Category: California

Posted on

Landline service could end for good across the Bay Area and California

By Amanda Bartlett : sfgate – excerpt (audio track)

AT&T is hoping to remove landline service in several parts of California, raising concern among residents who say they rely on the service for myriad reasons…

AT&T secured a big win in its lengthy battle to pull landline service across the state of California after the Federal Communications Commission approved a petition from the telecommunications giant last week to end the service. The plan would cut off access to 184,000 households starting June 1, 2027, the Mercury News reported, though it remains unclear how many homes in the Bay Area would be affected.

“Only 3% of households we serve in California still use traditional phone service. We’re taking a phased, year-long approach to upgrade customers in these areas where better, more reliable services are available,” AT&T said in a recent news release, adding that “no customer will be left without access to phone or 911 service.”… (more)

 

Posted on

Why turning 55 is one of the most important financial milestones if you live in California

By Jessica Roy : sfchronicle – excerpt

Every birthday is worth celebrating. But in California, you might celebrate a little more when you turn 55 — especially if you own a home.

What’s all the excitement about? It’s the age you become eligible to sell your home and buy a new one while retaining your property tax basis, thanks to Proposition 19… (more)

This is actually a tease for the next article that is a lot more compelling in my opinion, and there is no firewall.

Primary Care as a Public Utility
The Case for a Common Fund

Importance  More than one-third of US adults lack access to primary care, which has increasingly become a commodity rather than the common good envisioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Many states are working to bolster primary care, but face common challenges related to federalism, fragmentation of health insurance, and administrative hurdles that undermine their efforts to invest in primary care. These challenges are discussed and one potential solution is described: a primary care common fund that finances and pays for primary care from the perspective of a public utility…

Conclusions and Relevance  As people in the US increasingly struggle to find a primary care clinician, state investments in primary care share common challenges. A primary care common fund could help states overcome these challenges by pooling resources and paying for primary care as a public utility—consistent with the vision of primary care as a common good—without disrupting the rest of the health care system. This approach is supported by precedent and paths toward feasibility… (more)

Posted on

California’s second-largest home insurer to raise rates this fall

By Megan Fan Munce : sfchronicle – excerpt
White picket fence photo by zrants
Farmers Insurance Group, the second-largest home insurer in California, is set to raise overall policy rates for homeowners by 1.5% this fall.
Its rate hike, approved Monday, will take effect for the insurers’ nearly 915,000 homeowners at their next renewal date following Sept. 15, 2026, according to a filing with the California Department of Insurance. While increases across the state will average out to 1.5%, Individual customers could see their rates rise by much more than 1.5% or may see their premiums decrease. Data on the exact range of rate changes or which areas may see the largest hikes wasn’t available on Monday.
Farmers covers approximately 11% of all insured homes in California, second only to State Farm General. As part of its filing, the insurer said it will up its home and auto bundling discount from 15% to 22% and increase the discounts homeowners can get for reducing their wildfire risk.
This is Farmers’ first filing under the Sustainable Insurance Strategy, a set of regulatory reforms finalized last year that altered the way insurance companies price wildfire risk. The request was first submitted last November for a 6.99% increase but was approved by regulators at just 1.5%…(more)
Posted on

A federal ‘naughty list’ is making some California condo sales nearly impossible

By Christian Leonard : sfchronicle – excerpt

The additional layer of checks adds yet another complication for the California condo market, which historically has been much softer than that for single-family homes.

Buying a condo is tricky enough. But a federal database of problematic condo buildings — which some lenders are calling a “blacklist” — is making it even harder to get a mortgage for some.

The database was created by Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored corporation that buys mortgages from lenders and sells them to investors as securities. The system frees up lenders’ funds for additional loans and lessens their risk, generally resulting in lower rates for buyers…

But not for every buyer. More than 700 California condominium complexes are flagged in Fannie Mae’s database as being “unavailable,” meaning the company won’t purchase loans for units there, according to data provided by condo law firm Alcock Marcus. The number of affected condos has skyrocketed in the past few years.

The impact of being on the list could be severe. A bank often won’t lend money for a condo that’s on that list, said Kevin Casey, a Bay Area loan officer with Guarantee Mortgage. That means the buyer has to either get a non-qualified mortgage, which is a riskier type of loan that comes with higher interest rates, or back out of the deal entirely….

Condo owners and sellers were already struggling to find insurance, with providers either leaving the state or significantly raising rates. Those insurance woes have also resulted in the Bay Area having some of the highest HOA fees in the country. And in the Walnut Creek retirement community of Rossmoor, most buyers have to pay in cash after Fannie and Freddie announced they would no longer back mortgages there unless it was funded for a complete loss. Rossmoor is one of 35 flagged condo complexes in Walnut Creek, according to the Mercury News.

Casey, the Guarantee Mortgage agent, said buyers who are considering bidding on a condo should make sure it’s in a well-run association, as that can determine how much time they spend navigating issues later in the deal.

You’re buying two things,” Casey said. “You’re buying what’s between the walls, and you’re buying the management company. So you have to spend … a good amount of time looking at that HOA.”… (more)

 

Posted on

New state bill aims to cancel medical debt for low-income Californians

: sfexaminer – excerpt (audio track) 

The state would purchase and forgive many Californians’ medical debt under a legislative proposal announced Monday.

Around 40% of Californians are struggling with some kind of medical debt regardless of whether or not they have some form of health insurance, said Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, who authored Assembly Bill 2123, during a press conference Monday.

“Many people do have coverage,” she said, but they “still end up with bills they can’t afford, high deductibles, copays, denied claims — [it] can leave families owing thousands of dollars, and they never expected [it] would happen.”…

The Medical Debt Relief Act of 2026 is based on an existing pilot program launched in Los Angeles County in 2024, where the Board of Supervisors invested $5 million to purchase debt for pennies on the dollar and erase it for people whose household incomes are at or below 400% of the federal poverty level, or have medical debt that equals 5% or more of their annual income…(more)

Posted on

Break up PG&E?

By Sam Maslin : sfchronicle – excerpt

We should first try fixing the California Public Utilities Commission

As we gear up for the 2026 election season, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is in the crosshairs. Tom Steyer is running for governor and loudly vowing to “break up” the electric utilities. Meanwhile, in the San Francisco congressional race to replace Nancy Pelosi, all three major candidates — Scott Weiner, Saikat Chakrabarti and Connie Chan — support a takeover of the city’s electric system.

Politicians and voters have every right to be upset at PG&E. Rates have gone through the roof as the company has presided over a string of deadly failures and costly outages. But moves to take over the grid should give us pause. San Francisco City Hall, with pressing challenges and its own history of mismanagement, seems ill-equipped to launch an electric utility, and advocates of municipal power are often unrealistic about what would be involved. There are better ways to get the electric system we want.

Here’s the thing: The large investor-owned utilities are already publicly controlled. As state-sanctioned monopolies, they are comprehensively regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission, which has the responsibility to approve their actions. So if we’re unhappy with the utilities, why don’t we just try regulating them better?

We should be asking much more of the five members of the commission, who are appointed by the governor. As a developer of solar and energy storage projects in California, I have seen firsthand how our regulators have failed to produce effective energy policy or to provide even a modest check on the utilities.

The truth is, the commission has not been meeting the moment…

Now’s the time for a fresh start. Leadership is turning over at the commission, and we’ll soon elect a new governor who will appoint new regulators. As voters, we should be asking pointed questions and demanding better results.

Can we unpack the rate increases? How are costs categorized, and do we agree? What returns are utilities receiving on their investments, and are they appropriate? Are there more cost-effective solutions to grid challenges that aren’t being considered? How can we empower communities to develop the next generation of energy assets?…

Let’s organize with our neighbors — using existing groups and forming new ones. Let’s take a hard look at utility profits and, in this era of budget cuts and hard choices, insist that they do belt-tightening just like the rest of us. Let’s increase the pace of energy development and fight for the right to develop local resources to prevent future blackouts, just as PG&E has.

We should be unabashed about these goals with the incoming governor’s administration. We want a transformed utility system and intend to work effectively across the different stakeholders to effect real change. Of course, we can always keep a city takeover in our back pocket…

Ultimately, there isn’t one solution to our energy woes. The grid is a large, multilayered system, and we have to do many things at scale to ensure that we have the energy we need over the coming years. But having regulators who recognize the urgency of the situation is a must, and right now, we don’t.

So we can keep talking about a long-term breakup with PG&E, but let’s recognize that we have the opportunity to demand better outcomes now… (more)

Sam Maslin is CEO of Eddy Energy, a developer of community energy storage projects, and the president of the Noe Valley Democratic Club in San Francisco.

Posted on

An update from Los Altos Hills

By Lynn La : calmatters via email:

Horses are welcome in Los Altos Hills, among other communities in the Peninsula that appreciate a rural lifestyle, where some vineyards and orchards struggle to survive.

Last fall, CalMatters covered the saga of the well-to-do Silicon Valley suburb that set aside some land for denser development in compliance with state housing law, only to scale back its plans once a developer proposed a major apartment project for the site. Since then, regulators with California’s Housing Department signed off on the town’s about-face.

Now, the California Housing Defense Fund, a pro-development legal advocacy group, is suing the town, arguing that its housing plan violates state law — even if the state’s own regulators don’t see things that way.

Is it possible the legal YIMBY arm is reaching too far as it attacks the root of its support? How much is too much and when is it time to retreat? The peninsula is known for its excellent local food sources that feed fine restaurants in the Bay Area.

Posted on

California’s blockbuster legislation faces rocky rollout

By Sam Dillon : msn – excerpt

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/californias-blockbuster-housing-legislation-faces-rocky-rollout/ar-AA1W4Md0?ocid=socialshare

There is a bit of a disconnect between theory and results with the Wiener bills. Art by sfbluecomics.

Commentary:  How long can you hold a citizenry hostage to a crisis? 

Mass confusion over the meaning and implementation of SB79, which amounts to unlimited growth near mass transit, is sweeping California’s largest cities that are targeted by the one of the most draconian bills ever devised. After turning over the Pacific coastline to developers, and blaming cities for the housing shortage, Senator Wiener, has managed to make almost everyone mad at him. Now it turns out his penchant for writing long, detailed, prescriptive bills is not playing well with the public or city officials who are charged with enforcing what has been described as developer wet dreams.

Give the anger and confusion over SB79 in his district is giving Scott Wiener’s competitors a boost. He is rumored to be considering a delay in implementation of the bill as he seeks support for his new power move to Washington to replace Pelosi. 

In his haste to divide and conquer Wiener has succeeded in dividing both his friends and foes, often referred to as YIMBYS and NIMBYS. Wiener is not enjoying a lot of support from the press either. He relies heavily on the Abundant crowd in Silicon Valley, that his constituents are being hammered by. If you were not recently laid off by a high tech firm, you may have lost your income to Waymo or been evicted from a gentrified neighborhood.

Wiener is fighting a Dead horse that is obvious to everyone but him and people are ready to fight back.

There are some gems in this article that covers a lot of the history of how we got here and where the Wiener of the world want us to go. Here are a couple of pull-quotes from the article:

Posted on

Supes approve affordable senior housing project—but discussion raises larger issue

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Nonprofit housers are good neighbors. Speculators are not. But Wiener’s law treats both the same way.

To the surprise of nobody, the Board of Supes Tuesday rejected an attempt to delay or undermine an affordable housing project for seniors at the foot of Bernal Hill. The vote was unanimous.

A few neighbors on Coleridge street complained that the project would reduce the size of an existing park that has been closed for years and was hardly ever used when it was open. It’s a private park, not a city park, and it sits on top of a pedestal with a garage underneath, which makes it unstable anyway.

The project would include a new park that would be much more accessible…

Sup. Jackie Fielder, who supported the affordable senior housing, asked Planning Department staffer Audrey Maloney a pretty basic question. Under current state law, where are people supposed to go to raise questions about a new development in their neighborhood?

Maloney: Under SB 35 (a bill by state Sen. Scott Wiener), the city has no role in this project. The public has no right to a hearing. If it’s compliant with the local zoning, there’s nowhere to raise any questions. It’s approved by right…(more)

I’m going to add one other issue that comes to mind where handing out entitlements to developers is concerned. Not all of the projects are being built as planned. Quite a few change hands and the plans may be altered without any notice.  That is of great concern to the neighbors, and everyone concerned. Thousands of units are on hold. We have no idea what the developers will finally do once they decide to build, if they ever do.

As we all know, and Tim Redmond points out, “But SB 35, and its unholy progeny SB 423, doesn’t just apply to affordable housing projects. It also applies to a huge number of potential market-rate projects in much of San Francisco.” 

We don’t need for the state to declare we are under builder’s remedy because we failed to meet the RHNA goals. We already are.

 

Posted on

San Francisco Political Forecast for 2026

by : beyondchron – excerpt

Handicapping the Key Races

San Francisco in 2026 faces an electoral blizzard. Its first contested congressional race since 1987, two tight June supervisor races on top of the November contests, and at least three high-profile ballot measures. San Franciscans will also be involved in the governor’s race and helping Democrats take back the House and Senate.

For campaign professionals, hardworking volunteers, and political junkies, 2026 should be a great year.

Here’s our early forecast of the key San Francisco races along with the governor’s contest…

Charter Reform

It has yet to be decided what the planned charter reform ballot measure will cover and whether it will be on the June or November ballot (or both). Here’s what I previously wrote about all those claiming that San Francisco’s biggest problem is its charter:

Charter reform will not close open-air drug markets. It will not fill downtown office vacancies. It will not solve MUNI’s financial troubles. It will not lower health care or housing costs. It will not get lenders to make loans to build new housing. It will not boost the international tourism that Donald Trump has deterred. Charter reform will make San Francisco government operate more effectively. But it will not address the top ten problems facing the city.

…(more)

I hope you will read this entire article. It is somewhat surprising coming from Randy Shaw, but, rather close to what many of us believe may turn the city political arena back into balance. Or closer to balance than it is now. A healthy middle is what the public seems to want but has problems figure out who to trust to get them there.

Randy is correct in pointing out the one of the biggest problems we are current dealing with is government overreach. Both the national and the state administrations have usurped a lot of the power the citizens welded.

How does the public regain its power? Which candidates are most likely to reverse the trend to centralize authority? Who is most likely to find the solutions to San Francisco’s real  problems?