State has nearly 100 new housing laws; are they fixing the affordability crisis?

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

Facing a massive affordable-housing crisis pushing Californians out of their hometowns and some onto the street, state legislators passed law after law to boost housing production. Now, Sacramento is asking itself the million-dollar question: Is it working?

The answer: not as quickly as anyone hoped.

Nearly 100 housing bills have been signed into law since 2016 as legislators, in the midst of intense pushback from some growth-resistant city officials and residents, made supercharging the state’s housing supply a top priority. Despite that monumental effort, housing production has remained relatively stagnant, according to data tracked by the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

The disappointing results, laid bare during a recent joint hearing of the Senate and Assembly’s housing committees, point to holes that still need to be fixed before the state can build its way out of the crisis – such as high costs and a significant lack of funding. At the same time, lawmakers are hopeful the volume will improve, insisting some of this new legislation just needs more time before it will fully bear fruit.

“We’re coming up short,” Ben Metcalf, managing director of the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation, said during the hearing. “But I think it’s important to say it’s also early.”

The number of homes permitted across California has increased 16% since 2018 – the year the landmark Senate Bill 35 began forcing cities to approve and expedite certain projects that include affordable units. That’s hardly impressive, considering just 132,811 homes were permitted in 2021 – less than half of what state officials say California needs every year to achieve its target 2.5 million new homes by the end of the decade. And with interest rates and construction costs rising, it’s getting even harder to build.

But while the new housing laws have been slow to boost overall production, they’ve already made a noticeable difference when it comes to affordable homes and small in-law units known as accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.

“We’re already seeing some of the results,” Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Demo- crat who chairs the Senate Housing Committee, said at the hearing. “It’s not as quickly as we want, but it’s gradually moving in the right direction.”

Permits for low-income and very-low-income units nearly doubled to 20,245 between 2018 and 2021, while permits for higher-priced units increased by just 5%. Many of the state’s new housing laws either don’t apply or aren’t as useful when it comes to market-rate units.

And while low-income units are crucial, they make up a small fraction of the state’s overall housing production. Experts agree they can’t fix the crisis by themselves.

But for affordable housing developers, the new laws have made a world of difference. Elected officials, housing advocates and developers gathered in Mountain View on Friday to celebrate the groundbreaking of La Avenida Apartments – a 100-unit building for low-income residents. The project took advantage of SB 35, which allowed the developers to skip public hearings and dodge certain lawsuits that could delay or even kill the project. That saved them two or three years, estimated Linda Mandolini, president of Eden Housing, which is building the project. And time is money, as delays mean higher interest payments on building loans.

“You can’t overstate how huge that is for affordable housing,” Mandolini said.

SB 35 is perhaps the most well-known of a series of recent housing bills that do everything from streamline the permitting process for certain projects, to require cities to plan for more housing, to allow multifamily developments in single-family neighborhoods.

Legislators also have passed bills that make it easier to add small backyard or garage units to homes in single-family neighborhoods. As a result, the number of such accessory dwelling units permitted in California has increased by nearly 130% to 20,193 units between 2018 and 2021.

But the flurry of new legislation has yet to accomplish for most housing what it has done for ADUs and affordable dwellings. SB 35, for example, can be used to create market-rate housing, but it rarely is, according to research from the Terner Center.

Steve Eggert, founder of development company Anton DevCo, told lawmakers that’s because SB 35’s labor rules for market-rate projects require developers to pay wages that aren’t feasible.

Wiener, who wrote SB 35, is attempting to address that this year with a new bill – SB 423 –that would change those labor requirements. It also would permanently extend SB 35’s streamlining provisions, which are set to sunset in 2025.

The biggest problem, which came up again and again during the recent legislative hearing, is that housing is too expensive to build, and there isn’t enough funding to subsidize low-income projects. It’s costing Eggert’s team

$429 per square foot to build a 200-unit project in Santa Cruz – compared to $256 per square foot for a similar project in Colorado, he said. Meanwhile, affordable housing developers have to fight for the limited supply of state and federal funding that allows them to charge reduced rents.

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who chairs the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee, vowed to find ongoing funding for affordable housing – whether through taxes, bonds, or something else. There’s also some enthusiasm building this year for turning nonresidential sites into housing, Metcalf said. Wiener’s SB 4 would make it easier for religious institutions to build homes on their properties. Assemblymember Matt Haney’s AB 1532 would make it easier to turn office buildings into apartments and condos.

In the meantime, legislators are asking for patience as new state laws ramp up. “I think the challenge is we’ve done a lot of stuff, we’re not going to see the ROI on it for a little bit longer,” Wicks said in an interview, using an acronym that stands for return on investment. “And if you’re a voter, you’re paying high housing costs today. You’re driving by homeless encampments today. You want to see change now.”

Bay Area newlyweds say Hawaii tour boat abandoned them in the ocean

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

A Bay Area couple on their honeymoon are suing a Hawaii tour company for allegedly abandoning them in the open ocean during a snorkeling tour.

Elizabeth Webster and Alexander Burckle say that Sail Maui owes them damages for negligence and emotional distress. According to their lawsuit, they are Alameda County residents and Stanford graduates who both work as chemists.

The couple were honeymooning in Maui in September 2021 when the alleged incident occurred.

According to the suit filed in the US District Court for the District of Hawaii, they booked a Lanai coast tour with Sail Maui. The tour, which included 44 passengers, set off for a snorkeling destination off what was once Club Lanai, a resort only accessible via boat.

Webster and Burckle allege that the boat’s captain and crew failed to describe the boundaries of where they should be snorkeling or when snorkelers should return to the boat. After about an hour in the water, the couple say the boat began sailing away from them. They say they waved their arms in a distress signal, but the boat continued to leave them behind in the increasingly rough, choppy water.

A Sail Maui lifeguard “finished corralling what she erroneously thought was the last passenger back onboard the Vessel, and the crew prepared to depart for the next dive site,” the lawsuit alleges. “One passenger later reported to the Coast Guard that when she returned to the Vessel, she reported to a crew member that Plaintiffs were still out in the water further out then where she had been, but the crew member assured her Plaintiffs were already accounted for.”

For about 30 minutes, the couple claim they tried swimming toward the boat. By then, they say the surf was up to 8 feet high.

“Plaintiffs were beginning to panic and were struggling to swim in the ocean conditions,” the lawsuit reads. “They feared that drowning was imminent. Plaintiffs realized the Vessel had left them and was not coming back for them, and they decided that their only option for survival at that point was to return to shore.”

Although they were “extremely fearful and nervous,” they say they began swimming toward the Club Lanai shore. At 1 p.m., they made it safely to shore, where Webster allegedly wrote out “HELP” and “SOS” in the sand. About 10 minutes later, a pair of good Samaritans came by in their truck and gave the couple water and their cell phone to call for help.

The lawsuit claims a Coast Guard investigation into the incident found that the “vessel master negligently performed duties with regard to operating the vessel because he did not uphold the company safety procedures.” out something.”

Webster and Burckle are seeking a jury trial to pursue $5 million in damages. The case has been assigned to Judge J. Michael Seabright.

Hundreds of thousands of Bay Area families may face similar challenges. In December 2022, roughly 256,000 households were receiving CalFresh benefits in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, according to the California Department of Social Services. Across California, that number was nearly 3 million.

In Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, the more than 93,000 households receiving CalFresh benefits will lose approximately $16 million per month, according to Second Harvest of Silicon Valley – one of the largest food banks in the country.

As families lose the much-needed emergency benefits, food banks are bracing for an influx in demand. Throughout the pandemic, they broadened their reach as a social safety net as more people sought help – many for the first time. At the beginning of the pandemic, four in 10 people visiting food banks across the country were doing so for the first time, according to the nonprofit Feeding America.

Second Harvest of Silicon Valley – which serves residents in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties – doubled the number of people they fed when the pandemic hit, from about 250,000 clients a month to 500,000.

The nonprofit currently provides food for 460,000 people on average each month – an 80% increase from before the pandemic.

In fall 2021, adults 65 and older had a higher poverty rate, 16.3%, than children and adults between 18 and 64, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. In previous years, child poverty has been the highest.

Latinos are also disproportionately impacted by poverty in California, though the rate has fallen since 2019. In 2021, they made up 45.7% of impoverished Californians, but 39.7% of the state’s population.

Second Harvest CEO Leslie Bacho said many of the federal financial resources that helped them meet the need have disappeared. At the same time, donations fell, and their food costs climbed 30%.

That’s already led the agency to make some difficult decisions. Second Harvest typically gave out a gallon of milk to clients at food distributions. But at the beginning of the year, they reduced it to a half-gallon.

“The hard reality is we have limited resources, and the numbers are not adding up, so we’re having to take a really hard look at that,” Bacho said.

Stephanie Garcia, 39, a single mother of a 6-year-old in San Jose, saw just how limited those resources were on Friday morning when she went to the Mayfair Community Center to pick up food being distributed by Second Harvest. While she said she was grateful for what she did get – a couple of canned goods and some frozen vegetables – she left without eggs, milk or any fresh fruits and vegetables.

“This morning, [my daughter] says, ‘mommy, you’re Superwoman, and I’m your Supergirl,” Garcia said. “It felt great, and it was a little bit of a tug on the heartstrings. But Superwoman couldn’t come home with eggs and milk.”

With strained resources, Garcia has resorted to swapping food with family and friends who might have obtained different items at other food distribution sites.

East Bay food banks are grappling with similar issues. Liz Gomez, chief impact officer for the Alameda County Community Food Bank, is kept up at night thinking about whether it will have enough resources once the emergency funds end.

“For this to happen when inflation is high and food prices are through the roof, it’s really going to be devastating,” she said. “It’s going to be devastating not just for the families and people who need assistance, but also the food banks who are here to provide emergency assistance to people who need services. And it’s also going to be an impact on our local economy.”

Caroline Danielson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said programs like CalFresh typically aren’t meant to cover a family’s entire monthly food bill. But in past recessions, the federal government has stepped in with additional funds to lessen the impact on the economy. Those benefits, however, aren’t meant to last forever, and the end will be a “shock to family budgets.”

“In our poverty work, we showed that CalFresh had twice the impact in 2021 as it did in 2019 in reducing poverty,” Danielson said. “Some of that benefit will go away and it won’t have quite the same poverty effect that it did in 2021.”

Without additional funds for food, a few hundred thousand Californians could be plunged back below the poverty level, she said.

Bacho would like the government to increase the benefits and adjust them for the local cost of living.

“We cannot end hunger by food banks just distributing more food,” she said. “It’s going to take some real system change to make that possible.”

Paul Manafort agrees to pay $3.15 million to settle with Justice Department

The WashingTon PosT

Paul J. Manafort, a longtime fixture in Republican politics who briefly managed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, agreed to pay $3.15 million to settle a civil case brought by the Justice Department last year over foreign bank accounts that he did not declare to United States officials, according to his lawyer and court documents.

Jeffrey Neiman, a lawyer for Manafort, confirmed the settlement in a brief telephone interview on Sunday and said his client “is happy to have this chapter of his life behind him.”

The settlement was announced in paperwork dated Feb. 22 and filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida where Manafort resides. It was reported Saturday by the Florida Bulldog, a nonprofit website. Details about how and when Manafort is required to pay that settlement were not disclosed in the court paperwork, and his lawyer declined to provide that information.

The settlement would end a civil suit the Justice Department filed in April 2022 seeking to force Manafort to pay millions of dollars in fines and interest “for his willful failure to timely report his financial interest in foreign bank accounts.” The complaint alleged that Manafort failed to file in 2013 and 2014 a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (known as FBAR), as required by any U.S. citizen whose

Rail

From Page One really haven’t done it very well yet,” he said.

Brown is the lead sponsor of a rail safety bill that would require more disclosure of hazardous materials traversing states, inspections of wheel bearings and mandate minimum crew sizes. And it would increase penalties for violations.

Brown’s bill has cosponsors from across

Chips

From Page One mechanisms.” accounts abroad exceed $10,000.

Shipments from China to Russia have also surged as Beijing plays an increasingly important role in supplying Moscow, the diplomat added, asking not to be named discussing sensitive information. Those countries outside the EU haven’t sanctioned Russia themselves, but most have repeatedly denied they are helping the Kremlin.

The EU has sanctioned nearly 1,500 individuals, restricted exports on hundreds of goods and technologies, and targeted many of Moscow’s key revenue sources.

According to the Justice Department, Manafort earned income from consulting work in Ukraine and deposited the money in several overseas accounts in Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the United Kingdom.

Some of those accounts listed Manafort as “an authorized signer or beneficial owner of the account,” according to the complaint. It also said many of the accounts were held in shell companies opened on Manafort’s behalf.

Manafort briefly managed Trump’s campaign in 2016 before he was ousted from that role amid questions about his consulting work in Ukraine, for which he earned millions.

He was convicted by a jury of using foreign accounts to hide the proceeds of his Ukrainian consulting, and he pleaded guilty to money laundering and obstruction. The Justice Department indicted him in 2017 as part of the investigation by the political spectrum, including Republicans J.D. Vance of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri as well as Democrats Bob Casey and John Fetterman of neighboring Pennsylvania.

Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner, who represents the area around Saturday’s derailment, added his own frustration with the rail industry, calling the spate of Ohio derailments –now four in the last five months – “outrageous.”

“What we’ve seen, you know, recently with the biting hard and contributing to sustained economic recession in Russia,” Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said in Bulgaria recently. “But their effectiveness also depends on how well they are enforced.” special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into the Trump campaign.

On the surface of things, sanctions appear to be effective. Russia’s economy has contracted and many of its banks and companies remain cut off from international financial and trading systems. There is also evidence that the restrictions on European and U.S. technologies have weakened key Russian industries and hampered their ability to innovate in the future.

At one point, Manafort was sentenced to more than seven years in prison but was released early in 2020 as a result of health concerns during the coronavirus pandemic. Trump pardoned Manafort on Dec. 23, 2020, shortly before leaving office.

Though Trump had pardoned Manafort for financial crimes covering this period, the Justice Department complaint argued that he still owed the Treasury Department money, saying he violated laws requiring him to declare foreign bank accounts he controlled.

Neiman, Manafort’s lawyer, had previously downplayed the matter, describing his client’s actions as “simply failing to file a tax form,” claiming the lawsuit was filed “simply to embarrass Mr. Manafort.” risk to communities is unacceptable,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And the fact that we’re having derailment after derailment shows really the lack of investment, the disinvestment, in our infrastructure, and that needs to change.”

Manafort has worked for many presidents over the decades including Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. After his standing in Republican circles faded, he made millions advising political candidates in other countries, particularly Ukraine.

In 2019, amid concerns that Trump might pardon his former adviser, the Manhattan district attorney’s office obtained a grand jury indictment against Manafort on fraud charges that echoed the federal case. A New York state judge threw out that case, saying it violated state laws against double jeopardy.

Still, some ideological rifts were apparent. Brown blamed the derailments in part on stock buybacks, CEO pay and workforce reductions – issues unlikely to get agreement from Republicans.

Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from and Central Asia helped make up the shortfall. Meanwhile, shipments of high-tech components to those countries from the allied nations surged by a similar amount.

The same sort of patterns are apparent across hundreds of product categories, but it is especially acute when it comes to advanced chips and integrated circuits that can be used for military purposes, the diplomat said.

With Russia’s war in Ukraine now into its second year, the EU and its allies are increasingly focused on tightening any loopholes and preventing successive rounds of sanctions they’ve introduced from being circumvented.

West Virginia, said opposition to pipelines had put more stress on the rail system. “Pipelines would help alleviate a lot of this problem with the oil that we need in our country,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

And Vance told Fox News on Friday that attempts to blame President Donald Trump’s administration – which killed a train braking rule designed to prevent incidents like the one in East Palestine – “complete partisan hackery.” enforcement regime has opened a debate over where the share of responsibilities between Brussels and Europe’s capitals should lie when it comes to policing measures, officials and diplomats say.

“It would of course be more convenient for everybody if there was one EU level institution in charge,” Toms Platacis, the acting director of the Latvian Financial Intelligence Unit, said in an interview.

Latvia has criminalized sanctions violations, while other EU countries have not, so violators can “look for other countries where evading sanctions carries less potential penalty,” he said.

From Page One raise issues about my age,” he said in an ABC News interview in February.

“It’s totally legitimate to do that. And, the only thing I can say is ‘watch me.’”

The president’s doctor said Biden is “healthy” and “vigorous” following a routine physical on Feb. 16. On Friday, the White House said Biden had a cancerous skin lesion removed from his chest during the annual checkup, requiring no further treatment.

But some officials worry that the bloc still lacks an effective apparatus to enforce those measures and lags the U.S. With a longer history of sanctioning foreign powers, the U.S. has a centralized agency, more efficient procedures for gathering information as well as stringent legislation and the tools to enforce the rules at home and abroad.

In the EU, enforcement is a patchwork effort that mostly falls to member states.

While the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, monitors implementation and provides guidance, national authorities are responsible for identifying breaches and imposing penalties. And that means the results are inconsistent.

Ultimately, it’s about political will, said one EU official involved in the process, and national officials can come under pressure when it comes to taking tough action against their own companies.

“Our sanctions are

But information collected by the Genevabased Trade Data Monitor indicates that some sanctioned goods – particularly advanced semiconductors – are being diverted to Russia via third countries, many of which abruptly changed their trading habits following Russia’s invasion.

In some cases, the exports to Russia of technologies that could be used for military purposes in Ukraine have gone from effectively zero to millions of dollars.

Kazakhstan provides a key example.

In 2022 the Central Asian nation exported $3.7 million worth of advanced semiconductors to Russia, up from a mere $12,000 worth the year before the war started.

Russia was buying an average of $163 million worth of advanced chips and integrated circuits from the EU, the U.S., Japan and the U.K. each year between 2017 and 2021. In 2022, that slumped to about $60 million.

The data show Turkey, Serbia, the UAE and a half-dozen other economies in Eastern Europe

But tracking shipments isn’t a straightforward process. Buyers sometimes use complex corporate vehicles and distribution models to obscure the final destination of their goods. Incomplete paperwork can add to the opacity, as well as so-called transshipment points, where goods are moved between vehicles or rerouted.

On Thursday, the Biden administration released a compliance note aimed at cracking down on intermediaries used to evade sanctions and export controls on Russia. The notice names China, Armenia, Turkey and Uzbekistan as locations that may be used to illegally redirect restricted items to Russia.

The G-7 recently announced a new mechanism to bolster enforcement and the EU has also introduced several tools in its recent packages to go after those aiding Russia. But EU countries have so far been shy about using some of those tools and going after potential breaches at home, at least publicly. Discussions on toughening up the EU’s

In implementing successive rounds of sanctions, EU nations have been careful to limit the impact on their own bottom line and the wider global economy. That has at times led to often tortuous discussions between member states over exemptions and reporting requirements.

With every round of sanctions we take a step forward with new measures and one step back with new exemptions, one senior European minister said. Some member states are less enthusiastic about enforcement and are not doing enough, the minister added.

“Enforcement of export sanctions is not trivial,” said Beata Javorcik, chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. “Every government wants all other countries to enforce them but prefers to be lenient vis-a-vis its own firms. The experience with export restrictions during the Cold War shows this clearly. Thus, leaving enforcement of sanctions to national governments may not always work perfectly.”