Sacramento The last week of the legislative session always is a wild ride, but this year’s proceedings take on an urgency that we haven’t seen in the past several years given the stridently more progressive tilt of the state government. It’s…
Last week, Oregon became the first state in the nation to adopt a mandatory statewide rent control policy. Yet, rent control never delivers on the promise that it will multiply the affordable housing in high-value markets to serve middle- and…
Sacramento After debating rent control in Santa Monica on Monday with a leader of a liberal community group, I was left thinking about a great quotation from a famous left-wing Californian, author Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a…
Sacramento Not long ago, I quoted Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck’s conclusion about the results of rent control. He wrote that in many cases, it “appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for…
Sacramento The most stunning thing about California’s Democratic-dominated progressivism is that it continually works toward some future Nirvana even as it blatantly neglects its fundamental, current responsibilities. The state’s infrastructure is crumbling and it has the nation’s highest cost-of-living-based poverty…
Sacramento Most people believe the rent is too damn high in California. Fortunately, we don’t have candidates running under the unusual The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, as they did in New York. But thanks to California’s initiative process,…
San Francisco’s rent-control and tenant ordinances are so oppressive that thousands of apartment units sit vacant in a city where fierce housing demand has pushed rents for tiny apartments to above $3,000 a month. Basically, many property owners there refuse…
It is especially painful for me, as an economist, to see that two small cities in northern California — San Mateo and Burlingame — have rent control proposals on the ballot this election year. There are various other campaigns, in…
