It's a time-honored business nostrum that "you are what you measure." Housing expert Scott Beyer of the Market Urbanist takes a look at the beleaguered SJ Housing Dept's audit, and finds the organization's metrics confused, avoidant, and not very useful. An Opp Now exclusive.

Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association's president Jon Coupal explains how California's unfunded pension liabilities, at nearly $250 billion (for SJ specifically: $3.6 billion), strain taxpayers, who must shoulder the price of overgenerous commitments. By switching from defined benefit to defined contribution plans, the State could reduce taxpayers' risks while maximizing retirees' returns. From the OC Register.

Like SJ's system that reroutes street water into the SF Bay, LA's urban runoff heads straight to its county beaches. Currently, many of these beaches are warning residents to avoid the water at all costs, due to high fecal-indicator bacteria (FIB). City Journal connects LA's surging FIB numbers and sprawling homeless encampments in an insightful piece on preserving public safety.

In a hard-hitting Free Press piece, Neighbors Together Oakland's founder Seneca Scott observes that the Left assumes wealth/race divide people's perspectives on criminal justice, with only affluent white folks wanting fortified police forces. Instead, says Scott, minority residents in poorer neighborhoods are often the firmest advocates for beefed-up policing—because they're most impacted by unsafe living conditions.

Two San Jose AI companies—A-CX and InfoObjects—and UC Berkeley finance prof/AI researcher Anastassia Fedyk comment on Mayor Mahan and CM Cohen's initiative to promote local artificial intelligence innovation. Making AI “approachable,” they explain, involves tapping into population density, university talent, and civic problem-solving. An Opp Now exclusive.

The Opp Now team dove into Reddit community r/BayArea to find out how local residents feel about Bay Area Rapid Transit, and the following comments—excerpted from a thread titled “Why does BART suck so much?”—are all things frank, tongue-in-cheek, and, yes, profoundly sobering for taxpayers. Fasten your seat belts.

Over the last couple weeks, masses of students and faculty have advocated for the end of the Israeli people at universities such as Stanford, Berkeley, and UC Davis. In the LA Times, Cal's law dean Erwin Chemerinsky expresses horror about the discrimination Jewish folks have experienced on college campuses since Hamas' first attack—which some suspect is tied to DEI ideology's inherent antisemitism.

Folks of all political stripes who want safer, more humane streets are banding together to request the SCOTUS review Johnson v. Grants Pass, which builds on Martin v. Boise by prohibiting cities from maintaining certain restrictions on street encampments. Similarly, San Jose's mayor—among others like San Diego's—wants the city to enforce more stringent rules on illegal camping. From the National Review.

For local jurisdictions to reach their Housing Elements' lofty targets for new affordable housing units, private investors must perceive reduced risk and a higher potential for payoff, says SF real estate firm director K. Cyrus Sanandaji. Sanandaji proposes in the SF Business Times that cities reform roadblocks to housing construction—like burdensome permitting processes—in order to jumpstart private sector developments.

Campus Reform reports that in attempts to minimize student discomfort, the University of California’s Ethnic Studies Faculty Council has cautioned to avoid terms like “terrorism” when denoting civilian targeting that defies the International Humanitarian Law. Simultaneously, local Jewish students—including at the Bay Area's own Stanford University—are seeing heightened discrimination, while institutions like DEI offices turn a blind eye.