Downtown developer Gary Dillabough suggests that homeless vandals are trashing the properties he wants to improve in SJ's struggling downtown. SJ Mercury reports.

San Jose's belated turn away from Permanent Supportive Housing is not unique: In city after city, county after county, and state after state, Americans have turned away from the idealistic but empty promises of Housing First advocates and toward commonsense policies. But Housing First advocates stubbornly refuse to acknowledge how their failed policies have caused untold misery--and have lost both the argument and their own credibility. National Review reports. 

California is not only the home of innovative technology; sadly, it is also the home of innovative tax ideas. The latest bad new idea, says Marc Joffe of the California Policy Center in a CA Globe article, is a one-time billionaire wealth tax levied on a retroactive basis--which could have disastrous consequences for CA's already beleaguered budget.

Manhattan Institute legal policy fellow tax Tal Fortgang argues that decarceration fans like County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg get it all wrong, and that violent crime is overwhelmingly the work of a small group of repeat offenders—that is, it is highly concentrated. The remedy, Fortgang argues, is not social engineering but incapacitation: keeping the violent few from striking again.

Despite government efforts and a solid economy, homelessness in San Jose and Silicon Valley continues to surge. Latest data suggests that, contrary to local homeless advocates' claims, homelessness tends to arise in the context of long-term, severe deprivation rather than large and sudden losses of income. A recent cross-country analysis found that about two thirds of adult homeless people suffer some form of mental illness. Econofact explores.