin Newsom three years ago vowed to fill if another vacancy arose in a California Senate seat – and he named Laphonza Butler quickly after the pioneering Dianne Feinstein’s death in late September.

 

        Butler was sworn in less than five days after Feinstein’s demise.

 

        Newsom thus kept one promise. But by not requiring that Butler commit to being a mere caretaker, a seat filler, he broke another prior commitment. Now she has chosen to essentially chosen to be caretaker, seat-filling senator he also promised to name.

 

        Butler’s decision was a favor not only to Newsom but to all the other Democrats in this Senate race: That includes the three Democratic Congress members running with substantial poll leads over all Republicans in the field.

Every survey has had Burbank’s Adam Schiff, a longtime nemesis of ex-President Donald Trump, leading fellow Democrat Katie Porter of Irvine and Oakland’s Barbara Lee, the only Black person running before the Butler’s appointment. Those polls were all taken before former baseball great Steve Harvey entered the race as a Republican and Donald Trump supporter and before Christina Pascucci, a longtime TV news anchor on Los Angeles station KTLA joined as a Democrat.

 

        Newsom’s stated reason for promising to name a caretaker was to avoid interfering in the ongoing campaign. But a Butler entry into the race held the potential for changing things radically.

 

 

        Joint entries by both Butler and Pascucci might have splintered the Democratic vote even more than it now figures to be. What once appeared sure to be a Democrat-on-Democrat general election race next fall could easily have become any of the Democrats facing Garvey. Butler’s contribution to the splintering could have been to divide both the Black female vote now figuring to be Lee’s property and further divide “we-want-a-female” voters, who still might be split among Lee, Porter and Pascucci.

 

     It may be no accident that Garvey, who had “explored” a run since last spring, actually got in only after the Butler possibility arose.

 

        No statewide primary race with more than three Democratic contenders has produced an all-Democrat runoff election since California adopted its Top Two, “jungle primary” system via the 2010 Proposition 14. The party's voters have been too split for that. There appeared a good chance the pattern would continue if Butler opted to enter the race. A Republican/Democrat race remains a strong possibility.

 

        As the former head of the nation’s leading women’s political funding group, Butler knew all this, but still spent weeks pondering the race. She also had to know that her fairly recent move to Maryland – one she reversed immediately upon getting Newsom’s nod – would harm her in a California Senate race.

 

        So a Butler entry into this contest was never extremely likely.

 

        But there was one other possibility, however slim it appeared: Lee could have dropped out and urged supporters to vote for Butler.

 

        But that kind of move never materialized, as Lee has hankered for the Senate for many years.

 

        At 77, Lee adopted a beaming, almost celebratory look when Butler was sworn in as a senator by Harris. Her stated goal in running was to give black women representation in the Senate, and Butler was now there even if Lee was not.

 

     Perhaps Lee new all along that if she did not drop out, Butler would. That is, after all, what happened.

 

 

 

        Political and mathematical reality is that by not running, Butler avoids diluting Democratic votes to the point where a Republican like Garvey could make next November’s runoff and possibly squeak into the Senate. Even if she were self-aggrandizing, which Butler has never been, that could have assured a future Republican Senate majority, something she has fought against for years.

       

-30-

    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.

IS HOUSING DENSITY LINKED TO INCREASED STROKES?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2023 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “IS HOUSING DENSITY LINKED TO INCREASED STROKES?”

 

Gov. Gavin Newsom is a big advocate of science, the concept, not the magazine. He’s often said science was behind his many controversial moves to counter COVID-19 and he’s using science in the state’s effort to mitigate future wildfires, for just two examples.

 

But when confronted with the strong possibility that science might argue against his years-long push for more housing density, signing bill after bill to further that cause over the last five years, he ignored scientific findings.

 

As far back as 2019, fully four years ago, Newsom was presented evidence from Science (the peer-reviewed magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of, yes, Science) that the denser housing becomes, the greater the frequency of strokes among residents of that housing.

 

Ironically, one argument presented by Newsom and

San Francisco’s Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, chief legislative backer of the big push for ever-denser housing, was that it would lead to a healthier California.

 

Said Wiener back then, via an email, “Housing density…facilitates active transportation, such as walking and biking. People are much healthier when they regularly walk, as opposed to having a sedentary lifestyle and spending hours every day in a car.”

 

Those comments came after publication in Science of a study from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, which found that “higher residential-surrounding greenspace is related with fewer and less severe strokes. Living in high noise areas…can lead to more severe strokes.”

 

Newsom was furnished this study in 2019 and failed

to comment on it then, or since then.

 

Meanwhile, bills he’s signed have led to a high-rise housing construction boom and more noise in many parts of California. He and his supporters in the Legislature each year since 2018 passed new laws making building permits for dense housing easier and easier to get. Easiest of all are the “builders’ remedy” structures going up in cities from Santa Monica to San Jose, where housing plans weren’t approved by state authorities prior to arbitrary deadlines.

 

One consequence has been overbuilding, as evidenced by high vacancy rates in new buildings and ubiquitous signage advertising this fact. Some new buildings sport rooftop gardens, parks and playgrounds. But not most.

 

There is no proven cause-and-effect link, but the

number of strokes in California has risen steadily since the building boom began in late 2018, a period in which the state’s population has dropped yearly.

 

        Here’s the latest tally from the National Center for Health Statistics: In 2018, 16,457 Californians suffered strokes. A year later, there were 16,851. In 2020, there were 17,916 and by 2021, the last year for which numbers are available, the figure had jumped to 18,304. That’s an 11.2 percent increase in strokes during a time when population dropped and new dense housing construction expanded vastly.

 

        There are no statistics available on whether these strokes were more severe as the years progressed. This also may involve mere correlation, not causality. But the fact is that denser housing here has coincided with more strokes.

 

        So the figures suggest Wiener may have been wrong about dense living being healthier than life surrounded by green space. So much for his years-long effort to decimate or eliminate single-family housing in this state, which was largely built on the concept of urban sprawl.

 

        And yet, the authors of the Barcelona study insist they have nothing against high-rise living. Payam Dadvand MD, co-author of the stroke study, said that “Denser cities have both pros and cons. It very much depends on how they are designed and planned.”

 

        But nothing in any of the new state laws requires new parks or other green space around new high-rises. Not even a parking space for each unit. So greenery is rare on or near the new California buildings, despite Wiener saying “Urban density should include significant green space and noise abatement.”

 

        The bottom line: Newsom used science when it promoted his anti-Covid tactics. But he’s ignored science so far as it appears to conflict with his housing policies.

-30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

SAVE MONEY OR LIVES: THE REAL ISSUE IN PRISON CLOSINGS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2023, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “SAVE MONEY OR LIVES: THE REAL ISSUE IN PRISON CLOSINGS”

 

        Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats in Sacramento are working steadily these days to close several California prisons, perhaps as many as six.

 

        The stated benefits include saving money and doing something to address mass incarceration of Blacks and other minorities, which is partly the result of the much-maligned federal and state “war on drugs.”

 

        But despite support from the elected chief prosecutors in several of the most populous California counties, there are dangers.

 

        Take some provisions of a bill that came within a hair of becoming law this fall, one that would allow most convicts, including murderers and rapists, to petition for re-sentencing and eventual parole if they can show “mitigating circumstances” drove them to their crimes, no matter how heinous.

  

        This measure, known as SB 94, will surely be back for another try next year with a different number. It does not specifically call for prison closings, but if it becomes law, could significantly reduce the population in high-security prisons and justify one or more prison closings.

 

        The proposal is also considered likely to be amended to include virtually all inmates currently under death sentences or serving terms without possibility of parole. The 2023 version exempted anyone who murdered three or more persons.

 

        No doubt, some of those involved have reformed, at least to some degree. Others have grown older and feebler. But some remain threatening, regardless of the findings of parole boards.

 

        One example cited by the City Journal, published by the conservative Manhattan Institute, is Timothy Chavira, convicted in 1986 of beating and stabbing to death his stepmother. For this, he received a sentence of 26        years to life. He was released from prison in 2017, but returned there three years later after stabbing a retired woman doctor in El Sereno, an area of Los Angeles.

 

        Now he has a new sentence of life without possibility of parole – unless SB 94 or its likely heir should pass.

 

        No one knows how many Timothy Chaviras now reside in California prisons, where they can harm no one but their themselves or fellow inmates until and unless they are released. In fact, some are already wreaking havoc on other prisoners, as inmate-on-inmate murders and beatings have reportedly increased this year.

 

        This did not deter supporters of SB 94, who got the bill through the state Senate and its ironically named Public Safety Committee before it was suspended for now by state Assembly leaders.

 

        Sponsored by Democratic Sens. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Corey Jackson of Riverside, among others, it is certain to reappear later this year or next.

 

        That’s especially likely since the measure has been supported by state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and the ultra-liberal district attorneys of Los Angeles and Alameda counties, George Gascon and Pamela Price.

 

        Essentially, they all back early releases for many of the worst of the worst among California convicts.

 

        Gascon and Price were elected on promises to go easier on serious criminals, including omitting some earlier felony “strikes” against them as sentencing factors and enforcing no-cash-bail policies wherever possible, despite the fact California voters by a large margin in 2020 passed a referendum canceling a law that sought to eliminate cash bail statewide.

 

        Prisoners who would be eligible for parole and/or reduced sentences under SB 94 or its presumed successor could also see any special circumstances (like use of a firearm in their crime) disregarded.

 

        Politicians like Wiener, who knows he will never face a serious reelection challenge because his district is so heavily Democratic, have not been dissuaded by seeing this bill placed in suspension.

 

        That’s in keeping with the pattern he followed in pushing over several years for housing density measures like SB 9 and SB 10, which essentially ended single-family zoning throughout California. His bills were suspended multiple times, but eventually passed and became laws when Newsom signed them.

 

        So long as Newsom remains hell-bent on reducing prison populations to save money, SB 94 and its like will never die, but always return until a soft-on-crime Legislature eventually passes it, as happened with no-cash-bail.

 

 

    -30-

    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

DON’T BELIEVE STATE’S MINIMALIST GROWTH FORECAST

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2023, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “DON’T BELIEVE STATE’S MINIMALIST GROWTH FORECAST”

 

        Two things you can count on when it comes to ballyhooed state forecasts on things like California’s housing and population: They’ll be incompetent and inconsistent. Usually, they will also be outdated even before they’re issued.

 

        For years, this state has plagued its cities and counties with inaccurate, vastly varying predictions of housing need. In 2018, the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) predicted California would need to build 3.5 million new housing units by 2025.

 

        Four years of unpredicted population loss followed. HCD never listed this as a reason, but by 2021, it was saying the need had dropped to 1.8 million living spaces. This year, despite more net out-migration from the Golden State, the projected housing need was back up again, this time to 2.5 million.

 

        The state offered no explanation for its inconsistency, apparently expecting no one to remember the previous estimates, none of which developers came anywhere near fulfilling.

 

        Now it’s the turn of the population forecasters in the state’s Department of Finance. Ten years ago, they predicted tremendous California growth, apparently not noticing that most cities were already pretty well built out, and that massive population growth would either have to land in huge new swaths of urban sprawl or spur tearing down and rebuilding in existing neighborhoods to make them far more dense.

 

        There’s been no population growth, but policymakers in the Legislature have nevertheless chosen to pursue density, virtually all their new housing laws aiming to encourage more crowded living conditions and assuming that those in the new buildings will own few cars and use mass transit. Of course, mass transit usership has not risen notably even as new construction arose near light rail stops. So much for that forecast.

 

        Where the Finance department in 2013 predicted California would have 52.7 million residents by 2060, it now figures the number will be 39.51 million, just about the same as today.

 

        But wait: This forecast turns out not worth the many sheets of paper on which it was printed. For lo and behold, there’s now large-scale buyers’ remorse among California emigres in places like Austin and Dallas, Texas; Tucson and Glendale, Ariz., and several parts of Florida.

 

 

        Californians moved to those places in droves immediately before and during the Coronavirus pandemic.

 

        Charmed at first by Austin, where many high tech workers moved when the virus freed them from working in offices, they’re now finding it difficult to move easily from gig to gig as they could in places like Silicon Valley and the Irvine area of Orange County.

 

        That’s because while there’s a fair amount of technology innovation in Austin, the California technology hubs remain dominant in their industry, providing far more options for switching jobs without risking long-term unemployment.

 

        Some emigres also complain about the central Texas weather, featuring many more 100-degree summer days and far colder winters than they experienced in California.

 

        But once you sell a California home and turn your equity into a larger Texas manse, it can be difficult to move back without a major drop in standard of living. So there’s less potential mobility for emigres who left their previous options behind.

 

        And soone recent survey of Austin newcomers saw many yearning to return to California. It’s much the same in cities like Orlando, Fla., and Tucson, both of which attracted many Californians with lower priced, more sumptuous housing than they could afford in coastal parts of California.

 

        There’s suddenly a strong possibility many of the recent California emigres will move back, even if means enduring a somewhat lower standard of living for a while.

 

        But the reports indicating this likelihood came after release of the California Finance department forecast. So the state forecast was probably outmoded before it was printed.

 

        California growth likely will rebound, but probably not soon to levels seen from 1950 to 2010. That’s partly because this state has become denser than before and thus less attractive to many folks who seek green surroundings.

 

        All of which should reassure property owners who would love to get rid of the many vacancy signs on new apartment buildings coming online every week in California, and demonstrates the error of assuming that today’s trends will continue indefinitely.

 

    -30-

    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