Back in June of 2023, executives from the South Bay Community Land Trust (SBCLT) stormed the offices of the Santa Clara County Ass'n of Realtors, threatened staff, and sent one employee to the hospital with damaged hearing. Pleas from SCCAOR to the City to speak up on their behalf went, predictably, unaddressed. And now, adding insult to injury, the City just gifted the SBCLT five million cool ones as part of a misguided and economically illiterate "housing preservation" scheme. We repost, below, our 2023 Opp Now exclusive interview with Gina Zari, gov't. affairs director at SCCAOR, about Land Trust execs' invasion of their offices.

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Is it possible that the billions spent on 232 service providers in San Francisco hasn’t actually reached those in need? Street homelessness might be down by 1%, but that’s cold comfort to the 8,323 people counted sleeping in shelters and city streets on a single January night. Overall, the number of unhoused folks is up 7% this year. And nobody knows where all the prevention money goes. The SF Standard’s David Sjostedt reports.

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High density housing promises to radically transform the character of Bay Area cities, but will it lower prices? In his Substack R-Curious, Gus Mattammal rebuts a misreading of basic economics, brought to us by progressive Substacker Darrel Owens. Before we zone high-rises into every Palo Alto and Woodside, says Mattammal, consider Manhattan: dense, yet unaffordable. Maybe the solution is to alter the demand side of the equation, to construct world-class cities in California’s interior.

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California's eviction moratorium may have expired, but the idea that residential evictions are largely unjust has (as Reason mag's Christian Britschgi explains in his newsletter) lived on. However, new research finds most evictions cost landlords 2-3 months' rent—so are used as a last resort, when nonpaying tenants refuse to work out a deal.

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So goes Ray Bradbury's haunting 1950 short story, in which technology incessantly, futilely grapples against nature after human extinction. But what about today? How can we relate to technology (and vice versa)? In this Opp Now exclusive, four Bay Area art professors parse the delicate distinction between “authentic” vs. “technical.”

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Even if SF’s Dream Keeper Initiative hadn’t been shrouded in scandal, it'll likely expose City Hall to legal challenges, writes SF Standard’s Sanjana Friedman, who details how it can be viewed as “effectively race-based” and therefore violating state and federal law. Already, a court has slapped down GIFT—the basic income program that was based on identity. She now predicts the Office of Racial Equity will get sued for employment discrimination.

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Daniel Lurie (to replace Breed as SF's mayor) isn't the first political outsider to resonate with local voters. Here, WNYC examines the fascinating rhetorical dichotomy of “incumbent” vs. “outsider”—while tracing a history of successful outsider campaigns, all the way back to President Andrew Jackson.

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Interviews with CMs, economists, tax experts. Perspectives from 19 Opp Now contributors. It's mid-December, and we're just wrapping up Election '24 coverage (though trad media moved on—pretty fast?). Below, Harvard Biz Review analyzes our cultural addiction to “acceleration”—and, contrarily, what's to gain from lingering, savoring, and “musing.”

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LAist highlights recent calls by Southland auditors for data re: where the city of Los Angeles is spending millions of dollars that were supposed to go to the building of over 13,000 new shelter beds. This comes after lawsuits forced the city of LA into being more accountable and transparent re: homeless spending.

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Finding a parking spot in SF was never easy, but van life hasn’t helped. Since 2022, the number of homeless people living in their vehicles has jumped 37%. Residents are fed up with litter and dangerous behavior. Now, if perma-parkers don’t accept the City’s compassionate offer to house or support them, Mayor Breed says they'll tow their RVs. LA Times’s Corinne Purtill reports.

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His critique of COVID-era lockdowns have been vindicated. And the university censors that tried to silence him have been defeated. The irrepressible (and Opp Now contributor) Dr. Jay Bhattacharya now considers linking academic freedom performance at universities and medical schools with potential NIH grants. Liz Essley Whyte reports for the WSJ.

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In a strange mea culpa, liberal SF senator Scott Wiener admits that progressive governance has failed local cities in many respects. But his apologia suggests he doesn't really mean it. From an SF Standard editorial.

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