Here’s what you need to know this week — in 20 seconds or less:

• Californians’ priorities are clear – safety, homelessness, cost of living – but we’re at risk of further backsliding in Sacramento. 
• The Quakes are up for sale — and it could kickstart a bold new future for Downtown.
• Sacramento is about to zero out the state funding we’ve used to move over 1,000 people off our streets. Time to speak up.

Keep scrolling for all the data and details

Dear Neighbor,

You – and our neighbors across California – have been clear about your priorities in recent years: increase public safety, bring everyone indoors, and slow down cost-of-living increases, especially those related to housing and utilities. Right now, we are at real risk of seeing Sacramento move us in the opposition direction on these important priorities. 

On safety, nearly 70% of us voted last year to implement Prop 36, creating a new tool – treatment mandated felonies – that allows judges to require that repeat offenders get the help that they need to turn their lives around rather than experience the revolving door between streets, jail and emergency rooms. 

Making Prop 36 work requires a significant expansion of our mental health care system. If we’re serious about alternatives to incarceration, we have to rebuild treatment capacity in California and ensure that people use it. But last week, the Legislature passed a tentative $325 billion budget with just $150 million for Prop 36 implementation. That’s a mere 0.046% – or less than one-half of one-percent – of the budget and it’s not nearly enough to move the needle on treatment capacity. 

On homelessness, like mental health, we face a dire shortage of beds (i.e. safe, managed places where people can live in dignity, with basic services like security, sanitation and healthy food). In recent years, large cities like San Jose have responded to the crisis on our streets by building interim housing and other safe alternatives to the streets. 

But this year’s tentative budget zeroes out the $1 billion in funding the State has divided between cities, counties and “continuums of care” each of the last six years to build and operate these alternatives. San Jose’s typical share of this funding ($30 million) is equivalent to the cost of keeping over 1,000 people off of our streets. (Read more about the state’s HHAP funding that is at risk in the dedicated section below.) 

On cost of living, Sacramento has fewer levers (i.e. the State can’t change interest rates or opt out of tariffs), but two important proposals from state legislators this year focus on reforming the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which blocks investment of all types in California and thereby drives up costs via supply shortages. Bills by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks and Senator Scott Wiener would limit CEQA’s applicability in urban infill sites and reduce abuse of this law, which has been stretched by judges and narrow interest groups over the years to enable lawsuits to effectively block new development of all kinds in our state, from housing to grid upgrades.  

But these bills are now under threat from Sacramento lobbyists and may not survive the sausage-making process intact. Meanwhile, Sacramento has managed to push nearly every oil refinery out of the state (driving up the cost of gas when most of us are still dependent on it), mandate solar panels on every new home (making new housing more expensive when grid-scale storage is more efficient and what the state really needs is more energy storage capacity), and is now considering myriad energy and data center-related bills that may push data center and R&D demand out of state and, with it, the future of the innovation economy. Energy is one area where Sacramento might want to stop helping! 

The good news? It’s not too late. The current budget is tentative and many of these legislative battles are far from over. You can help me tell our leaders in Sacramento that we want real action on public safety, homelessness and cost-of-living by looking up your legislator and getting in touch:

https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov

As always, thank you for being civically engaged and fighting for better outcomes for our community. I hope you and your loved ones enjoy the start of summer!

Sincerely,

Mayor Matt