Do locals actually want to kill property transfer protections?

Rembrandt Peale: The Court of Death. Image by Wikimedia Commons Taxpayer advocate Susan Shelley shines a light on California’s Proposition 19, which nullifies existing protections for parent–child property transfer, thereby treating a gift of property like a sale. Shelley wonders if many Californians—who voted against one-time estate taxes in 1982—truly want their yearly property tax…

Read More

☆ Khamis: Why won’t cities solve housing crises by buying on the cheap (instead of building extravagantly)?

Image by Randy von Liski Everybody knows that building new housing to solve local affordability crises is brutally expensive, and requires vast, ongoing, unsustainable subsidies. Former D10 Councilmember Johnny Khamis posits that taxpayer money would go a lot further—and our homeless and needy neighbors would get housing relief a lot faster—if the City simply purchased…

Read More

GOP Lawmakers in Sacramento Split Over MediCal for Undocumented Farm Workers

By Ana B. Ibarra / January 24, 2024 (San Jose Inside) Photo by Shutterstock Two California lawmakers publicly blew up at each other earlier this month, hitting a nerve on an issue that has long-divided the state’s elected leaders: Whether and how much to offer government-subsidized health benefits to undocumented residents. In one corner, Corona Assemblymember Bill Essayli declared that…

Read More

CSU Strike Ends After One Day, Classes Resume Tuesday

By Barry Holtzclaw (San Jose Inside) / January 23, 2024 After just one day of a planned week-long strike, negotiators for the California Faculty Association and California State University management announced Monday night they had reached a tentative agreement on a new contract, ending the first systemwide faculty strike at the largest four-year public university in the…

Read More

SJ Biz leaders find wage theft amendment excessive, counterproductive, urge its rejection

A group of construction cranes in front of a skyscraper.

Image by Wikimedia Commons At the end of last year, City Council directed Staff to consider further regulating development in the City by requiring building officials to withhold a certificate of occupancy from private owners when any contractor, subcontractor, or supplier is subject to an unpaid final wage theft judgment. The following Open Letter from local…

Read More

State, Lenders Seek to Recover $170 Million from Homekey Housing Developers

By Dan Pulcrano @pulcrano / January 19, 2024 (San Jose Inside) Pacific Motor Inn, site of new permanent housing for formerly homeless people, in SoFa district of San Jose. File Photo During the pandemic’s early days, as tents, tarps and cardboard shelters overwhelmed creek beds, freeway embankments and sidewalks, converting empty motels into housing for the homeless seemed…

Read More