By Shira Stein, Joe Garofoli : sfchronicle – excerpt

WASHINGTON — Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will retire from Congress at the end of the year, just weeks after he was ousted from the position, he said Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal.

McCarthy gained the speakership after 15 votes in January, the most required for any speaker to be elected. He was then removed from his position Oct. 3 in a vote supported by all House Democrats and eight right-wing members of his own party, the first time a speaker had ever been removed in history…

His departure, along with that of Ohio Rep. Bill Johnson and the removal of George Santos, will leave House Republicans with only a one-seat majority. That will make it even more difficult to permanently fund the government in January with upcoming deadlines…(more)

Special Reports : opportunitynowsv – excerpt

California finance expert Tom Rubin analyzes MTC’s proposed $10–20 bn bond measure, which would chuck some greenbacks at jurisdictions in the name of developing/preserving affordable housing. Not only does the measure lack clear performance metrics (um, are we talking 100 or 10,000 units produced?), but it neglects key market problems—suggesting instead we hand gov’t (more) cash to figure everything out. An Opp Now exclusive.

Opportunity Now: Is it just us, or does the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s latest proposal to invest—cough—$10–20 billion in “affordable housing” in California feel a bit déjà vu? This isn’t the first time they’ve attempted something like this, right?

Tom Rubin: MTC has been working on this big housing bond concept for years now.

Pre-Covid, their plan via CASA was to provide $2.4 billion annually in housing from about 12 different sources. However, there wasn’t much information made available about how many houses CASA would reap, and when. What made the situation even more difficult was, since it was officially a private sector thing (involving community groups and nonprofits, although public interests were represented at the table), there were not open meetings and records weren’t publicly available. Nevertheless, CASA died for a couple of reasons, COVID being one of them…(more)

by Garey De Martini : marinatimes – excerpt

Winter has finally arrived, and it’s almost time to put 2023 to bed. Couldn’t happen soon enough in the minds of many San Francisco real estate agents.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this before: prices are down because interest rates are up, prices are up because listing inventory is down,” said Matt Fuller, cofounder at Jackson Fuller Real Estate, when describing current market conditions.

“At an annual real estate luncheon in December of 2022, First Republic Bank predicted a bumpy 2023, and a drastically improved 2024,” he continued. “Well, they sure were right about 2023.”

And what’s ahead in 2024?…

According to a housing and economic forecast released in late September by the California Association of Realtors, slower economic growth and cooling inflation will bring down mortgage interest rates in 2024 and create a more favorable market environment to spur California home sales next year.

But, really, who knows? It’s always a little frightening to think that a slowing economy is a good thing, something that should be welcomed…

As has been well documented, San Francisco is suffering from a lack of listings. Fuller pointed out there might be light at the end of that tunnel, but it might include some unforeseen consequences.

San Francisco is supposed to build 80,000 market-rate homes in the next eight years to comply with its state-mandated housing goals. If that’s even possible, in a city that averages 4,000 to 5,000 sales a year, what would adding 10,000 new homes a year on top of that do to values in the city’s real estate market? Only time will tell.

Where will all these new homes be built? According to Fuller, most of the development sites are south or east of I-280. And of course on Treasure/Yerba Buena Island, where 8,000 new homes are planned — and where he estimates less than 500 new homes have been finished as of 2023…(more)

By Christopher : Calmatters – excerpt (includes audio track)

Who’s up and who’s down? When the news broke late Tuesday that new Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas picked new committee chairpersons and canned others, the Sacramento political sphere was immediately abuzz with talk of winners and losers.

The winners include Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, the Davis Democrat who was named Assembly majority leader, and Encino Democrat Jesse Gabriel, who is taking over the budget committee, though at a time of budget deficits. He’s replacing Assemblymember Phil Ting of San Francisco, who said that the eight state budgets he helped put together have boosted California’s efforts on child care, climate change and access to higher education and healthcare…

Yes In My Backyard activists — who promote legislation meant to make it easier to build housing of all kinds, even if that comes at the expense of local control over development decisions — have been on a winning streak this year.

The chorus of lawmakers willing to argue that the state doesn’t face a housing shortage, or that the state need not get involved has dwindled in recent years. By the end of the most recent legislative session, with Rivas at the helm of the Assembly, the Legislature passed an array of bills that fast-track “any flavor of affordable housing you could possibly want to build.”…(more)

Not the best news going into 2024. MUST support some new people in
Sacramento. You have until Dec. 8 to talk someone into running. PLEASE Do.

By Chronicle readers : sfchronicle – excerpt

Regarding “PG&E bills to soar nearly $400 a year in 2024 for millions of California households” (California, SFChronicle.com, Nov. 17): Again the California Public Utilities Commission sides with the investor-owned utilities not the citizens of the state or of the blue planet.

We can’t afford it anymore. People are struggling to pay their utility bills, and PG&E got another big rate increase estimated to average about $400 per year and a reduction in payments to owners of rooftop solar for the second time this year, supposedly to reverse the “unfair subsidies.”

Rather than incentivize property owners to take load off the grid we have, once again, incentivized PG&E to build more power plants.

Why does our governor and presidential hopeful continue to side with the corporations instead of the citizens?

Aren’t we really supposed to be trying to reduce the use of fossil fuels, the state’s stated goal, and decrease the impact that humans have on our beautiful blue planet?…(more)

This is one of many letters that deride the Governor-appointed CPUC for raising energy costs while punishing people for installing rooftop solar systems to relieve the pressure on the grid. Not only is PG&E forcing private citizens to pay more, they are gauging the SFMTA that must rely on them to expand their electric fleet. Now the state has put our public transportation system that they normally support in a bind. They are passing unfunded mandates on public transit systems. Read the details here: Muni’s Dream of An Electric Fleet of SF Buses Suddenly Looks Much More Like the Present

Time for new people to represent us in Sacramento. Ask your most responsible honest local politicians to run for office. Ignore the negative campaigns against them.

By George Avalos : mercurynews – excerpt (audio track)

Coalition emerges even as state regulators prep OK for higher PG&E PG&E transmission towers in Solano County, near Rio Vista, 2019.

OAKLAND — Consumer groups, politicians, labor unions and advocacy organizations have teamed up to try to combat fast-rising increases in PG&E monthly bills and demand more accountability from the utility behemoth.

FAIR California, as the diverse coalition is called, has banded together just ahead of a vote by state regulators Thursday that’s expected to bestow on PG&E the power to shove monthly power bills higher — once again — starting in January.

“We have to create a sufficiently substantial counterweight to the massive political power of PG&E, its investors and its political allies,” Sam Liccardo, San Jose’s former mayor, and one of the principal leaders of FAIR California, said in an interview with this news organization.

For decades, The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, has waged a fight nearly single-handedly to oppose rising utility bills delivered by California’s three major utilities, PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.

Now, yet another vote looms at the state Public Utilities Commission that is poised to hand over authorization to PG&E to impose a fresh round of higher monthly bills.

“We need to stop the sky being the limit for PG&E requests for rate increases, and the sky being the limit to how much the CPUC can approve,” said Mark Toney, TURN’s executive director.

The opposition to PG&E’s rising electric and gas costs has emerged at a time when PG&E monthly bills have soared skyward at a far faster pace even than the brutally high inflation rate in the Bay Area.

“What we need is legislation that caps annual rate increases to no more than the cost of living allowance received each year by people on Social Security,” Toney said. “Make PG&E live within a budget like its customers have to.”..(more)

By Christian Leonard and Emma Stiefel : sfchronicle – excerpt

Who are California’s biggest landowners?

According to a Chronicle analysis relying on 13.2 million property records obtained from property data company Regrid, the state’s seven largest owners of private land share something in common: All are in the forestry or agriculture industries, ranging from long-standing logging companies to a nut tycoon.

Regrid’s property numbers, which the company calculates based on county parcel data, are from 2022, meaning they don’t reflect recent acquisitions or sales some of the businesses below have made. They’re also conservative estimates, and while the Chronicle attempted to group companies with their affiliates and subsidiaries where possible, parcels of less than 1,000 acres were not included in that grouping.

Below are descriptions of each of these mega-landowners and maps of what they control. You can learn more about who owns any property in California by exploring our map of all 13.2 million properties here…(more)

Anybody who is concerned about the landowning lumber and agricultural interests in California shlould read this article.