"California is dominated by Democrats, but many of the people Democrats claim to care about most can’t afford to live there.
In California, we’re often symbolically liberal, but operationally conservative."
"The median price for a home in California is more than $700,000.
The state has four of the nation’s five most expensive housing markets and a quarter of the nation’s homeless residents.
The root of the crisis is simple:
It’s very, very hard to build homes in California. "
"In Los Angeles, Mayor
@EricGarcetti persuaded Angelenos to pass a new sales tax to address the city’s homelessness crisis, but the program has fallen far behind schedule, in part because homeowners fought the placing of shelters in their communities."
"@toniatkins, Dem State Senate leader, sponsored a modest bill to allow duplexes on single-family lots. It passed the Senate, and then passed Assembly in slightly amended form, and then died because it was sent back to the Senate w/ only 3 minutes left in the legislative session"
"In much of SF, you cant walk 20ft w/o seeing a multicolored sign declaring #BlackLivesMatter, kindness is everything & no human being is illegal.
Those signs sit in yards zoned for single families, in communities that organize against efforts to add the new homes..."
"Poorer families — disproportionately nonwhite and immigrant — are pushed into long commutes, overcrowded housing and homelessness.
Those inequalities have turned deadly during the pandemic."
"CA talks big game on #climatechange, but even w/ billions of dollars in federal funding, it couldnt build high-speed rail between LA & SF.
The project was choked by pricey consultants, private land negotiations, endless environmental reviews, county govts suing the state govt."
"It has been shrunk to a line connecting the midsize cities of Bakersfield and Merced, and even that is horribly over budget and behind schedule."
"In San Francisco, for example, it took 10 years to get two rapid bus transit lines through environmental review.
It’s become common in the state to see legislation like the California Environmental Quality Act wielded against projects that would curb sprawl."
"Groups with no record of green advocacy use it to force onerous environmental analyses that have been used to block everything from bike lanes to affordable housing developments to homeless shelters."
"Some conservative outcomes are intended;
California’s voters blocked the 2020 ballot initiative restoring affirmative action on purpose.
But some reflect old processes and laws that interest groups or existing communities have perverted for their own ends."
"The profusion of councils and public hearings that let NIMBYs block new homes are a legacy of a progressivism that wanted to stop big developers from slicing communities up with highways, not help wealthy homeowners fight affordable apartments."
"California wants to be the future, but its governing institutions are stuck in the past.
Its structures of decision making too often privilege incumbents who like things the way they are over those who need them to change."
