The Lessons of Fresno’s Ingenious Underground Gardens

For 40 years, Italian Immigrant Baldassare Forestiere Wielded a Pickax to Dig His California Dream Home

In our search for inspiring new ideas for solving California’s housing crisis, we must dig deeper. We must take our cues from Archimedes, “Give me a place on which to stand, and I will move the earth.”

How deep must we dig? At least to the depths plumbed by Baldassare Forestiere.

If you’ve never heard of Forestiere, you’re not alone. He’s never become the household name he should be in California. He deserves far more recognition for being the creator of Fresno’s greatest structure, which is also one of our state’s …

by Joe Mathews | September 24, 2019

The True Horror of Sunny Santa Cruz

The City’s Residents Feel Powerless Over Their Future—From Housing to Climate Change

by Joe Mathews | September 10, 2019

Is Santa Cruz the scariest place in California?

For sure, this state’s 21st-century reality is frightening: from the persecution of immigrants to the droughts and wildfires made worse by …

In San Juan Bautista, It’s Apocalypse—Now

The Site of a Famous Mission, and a Hitchcock Masterpiece, Is a Good Place to Ponder Human Fall-ibility

By Joe Mathews | August 14, 2017

If the apocalypse comes to California, I’ll be ready. After all, I’ve been to San Juan Bautista, which has centuries of experience with the ending of worlds.

I visited the San …

The Walls Are Too High in the Kingdom of Ventura

Growth Restrictions Have Saved Open Space in California, but Wealthy Elites Also Use Them to Keep the Middle Class Out

By Joe Mathews | August 11, 2016

Ventura County is the most glorious and verdant of California kingdoms.

Just ask its princes and princesses—those fortunate enough to be able to afford to live and vote there. Most of …

South L.A. Doesn’t Need Saving

Instead, the Area Could Be a Savior to a California That's Pushing out Its Working Class

By Joe Mathews | July 7, 2016

“How can we save South Los Angeles?” is a tired question. It’s an artifact of previous decades when the region formerly called South Central was known by its reputation for …

Why California IT Keeps Crashing

Governments Waste Hundreds of Millions; The Fix Lies in Working With Other States

by Alissa Black | March 27, 2013

Even as California governments say they don’t have enough money, they keep throwing it away—on information technology.

The courts blew more than $500 million on a new computer system—before recently abandoning …

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