California Housing Is Becoming More Affordable—Relatively, Anyway

You Still Get More House for Your Money in Austin or Boise Than L.A. or San Francisco, But the Difference Is Dwindling

California housing prices have soared during the pandemic. The California Association of Realtors reports that the median selling price of a single-family house here increased 11 percent, to $796,000, between December 2020 and December 2021.

Skyrocketing home prices and their impact on affordability are often cited as reasons for net domestic migration out of California. In the early 1960s around 250,000 Americans moved to California each year. In 2020 close to the same number left. Is this the beginning of a mass exodus from the Golden State or a more temporary …

by JERRY NICKELSBURG | April 6, 2022

Does California Need Local School Boards?

A San Francisco Recall Reveals a Dysfunctional System Failing Students—And the Useless Scapegoating of Powerless Officials

by Joe Mathews | December 7, 2021

If California’s local school board members won’t accept unfair criticism, submit to questionable recall votes, or tolerate verbal abuse at meetings, then California should do away with school boards entirely.

Why? …

The Mural So Controversial Nixon Tried to Remove It

75 Years Later, ‘War and Peace’ Survives, But Its Ideals Have Not

by Gray Brechin | October 4, 2021

As multiple crises pile atop one another in the young 21st century, a tripartite mural at a former San Francisco post office lobby rebukes us with its dated optimism.

“War and …

Can the American Republic Survive the Stubbornness of San Francisco?

The City by the Bay Keeps Producing Leaders Who Won’t Quit—Even When They Should

by Joe Mathews | September 7, 2021

San Francisco stubbornness is holding the republic hostage.

The hostage takers are two of California’s oldest and most powerful mules. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer …

Where I Go: Atop San Francisco’s ‘Redwood Empire’

For Nearly 30 Years, I’ve Come to the City’s Highest Natural Point to Orient Myself

by Talib Jabbar | July 17, 2020

At 938 feet above sea level, Mount Davidson is the highest natural point in San Francisco. And for nearly 30 years, since I was a child, it has been my …

When San Francisco Tried to Be the World’s ‘Queer Sanctuary’ for Refugees and Asylum Seekers

In the 2010s, the Bay Area Worked to Resettle LGBTQ People Fleeing Persecution—but Then Policies Changed

by Tom Shepard | June 25, 2020

Early one morning in 2012, Subhi Nahas woke up in a hospital bed near Idlib, Syria. The bright, boyishly handsome 22-year-old couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. The day before, …

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