Archive for November 2023

In his exclusive report for Opportunity Now, Randal O’Toole of the Thoreau Institute explores how New Urbanist thinking and misguided anti-market policies created one of the most unaffordable housing markets in the world—and how to fix it. First posted on 11.19.2020. High-density, mid-rise and high-rise housing is more costly to build and most homebuyers and…

Image by The Free Press on X This week, Stanford junior and Free Press intern Julia Steinberg testified before Congress about rising antisemitism on college campuses. Her verdict? The hate didn’t magically materialize on October 7th. Steinberg traces rampant anti-Israeli discrimination to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ideologies that “pit groups of students against each other.”…

Image by Charles W. Bailey Jr A recent Merc article observes that some developers are invoking the “builder’s remedy” to downsize or downzone SJ projects, while the provision was intended to encourage and expand affordable housing options in NIMBY jurisdictions. Yet, YIMBY Law’s executive director Sonja Trauss is all in favor of (what she frames…

Image in Public Domain University leadership that celebrates free speech selectively—i.e., for students chanting for Hamas to “smash” Israel, but not for scientists disproving school lockdowns or judges speaking at club meetings—is either part of the Woke mob or afraid of it, says the Wall Street Journal’s Ruth Marcus. Marcus recalls Stanford’s ousting of president…

Bartolomeo Manfredi: Midas Washing at the Source of the Pactolus. Image by Regan Vercrysse In a Reform California webinar, chairman Carl DeMaio breaks down the five key tenets of proposed Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act (starting with requiring voter approval of all State tax increases). San Jose CM Doan is the City’s lone supporter…

by Josue Torres (NewsBreak) Photo by Jose Rago on Unsplash In a new move impacting tens of thousands of Californians, a prominent insurance provider associated with Farmers Insurance Group, the second-largest property and casualty insurer in California, has decided to relinquish its Certificate of Authority. This decision, as seen in a recent filing with the California Department of Insurance,…

In this Opp Now exclusive, three experts (SJSU’s regional planning professor Kelly Snider, Bay Area Council’s senior VP Matt Regan, and California YIMBY’s research director Nolan Gray) parse the builder’s remedy provision of CA’s Housing Affordability Act—which lets developers bypass local zoning laws for affordable housing projects if that city’s Housing Element is noncompliant. The…

Georgia O’Keeffe: Sun Water Maine, 1922. 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…

Carlo Bossoli: Ruins of a Large Genoese Fortress at Sudak, 1856. Image in Public Domain 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…

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. Ilpo Niva, A-CX CEO and co-founder: Population density…