Back Issues
Issue 25: Spring 2018
Remaking Rent Control
View Online
» Read more
News
As Supreme Court Backs Travel Ban, Yemeni-Americans Grapple With Next Steps
By Farida Jhabvala Romero, KQED News
Majed Balawi has spent months and nearly $25,000 in his quest to apply for a visa for his wife, who lives in war-torn Yemen. Balawi, is a naturalized U.S. citizen and he worries his wife might not survive the ongoing bloodshed and famine faced by millions of people in that country. “Yemen is not safe. I want to bring my wife here,” said Balawi, 38, an Uber driver who has lived in San Francisco since 2009. “I can’t go back to Yemen because there’s a war.”
News
Network of California Districts to Explore the Enigma of Engaging Parents
By John Fensterwald, EdSource
California plans to spend $13.3 million over six years to identify and replicate successful ingredients of community engagement, an essential but, for many school districts, elusive part of local control — the shorthand for setting budgeting and academic priorities under the state’s school financing law. The new money — included in the 2018-19 budget — will fund a network that eventually will reach as many as 80 districts. The funding represents the first substantial state effort to strengthen community involvement as required under the law, known as the Local Control Funding Formula. The school funding law, which Gov. Jerry Brown championed, shifted control over decision-making from Sacramento to school districts. Read the complete story at EdSource.
News
Saga of a San Francisco ‘Historic Laundromat’
By Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local
First things first, here it is. Here’s the 137-page historical study of a laundromat, underwritten to the tune of $23,000 by Robert Tillman, who hopes to build an eight-story, 75-unit tower atop where the washers and dryers now churn at Mission and 25th streets. And it turns out that, decades ago, several groups whose actions have helped shape the Mission did meet here, organize here, paint murals here — but the building was subsequently revamped and converted into a laundromat. So this structure is not historical. It’s a laundromat.
News
Exploring the Promise — and Unintended Consequences — of Rent Control
By Chris Nichols, Capital Public Radio/CALmatters
Toy cars are scattered across the floor in Marie Camacho’s small one-bedroom apartment in Sacramento. Photos of her 4-year-old boy, Julian, line the walls. The 32-year-old single mom juggles two part-time jobs, but she can’t stand to be away from her son. “He likes being around his mom,” said Camacho. “And I’m the only one.
News
Getting Free College Tuition in California: A Quick Guide
By Nico Savidge, EdSource
More than 1.3 million low- and middle-income students attend California’s public colleges and universities each year without having to pay tuition, thanks to financial aid programs in each of the state’s higher education systems that cover those bills. A California law that allows for a free first year of tuition at the state’s community colleges made headlines in 2017. But close to half of students at the 114 California community colleges already attended tuition free before the law was signed. At four-year universities, about 60 percent of students in the 23 campus California State University system, and the same share of in-state undergraduates in the 10-campus University of California system, attend tuition free as well. Read the complete story at EdSource.
News
Out With Soda, Juice and Chocolate Milk — California Could Become First State to Restrict Kids’ Meals
By Elizabeth Castillo, CALmatters
As the food court at a Sacramento mall buzzed with families on a recent summer day, Emily Wickelgren and her daughter Thea were enjoying lunch at Subway. The 7-year-old opted for water with her sandwich instead of soda or juice. “I do have unusual kids in that neither one of them likes soda and they don’t really like juice,” said Wickelgren, the mom of two daughters. This is what many legislators hope will be the new norm for more California families. Under a bill advancing in the Capitol, restaurants could offer only water or milk with meals marketed for children.
News
Suicide by Train: Will Technology Offer a Solution?
By Tonya Mosley, KQED News Fix
Caroline Camhy didn’t have a plan the night she decided to grab a lawn chair and sit along the Caltrain tracks near her home. It was Oct. 20, 2009, and all she knew was that teenagers were killing themselves, and she had to do something. “At that point I had a son coming into third grade and a son coming into fifth grade, and I started to think of what was going to happen,” says Camhy, at her home office in Palo Alto. “What was I doing?
News
Imagine the Future San Francisco Bay Shoreline
By Zach St. George, Bay Nature
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy washed into the eastern United States. The storm killed 191 people, razed much of the Jersey Shore, flooded part of Lower Manhattan, and damaged or destroyed 600,000 homes. All told, it caused something like $65 billion in damage and economic loss. Sea level rise alone wasn’t responsible for the destruction, but sea level rise made it worse.
News
Housing Crisis? State Agency Says Someone Making $200K Deserves House-Buying Help.
By Matt Levin, CALmatters
When the California Housing Finance Agency was created in 1975 in Gov. Jerry Brown’s first term, the mission was simple: help low- and moderate-income families buy their first home. More than 40 years later, amid skyrocketing housing prices and near-record low homeownership rates, that goal is getting harder and harder to attain. So much so that the agency has quite redefined what it means to be “moderate income” in California — and its definition of “moderate” may be different from yours. In fiscal year 2016, only 124 households making over $100,000 obtained a loan through the agency, accounting for only 3 percent of the mortgages offered by the agency. Read the complete story at CALmatters.