WHY IS RENT SO HIGH IN CALIFORNIA?

The chart below explains it all. It tells the whole sad story. We need to build 180,000 new housing units in California every year to keep up with population growth, but we are only building 80,000, and this has been going on for 20 years. All of the housing problems we have in California, all of them, can be traced back to this one simple fact. Every year, our housing shortage gets worse, and this ever-worsening housing shortage explains why rents keep rising faster than inflation, why the vacancy rate is so low, why people are doubling up in apartments and houses, why people are paying a higher and higher percentage of their income on housing, why college graduates in California move back home with their parents after they graduate, and why thousands of people in the Bay Area are living in RVs, tents, cars, and trucks. Unless we build enough housing to keep up with population, all of these problems will just get worse.

California’s Population Explosion. In 1945, the population of California was 8 million. Today it is 40 million. That means that for every 1 person who was living in California at the end of World War 2, there are now 5 people living here. I live in a house that was built in 1902. In 1902, the population of California was 1.5 million. That means that for every 1 person who lived in California when my house was built, there are now 26 people living in this state. Like most people in the Bay Area, I am not happy about this tremendous population growth. I too wish that fewer people were moving to California, but they are coming here whether we like it or not. And its easy to see why they are coming. This truly is the Golden State! Suppose you were living in a city in a Rust Belt state full of closed factories, where the unemployment rate was 20% and the minimum wage was still $7.25 an hour. Wouldn’t you want to pack your bags and move to California? The unemployment rate in California is 4%, and the minimum wage in California will soon be $15.00 an hour.

America’s Black Hole. My sister Judy once called California ‘America’s Black Hole.’ I never forgot that because it’s true. What she meant was that moving to California is like entering a Black Hole. Nothing that enters a Black Hole comes back out. Once people move to California, they never go back to where they came from.

Adios Baltimore! I grew up in Baltimore, a Rust Belt city. The population of Baltimore peaked in 1950 and has been declining ever since. The heavy industries that once supported Baltimore’s prosperous working class are gone. Baltimore’s shipyards that once employed 50,000 people are gone. The Glen L. Martin aircraft factory that once employed another 50,000 people is also long-gone. The Bethlehem steel mill that once produced 10,000 tons of steel a day is gone. As the jobs dried up, so did Baltimore’s population. Thousands of row houses in Baltimore with their famous white marble stoops are just rotting away. All of Baltimore’s once-fashionable downtown department stores are now abandoned. There are dozens of cities just like Baltimore all over this country, once bustling industrial centers that have been in decline for generations. Without the jobs, what is to keep people in Baltimore? Baltimore is hot and muggy in summer and can be bitterly cold in winter. There are no interesting geographical features in Baltimore like mountains or waterfalls or palm tree lined beaches. We can’t stop people from leaving places like Baltimore and moving to California, and it is a fantasy to imagine that people won’t come here from places like Baltimore if we just don’t build housing for them.

Not In My Back Yard. We need more housing, a lot more housing in California, housing that ordinary working people can afford, but we’re not building it. Most of the city councils around the Bay Area are dominated by NIMBYs. (Not In My Back Yard). These politicians and the voters who elected them support laws that discourage new housing from being built, like downzoning, height limits, and and inclusionary housing laws. They also support laws that encourage landlords to remove existing rental units from the market, like rent and eviction control laws. Rent control gives owners of rental properties, particularly small rental properties, a financial incentive to get rid of their tenants and sell their properties to owner-occupants or to use their rentals for other purposes, like turning apartments into AirBNB rentals or offices. We need to accept this one fact – a lot of people are coming to California whether we like it or not. We are only hurting ourselves by discouraging developers from building new housing and by encouraging landlords to go out of business.

SHOULD YOU GET A HOME SECURITY SYSTEM?

Tenants often ask me this question; however, it’s not a question that I can answer. One thing I can and do tell all my tenants – a home security system is not a substitute for common sense. That means:

1. Lock your doors and windows when you are not home. About 1/3 of burglars enter their victims’ homes through unlocked doors and windows.
2. Don’t discuss your travel plans on social media web sites until you return. 4 out of 5 professional home burglars check Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter regularly to find out who is on vacation.
3. Put a lamp on a timer while you’re away. Even a dim-witted burglar can figure out that nobody is home if there are no lights on in the early evening night after night. I will give you a lamp timer if you don’t have one.
4. Don’t let mail and parcels pile up on your porch while you are on vacation. Have the post office hold your mail and have a friend check your porch daily.

Occam’s Razor. I am a big believer in Occam’s Razor which states that the most obvious solution to any problem is usually the correct one. Burglars use this principle to their advantage. Example – Why would a burglar try to get into somebody’s house by picking the front door lock if he can see that a ground floor window in the house next door is wide open? A burglar wants to rob a house, but he doesn’t want to get caught. What is the most obvious solution to the burglar’s problem?

I once had a tenant in Oakland who left her front door wide open while she went to the laundromat a few blocks away. This was back in the days before I put washers and dryers in all my units. She was robbed more than once by people who simply walked into her living room and took stuff. She thought that her problem was that Rockridge was a dangerous neighborhood. I tried to get her to see the connection between leaving her front door wide open and these robberies, but I was never able to do that.

SHOULD SCHOOLTEACHERS CARRY GUNS?

On March 13, 2018; Dennis Alexander, a math teacher at Seaside High School (Monterey County, California) brought his gun to class to give his students a lecture on gun safety. During his lecture, Mr. Alexander’s gun accidentally discharged, firing a bullet into the ceiling. A piece of the ceiling flew off, hitting a 17 year old male student and lodging in his neck. The student was taken to the hospital and is expected to recover. Mr. Alexander is very experienced in gun use. He is a reserve police officer and a member of the Seaside city council. He supports President Trump’s call to arm schoolteachers who, like himself, have gun training. I teach American history at Orinda Intermediate School, and my students are unanimously opposed to arming teachers (including me!)

32 MARIJUANA STORES IN BERKELEY?

I have long believed that in order to get elected to public office Berkeley, you have to have delusions of grandeur. The Berkeley city council is now considering how many marijuana stores to license. Most council mayors, including the mayor, support capping the number at 32, but that is opposed by the Berkeley Cannabis Commission, which wants a much higher number on the grounds that limiting the number of marijuana stores in Berkeley to 32 would ‘stifle innovation.” To put this into perspective, Berkeley has 1 Trader Joe’s, 2 Target stores, 3 Safeways, 6 Starbucks, 6 Walgreens, and 11 ice cream and frozen yogurt stores. All these stores added together still doesn’t get you up to 32. The idea of 32 marijuana stores in a city the size of Berkeley is insane.

Executing Drug Dealers? On the other side of drug madness, President Trump is proposing executing drug dealers, citing southeast Asian countries, where such executions are common. Trump isn’t the only politician advocating executing drug dealers, but this idea overlooks the fact that most Americans who are addicted to opiates don’t get their drugs on the black market.  In movies and TV shows, addicts usually get their drugs from sleazy criminals working for the Mafia or a Mexican drug cartel, but the reality is that most opioid addicts in the United States get their drugs at Walgreens or CVS with prescriptions. Unfortunately, there are a lot of doctors and dentists in this country who dole out prescriptions for opiates like they were Tic Tacs. I am sure that those doctors and dentists are not the people who President Trump is talking about executing. About 5% of the world’s population live in the United States, but we consume 80% of the world’s opiates. We are not going to get control over our nation’s opioid epidemic until the government makes it much, much harder for doctors to prescribe these drugs.