CalWatchdog Morning Read – January 24

24 Jan, 2017 by CalWatchdog Staff

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Enough blame for everyone with Oakland housing crisis
Trade deal’s death hurts Central Valley farmers
Key reform of environmental law hasn’t worked
Orange County could model GOP success with Asian-Americans
California has the highest real poverty rate in the country

Good morning! The governor gives his State of the State address today and it’s a pretty good bet he’ll discuss housing and the shortage of affordable options.

From the Mexican border to the Bay Area, local governments along the California coast fret about short-term rental operations such as Airbnb eating up already limited housing stock.

In response, homeowners who use such rentals to deal with the high cost of living fire back with claims that they’re being scapegoated for local officials’ ineffective response to the Golden State’s affordable housing crisis.

In Oakland, these arguments keep growing more intense as tech workers keep moving in. Uber’s plan to build a new headquarters in the city by 2018 only adds to city leaders’ concerns about housing costs.

But recent reports and surveys leave little doubt that in Oakland, both short-term renters and local officials bear responsibility for severe housing headaches.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

Agriculture: “Agriculture leaders expressed disappointment over President Donald Trump’s decision Monday to pull out of a 12-country trade deal that would have boosted exports from San Joaquin Valley farmers,” reports The Fresno Bee.
Regulation: “Under legislation passed in 2011, environmental lawsuits against mega-projects would face significant restrictions, forcing any litigation to take no longer than nine months. Instead, the Warriors’ case lasted nearly a year. Overhauling the environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act, is a perennial issue at the Capitol, and the measure benefiting the Warriors arena was one of the most high-profile CEQA reforms in recent years. But the failure of the 2011 legislation to meet its stated goals reveals the difficulty lawmakers have had in making meaningful changes to the law.” The Los Angeles Times has more.
Politics: “Orange County could hold the key to Republican success nationwide with the fastest growing slice of the electorate, Asian American voters.” The Orange County Register has more.
Poverty: California has the highest real poverty rate in the country, reports PolitiFact California.