Tag Archives: quality of life

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Silicon Valley Legislators Sic State Auditors on Their Own Districts

by Josh Koehn : sfstandard – excerpt

Two state legislators representing Silicon Valley are ruffling feathers in their home districts after asking California’s aggressive auditing department to scrutinize the local response to two intractable issues: homelessness and transportation.

Senator Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, and Assemblymember Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, each confirmed to The Standard that they requested audits looking into San Jose’s homelessness response and operations at the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), respectively, in an effort to ensure taxpayer money is being used effectively.

The audits—expected to be completed around the end of the year—are almost certain to have broader political implications, as any shortcomings identified in the reports will likely set off a blame game that pits state and local officials against one another…(more)

The same may be said of Newsom, Wiener, Ting, and Haney. They are writing laws that remove the rights of their constituents to decide how the want to live. Attorney General  Bonta is suiting cities that do not follow these laws.

Politicians used to ask “How may I help make your life better”. Now they are say “I don’t care what you think. I am going to force you to live the way I think you should, and, by the way, please send money to my campaign fund, so I can continue to make your life miserable by removing more of your rights.”
Housing

Op-Ed: The absolute wrong way to solve California’s affordable housing crisis

Opinion By Christian Horvath,  Olivia Valentine, Drew Boyles : latimes – excerpt

In recent years, a group of California lawmakers has been pushing for legislation to override locally approved zoning rules and permit denser development in residential neighborhoods. At the moment, a bill is rushing toward passage in the state Legislature that would dramatically and undemocratically rewrite land-use rules in California.

The bill is SB 9, written by Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego). If approved, it would effectively eliminate single-family zoning in wide swaths of California’s cities. Under its provisions, the owners of parcels currently zoned for single-family use would be allowed by right (subject to very limited environmental and other exceptions) to split their lots in two — and then to have up to two residential units on each lot.

In other words, a parcel currently zoned for only one family could soon have four families squeezed together.

These changes in the rules would be imposed on local governments but would not provide true solutions to the state’s affordable housing crisis. That’s why a bipartisan group of 120 locally elected officials from 48 cities across the state — including not just wealthy communities but also low- and middle-income communities — have signed on to this article, agreeing that adding density to neighborhoods in such a broad and haphazard manner lowers quality of life for all communities…(more)