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"content": "\u003cp>Californians in two industries are set to get new minimum wages just for them next year, and that could lead to pay bumps for other workers, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two union-backed bills to boost fast-food and health care workers’ minimum wages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California-based \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2023/09/minimum-wage-california/\">fast-food workers\u003c/a> for chains with 60 or more locations around the nation will earn at least $20 an hour beginning in April, $4 higher than the overall state minimum wage of $16 that will be effective Jan. 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In June, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/10/california-minimum-wage-health-care-law/\">health care workers\u003c/a> will earn a minimum of $18, $21 or $23 an hour, depending on what type of facility employs them and where they work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The industry-specific wage increases reflect a shift in unions’ strategies at the Capitol. After the Great Recession, labor groups led campaigns that resulted in then-Gov. Jerry Brown signing a law in 2016 that put California on a path to a $15 minimum wage. That law included inflation adjustments, which is why the minimum wage is higher today. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"John Logan, professor of labor studies, San Francisco State University\"]‘Other food-services companies will likely have to increase wages to retain workers in a sector in which chronic understaffing, and the stress and burnout that causes among remaining staff, is already a problem.’[/pullquote]The two new laws are expected to trigger pay increases for about 900,000 Californians, some of whom are earning more than minimum wage today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are going into effect in a competitive labor market that has seen employers, especially \u003ca href=\"https://www.sgvtribune.com/2023/02/10/these-small-business-owners-are-upbeat-despite-hiring-challenges/\">small businesses\u003c/a>, struggling to hire and retain workers. California’s unemployment rate is 4.8%, which is higher than the federal unemployment rate of 3.7% but is near a historic low.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new fast-food minimum wage could push up pay for other restaurant and food workers, experts say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a tight labor market, “other food-services companies will likely have to increase wages to retain workers in a sector in which chronic understaffing, and the stress and burnout that causes among remaining staff, is already a problem,” said John Logan, professor of labor studies at San Francisco State University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11970645\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11970645\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02.jpg\" alt=\"Gov. Gavin Newsom is speaking at a podium, smiling, surrounded by press and cheering people.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gov. Gavin Newsom signs legislation supporting the rights of fast food workers and boosting wages to $20 an hour, starting in April of 2024, during a press conference at SEIU Local 721 in Los Angeles on Sept. 28, 2023. Anneisha Williams, a leader in Fight for 15 and a Union and a fast food worker, cheers beside him to the right. \u003ccite>(Alisha Jucevic/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Others say the industry-specific minimum wage could have ripple effects in other industries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keith Miller owns three Subway sandwich shops in Northern California and is a spokesperson for the American Association of Franchisees & Dealers, which opposed the fast-food worker legislation. The law passed with support from major fast-food chains, which gained assurances that unions would drop an initiative that would have made the chains liable for their franchises’ labor violations. [aside postID=news_11954955 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/07/RS66719_GettyImages-1458634098-qut-1020x680.jpg']Under the law, Miller said, franchisors like McDonald’s or Subway avoid responsibility but franchisees like him will bear the costs of paying higher wages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miller questioned why fast-food workers were singled out as needing a minimum-wage increase and added that it could affect industries such as retail. He said retail workers might switch over to fast food if they can make more money there, or retailers might need to raise their workers’ wages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of a fallacy that this impacts only fast-food workers,” Miller said. “It kind of creates a market rate. In effect, the minimum wage for a lot of people will be $20.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Upcoming minimum wage measures\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In November, California voters will see a ballot initiative that would raise the\u003ca href=\"https://ktla.com/news/california/18-minimum-wage-in-california-what-to-know-about-next-years-ballot-measure/\"> state minimum wage to $18 an hou\u003c/a>r. Billionaire Joe Sanberg backs it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, workers in other industries are also fighting for higher minimum wages. In Los Angeles, a proposed ordinance would institute a \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2023/06/california-minimum-wage-2/\">$25 minimum wage for workers\u003c/a> in the tourism industry before the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, which would rise to $30 an hour by 2028. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Keith Miller, franchise owner, Subway\"]‘It’s kind of a fallacy that this impacts only fast-food workers. It kind of creates a market rate. In effect, the minimum wage for a lot of people will be $20.’[/pullquote]Jovan Houston, an airport security worker at Los Angeles International Airport, said she has worked there for six years and makes $19.78 an hour. She said a wage boost would be “extremely” helpful for her and her 13-year-old son. They live with her niece and her four kids because rent is so expensive, Houston said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s cramped, but I can’t afford to move,” she said, adding that she has coworkers “who work two or three days to survive. They’re sleeping in the back on their breaks because they’re tired.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even as she fights for the Los Angeles ordinance that would raise her wages, Houston thinks it’s possible that her company would cut workers if forced to pay them more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They might eliminate workers,” Houston said. “I’m definitely worried about that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The effects of higher minimum wages\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The costs and potential consequences of the higher minimum wages worry some people, including economists and the governor, while others see upsides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Economist Christopher Thornberg, one of the founding partners of Beacon Economics, said that in a competitive market, increasing minimum wages for the lowest-paid workers will lead to higher prices for consumers. For example, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/30/mcdonalds-chipotle-to-raise-california-menu-prices-as-fast-food-wages-rise.html#:~:text=McDonald's%20and%20Chipotle%20Mexican%20Grill%20will%20raise%20their%20menu%20prices,quarterly%20earnings%20in%20recent%20days.\">McDonald’s\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/30/mcdonalds-chipotle-to-raise-california-menu-prices-as-fast-food-wages-rise.html#:~:text=McDonald's%20and%20Chipotle%20Mexican%20Grill%20will%20raise%20their%20menu%20prices,quarterly%20earnings%20in%20recent%20days.\"> and Chipotle\u003c/a> executives have said they plan to raise prices next year to offset increased labor costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Michael Reich, an economics professor at UC Berkeley, said the effect of increased wages on product costs is relatively low and is usually seen in labor-intensive industries like dining and fast food. Reich said that when wages rise 10%, costs in the restaurant industry go up by about 2% to 3%, usually just on a one-time basis instead of a yearly increase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reich said raising wages for workers can lead to their upward mobility. Any adverse effects, such as higher costs for consumers or contribution to inflation, are negligible, he and other economists said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By increasing minimum wages for the lowest-paid workers, “you raise the standard of living,” Reich said. “That is quite significant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11970646\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11970646\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03.jpg\" alt=\"A strike of health care workers hold signs outside of a Kaiser Permanente facility.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kaiser Permanente employees on strike on Oct. 4, 2023. The workers held a demonstration in front of the Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento location. \u003ccite>(Miguel Gutierrez Jr./CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In addition, securing minimum wages for certain groups could eventually be used as a model to benefit other types of workers, such as gig workers who don’t currently have employee status, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor at UC Santa Barbara who has written books about labor history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One could see a wage commission … for the Uber world that can establish certain kinds of criteria, which would have the effect of a minimum wage,” Lichtenstein said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the new \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/11/california-health-care-minimum-wage-cost/\">minimum wage for health care workers\u003c/a> is expected to cost $4 billion in the first year — half from California’s general fund and half from federal funds — during a time when it is facing a gaping budget deficit. So the governor reportedly is \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-07/as-california-deficit-tops-68-billion-newsom-seeks-changes-to-healthcare-wage-law\">seeking changes\u003c/a>, though it is unclear what form they will take.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What’s next for California labor?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Worker advocates and labor leaders cheer their victories on wages as they strive to improve workers’ lives in other ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The unions that advocated for the fast-food and health care minimum wages said their list of priorities is long and includes other concerns, such as how artificial intelligence will affect work, housing costs, worker classification and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can talk about leave, minimum wage, etc., but it doesn’t matter if we’re replacing people with robots in the workplace,” said Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, head of the California Labor Federation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Isabel Urbano, a spokesperson for the Service Employees International Union, which campaigned for the fast-food bill and played a critical role in championing the minimum wage increase Gov. Brown signed in 2016, said: “The wage increase won’t mean anything if we don’t stabilize schedules and have predictable hours.” [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Lisa Fu, executive director, California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative\"]‘What’s happening in the state and around the country with the labor movement has been really, really inspiring for us.’[/pullquote]Lisa Fu, executive director of the worker-advocacy group California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, said, “What’s happening in the state and around the country with the labor movement has been really, really inspiring for us.” However, she said her organization’s main goal is to educate nail salon workers and businesses about labor laws. Fu said there is a “widespread” misclassification of such workers as independent contractors who are not entitled to sick pay, breaks and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While she said a minimum wage is one concern, “understanding of labor laws is the first step” in an industry primarily comprised of Vietnamese immigrants. The median hourly wage for nail salon workers in the state, including tips, is $10.94 an hour, she said, citing American Community Survey data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gonzalez Fletcher said labor is more focused on pushing for improvements in contracts, which she said tends to help raise the wages of nonunion workers, too. But she said she continues to support any efforts to raise the state minimum wage. “The only way to keep up with inflation is to increase wages,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "California fast-food workers will earn a $20 minimum wage in April. Other employers might have to raise their pay floor to recruit and retain staff.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Californians in two industries are set to get new minimum wages just for them next year, and that could lead to pay bumps for other workers, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two union-backed bills to boost fast-food and health care workers’ minimum wages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California-based \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2023/09/minimum-wage-california/\">fast-food workers\u003c/a> for chains with 60 or more locations around the nation will earn at least $20 an hour beginning in April, $4 higher than the overall state minimum wage of $16 that will be effective Jan. 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In June, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/10/california-minimum-wage-health-care-law/\">health care workers\u003c/a> will earn a minimum of $18, $21 or $23 an hour, depending on what type of facility employs them and where they work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The industry-specific wage increases reflect a shift in unions’ strategies at the Capitol. After the Great Recession, labor groups led campaigns that resulted in then-Gov. Jerry Brown signing a law in 2016 that put California on a path to a $15 minimum wage. That law included inflation adjustments, which is why the minimum wage is higher today. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘Other food-services companies will likely have to increase wages to retain workers in a sector in which chronic understaffing, and the stress and burnout that causes among remaining staff, is already a problem.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The two new laws are expected to trigger pay increases for about 900,000 Californians, some of whom are earning more than minimum wage today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are going into effect in a competitive labor market that has seen employers, especially \u003ca href=\"https://www.sgvtribune.com/2023/02/10/these-small-business-owners-are-upbeat-despite-hiring-challenges/\">small businesses\u003c/a>, struggling to hire and retain workers. California’s unemployment rate is 4.8%, which is higher than the federal unemployment rate of 3.7% but is near a historic low.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new fast-food minimum wage could push up pay for other restaurant and food workers, experts say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a tight labor market, “other food-services companies will likely have to increase wages to retain workers in a sector in which chronic understaffing, and the stress and burnout that causes among remaining staff, is already a problem,” said John Logan, professor of labor studies at San Francisco State University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11970645\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11970645\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02.jpg\" alt=\"Gov. Gavin Newsom is speaking at a podium, smiling, surrounded by press and cheering people.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage02-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gov. Gavin Newsom signs legislation supporting the rights of fast food workers and boosting wages to $20 an hour, starting in April of 2024, during a press conference at SEIU Local 721 in Los Angeles on Sept. 28, 2023. Anneisha Williams, a leader in Fight for 15 and a Union and a fast food worker, cheers beside him to the right. \u003ccite>(Alisha Jucevic/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Others say the industry-specific minimum wage could have ripple effects in other industries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keith Miller owns three Subway sandwich shops in Northern California and is a spokesperson for the American Association of Franchisees & Dealers, which opposed the fast-food worker legislation. The law passed with support from major fast-food chains, which gained assurances that unions would drop an initiative that would have made the chains liable for their franchises’ labor violations. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Under the law, Miller said, franchisors like McDonald’s or Subway avoid responsibility but franchisees like him will bear the costs of paying higher wages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miller questioned why fast-food workers were singled out as needing a minimum-wage increase and added that it could affect industries such as retail. He said retail workers might switch over to fast food if they can make more money there, or retailers might need to raise their workers’ wages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of a fallacy that this impacts only fast-food workers,” Miller said. “It kind of creates a market rate. In effect, the minimum wage for a lot of people will be $20.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Upcoming minimum wage measures\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In November, California voters will see a ballot initiative that would raise the\u003ca href=\"https://ktla.com/news/california/18-minimum-wage-in-california-what-to-know-about-next-years-ballot-measure/\"> state minimum wage to $18 an hou\u003c/a>r. Billionaire Joe Sanberg backs it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, workers in other industries are also fighting for higher minimum wages. In Los Angeles, a proposed ordinance would institute a \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2023/06/california-minimum-wage-2/\">$25 minimum wage for workers\u003c/a> in the tourism industry before the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, which would rise to $30 an hour by 2028. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Jovan Houston, an airport security worker at Los Angeles International Airport, said she has worked there for six years and makes $19.78 an hour. She said a wage boost would be “extremely” helpful for her and her 13-year-old son. They live with her niece and her four kids because rent is so expensive, Houston said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s cramped, but I can’t afford to move,” she said, adding that she has coworkers “who work two or three days to survive. They’re sleeping in the back on their breaks because they’re tired.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even as she fights for the Los Angeles ordinance that would raise her wages, Houston thinks it’s possible that her company would cut workers if forced to pay them more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They might eliminate workers,” Houston said. “I’m definitely worried about that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The effects of higher minimum wages\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The costs and potential consequences of the higher minimum wages worry some people, including economists and the governor, while others see upsides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Economist Christopher Thornberg, one of the founding partners of Beacon Economics, said that in a competitive market, increasing minimum wages for the lowest-paid workers will lead to higher prices for consumers. For example, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/30/mcdonalds-chipotle-to-raise-california-menu-prices-as-fast-food-wages-rise.html#:~:text=McDonald's%20and%20Chipotle%20Mexican%20Grill%20will%20raise%20their%20menu%20prices,quarterly%20earnings%20in%20recent%20days.\">McDonald’s\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/30/mcdonalds-chipotle-to-raise-california-menu-prices-as-fast-food-wages-rise.html#:~:text=McDonald's%20and%20Chipotle%20Mexican%20Grill%20will%20raise%20their%20menu%20prices,quarterly%20earnings%20in%20recent%20days.\"> and Chipotle\u003c/a> executives have said they plan to raise prices next year to offset increased labor costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Michael Reich, an economics professor at UC Berkeley, said the effect of increased wages on product costs is relatively low and is usually seen in labor-intensive industries like dining and fast food. Reich said that when wages rise 10%, costs in the restaurant industry go up by about 2% to 3%, usually just on a one-time basis instead of a yearly increase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reich said raising wages for workers can lead to their upward mobility. Any adverse effects, such as higher costs for consumers or contribution to inflation, are negligible, he and other economists said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By increasing minimum wages for the lowest-paid workers, “you raise the standard of living,” Reich said. “That is quite significant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11970646\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11970646\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03.jpg\" alt=\"A strike of health care workers hold signs outside of a Kaiser Permanente facility.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMWage03-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kaiser Permanente employees on strike on Oct. 4, 2023. The workers held a demonstration in front of the Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento location. \u003ccite>(Miguel Gutierrez Jr./CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In addition, securing minimum wages for certain groups could eventually be used as a model to benefit other types of workers, such as gig workers who don’t currently have employee status, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor at UC Santa Barbara who has written books about labor history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One could see a wage commission … for the Uber world that can establish certain kinds of criteria, which would have the effect of a minimum wage,” Lichtenstein said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the new \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/11/california-health-care-minimum-wage-cost/\">minimum wage for health care workers\u003c/a> is expected to cost $4 billion in the first year — half from California’s general fund and half from federal funds — during a time when it is facing a gaping budget deficit. So the governor reportedly is \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-07/as-california-deficit-tops-68-billion-newsom-seeks-changes-to-healthcare-wage-law\">seeking changes\u003c/a>, though it is unclear what form they will take.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What’s next for California labor?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Worker advocates and labor leaders cheer their victories on wages as they strive to improve workers’ lives in other ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The unions that advocated for the fast-food and health care minimum wages said their list of priorities is long and includes other concerns, such as how artificial intelligence will affect work, housing costs, worker classification and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can talk about leave, minimum wage, etc., but it doesn’t matter if we’re replacing people with robots in the workplace,” said Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, head of the California Labor Federation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Isabel Urbano, a spokesperson for the Service Employees International Union, which campaigned for the fast-food bill and played a critical role in championing the minimum wage increase Gov. Brown signed in 2016, said: “The wage increase won’t mean anything if we don’t stabilize schedules and have predictable hours.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Lisa Fu, executive director of the worker-advocacy group California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, said, “What’s happening in the state and around the country with the labor movement has been really, really inspiring for us.” However, she said her organization’s main goal is to educate nail salon workers and businesses about labor laws. Fu said there is a “widespread” misclassification of such workers as independent contractors who are not entitled to sick pay, breaks and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While she said a minimum wage is one concern, “understanding of labor laws is the first step” in an industry primarily comprised of Vietnamese immigrants. The median hourly wage for nail salon workers in the state, including tips, is $10.94 an hour, she said, citing American Community Survey data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gonzalez Fletcher said labor is more focused on pushing for improvements in contracts, which she said tends to help raise the wages of nonunion workers, too. But she said she continues to support any efforts to raise the state minimum wage. “The only way to keep up with inflation is to increase wages,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Over 930,000 Californians Lost Medi-Cal Coverage This Year Due to ‘Procedural Reasons’",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Lea este artículo en \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/calmatters-en-espanol/2023/12/me-dijeron-que-no-tengo-cobertura-californianos-sorprendidos-por-haber-perdido-su-seguro-de-medi-cal/\">español\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Florinda Miguel took her 6-year-old daughter for a routine dentist appointment in early December, only to find out that her Medi-Cal coverage had lapsed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took her by surprise. She hadn’t needed to renew her kids’ Medi-Cal coverage in almost four years. The Los Angeles resident said she doesn’t recall getting any notices or renewal paperwork in the mail this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know if they sent it, if it was lost. I don’t know, but I didn’t get it,” Miguel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without coverage, her daughter’s dental exam would cost $60, plus the cost of any additional work that needed to be done, so Miguel postponed it until she could get her Medi-Cal reinstated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This spring, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/07/medi-cal-eligibility-california-review/\">states restarted their annual eligibility reviews\u003c/a> for lower-income people enrolled in Medicaid — better known as Medi-Cal in California — after the federal government paused them in 2020 so recipients could automatically maintain their health benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Celia Valdez, Maternal and Child Health Access\"]‘During COVID, the message was ignore, ignore, don’t worry. For close to four years, we told people not to worry, and then all of a sudden, they had to worry.’[/pullquote]Now, six months into the renewed eligibility process, thousands of eligible Californians are finding out, often during doctor’s visits, that they’ve lost their coverage due to missing or incomplete paperwork.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 930,000 people have had their Medi-Cal coverage terminated this year, according to state data. The vast majority of them — close to 90% — lost coverage because of so-called “procedural reasons,” often entailing problems with paperwork. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kff.org/report-section/medicaid-enrollment-and-unwinding-tracker-overview/\">California has the country’s fourth highest rate\u003c/a> of terminations linked to procedural issues, according to the health policy research organization KFF (formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among Californians eligible for Medi-Cal renewals, 47% retained coverage, 15% were kicked off for paperwork problems, 2% no longer qualified and 35% are still under review, the KFF tracker shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who lose their \u003ca href=\"https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/keep-your-Medi-Cal/Pages/I-got-a-renewal-form.aspx\">Medi-Cal coverage but are still eligible\u003c/a> can hop back on within a 90-day grace period as long as they submit any missing information through the mail or online. As of October, the program covered 15.1 million people in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“During COVID, the message was ignore, ignore, don’t worry. For close to four years, we told people not to worry, and then all of a sudden, they had to worry,” said Celia Valdez, director of outreach and education at the Los Angeles nonprofit Maternal and Child Health Access. Her organization helped Miguel reinstate her kids’ Medi-Cal. But experiences like Miguel’s are common, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many [enrollees] are saying, ‘I couldn’t fill my prescription, I went to the doctor and they told me I have no coverage,’” Valdez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who are being disenrolled for “procedural reasons” tend to fall into several buckets, including those who are new to the program and may not understand that they now have to respond to yearly reviews, said Yingjia Huang, assistant deputy director at the California Department of Health Care Services, the state agency that oversees the Medi-Cal program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other people may now have health insurance through an employer and are not filling out their paperwork because they no longer need Medi-Cal nor would they qualify, Huang said. And some who moved during the pandemic may not have received the renewal alert this year because they neglected to report their new address to their county Medi-Cal office.[aside label=\"more on medi-cal\" tag=\"medi-cal\"]And in some cases, advocates add, county offices may not be processing paperwork on time that was submitted close to the deadline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Children’s Partnership, a nonprofit children’s advocacy organization, last week \u003ca href=\"https://childrenspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/101691-000_Packard_FinishLine_CA_Deck.pptx.pdf\">published a report \u003c/a>about parents’ and guardians’ experiences with renewing their families’ Medi-Cal. The report noted several obstacles that parents said contributed to their children losing coverage, including unreturned phone calls, long call wait times, confusing instructions, limited access to translators, feelings of discrimination, and lack of awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the report, gaps in coverage led to delays in care, missed medications and out-of-pocket costs for families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Huang, with the Department of Health Care Services, said the state is working to increase the number of people whose coverage can be renewed automatically using state electronic databases that can verify an enrollee’s income and eligibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our [automatic renewal] rates historically have been lower than many of the other states — they probably have more electronic sources and databases that they can use,” Huang said. She noted the state has been receiving automation tips and technical assistance from the federal government to increase the number of cases that can be renewed automatically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That just eases the administrative burden on our members as well as our counties,” Huang said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valdez and other health advocates said there are significant gaps in support for people who have questions or need assistance. She said that calling county Medi-Cal offices can result in hours-long waits, and organizations like hers have limited capacity to fill in the gaps. People who are not connected to an advocate or an enrollment counselor could get lost in the process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/09/what-to-do-if-you-lose-medi-cal-health-insurance/\">top questions and comments\u003c/a> from people seeking assistance is that the paperwork is too much or too confusing, said Kimberley Graham, director of patient access at AltaMed Health Services, a clinic system in Los Angeles and Orange counties that provides enrollment services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And they don’t know what to do. So often, the packets are opened, but they’re completely blank,” Graham said. “The next question is, ‘Do I have to do this every year?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer, she said, is “yes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that\u003c/em> \u003cem>people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://www.chcf.org/\">\u003cem>www.chcf.org\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> to learn more.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Lea este artículo en \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/calmatters-en-espanol/2023/12/me-dijeron-que-no-tengo-cobertura-californianos-sorprendidos-por-haber-perdido-su-seguro-de-medi-cal/\">español\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Florinda Miguel took her 6-year-old daughter for a routine dentist appointment in early December, only to find out that her Medi-Cal coverage had lapsed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took her by surprise. She hadn’t needed to renew her kids’ Medi-Cal coverage in almost four years. The Los Angeles resident said she doesn’t recall getting any notices or renewal paperwork in the mail this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know if they sent it, if it was lost. I don’t know, but I didn’t get it,” Miguel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without coverage, her daughter’s dental exam would cost $60, plus the cost of any additional work that needed to be done, so Miguel postponed it until she could get her Medi-Cal reinstated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This spring, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/07/medi-cal-eligibility-california-review/\">states restarted their annual eligibility reviews\u003c/a> for lower-income people enrolled in Medicaid — better known as Medi-Cal in California — after the federal government paused them in 2020 so recipients could automatically maintain their health benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Now, six months into the renewed eligibility process, thousands of eligible Californians are finding out, often during doctor’s visits, that they’ve lost their coverage due to missing or incomplete paperwork.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 930,000 people have had their Medi-Cal coverage terminated this year, according to state data. The vast majority of them — close to 90% — lost coverage because of so-called “procedural reasons,” often entailing problems with paperwork. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kff.org/report-section/medicaid-enrollment-and-unwinding-tracker-overview/\">California has the country’s fourth highest rate\u003c/a> of terminations linked to procedural issues, according to the health policy research organization KFF (formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among Californians eligible for Medi-Cal renewals, 47% retained coverage, 15% were kicked off for paperwork problems, 2% no longer qualified and 35% are still under review, the KFF tracker shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who lose their \u003ca href=\"https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/keep-your-Medi-Cal/Pages/I-got-a-renewal-form.aspx\">Medi-Cal coverage but are still eligible\u003c/a> can hop back on within a 90-day grace period as long as they submit any missing information through the mail or online. As of October, the program covered 15.1 million people in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“During COVID, the message was ignore, ignore, don’t worry. For close to four years, we told people not to worry, and then all of a sudden, they had to worry,” said Celia Valdez, director of outreach and education at the Los Angeles nonprofit Maternal and Child Health Access. Her organization helped Miguel reinstate her kids’ Medi-Cal. But experiences like Miguel’s are common, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many [enrollees] are saying, ‘I couldn’t fill my prescription, I went to the doctor and they told me I have no coverage,’” Valdez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who are being disenrolled for “procedural reasons” tend to fall into several buckets, including those who are new to the program and may not understand that they now have to respond to yearly reviews, said Yingjia Huang, assistant deputy director at the California Department of Health Care Services, the state agency that oversees the Medi-Cal program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other people may now have health insurance through an employer and are not filling out their paperwork because they no longer need Medi-Cal nor would they qualify, Huang said. And some who moved during the pandemic may not have received the renewal alert this year because they neglected to report their new address to their county Medi-Cal office.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>And in some cases, advocates add, county offices may not be processing paperwork on time that was submitted close to the deadline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Children’s Partnership, a nonprofit children’s advocacy organization, last week \u003ca href=\"https://childrenspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/101691-000_Packard_FinishLine_CA_Deck.pptx.pdf\">published a report \u003c/a>about parents’ and guardians’ experiences with renewing their families’ Medi-Cal. The report noted several obstacles that parents said contributed to their children losing coverage, including unreturned phone calls, long call wait times, confusing instructions, limited access to translators, feelings of discrimination, and lack of awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the report, gaps in coverage led to delays in care, missed medications and out-of-pocket costs for families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Huang, with the Department of Health Care Services, said the state is working to increase the number of people whose coverage can be renewed automatically using state electronic databases that can verify an enrollee’s income and eligibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our [automatic renewal] rates historically have been lower than many of the other states — they probably have more electronic sources and databases that they can use,” Huang said. She noted the state has been receiving automation tips and technical assistance from the federal government to increase the number of cases that can be renewed automatically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That just eases the administrative burden on our members as well as our counties,” Huang said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valdez and other health advocates said there are significant gaps in support for people who have questions or need assistance. She said that calling county Medi-Cal offices can result in hours-long waits, and organizations like hers have limited capacity to fill in the gaps. People who are not connected to an advocate or an enrollment counselor could get lost in the process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/09/what-to-do-if-you-lose-medi-cal-health-insurance/\">top questions and comments\u003c/a> from people seeking assistance is that the paperwork is too much or too confusing, said Kimberley Graham, director of patient access at AltaMed Health Services, a clinic system in Los Angeles and Orange counties that provides enrollment services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And they don’t know what to do. So often, the packets are opened, but they’re completely blank,” Graham said. “The next question is, ‘Do I have to do this every year?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer, she said, is “yes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that\u003c/em> \u003cem>people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://www.chcf.org/\">\u003cem>www.chcf.org\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> to learn more.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>King City, population 14,000, wanted to show that even small towns can try to solve homelessness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Monterey County community last year partnered with Los Angeles-based developer Shangri-La Industries to land a grant from Homekey, California’s $3.1 billion program to help cities build affordable housing for their unhoused residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King City and Shangri-La got $12.4 million to convert a motel into 44 units of permanent housing complete with social services — enough room for the city’s entire unhoused population, said Mayor Mike LeBarre. The city expected the units to open by the end of 2022. But starting late last year, LeBarre said the renovations kept getting delayed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the whole project may be in jeopardy. And the California Department of Housing and Community Development said this week it is investigating Shangri-La for program violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shangri-La took out a loan for the conversion, which is now in default, according to filings in the Monterey County Recorder’s Office, putting the project at risk of foreclosure. The developer also failed to record an affordability use restriction — the legal language attached to a deed that guarantees the property remains affordable housing, LeBarre said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, Shangri-La defaulted on private loans in seven Homekey-funded motel conversion projects across the state, three of which are already housing unhoused residents. On several of the projects, contractors have filed liens, alleging they weren’t paid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Pablo Espinoza, spokesperson, Department of Housing and Community Development\"]‘We are aware of violations by Shangri-La Industries with respect to six of the seven Homekey properties for which it is the developer. The state takes seriously any violations and is actively investigating this matter.’[/pullquote]And Shangri-La failed to record affordability restrictions in six of the projects, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which said it is coordinating with the state Attorney General’s office in its investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are aware of violations by Shangri-La Industries with respect to six of the seven Homekey properties for which it is the developer,” spokesperson Pablo Espinoza wrote in an email to CalMatters on Wednesday. “The state takes seriously any violations and is actively investigating this matter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In letters the department \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Notice-of-Violations-Final.12.4.23.pdf\">issued to the developer\u003c/a> this month, officials alleged the lack of affordability restrictions and the loans themselves (which made the projects collateral for lenders) violated program agreements with the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview Thursday, \u003ca href=\"https://www.shangrilaindustries.com/\">Shangri-La\u003c/a> CEO Andy Meyers said the state is partly to blame. He accused the housing department of taking months to approve the affordability agreements, a required step before the documents are recorded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The state has just taken forever to get these agreements out,” he told CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other problems with the projects have stemmed from that, he said. Projects are over budget, in part because Shangri-La has had to pay property taxes when they would be eligible for abatements if the properties were recorded as affordable housing. Lenders also expected the affordability agreements to be recorded, causing some loan defaults on technicalities, he said. Meanwhile, he said, \u003ca href=\"https://www.marketplace.org/2023/10/18/america-needs-more-houses-but-homebuilders-are-hobbled-by-high-interest-rates/\">high-interest rates\u003c/a> over the past two years have made refinancing difficult. The loan defaults were \u003ca href=\"https://therealdeal.com/la/2023/12/01/shangri-la-industries-defaults-on-project-homekey-loans/\">first reported this month\u003c/a> by the real estate news outlet The Real Deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s been no sense of urgency until there were these recent articles written about the loan defaults,” Meyers said of the housing department’s approving the agreements. “Then all of a sudden, HCD got really engaged and said, ‘We reached out to the Attorney General.’ I don’t give a s–t … I would love to go meet and work things out with HCD.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Related Stories\" postID=\"news_11961820,news_11954909,news_11953216\"]Espinoza denied Meyers’ allegations, though one city appeared to back up the developer’s claim. In Thousand Oaks, a Los Angeles suburb, Assistant City Manager Ingrid Hardy told CalMatters in an email that the city and developer submitted an affordability agreement for a Homekey project to the state department in February and only received approval to record it within the last week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Espinoza said the department couldn’t have approved the agreements after Shangri-La had already taken out the loans, and “absent their violation, the recording would have been done in a timely manner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The department’s probe appears to be its first significant investigation into a private developer for the much-praised \u003ca href=\"https://www.hcd.ca.gov/grants-and-funding/homekey\">Homekey program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program — which gives cities, counties and local housing authorities money to build permanent housing for unhoused residents — \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2021/05/newsom-end-homelessness-pandemic-lessons/\">began in 2020 and has mostly funded\u003c/a> hotel and motel conversions. Over the past three years, the housing department has granted $3.1 billion for 226 projects that, when all are completed, promise more than 14,000 units of affordable housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shangri-La’s loan defaults throw the future of some of those projects into question. The housing department stressed in an emailed statement that the developer’s grants amount to just 3% of the total public dollars distributed through the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meyers, meanwhile, said his company is committed to refinancing its loans and completing construction, which is halted on the four projects that haven’t yet opened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m going to find a way to get these projects done one way or another,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The delays have vexed local officials like LeBarre, who depended on the Homekey program to provide many affordable housing units, especially in small cities with otherwise limited services for the unhoused.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like other local governments Shangri-La worked with, King City didn’t purchase the motel itself and has no ownership stake in it. Instead, the city acted only as a required co-applicant when the developer sought state funds to acquire and renovate the property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11970245\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11970245\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy.jpg\" alt=\"A view of a motel from the street.\" width=\"1568\" height=\"1045\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy.jpg 1568w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Americas Best Value Inn Corte Madera, a Homekey program site, is located next door to an apartment complex at the base of a residential neighborhood in Marin County. \u003ccite>(Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, the city is asking for state help to save the property from a possible foreclosure. And it has scrambled to keep dozens of unhoused residents in motel rooms temporarily for months longer than planned. King City moved the residents from a creekbed encampment earlier this year, intending to soon move them into permanent units at the Shangri-La project, LeBarre said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re trying to find solutions of how to keep the project alive,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 200 miles south, the city of Thousand Oaks and Shangri-La won a $26.7 million Homekey grant in 2022 to convert a Quality Inn to 77 units of permanent housing. Shangri-La beat out three competing bids, according to a memo city officials prepared in the fall of 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thousand Oaks selected the developer for its “significant motel conversion experience” and because the company had already picked out the property on its own. City officials also noted that Shangri-La’s prior Homekey-funded projects — in Salinas and San Bernardino — were “among the top 10 percent most cost-effective Homekey projects in California” and that the company would not need “any financial capital assistance from the city” to buy or renovate the hotel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"King City Mayor Mike LeBarre\"]‘We’re trying to find solutions of how to keep the project alive.’[/pullquote]Still, Hardy, the assistant city manager, said the city also gave Shangri-La $1.8 million to help with construction. The project was supposed to open before the end of this year. But the developer has defaulted on a $10 million loan and contractors have also filed liens, according to Ventura County property records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Construction is only 20% complete, Hardy said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The city is obviously extremely concerned and anxious to get this project back on track and resume construction so that we can house our most vulnerable residents,” she wrote. “Our community is relying on this project to serve people experiencing homelessness, especially considering this project was going to be the first of its size in East Ventura County.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shangri-La’s other projects were motel conversions in San Bernardino and Redlands that have both opened and three in Salinas, where only one project has opened. In all its projects, the developer partnered with the nonprofit Step Up on Second to provide services to residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Salinas and San Bernardino County officials did not respond to inquiries from CalMatters on Thursday. Step Up officials could not be reached for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Redlands, city spokesperson Carl Baker said an affordability agreement has been recorded. The property opened in January and is “basically fully occupied with approximately 120 residents,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the project’s troubles aren’t over. This week, Luxlion Industries, a company that provides fire safety services, filed a lien on the property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>CalMatters’ investigative reporter \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/laurenhepler/\">\u003cem>Lauren Hepler\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Local officials counted on the state’s Homekey program to convert hotel rooms. But now a major developer has defaulted on loans and the state housing department is investigating.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>King City, population 14,000, wanted to show that even small towns can try to solve homelessness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Monterey County community last year partnered with Los Angeles-based developer Shangri-La Industries to land a grant from Homekey, California’s $3.1 billion program to help cities build affordable housing for their unhoused residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King City and Shangri-La got $12.4 million to convert a motel into 44 units of permanent housing complete with social services — enough room for the city’s entire unhoused population, said Mayor Mike LeBarre. The city expected the units to open by the end of 2022. But starting late last year, LeBarre said the renovations kept getting delayed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the whole project may be in jeopardy. And the California Department of Housing and Community Development said this week it is investigating Shangri-La for program violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shangri-La took out a loan for the conversion, which is now in default, according to filings in the Monterey County Recorder’s Office, putting the project at risk of foreclosure. The developer also failed to record an affordability use restriction — the legal language attached to a deed that guarantees the property remains affordable housing, LeBarre said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, Shangri-La defaulted on private loans in seven Homekey-funded motel conversion projects across the state, three of which are already housing unhoused residents. On several of the projects, contractors have filed liens, alleging they weren’t paid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘We are aware of violations by Shangri-La Industries with respect to six of the seven Homekey properties for which it is the developer. The state takes seriously any violations and is actively investigating this matter.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>And Shangri-La failed to record affordability restrictions in six of the projects, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which said it is coordinating with the state Attorney General’s office in its investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are aware of violations by Shangri-La Industries with respect to six of the seven Homekey properties for which it is the developer,” spokesperson Pablo Espinoza wrote in an email to CalMatters on Wednesday. “The state takes seriously any violations and is actively investigating this matter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In letters the department \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Notice-of-Violations-Final.12.4.23.pdf\">issued to the developer\u003c/a> this month, officials alleged the lack of affordability restrictions and the loans themselves (which made the projects collateral for lenders) violated program agreements with the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview Thursday, \u003ca href=\"https://www.shangrilaindustries.com/\">Shangri-La\u003c/a> CEO Andy Meyers said the state is partly to blame. He accused the housing department of taking months to approve the affordability agreements, a required step before the documents are recorded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The state has just taken forever to get these agreements out,” he told CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other problems with the projects have stemmed from that, he said. Projects are over budget, in part because Shangri-La has had to pay property taxes when they would be eligible for abatements if the properties were recorded as affordable housing. Lenders also expected the affordability agreements to be recorded, causing some loan defaults on technicalities, he said. Meanwhile, he said, \u003ca href=\"https://www.marketplace.org/2023/10/18/america-needs-more-houses-but-homebuilders-are-hobbled-by-high-interest-rates/\">high-interest rates\u003c/a> over the past two years have made refinancing difficult. The loan defaults were \u003ca href=\"https://therealdeal.com/la/2023/12/01/shangri-la-industries-defaults-on-project-homekey-loans/\">first reported this month\u003c/a> by the real estate news outlet The Real Deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s been no sense of urgency until there were these recent articles written about the loan defaults,” Meyers said of the housing department’s approving the agreements. “Then all of a sudden, HCD got really engaged and said, ‘We reached out to the Attorney General.’ I don’t give a s–t … I would love to go meet and work things out with HCD.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Espinoza denied Meyers’ allegations, though one city appeared to back up the developer’s claim. In Thousand Oaks, a Los Angeles suburb, Assistant City Manager Ingrid Hardy told CalMatters in an email that the city and developer submitted an affordability agreement for a Homekey project to the state department in February and only received approval to record it within the last week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Espinoza said the department couldn’t have approved the agreements after Shangri-La had already taken out the loans, and “absent their violation, the recording would have been done in a timely manner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The department’s probe appears to be its first significant investigation into a private developer for the much-praised \u003ca href=\"https://www.hcd.ca.gov/grants-and-funding/homekey\">Homekey program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program — which gives cities, counties and local housing authorities money to build permanent housing for unhoused residents — \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2021/05/newsom-end-homelessness-pandemic-lessons/\">began in 2020 and has mostly funded\u003c/a> hotel and motel conversions. Over the past three years, the housing department has granted $3.1 billion for 226 projects that, when all are completed, promise more than 14,000 units of affordable housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shangri-La’s loan defaults throw the future of some of those projects into question. The housing department stressed in an emailed statement that the developer’s grants amount to just 3% of the total public dollars distributed through the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meyers, meanwhile, said his company is committed to refinancing its loans and completing construction, which is halted on the four projects that haven’t yet opened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m going to find a way to get these projects done one way or another,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The delays have vexed local officials like LeBarre, who depended on the Homekey program to provide many affordable housing units, especially in small cities with otherwise limited services for the unhoused.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like other local governments Shangri-La worked with, King City didn’t purchase the motel itself and has no ownership stake in it. Instead, the city acted only as a required co-applicant when the developer sought state funds to acquire and renovate the property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11970245\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11970245\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy.jpg\" alt=\"A view of a motel from the street.\" width=\"1568\" height=\"1045\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy.jpg 1568w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/111320_ProjectHomekeySites_AW_sized_04-copy-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Americas Best Value Inn Corte Madera, a Homekey program site, is located next door to an apartment complex at the base of a residential neighborhood in Marin County. \u003ccite>(Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, the city is asking for state help to save the property from a possible foreclosure. And it has scrambled to keep dozens of unhoused residents in motel rooms temporarily for months longer than planned. King City moved the residents from a creekbed encampment earlier this year, intending to soon move them into permanent units at the Shangri-La project, LeBarre said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re trying to find solutions of how to keep the project alive,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 200 miles south, the city of Thousand Oaks and Shangri-La won a $26.7 million Homekey grant in 2022 to convert a Quality Inn to 77 units of permanent housing. Shangri-La beat out three competing bids, according to a memo city officials prepared in the fall of 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thousand Oaks selected the developer for its “significant motel conversion experience” and because the company had already picked out the property on its own. City officials also noted that Shangri-La’s prior Homekey-funded projects — in Salinas and San Bernardino — were “among the top 10 percent most cost-effective Homekey projects in California” and that the company would not need “any financial capital assistance from the city” to buy or renovate the hotel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Still, Hardy, the assistant city manager, said the city also gave Shangri-La $1.8 million to help with construction. The project was supposed to open before the end of this year. But the developer has defaulted on a $10 million loan and contractors have also filed liens, according to Ventura County property records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Construction is only 20% complete, Hardy said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The city is obviously extremely concerned and anxious to get this project back on track and resume construction so that we can house our most vulnerable residents,” she wrote. “Our community is relying on this project to serve people experiencing homelessness, especially considering this project was going to be the first of its size in East Ventura County.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shangri-La’s other projects were motel conversions in San Bernardino and Redlands that have both opened and three in Salinas, where only one project has opened. In all its projects, the developer partnered with the nonprofit Step Up on Second to provide services to residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Salinas and San Bernardino County officials did not respond to inquiries from CalMatters on Thursday. Step Up officials could not be reached for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Redlands, city spokesperson Carl Baker said an affordability agreement has been recorded. The property opened in January and is “basically fully occupied with approximately 120 residents,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the project’s troubles aren’t over. This week, Luxlion Industries, a company that provides fire safety services, filed a lien on the property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>CalMatters’ investigative reporter \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/laurenhepler/\">\u003cem>Lauren Hepler\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>If any year is looked back on as pivotal in California’s fight to curb mental illness, homelessness and drug-related deaths, 2023 could be the one. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed major — and at times controversial — \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/mental-health/2023/08/california-mental-health-services-newsom/\">reforms of the state’s mental and behavioral health systems\u003c/a> through the Legislature, but a mere two months after signing the laws, Newsom accused counties of moving too slowly to adopt them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom on Friday, at a press conference, took local governments to task, publicly pressuring them to take action on the state’s new conservatorship law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The state has done its job. It’s time for the counties to do their job,” Newsom said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In October, lawmakers significantly loosened long-standing rules limiting who can be placed in involuntary treatment. The change to the state’s conservatorship rules allows people who can’t take care of their own medical needs or personal safety to be deemed “gravely disabled” and placed in treatment facilities without consent. This includes people struggling with addiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the vast majority of counties have opted to delay implementing the conservatorship expansion, putting them at odds with the governor’s timeline. They play a critical role in the law because they administer the state’s social services and mental health programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>County leaders said they need more guidance and resources. They argue they lack the staff and funding to move this new policy forward. The law goes into effect in 2024 but allows counties to defer implementation until 2026.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty-six counties out of the state’s 58 are requesting permission to delay implementing the law, Tony Vartan, Stanislaus County’s Behavioral Health Director, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smlBBytSgQ4\">told his Board of Supervisors\u003c/a> this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"California Gov. Gavin Newsom\"]‘You have a crisis out there. There’s a crisis on the streets and people are talking about delaying the conservatorship efforts till 2026. We can’t afford to wait.’[/pullquote]Only San Luis Obispo and \u003ca href=\"https://www.sf.gov/news/san-francisco-prepared-implement-new-conservatorship-law-help-people-struggling-severe\">San Francisco\u003c/a> counties plan on beginning implementation next month, Vartan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom said during Friday’s press call that the “lack of urgency” at the local level was disappointing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have a crisis out there. There’s a crisis on the streets and people are talking about delaying the conservatorship efforts till 2026. We can’t afford to wait,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michelle Doty Cabrera, executive director of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association of California, said in a statement behavioral health departments are “already stretched” thin and need time to coordinate such a complex change. In the past two years, they’ve been hit by increased demand for services, widespread provider shortages, and a series of new state mandates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“County boards of supervisors across California have heard clearly from hospitals, law enforcement officials, and county behavioral health professionals that infrastructure capacity, staffing and training must be in place to make the law successful,” Cabrera said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"h-california-counties-singled-out\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">California counties singled out\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The change comes on the heels of another major Newsom mental health initiative. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2022/09/california-lawmakers-approved-care-court-what-comes-next/\">CARE Court\u003c/a>, which passed last year and began rolling out in October, allows people with untreated mental illness to be placed in \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/08/care-court-california-start/\">court-mandated treatment programs and housing\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, eight counties are operating a CARE court. Now, most of those early adopters have chosen to delay the conservatorship expansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Related Stories\" postID=\"news_11964791,science_1984855,news_11961241\"]One of the counties that is operating a CARE Court, Riverside, is taking more time to adopt the conservatorship law. Newsom singled it out at his press conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Riverside County (is) doing great work on CARE Court, but decided not to move forward with the implementation of conservatorship,” Newsom said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riverside County officials said they’re not ready to carry out changes to the conservatorship law, which carries “significant responsibilities.” The county’s behavioral health department, hospitals and law enforcement need time to expand treatment facilities, increase housing capacity, develop new protocols and train staff, Dr. Matthew Chang, behavioral health director of Riverside University Health System, said to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Setting an implementation date in 2026 would signal our commitment to getting it right for our community,” Chang said during board remarks.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"h-mayors-back-newsom-s-timeline\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Mayors back Newsom’s timeline\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Several California mayors, by contrast, are urging counties to move faster. Mayors often bear the brunt of residents’ complaints about homelessness, but they tend to have little influence over social services and mental health spending.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, who supported a majority of Newsom’s mental health reforms, urged his county’s board of supervisors to implement the conservatorship expansion immediately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11970238\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11970238\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/GettyImages-1410298764.jpg\" alt=\"A Latino man in a dark gray suit with a maroon tie gestures as he speaks into a microphone.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/GettyImages-1410298764.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/GettyImages-1410298764-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/GettyImages-1410298764-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/GettyImages-1410298764-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria in a photo from July 21, 2022 in San Diego. \u003ccite>(Daniel Knighton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“While the law allows for counties to delay implementation until 2026, our county is experiencing an unacceptable behavioral health crisis — one all of us see clearly every day in our communities. Putting implementation off will cost people their lives,” Gloria and other \u003ca href=\"https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2023-12/20231204-sb43-county-signon-letter-final.pdf\">San Diego County mayors wrote in a letter \u003c/a>to the board this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nora Vargas, chair of the board of supervisors, initially proposed delaying implementation to 2025 after hospital and behavioral health leaders argued more people would cycle in and out of the emergency room without proper support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“San Diego County will implement (the conservatorship law) in a way that is methodical and equitable because these are real people and real families seeking care,” Vargas said in a statement to CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tim McClain, a spokesperson for San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency, said the county is moving as quickly as possible despite receiving no support from the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The law “comes with no new resources for hospitals, substance use disorder treatment providers, or county-run public conservator offices. It doesn’t establish clinical assessment criteria that will incline clinicians to extend holds. And it doesn’t do anything to create the operational tools that will actually get people with substance use disorder from (emergency departments) into ongoing addiction treatment,” McClain said in a statement to CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"h-demand-on-mental-health-system\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Demand on mental health system\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Among the concerns raised by counties is a dramatic influx in the number of people needing treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Kern and Santa Barbara counties, behavioral health officials have said they expect the number of people who would qualify for involuntary treatment to increase tenfold, \u003ca href=\"https://www.bakersfield.com/news/45-counties-including-kern-to-delay-launch-of-major-mental-health-law/article_6db580bc-90dd-11ee-8f8b-935b4dc28496.html\">\u003cem>The Bakersfield Californian\u003c/em> \u003c/a>and \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.independent.com/2023/12/12/grave-disability-law-poses-grave-problems-for-santa-barbara-countys-mental-health-system/\">Santa Barbara Independent\u003c/a>\u003c/em> have reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Supervisor Robert Rickman, San Joaquin County\"]‘We need the state to provide us with guidance on how we can best apply this law to help the vulnerable and protect people’s civil rights while ensuring their treatment.’[/pullquote]Behavioral health officials in Stanislaus County told their board of supervisors that because the expanded definition of “gravely disabled” will now include people with drug use disorders, the number of conservatees will likely go up. They said they need additional staff and coordination to handle a larger population. There are also very few treatment settings for people with severe substance use disorders in the county, health officials said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors agreed to push back implementation, but supervisors said they would like to enact the law sometime before 2026.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In neighboring San Joaquin County, supervisors this week also voted to \u003ca href=\"https://www.sjgov.org/press-releases/press-release-detail/2023/12/13/board-protects-local-services-by-deferring-sb-43\">delay the law’s implementation\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need the state to provide us with guidance on how we can best apply this law to help the vulnerable and protect people’s civil rights while ensuring their treatment,” Supervisor Robert Rickman said in a press release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of the recent changes at the state level target serious mental illness among the state’s growing homeless population, which has ballooned by more than 30% to 170,000 people since Newsom took office in 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March, voters will be asked to approve or reject yet another major overhaul of the state’s mental and behavioral health system. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/mental-health/2023/09/gavin-newsom-mental-health-2024-election/\">Proposition 1\u003c/a> includes two key provisions: a $6.4 billion bond to pay for 10,000 treatment beds and supportive housing and a revamp of the state’s 20-year-old law that funds mental health services through a tax on personal income over $1 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If any year is looked back on as pivotal in California’s fight to curb mental illness, homelessness and drug-related deaths, 2023 could be the one. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed major — and at times controversial — \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/mental-health/2023/08/california-mental-health-services-newsom/\">reforms of the state’s mental and behavioral health systems\u003c/a> through the Legislature, but a mere two months after signing the laws, Newsom accused counties of moving too slowly to adopt them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom on Friday, at a press conference, took local governments to task, publicly pressuring them to take action on the state’s new conservatorship law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The state has done its job. It’s time for the counties to do their job,” Newsom said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In October, lawmakers significantly loosened long-standing rules limiting who can be placed in involuntary treatment. The change to the state’s conservatorship rules allows people who can’t take care of their own medical needs or personal safety to be deemed “gravely disabled” and placed in treatment facilities without consent. This includes people struggling with addiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the vast majority of counties have opted to delay implementing the conservatorship expansion, putting them at odds with the governor’s timeline. They play a critical role in the law because they administer the state’s social services and mental health programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>County leaders said they need more guidance and resources. They argue they lack the staff and funding to move this new policy forward. The law goes into effect in 2024 but allows counties to defer implementation until 2026.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty-six counties out of the state’s 58 are requesting permission to delay implementing the law, Tony Vartan, Stanislaus County’s Behavioral Health Director, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smlBBytSgQ4\">told his Board of Supervisors\u003c/a> this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Only San Luis Obispo and \u003ca href=\"https://www.sf.gov/news/san-francisco-prepared-implement-new-conservatorship-law-help-people-struggling-severe\">San Francisco\u003c/a> counties plan on beginning implementation next month, Vartan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom said during Friday’s press call that the “lack of urgency” at the local level was disappointing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have a crisis out there. There’s a crisis on the streets and people are talking about delaying the conservatorship efforts till 2026. We can’t afford to wait,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michelle Doty Cabrera, executive director of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association of California, said in a statement behavioral health departments are “already stretched” thin and need time to coordinate such a complex change. In the past two years, they’ve been hit by increased demand for services, widespread provider shortages, and a series of new state mandates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“County boards of supervisors across California have heard clearly from hospitals, law enforcement officials, and county behavioral health professionals that infrastructure capacity, staffing and training must be in place to make the law successful,” Cabrera said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"h-california-counties-singled-out\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">California counties singled out\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The change comes on the heels of another major Newsom mental health initiative. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2022/09/california-lawmakers-approved-care-court-what-comes-next/\">CARE Court\u003c/a>, which passed last year and began rolling out in October, allows people with untreated mental illness to be placed in \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/08/care-court-california-start/\">court-mandated treatment programs and housing\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, eight counties are operating a CARE court. Now, most of those early adopters have chosen to delay the conservatorship expansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>One of the counties that is operating a CARE Court, Riverside, is taking more time to adopt the conservatorship law. Newsom singled it out at his press conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Riverside County (is) doing great work on CARE Court, but decided not to move forward with the implementation of conservatorship,” Newsom said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riverside County officials said they’re not ready to carry out changes to the conservatorship law, which carries “significant responsibilities.” The county’s behavioral health department, hospitals and law enforcement need time to expand treatment facilities, increase housing capacity, develop new protocols and train staff, Dr. Matthew Chang, behavioral health director of Riverside University Health System, said to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Setting an implementation date in 2026 would signal our commitment to getting it right for our community,” Chang said during board remarks.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"h-mayors-back-newsom-s-timeline\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Mayors back Newsom’s timeline\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Several California mayors, by contrast, are urging counties to move faster. Mayors often bear the brunt of residents’ complaints about homelessness, but they tend to have little influence over social services and mental health spending.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, who supported a majority of Newsom’s mental health reforms, urged his county’s board of supervisors to implement the conservatorship expansion immediately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11970238\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11970238\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/GettyImages-1410298764.jpg\" alt=\"A Latino man in a dark gray suit with a maroon tie gestures as he speaks into a microphone.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/GettyImages-1410298764.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/GettyImages-1410298764-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/GettyImages-1410298764-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/GettyImages-1410298764-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria in a photo from July 21, 2022 in San Diego. \u003ccite>(Daniel Knighton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“While the law allows for counties to delay implementation until 2026, our county is experiencing an unacceptable behavioral health crisis — one all of us see clearly every day in our communities. Putting implementation off will cost people their lives,” Gloria and other \u003ca href=\"https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2023-12/20231204-sb43-county-signon-letter-final.pdf\">San Diego County mayors wrote in a letter \u003c/a>to the board this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nora Vargas, chair of the board of supervisors, initially proposed delaying implementation to 2025 after hospital and behavioral health leaders argued more people would cycle in and out of the emergency room without proper support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“San Diego County will implement (the conservatorship law) in a way that is methodical and equitable because these are real people and real families seeking care,” Vargas said in a statement to CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tim McClain, a spokesperson for San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency, said the county is moving as quickly as possible despite receiving no support from the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The law “comes with no new resources for hospitals, substance use disorder treatment providers, or county-run public conservator offices. It doesn’t establish clinical assessment criteria that will incline clinicians to extend holds. And it doesn’t do anything to create the operational tools that will actually get people with substance use disorder from (emergency departments) into ongoing addiction treatment,” McClain said in a statement to CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"h-demand-on-mental-health-system\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Demand on mental health system\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Among the concerns raised by counties is a dramatic influx in the number of people needing treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Kern and Santa Barbara counties, behavioral health officials have said they expect the number of people who would qualify for involuntary treatment to increase tenfold, \u003ca href=\"https://www.bakersfield.com/news/45-counties-including-kern-to-delay-launch-of-major-mental-health-law/article_6db580bc-90dd-11ee-8f8b-935b4dc28496.html\">\u003cem>The Bakersfield Californian\u003c/em> \u003c/a>and \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.independent.com/2023/12/12/grave-disability-law-poses-grave-problems-for-santa-barbara-countys-mental-health-system/\">Santa Barbara Independent\u003c/a>\u003c/em> have reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Behavioral health officials in Stanislaus County told their board of supervisors that because the expanded definition of “gravely disabled” will now include people with drug use disorders, the number of conservatees will likely go up. They said they need additional staff and coordination to handle a larger population. There are also very few treatment settings for people with severe substance use disorders in the county, health officials said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors agreed to push back implementation, but supervisors said they would like to enact the law sometime before 2026.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In neighboring San Joaquin County, supervisors this week also voted to \u003ca href=\"https://www.sjgov.org/press-releases/press-release-detail/2023/12/13/board-protects-local-services-by-deferring-sb-43\">delay the law’s implementation\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need the state to provide us with guidance on how we can best apply this law to help the vulnerable and protect people’s civil rights while ensuring their treatment,” Supervisor Robert Rickman said in a press release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of the recent changes at the state level target serious mental illness among the state’s growing homeless population, which has ballooned by more than 30% to 170,000 people since Newsom took office in 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March, voters will be asked to approve or reject yet another major overhaul of the state’s mental and behavioral health system. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/mental-health/2023/09/gavin-newsom-mental-health-2024-election/\">Proposition 1\u003c/a> includes two key provisions: a $6.4 billion bond to pay for 10,000 treatment beds and supportive housing and a revamp of the state’s 20-year-old law that funds mental health services through a tax on personal income over $1 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "California Food Banks Brace for Impact as Pandemic Aid Dries Up",
"headTitle": "California Food Banks Brace for Impact as Pandemic Aid Dries Up | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Food insecurity in California ticked upward over the past year, bringing the share of hardship back up to levels early in the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data released by the California Association of Food Banks on Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Families are buying less food,” said May Lynn Tan, the association’s director of research and strategic initiatives, who surveyed food aid recipients this summer. “They’re running out of food, not being able to afford nutritious meals, and worrying more about food.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates credited a pandemic-era federal aid program that gave food assistance recipients more money for groceries to pull food insecurity below 20% of California households between 2021 and 2022. The additional aid, Tan said, helped recipients buy healthier food and become more financially stable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As prices soared last year, food insecurity spiked. Then, the boost in federal aid ended in April. By October, more than 1 in 5 California families — more than 3.1 million households, including 1.1 million with children — were steadily reporting uncertain access to food, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cafoodbanks.org/food-insecurity-data/\">according to Census data analyzed\u003c/a> by the association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While hunger overall is disproportionately borne by people of color, Black families in particular reported sharp increases this year. In April, 30% of Black households in California were food insecure. Six months later, the figure was 40% and nearly half of Black families with children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anti-poverty advocates had feared a rise in hunger after the end of the aid boost this year, which affected the nearly 3 million California households that receive CalFresh, the federally-funded food stamps program. For three years, the program had given all families receiving CalFresh the highest possible amount of food assistance for their family size each month, with $95 on top for those already receiving the maximum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=\"news_11953407,news_11965675,news_11955866\" label=\"Related Stories\"]When the program reverted to ordinary aid levels, the decrease was anywhere from 32% to 40%, depending on the recipient, according to the food banks association. In a survey, the association conducted over the summer, more than two-thirds of the state’s food banks reported increases in the number of clients seeking meals and groceries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The uptick in food insecurity also follows an increase in poverty last year, triggered by the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cafoodbanks.org/blog/safety-net-cuts-in-the-midst-of-high-poverty-worsen-hunger-crisis/\">end of a different pandemic-era policy\u003c/a>. A one-time, yearlong expansion of a tax credit program in 2021 sent thousands of dollars to most families with children and pulled child poverty levels down to historic lows; after it ended, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2023/10/poverty-rate-california/\">poverty spiked again\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both trends will likely be the basis of advocates’ calls for California to expand safety net spending next year, even as the state \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/12/budget-deficit-california/\">faces a projected $68 billion deficit\u003c/a> in the 2024-25 fiscal year. That’s double the budget hole California plugged this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969784\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969784\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12.jpg\" alt=\"Two arms place a bag of food in to the back of a vehicle.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano volunteers and staff load groceries into cars in Vallejo on June 7, 2023. \u003ccite>(Shelby Knowles/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The food insecurity data was outlined by the food banks association Tuesday as it gears up to lobby for the expansion of assistance programs next year, including increasing funding for food banks to buy California produce to distribute to clients and supplementing the federally-funded CalFresh (food stamps) program with state dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It does look like a tough budget year next year, but I don’t think that changes our strategy,” said Becky Silva, the association’s director of government relations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’ll be a tough sell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom avoided major program cuts when they closed the deficit this year, but it did bring to a halt several years of social services expansions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, at a separate Tuesday web conference for anti-poverty advocates and lobbyists hosted by the liberal California Budget and Policy Center, Jessica Bartholow, chief of staff to state Senate Budget chairperson \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/nancy-skinner-1954/\">Nancy Skinner\u003c/a>, an Oakland Democrat, urged advocates to continue seeking funding or program expansions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Don’t ask for less,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>CalMatters politics reporter \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/yue-yu/\">\u003cem>Yue Stella Yu\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Food insecurity in California ticked upward over the past year, bringing the share of hardship back up to levels early in the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data released by the California Association of Food Banks on Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Families are buying less food,” said May Lynn Tan, the association’s director of research and strategic initiatives, who surveyed food aid recipients this summer. “They’re running out of food, not being able to afford nutritious meals, and worrying more about food.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates credited a pandemic-era federal aid program that gave food assistance recipients more money for groceries to pull food insecurity below 20% of California households between 2021 and 2022. The additional aid, Tan said, helped recipients buy healthier food and become more financially stable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As prices soared last year, food insecurity spiked. Then, the boost in federal aid ended in April. By October, more than 1 in 5 California families — more than 3.1 million households, including 1.1 million with children — were steadily reporting uncertain access to food, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cafoodbanks.org/food-insecurity-data/\">according to Census data analyzed\u003c/a> by the association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While hunger overall is disproportionately borne by people of color, Black families in particular reported sharp increases this year. In April, 30% of Black households in California were food insecure. Six months later, the figure was 40% and nearly half of Black families with children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anti-poverty advocates had feared a rise in hunger after the end of the aid boost this year, which affected the nearly 3 million California households that receive CalFresh, the federally-funded food stamps program. For three years, the program had given all families receiving CalFresh the highest possible amount of food assistance for their family size each month, with $95 on top for those already receiving the maximum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>When the program reverted to ordinary aid levels, the decrease was anywhere from 32% to 40%, depending on the recipient, according to the food banks association. In a survey, the association conducted over the summer, more than two-thirds of the state’s food banks reported increases in the number of clients seeking meals and groceries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The uptick in food insecurity also follows an increase in poverty last year, triggered by the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cafoodbanks.org/blog/safety-net-cuts-in-the-midst-of-high-poverty-worsen-hunger-crisis/\">end of a different pandemic-era policy\u003c/a>. A one-time, yearlong expansion of a tax credit program in 2021 sent thousands of dollars to most families with children and pulled child poverty levels down to historic lows; after it ended, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2023/10/poverty-rate-california/\">poverty spiked again\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both trends will likely be the basis of advocates’ calls for California to expand safety net spending next year, even as the state \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/12/budget-deficit-california/\">faces a projected $68 billion deficit\u003c/a> in the 2024-25 fiscal year. That’s double the budget hole California plugged this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969784\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969784\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12.jpg\" alt=\"Two arms place a bag of food in to the back of a vehicle.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/060723-Food-Bank-SKN-CM_12-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano volunteers and staff load groceries into cars in Vallejo on June 7, 2023. \u003ccite>(Shelby Knowles/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The food insecurity data was outlined by the food banks association Tuesday as it gears up to lobby for the expansion of assistance programs next year, including increasing funding for food banks to buy California produce to distribute to clients and supplementing the federally-funded CalFresh (food stamps) program with state dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It does look like a tough budget year next year, but I don’t think that changes our strategy,” said Becky Silva, the association’s director of government relations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’ll be a tough sell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom avoided major program cuts when they closed the deficit this year, but it did bring to a halt several years of social services expansions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, at a separate Tuesday web conference for anti-poverty advocates and lobbyists hosted by the liberal California Budget and Policy Center, Jessica Bartholow, chief of staff to state Senate Budget chairperson \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/nancy-skinner-1954/\">Nancy Skinner\u003c/a>, an Oakland Democrat, urged advocates to continue seeking funding or program expansions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Don’t ask for less,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>CalMatters politics reporter \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/yue-yu/\">\u003cem>Yue Stella Yu\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "these-californians-live-in-affordable-housing-why-did-their-rent-skyrocket",
"title": "California’s Rent Hikes Hit Low-Income Housing",
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"content": "\u003cp>When California lawmakers \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2019/09/big-rent-hikes-illegal-in-california-heres-what-to-know/\">passed a rent cap\u003c/a> four years ago to protect tenants from large and frequent rent hikes, they exempted hundreds of thousands of units reserved for some of the state’s poorest renters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Low-income housing, after all, is usually built with public subsidies that already impose rent ceilings on developers and property owners. Some are already managed or overseen by local public housing agencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But California also has more than 350,000 \u003cem>privately\u003c/em> owned low-income housing units — built with the help of federal tax credits — exempted from the state’s rent cap. Residents of some of those units have seen their rents soar despite being the exact demographic the law sought to protect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Anya Lawler, policy advocate, The California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation\"]‘We don’t have an interest in affordable housing developers not being able to maintain the financial viability of their properties.’[/pullquote]The 2019 law, known as the Tenant Protection Act, prohibits landlords from increasing rents more than a certain amount — \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-rent-control-settlement/\">10% this year\u003c/a>, though usually it’s less — and more than once a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s meant to guarantee some level of stability for tenants, proponents say. Without it, low-income renters like Miguel Contreras are seeing higher increases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 53-year-old mechanic was shocked when he opened a letter from his landlord this spring that said rent would go up from $1,828 to $2,138 — an increase of 17%. The two-bedroom apartment in San Jose where he lives was financed in 2006 with low-income housing tax credits and reserved for renters who must make less than the local average. There’s a \u003ca href=\"https://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/2023/supplemental.asp\">rent ceiling\u003c/a>, but the apartment isn’t otherwise subject to state or local caps on how fast the rent can grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Contreras said he’s lived in that apartment for more than two decades and, most of the time, got modest rent increases of about $50 a year. But the past two years, the hikes have been higher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the latest increase kicked in this past July, Contreras paid 25% more than he was just 13 months earlier, according to documents he shared with CalMatters. He said the rent eats up more than half of what Contreras earns each month. He picks up extra work on Sundays, missing church with his family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969627\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1600px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969627\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11.jpg\" alt=\"A person wearing a orange hat and shirt holds up a sign among others dressed in orange and holding signs on the street.\" width=\"1600\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11-1229x1536.jpg 1229w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Area tenants from the KDF Tenants Association protest housing conditions and rent increases outside the office complex that houses KDF Communities LLC’s office in Newport Beach on Oct. 26, 2023. \u003ccite>(Julie A. Hotz/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s hard to live in this apartment, it’s supposed to be affordable,” Contreras said through a Spanish interpreter. “But it’s hard to move out because when you look for another apartment in the San Jose area, it’s very expensive, and it seems the owner is trying to raise the rent to be the same like other apartments that are not affordable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the help of the Regional Tenant Organizing Network, an activist group, Contreras and residents of several other low-income housing buildings owned by the same company drove to their landlord’s office in Newport Beach to protest the rent increases, among other complaints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company, KDF Communities, has seven apartment buildings in the San Jose area and 40 across California. They closed their offices and declined in an email to meet with the tenants, said James Huynh, an organizing network spokesperson. Mayra Peterson, a KDF executive, declined to comment when reached by phone by CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Rent cap concerns\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Not all private-market tenants are subject to the state’s rent cap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To ease concerns that the regulations would burden small or mom-and-pop landlords, lawmakers carved out exemptions for single-family homes and apartment buildings with only two units if the landlord lives in the other. Situations in which someone rents a room in a landlord’s home are also exempt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also exempted are deed-restricted affordable housing or housing that receives any kind of government funding to house low-income tenants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The thinking was, if they’re already rent-restricted, it might not make sense to add another layer of complexity to it,” said David Chiu, the former Assemblymember who authored the 2019 law and current San Francisco city attorney. “This was a heavily negotiated bill.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exemption for tax credit-funded properties, in particular, has fueled a quiet but complex policy debate over whether to regulate rents further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Factors including inflation, rising insurance costs, and the fact that many tenants were unable to pay rent during the COVID-19 pandemic have led to particularly high rent increases in low-income housing the past two years, said advocates for tenants as well as for nonprofit and for-profit low-income housing developers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many cases, affordable housing is already subject to federal restrictions on rent by preventing tenants from being charged more than 30% of their income. But in tax credit-funded units, restrictions on rent are tied not to the tenant’s individual income but to the local median income, a figure calculated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In wealthy areas or times of high inflation, such as the past two years when median incomes have risen, that can create especially \u003ca href=\"https://www.novoco.com/notes-from-novogradac/record-rental-income-operating-expenses-properties-novogradac-survey-inflation-hud-caps-play\">high rent ceilings\u003c/a>, said Marcos Segura, a staff attorney at the California-based National Housing Law Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And where state or local rent caps don’t apply, there are few other limits on rents in these affordable housing units, Segura said. As long as the rent stays below the federal ceiling, it can be hiked at whatever percentage and however many times a year a property owner chooses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But advocates who tried to regulate low-income housing further this year say the solution won’t be as simple as adding a rent cap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anti-poverty groups sponsored \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB846\">Assembly Bill 846\u003c/a> this year, which would have imposed such a restriction. It ran aground early in the legislative session over concerns, raised mostly by nonprofit affordable housing developers, that a blanket cap would make it hard for them to keep their properties afloat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=\"news_11961732,news_11961026,news_11956396\" label=\"Related Stories\"]Marina Wiant, vice president of government affairs for the California Housing Consortium, which represents both nonprofit and for-profit affordable housing developers, said property owners need to raise rents sometimes to cover operating costs and repairs. The recent growth in median incomes, Wiant said, came after years of stagnation during which affordable housing landlords could raise rents little or not at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many low-income housing tenants could not pay rent during the pandemic, putting nonprofit developers in difficult financial positions, she said. Last year, the accounting firm Novogradac published \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2022_novogradacopexreport_ebook.pdf\">a report\u003c/a> that found operating costs for tax credit-funded units in California rose 26% between 2018 and 2021 while rental income only rose 11%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many affordable housing landlords work with tenants to try to keep rents low, raising rents on those who can afford a hike instead. She said owners are worried a blanket cap will remove that flexibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969626\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969626\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01.jpg\" alt=\"A person holds a cell hone horizontally to record a group of people wearing orange shirts.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Area tenants from the KDF Tenants Association stand in the hallway outside the KDF Communities LLC office, which was unexpectedly closed during business hours, in Newport Beach to read statements and protest housing conditions and rent increases on Oct. 26, 2023. \u003ccite>(Julie A. Hotz/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We are really trying to navigate, what could be something that helps residents not get hit with large rent increases at one time?” she said. “But that (also) doesn’t fully challenge a property owner from being able to raise rents consistent with the regulations that already exist. And it’s really hard to legislate a solution like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tenant advocates want to bring the bill back next year but said they’re sympathetic to the concerns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t have an interest in affordable housing developers not being able to maintain the financial viability of their properties,” said Anya Lawler, a policy advocate for one of the bill’s sponsors, the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nine other states— including New Jersey, Wisconsin, Montana and Oregon — do cap rents on low-income housing tax credit-funded properties. Some limit increases to once per year; others cap annual increases at 5%.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Local efforts\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Some activists are pushing for local restrictions instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Antioch, the tenant advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment last fall successfully pushed for the city council to pass an ordinance that caps rental growth and includes low-income housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tax credit units are now included in local rent caps in Richmond, Fairfax and Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This month, the alliance is filing ballot measures for the November 2024 election in four other Bay Area cities — Redwood City, Larkspur, Pittsburg and San Pablo — and Delano in the Central Valley that would impose local rent camps on tax credit units, legal and policy director Leah Simon-Weisberg told CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drafts of the measures show the organization aims to curb rent increases at 3% (like the Antioch cap) and 5%. Simon-Weisberg said she’s particularly concerned about \u003ca href=\"https://www.ft.com/content/3a60c15a-da53-45be-b246-a3f1288d5034\">corporate landlords\u003c/a> buying up affordable housing units and said those owners are more likely than nonprofits to raise rents to the maximum allowed by federal restrictions each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposals are sure to be fought by landlord groups such as the California Apartment Association, who say the properties are already heavily regulated. Low-income housing landlords in California, said spokesperson Debra Carlton, have affordability restrictions for 55 years, so unlike others who are subject to the state’s rent cap, landlords can’t just raise rents to market rates when tenants move out of a unit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You are getting in the way of owners who have entered into a contract,” Carlton said. “You can’t change the rules on them now … You would really create some problems for those owners who would even want to go into the business.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to Tachina Garrett, a former post office mail handler who moved into a tax credit property in Antioch after being priced out of San Francisco, the exemption for low-income housing is a “loophole” that should be closed. Garrett, 49, fought for the local rent cap last year after her portion of the rent increased by 40%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How are you supposed to live in affordable housing, but it’s not affordable?” she said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "California’s rent cap doesn’t apply to low-income housing, which has its own rules. But with inflation, some tenants have gotten much higher rent increases.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When California lawmakers \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2019/09/big-rent-hikes-illegal-in-california-heres-what-to-know/\">passed a rent cap\u003c/a> four years ago to protect tenants from large and frequent rent hikes, they exempted hundreds of thousands of units reserved for some of the state’s poorest renters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Low-income housing, after all, is usually built with public subsidies that already impose rent ceilings on developers and property owners. Some are already managed or overseen by local public housing agencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But California also has more than 350,000 \u003cem>privately\u003c/em> owned low-income housing units — built with the help of federal tax credits — exempted from the state’s rent cap. Residents of some of those units have seen their rents soar despite being the exact demographic the law sought to protect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘We don’t have an interest in affordable housing developers not being able to maintain the financial viability of their properties.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The 2019 law, known as the Tenant Protection Act, prohibits landlords from increasing rents more than a certain amount — \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-rent-control-settlement/\">10% this year\u003c/a>, though usually it’s less — and more than once a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s meant to guarantee some level of stability for tenants, proponents say. Without it, low-income renters like Miguel Contreras are seeing higher increases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 53-year-old mechanic was shocked when he opened a letter from his landlord this spring that said rent would go up from $1,828 to $2,138 — an increase of 17%. The two-bedroom apartment in San Jose where he lives was financed in 2006 with low-income housing tax credits and reserved for renters who must make less than the local average. There’s a \u003ca href=\"https://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/2023/supplemental.asp\">rent ceiling\u003c/a>, but the apartment isn’t otherwise subject to state or local caps on how fast the rent can grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Contreras said he’s lived in that apartment for more than two decades and, most of the time, got modest rent increases of about $50 a year. But the past two years, the hikes have been higher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the latest increase kicked in this past July, Contreras paid 25% more than he was just 13 months earlier, according to documents he shared with CalMatters. He said the rent eats up more than half of what Contreras earns each month. He picks up extra work on Sundays, missing church with his family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969627\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1600px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969627\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11.jpg\" alt=\"A person wearing a orange hat and shirt holds up a sign among others dressed in orange and holding signs on the street.\" width=\"1600\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_11-1229x1536.jpg 1229w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Area tenants from the KDF Tenants Association protest housing conditions and rent increases outside the office complex that houses KDF Communities LLC’s office in Newport Beach on Oct. 26, 2023. \u003ccite>(Julie A. Hotz/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s hard to live in this apartment, it’s supposed to be affordable,” Contreras said through a Spanish interpreter. “But it’s hard to move out because when you look for another apartment in the San Jose area, it’s very expensive, and it seems the owner is trying to raise the rent to be the same like other apartments that are not affordable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the help of the Regional Tenant Organizing Network, an activist group, Contreras and residents of several other low-income housing buildings owned by the same company drove to their landlord’s office in Newport Beach to protest the rent increases, among other complaints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company, KDF Communities, has seven apartment buildings in the San Jose area and 40 across California. They closed their offices and declined in an email to meet with the tenants, said James Huynh, an organizing network spokesperson. Mayra Peterson, a KDF executive, declined to comment when reached by phone by CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Rent cap concerns\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Not all private-market tenants are subject to the state’s rent cap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To ease concerns that the regulations would burden small or mom-and-pop landlords, lawmakers carved out exemptions for single-family homes and apartment buildings with only two units if the landlord lives in the other. Situations in which someone rents a room in a landlord’s home are also exempt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also exempted are deed-restricted affordable housing or housing that receives any kind of government funding to house low-income tenants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The thinking was, if they’re already rent-restricted, it might not make sense to add another layer of complexity to it,” said David Chiu, the former Assemblymember who authored the 2019 law and current San Francisco city attorney. “This was a heavily negotiated bill.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exemption for tax credit-funded properties, in particular, has fueled a quiet but complex policy debate over whether to regulate rents further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Factors including inflation, rising insurance costs, and the fact that many tenants were unable to pay rent during the COVID-19 pandemic have led to particularly high rent increases in low-income housing the past two years, said advocates for tenants as well as for nonprofit and for-profit low-income housing developers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many cases, affordable housing is already subject to federal restrictions on rent by preventing tenants from being charged more than 30% of their income. But in tax credit-funded units, restrictions on rent are tied not to the tenant’s individual income but to the local median income, a figure calculated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In wealthy areas or times of high inflation, such as the past two years when median incomes have risen, that can create especially \u003ca href=\"https://www.novoco.com/notes-from-novogradac/record-rental-income-operating-expenses-properties-novogradac-survey-inflation-hud-caps-play\">high rent ceilings\u003c/a>, said Marcos Segura, a staff attorney at the California-based National Housing Law Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And where state or local rent caps don’t apply, there are few other limits on rents in these affordable housing units, Segura said. As long as the rent stays below the federal ceiling, it can be hiked at whatever percentage and however many times a year a property owner chooses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But advocates who tried to regulate low-income housing further this year say the solution won’t be as simple as adding a rent cap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anti-poverty groups sponsored \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB846\">Assembly Bill 846\u003c/a> this year, which would have imposed such a restriction. It ran aground early in the legislative session over concerns, raised mostly by nonprofit affordable housing developers, that a blanket cap would make it hard for them to keep their properties afloat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Marina Wiant, vice president of government affairs for the California Housing Consortium, which represents both nonprofit and for-profit affordable housing developers, said property owners need to raise rents sometimes to cover operating costs and repairs. The recent growth in median incomes, Wiant said, came after years of stagnation during which affordable housing landlords could raise rents little or not at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many low-income housing tenants could not pay rent during the pandemic, putting nonprofit developers in difficult financial positions, she said. Last year, the accounting firm Novogradac published \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2022_novogradacopexreport_ebook.pdf\">a report\u003c/a> that found operating costs for tax credit-funded units in California rose 26% between 2018 and 2021 while rental income only rose 11%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many affordable housing landlords work with tenants to try to keep rents low, raising rents on those who can afford a hike instead. She said owners are worried a blanket cap will remove that flexibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969626\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969626\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01.jpg\" alt=\"A person holds a cell hone horizontally to record a group of people wearing orange shirts.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/102623_NB-Rent-Protest_JAH_CM_01-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Area tenants from the KDF Tenants Association stand in the hallway outside the KDF Communities LLC office, which was unexpectedly closed during business hours, in Newport Beach to read statements and protest housing conditions and rent increases on Oct. 26, 2023. \u003ccite>(Julie A. Hotz/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We are really trying to navigate, what could be something that helps residents not get hit with large rent increases at one time?” she said. “But that (also) doesn’t fully challenge a property owner from being able to raise rents consistent with the regulations that already exist. And it’s really hard to legislate a solution like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tenant advocates want to bring the bill back next year but said they’re sympathetic to the concerns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t have an interest in affordable housing developers not being able to maintain the financial viability of their properties,” said Anya Lawler, a policy advocate for one of the bill’s sponsors, the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nine other states— including New Jersey, Wisconsin, Montana and Oregon — do cap rents on low-income housing tax credit-funded properties. Some limit increases to once per year; others cap annual increases at 5%.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Local efforts\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Some activists are pushing for local restrictions instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Antioch, the tenant advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment last fall successfully pushed for the city council to pass an ordinance that caps rental growth and includes low-income housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tax credit units are now included in local rent caps in Richmond, Fairfax and Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This month, the alliance is filing ballot measures for the November 2024 election in four other Bay Area cities — Redwood City, Larkspur, Pittsburg and San Pablo — and Delano in the Central Valley that would impose local rent camps on tax credit units, legal and policy director Leah Simon-Weisberg told CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drafts of the measures show the organization aims to curb rent increases at 3% (like the Antioch cap) and 5%. Simon-Weisberg said she’s particularly concerned about \u003ca href=\"https://www.ft.com/content/3a60c15a-da53-45be-b246-a3f1288d5034\">corporate landlords\u003c/a> buying up affordable housing units and said those owners are more likely than nonprofits to raise rents to the maximum allowed by federal restrictions each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposals are sure to be fought by landlord groups such as the California Apartment Association, who say the properties are already heavily regulated. Low-income housing landlords in California, said spokesperson Debra Carlton, have affordability restrictions for 55 years, so unlike others who are subject to the state’s rent cap, landlords can’t just raise rents to market rates when tenants move out of a unit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You are getting in the way of owners who have entered into a contract,” Carlton said. “You can’t change the rules on them now … You would really create some problems for those owners who would even want to go into the business.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to Tachina Garrett, a former post office mail handler who moved into a tax credit property in Antioch after being priced out of San Francisco, the exemption for low-income housing is a “loophole” that should be closed. Garrett, 49, fought for the local rent cap last year after her portion of the rent increased by 40%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "California Can Take Kids From Abused Moms. Why the Separation Can Harm Both",
"headTitle": "California Can Take Kids From Abused Moms. Why the Separation Can Harm Both | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Worried that her abusive partner would kill her or her boys, Jackie had nowhere to go and no one to ask for help. She said her partner had angry outbursts, beat her, degraded her and destroyed things in the house. She knew she had to escape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She called the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, hoping for a path to a safe place to stay. Instead, she received a warning that struck a different kind of fear in her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If she didn’t leave her partner within 30 days, the child welfare agency would take her four boys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I asked for help, they wanted to separate us,” said Jackie, 39, who asked not to use her full name to protect her children’s privacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency’s warning is rooted in a nearly 40-year-old California law that allows child welfare agencies to remove children when they believe an abused parent cannot ensure their kids’ safety. Called “failure to protect,” the law is intended to safeguard kids in dangerous situations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Emily Berger, lawyer, Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers\"]‘But what we’ve found, and science backs up, is that being removed from your community, your family of origin and your primary caregiver has such a tremendous impact upon a child’s healthy brain development and ability to form attachments.’[/pullquote]But the longstanding practice is facing continued scrutiny as domestic violence advocates raise concerns about the potential to traumatize families further. Meanwhile, other states with similar laws have narrowed the criteria for when a welfare agency can remove a child. Many states have “failure to protect” laws, but California’s is comparably vague, giving social workers wide latitude in deciding when to remove kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just don’t understand how ‘failure to protect’ exists, either as a fair thing or a legal principle,” said Eve Sheedy, a lawyer and expert in domestic violence policy, including as former director of\u003ca href=\"http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/dvcouncil/about/about.htm\"> LA County Domestic Violence Council\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The law puts child welfare workers in the unenviable position of deciding what is more harmful to children — the trauma of being separated from their family or the risks of witnessing more violence or even becoming a target.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it can leave domestic violence victims feeling as if they are being punished for their partners’ abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Right now, the victims are seen just like a perpetrator,” said Marie, 36, a domestic violence survivor who said the Los Angeles child welfare agency took her children from her after her partner abused her. The kids continue to live with their grandparents. Marie also spoke on the condition that her full name would not be published to protect her kids’ privacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Changing the law is difficult in part because lawmakers and social workers share a commitment to protecting children, and they worry about a shift that could endanger kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CalMatters spoke with four mothers who lost children because of a failure to protect order, five current and former social workers, eight domestic violence policy experts and advocates and two state lawmakers for this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of them stressed that protecting children was their highest priority. Several cited two notorious murders in Los Angeles County where the welfare agency failed to remove children to underscore the hazards of allowing kids to remain in violent households. One was \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/local/countygovernment/la-me-gabriel-fernandez-20140819-story.html\">Gabriel Fernandez\u003c/a>, who suffered years of gruesome torture and abuse before he was fatally beaten at age 8 in 2013 by his mother and her boyfriend. The other was \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-boy-death-20180623-story.html\">Anthony Avalos\u003c/a>, who was also tortured and abused by his mother and her boyfriend before his death at age 10 in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>In my opinion, the system really did fail those kids,” said Assemblyman\u003ca href=\"https://ad34.asmrc.org/biography/\"> Tom Lackey\u003c/a>, a Palmdale Republican who has been a teacher and a California Highway Patrol officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said he has dealt more with children who should’ve been removed from unsafe situations than with unnecessary separations from abused parents for “failure to protect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=\"news_11964331,news_11945997\" label=\"Related Stories\"]No one can say how many California children are separated from family members every year under the law because neither the state nor counties collect that information. The closest estimate comes from a recent report by the UCLA Pritzker Center that showed more than half of Los Angeles County’s 38,618 foster care cases in 2020 involved domestic violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jackie, the mother who was alarmed when she received a “failure to protect” warning six years ago, believes the law discourages women from reporting domestic violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of women don’t say anything because of fear of being separated from their kids,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Separation after abuse, drug use\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Marie is soft-spoken with sparkling eyes and a gentle manner. She said as a teenager, she got hooked on prescription opioids and was addicted for years. She stopped using in 2015, and within a little more than a year, she graduated from college, got married and had two babies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was all too much, and I started using again,” Marie said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marie said her ex-husband was also addicted to drugs and when he was using, he physically abused her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969525\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969525\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19.jpg\" alt=\"A woman wearing a blue floral shirt, leans her right arm against a pole outside by a house.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marie at her home in Culver City on Sept. 29, 2023. Marie lived at Community’s Child after leaving a domestic violence relationship and battling past addictions. She now owns her home and has built a new life for herself and her children. \u003ccite>(Alisha Jucevic/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969526\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969526\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24.jpg\" alt=\"A person holds a handwritten note with butterfly and flower stickers.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marie holds a card from one of her kids at her home in Culver City. The card reads, “Thank you for being a very good mom. You been thru a lot but you are still the beast mom in the world.” Marie lived at Community’s Child after leaving a domestic violence relationship and a past of addiction. She now owns her home and has built a new life for herself and her children. \u003ccite>(Alisha Jucevic/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Department of Children and Family Services removed Marie’s kids for failure to protect them due to domestic violence and substance abuse. At ages 1 and 2, the kids had about a one-week stay in a group home. Marie’s parents adopted the children within six months of opening her case. Adoption typically takes a year or more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She pulled herself out of addiction after she became pregnant again and didn’t want to lose custody of a third child. She entered a substance abuse program in 2017. Next, she and her 2-month-old infant entered Community’s Child, a shelter and development program for homeless single mothers “motivated to achieve self-sufficiency.” Marie now owns her own home and works full-time in the medical field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She and her ex-husband have made peace and co-parent all three children, though the two older kids still live with Marie’s parents. Marie said the kids were very young during the violence and didn’t remember it, but she is still traumatized by the separation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I wasn’t able to heal in the six months that they gave me,” Marie said. “My family would’ve been a lot different if we had more time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/gvy3EjgmHFA?si=fIg0YFDOeAdv2xVH\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marie’s circumstances are not unusual. \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64441/\">One-quarter to one-half\u003c/a> of domestic violence cases occur with other problems, such as \u003ca href=\"https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-11-109\">parental substance abuse\u003c/a> or mental illness, intergenerational trauma or unemployment, among other stressors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her story illustrates the difficult choices social workers face every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Risk of staying and the risk of removal\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services is the largest child welfare agency in the world, with a budget of nearly $2.8 billion and oversight of \u003ca href=\"https://dcfs.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Factsheet-FY-2022-2023.pdf\">more than 25,000 children\u003c/a> annually. In 2022, 90% of the kids were 18 and younger and more than two-thirds were Black or Hispanic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If a social worker makes the wrong call, children can pay the price with their health or their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two former child welfare social workers said they felt supported by their agency, but deciding when a child was at risk of harm felt like their responsibility, which was difficult and emotionally exhausting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Child welfare is a judgment-based system. It is human-driven and based upon sticky, personal family dynamic facts,” said Brandon Nichols, director of the \u003ca href=\"https://dcfs.lacounty.gov/\">Department of Children and Family Services\u003c/a>, Los Angeles County’s child protection agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In U.S. households with domestic violence, \u003ca href=\"https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/can/factors/family/domviolence/\">30% to 60% also have child maltreatment\u003c/a>, including physical abuse or neglect. In 2020, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childabuseandneglect/fastfact.html#:~:text=Child%2520abuse%2520and%2520neglect%2520are%2520common.&text=In%25202020%252C%25201%252C750%2520children%2520died,neglect%2520in%2520the%2520United%2520States.\">1,750 children died\u003c/a> from abuse or neglect in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Kelly Callahan, director of the\u003ca href=\"https://www.harbor-ucla.org/pediatrics/academics-4/general-pediatrics/hub/\"> Kids In the Dependency System\u003c/a> clinic at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said children who witness domestic violence often have psychological or emotional problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Children who have witnessed violence between their caretakers can have PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), nightmares, sleep problems, school difficulties and more. They react the same way as children who have been abused,” Callahan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because of such harm, proponents of “failure to protect” laws said they’re needed for children’s safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969524\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969524\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08.jpg\" alt=\"A room with chairs, a table, and books.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The library and counseling room at Community’s Child in Lomita on Sept. 29, 2023. Community’s Child is a shelter and resource program that provides supplies, food and housing for women and infants who are struggling with homelessness, addiction and poverty. \u003ccite>(Alisha Jucevic/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But \u003ca href=\"https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/aces-and-toxic-stress-frequently-asked-questions/\">separation from a parent\u003c/a> can be equally devastating for children. \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/fastfact.html\">Adverse childhood experiences\u003c/a>, such as abuse or witnessing violence, contribute to poor mental and physical health well into adulthood, including risk for early death. A safe, secure relationship with a caring adult, such as a non-offending parent, can\u003ca href=\"https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/resilience/\"> build resiliency\u003c/a> for a traumatized child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The courts will often say, ‘We know that being exposed to violence in the home alters a child’s brain chemistry, and we’re going to remove this child and place them in foster care,” said Emily Berger, a lawyer for\u003ca href=\"https://www.ladlinc.org/\"> Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers\u003c/a>, a nonprofit consortium of court-appointed lawyers who defend parents involved in dependency court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But what we’ve found, and science backs up, is that being removed from your community, your family of origin, and your primary caregiver has such a tremendous impact upon a child’s healthy brain development and ability to form attachments,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Evolution of ‘failure to protect’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The original \u003ca href=\"https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1641&context=healthmatrix\">“failure-to-protect” laws\u003c/a> emerged in the 1960s in response to reports of child physical abuse. Under the laws, if a caregiver knew a child was being abused and didn’t report it, that \u003ca href=\"https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-76-number-1/whos-failing-whom-a-critical-look-at-failure-to-protect-laws/\">caregiver could be prosecuted\u003c/a> the same as the abuser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=WIC§ionNum=300.\">failure to protect\u003c/a> law falls under a welfare code that states children can become dependents of the court if “the child has suffered or there is a substantial risk that the child will suffer, serious physical harm inflicted non-accidentally upon the child by the child’s parent or guardian.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Listed among the criteria for substantial risk is “the failure or inability of the child’s parent or guardian to adequately supervise or protect the child.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2013/ssrv/child-neglect/child-neglect-080813.aspx#:~:text=Neglect%20Is%20the%20Most%20Common%20Reason%20for%20Foster%20Care%20Entry&text=Child%20neglect%20has%20been%20the,foster%20care%20entries%20since%202000.\">Neglect is the leading cause\u003c/a> for children to be placed under the courts’ jurisdiction. Failure to protect is often \u003ca href=\"https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/neglect_ch2.pdf\">considered neglect\u003c/a> or emotional abuse in the child welfare and justice systems, including when it’s related to domestic violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of 2015, 48 states and four U.S. territories had “failure to protect” laws: Maryland, Wyoming and Puerto Rico did not. The statutes designate the crimes as \u003ca href=\"https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1641&context=healthmatrix\">misdemeanors or felonies\u003c/a>. In California, neglect is usually charged as a \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=270.&lawCode=PEN\">misdemeanor.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Failure to protect charges \u003ca href=\"https://capitalandmain.com/child-law-penalizes-moms-for-abusive-partners-10-16\">can lead to life sentences\u003c/a> for parents in six states — Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina and West Virginia. In\u003ca href=\"https://talkpoverty.org/2019/10/25/failure-protect-child-welfare/index.html\"> Texas, the maximum penalty is 99 years\u003c/a>. For some non-offending parents, the penalties have been more severe than for the abuser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some states, such as New York and Washington, have moved in the \u003ca href=\"https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1641&context=healthmatrix\">opposite direction \u003c/a>to protect the rights of abuse victims. The New York Court of Appeals in 2004 ruled that \u003ca href=\"https://www.nyclu.org/en/cases/nicholson-v-williams-defending-parental-rights-mothers-who-are-domestic-violence-victims\">witnessing domestic violence did not constitute neglect\u003c/a> and couldn’t be the sole basis for removing children from the non-offending parent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Susan Rubio, a Democrat from West Covina, two years ago carried a bill that would have compelled California to study domestic violence in the child welfare system. She told her colleagues at the time the law “fails to recognize” the trauma of a parent “who is a domestic violence survivor.” The bill did not reach Gov. Gavin Newsom.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Would changing domestic violence law matter?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Despite Rubio’s setback, some advocates for domestic violence victims outside of the Capitol are building a case to change California’s law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Pritzker Center report calls for \u003ca href=\"https://pritzkercenter.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Pritzker-Domestic-Violence-Report-Endnotes_final.pdf\">California to consider legislative\u003c/a> reforms similar to the New York Court of Appeals ruling. The report also calls for \u003ca href=\"https://pritzkercenter.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Pritzker-Domestic-Violence-Report-Endnotes_final.pdf\">better training\u003c/a> in the complexities of family violence for all child welfare workers, court officers and such mandated reporters as teachers and coaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we could have legislation that said being victimized by domestic violence is not sufficient basis for charging neglect,” said Sheedy, the former director of LA County Domestic Violence Council.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This would be similar to California laws prohibiting the use of \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2085\">poverty\u003c/a> or homelessness as the sole basis for the removal of a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But others are urging more modest changes even as they express misgivings with the current policy. They worry about rescinding a policy intended to protect a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are definite concerns with ‘failure to protect’ and how it’s being used — it’s being used as a stick,” said Julie McCormick, a lawyer with the Children’s Law Center, a nonprofit legal organization representing children in the dependency system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, she said, “I wouldn’t say CLC (Children’s Law Center) has the stance that it should be gone. It’s too nuanced to do something blanket. I think that’s why it’s so hard to come up with legislation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Partnership to End Domestic Violence also has looked at the failure to protect the law. It isn’t calling for significant changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an issue we’ve tried to look at a couple of ways, but what makes sense statewide is tricky,” said Krista Colon, the partnership’s director.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Ending generations of domestic violence\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Jackie, the mother of four boys who was frightened by the warning that she could lose her kids, became an advocate for domestic violence victims after her experience. She is now a parent-partner with the Los Angeles Defense Lawyers and helps other parents navigate the system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her sons are now 18, 13, 12 and 7. She is stylish and engaging with a ready smile, but she harbors deep trauma. She lived with an abusive partner, the father of her three younger boys, for 10 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969527\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969527\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in a business suit sits in front of a desk.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jackie at her office in Monterey Park on Sept. 29, 2023. Jackie is a domestic violence survivor and is now a family advocate for Los Angeles Defense Lawyers. \u003ccite>(Alisha Jucevic/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“At first, he was the perfect guy,” Jackie said, “Then I moved in with him and little things started happening, like yelling and pushing me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She grew up with domestic violence in a large, multi-generational Latino household. When her ex-partner became abusive, she thought it was normal. Her grandmother told Jackie she had “to stay. Hispanic men are just like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Raphael, Jackie’s oldest son, said he remembers being afraid during the fighting, but as the big brother, he had to be strong to protect his siblings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jackie called 12 shelters before finding one to take her and her sons. Most shelters don’t accept boys older than 8. Raphael was 11, so he went to live with his biological father.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My dad told me my mom and my brothers were in the shelter. I didn’t know what that meant, and it really scared me,” Raphael said, “It was really tough because I missed my brothers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/4g9zMARbCo8?si=zuUiL81K44IT1WWb\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the boys weren’t taken, child welfare’s threat to do so was devastating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was drastic and traumatizing,” Jackie said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet, she said, calling child welfare saved her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I was living through it, I thought I was doing what I needed to do to protect my kids,” Jackie said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most abused mothers do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2023 Domestic Violence Impact Fund.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "California’s ‘failure to protect’ law allows child welfare agencies to take kids from households scarred by domestic violence. Advocates say the separation can worsen a family’s trauma.",
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"description": "California’s ‘failure to protect’ law allows child welfare agencies to take kids from households scarred by domestic violence. Advocates say the separation can worsen a family’s trauma.",
"title": "California Can Take Kids From Abused Moms. Why the Separation Can Harm Both | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Worried that her abusive partner would kill her or her boys, Jackie had nowhere to go and no one to ask for help. She said her partner had angry outbursts, beat her, degraded her and destroyed things in the house. She knew she had to escape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She called the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, hoping for a path to a safe place to stay. Instead, she received a warning that struck a different kind of fear in her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If she didn’t leave her partner within 30 days, the child welfare agency would take her four boys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I asked for help, they wanted to separate us,” said Jackie, 39, who asked not to use her full name to protect her children’s privacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency’s warning is rooted in a nearly 40-year-old California law that allows child welfare agencies to remove children when they believe an abused parent cannot ensure their kids’ safety. Called “failure to protect,” the law is intended to safeguard kids in dangerous situations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘But what we’ve found, and science backs up, is that being removed from your community, your family of origin and your primary caregiver has such a tremendous impact upon a child’s healthy brain development and ability to form attachments.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But the longstanding practice is facing continued scrutiny as domestic violence advocates raise concerns about the potential to traumatize families further. Meanwhile, other states with similar laws have narrowed the criteria for when a welfare agency can remove a child. Many states have “failure to protect” laws, but California’s is comparably vague, giving social workers wide latitude in deciding when to remove kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just don’t understand how ‘failure to protect’ exists, either as a fair thing or a legal principle,” said Eve Sheedy, a lawyer and expert in domestic violence policy, including as former director of\u003ca href=\"http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/dvcouncil/about/about.htm\"> LA County Domestic Violence Council\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The law puts child welfare workers in the unenviable position of deciding what is more harmful to children — the trauma of being separated from their family or the risks of witnessing more violence or even becoming a target.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it can leave domestic violence victims feeling as if they are being punished for their partners’ abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Right now, the victims are seen just like a perpetrator,” said Marie, 36, a domestic violence survivor who said the Los Angeles child welfare agency took her children from her after her partner abused her. The kids continue to live with their grandparents. Marie also spoke on the condition that her full name would not be published to protect her kids’ privacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Changing the law is difficult in part because lawmakers and social workers share a commitment to protecting children, and they worry about a shift that could endanger kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CalMatters spoke with four mothers who lost children because of a failure to protect order, five current and former social workers, eight domestic violence policy experts and advocates and two state lawmakers for this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of them stressed that protecting children was their highest priority. Several cited two notorious murders in Los Angeles County where the welfare agency failed to remove children to underscore the hazards of allowing kids to remain in violent households. One was \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/local/countygovernment/la-me-gabriel-fernandez-20140819-story.html\">Gabriel Fernandez\u003c/a>, who suffered years of gruesome torture and abuse before he was fatally beaten at age 8 in 2013 by his mother and her boyfriend. The other was \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-boy-death-20180623-story.html\">Anthony Avalos\u003c/a>, who was also tortured and abused by his mother and her boyfriend before his death at age 10 in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>In my opinion, the system really did fail those kids,” said Assemblyman\u003ca href=\"https://ad34.asmrc.org/biography/\"> Tom Lackey\u003c/a>, a Palmdale Republican who has been a teacher and a California Highway Patrol officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said he has dealt more with children who should’ve been removed from unsafe situations than with unnecessary separations from abused parents for “failure to protect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>No one can say how many California children are separated from family members every year under the law because neither the state nor counties collect that information. The closest estimate comes from a recent report by the UCLA Pritzker Center that showed more than half of Los Angeles County’s 38,618 foster care cases in 2020 involved domestic violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jackie, the mother who was alarmed when she received a “failure to protect” warning six years ago, believes the law discourages women from reporting domestic violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of women don’t say anything because of fear of being separated from their kids,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Separation after abuse, drug use\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Marie is soft-spoken with sparkling eyes and a gentle manner. She said as a teenager, she got hooked on prescription opioids and was addicted for years. She stopped using in 2015, and within a little more than a year, she graduated from college, got married and had two babies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was all too much, and I started using again,” Marie said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marie said her ex-husband was also addicted to drugs and when he was using, he physically abused her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969525\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969525\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19.jpg\" alt=\"A woman wearing a blue floral shirt, leans her right arm against a pole outside by a house.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-19-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marie at her home in Culver City on Sept. 29, 2023. Marie lived at Community’s Child after leaving a domestic violence relationship and battling past addictions. She now owns her home and has built a new life for herself and her children. \u003ccite>(Alisha Jucevic/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969526\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969526\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24.jpg\" alt=\"A person holds a handwritten note with butterfly and flower stickers.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-24-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marie holds a card from one of her kids at her home in Culver City. The card reads, “Thank you for being a very good mom. You been thru a lot but you are still the beast mom in the world.” Marie lived at Community’s Child after leaving a domestic violence relationship and a past of addiction. She now owns her home and has built a new life for herself and her children. \u003ccite>(Alisha Jucevic/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Department of Children and Family Services removed Marie’s kids for failure to protect them due to domestic violence and substance abuse. At ages 1 and 2, the kids had about a one-week stay in a group home. Marie’s parents adopted the children within six months of opening her case. Adoption typically takes a year or more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She pulled herself out of addiction after she became pregnant again and didn’t want to lose custody of a third child. She entered a substance abuse program in 2017. Next, she and her 2-month-old infant entered Community’s Child, a shelter and development program for homeless single mothers “motivated to achieve self-sufficiency.” Marie now owns her own home and works full-time in the medical field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She and her ex-husband have made peace and co-parent all three children, though the two older kids still live with Marie’s parents. Marie said the kids were very young during the violence and didn’t remember it, but she is still traumatized by the separation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I wasn’t able to heal in the six months that they gave me,” Marie said. “My family would’ve been a lot different if we had more time.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/gvy3EjgmHFA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gvy3EjgmHFA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Marie’s circumstances are not unusual. \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64441/\">One-quarter to one-half\u003c/a> of domestic violence cases occur with other problems, such as \u003ca href=\"https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-11-109\">parental substance abuse\u003c/a> or mental illness, intergenerational trauma or unemployment, among other stressors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her story illustrates the difficult choices social workers face every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Risk of staying and the risk of removal\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services is the largest child welfare agency in the world, with a budget of nearly $2.8 billion and oversight of \u003ca href=\"https://dcfs.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Factsheet-FY-2022-2023.pdf\">more than 25,000 children\u003c/a> annually. In 2022, 90% of the kids were 18 and younger and more than two-thirds were Black or Hispanic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If a social worker makes the wrong call, children can pay the price with their health or their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two former child welfare social workers said they felt supported by their agency, but deciding when a child was at risk of harm felt like their responsibility, which was difficult and emotionally exhausting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Child welfare is a judgment-based system. It is human-driven and based upon sticky, personal family dynamic facts,” said Brandon Nichols, director of the \u003ca href=\"https://dcfs.lacounty.gov/\">Department of Children and Family Services\u003c/a>, Los Angeles County’s child protection agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In U.S. households with domestic violence, \u003ca href=\"https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/can/factors/family/domviolence/\">30% to 60% also have child maltreatment\u003c/a>, including physical abuse or neglect. In 2020, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childabuseandneglect/fastfact.html#:~:text=Child%2520abuse%2520and%2520neglect%2520are%2520common.&text=In%25202020%252C%25201%252C750%2520children%2520died,neglect%2520in%2520the%2520United%2520States.\">1,750 children died\u003c/a> from abuse or neglect in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Kelly Callahan, director of the\u003ca href=\"https://www.harbor-ucla.org/pediatrics/academics-4/general-pediatrics/hub/\"> Kids In the Dependency System\u003c/a> clinic at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said children who witness domestic violence often have psychological or emotional problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Children who have witnessed violence between their caretakers can have PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), nightmares, sleep problems, school difficulties and more. They react the same way as children who have been abused,” Callahan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because of such harm, proponents of “failure to protect” laws said they’re needed for children’s safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969524\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969524\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08.jpg\" alt=\"A room with chairs, a table, and books.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-08-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The library and counseling room at Community’s Child in Lomita on Sept. 29, 2023. Community’s Child is a shelter and resource program that provides supplies, food and housing for women and infants who are struggling with homelessness, addiction and poverty. \u003ccite>(Alisha Jucevic/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But \u003ca href=\"https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/aces-and-toxic-stress-frequently-asked-questions/\">separation from a parent\u003c/a> can be equally devastating for children. \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/fastfact.html\">Adverse childhood experiences\u003c/a>, such as abuse or witnessing violence, contribute to poor mental and physical health well into adulthood, including risk for early death. A safe, secure relationship with a caring adult, such as a non-offending parent, can\u003ca href=\"https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/resilience/\"> build resiliency\u003c/a> for a traumatized child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The courts will often say, ‘We know that being exposed to violence in the home alters a child’s brain chemistry, and we’re going to remove this child and place them in foster care,” said Emily Berger, a lawyer for\u003ca href=\"https://www.ladlinc.org/\"> Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers\u003c/a>, a nonprofit consortium of court-appointed lawyers who defend parents involved in dependency court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But what we’ve found, and science backs up, is that being removed from your community, your family of origin, and your primary caregiver has such a tremendous impact upon a child’s healthy brain development and ability to form attachments,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Evolution of ‘failure to protect’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The original \u003ca href=\"https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1641&context=healthmatrix\">“failure-to-protect” laws\u003c/a> emerged in the 1960s in response to reports of child physical abuse. Under the laws, if a caregiver knew a child was being abused and didn’t report it, that \u003ca href=\"https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-76-number-1/whos-failing-whom-a-critical-look-at-failure-to-protect-laws/\">caregiver could be prosecuted\u003c/a> the same as the abuser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=WIC§ionNum=300.\">failure to protect\u003c/a> law falls under a welfare code that states children can become dependents of the court if “the child has suffered or there is a substantial risk that the child will suffer, serious physical harm inflicted non-accidentally upon the child by the child’s parent or guardian.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Listed among the criteria for substantial risk is “the failure or inability of the child’s parent or guardian to adequately supervise or protect the child.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2013/ssrv/child-neglect/child-neglect-080813.aspx#:~:text=Neglect%20Is%20the%20Most%20Common%20Reason%20for%20Foster%20Care%20Entry&text=Child%20neglect%20has%20been%20the,foster%20care%20entries%20since%202000.\">Neglect is the leading cause\u003c/a> for children to be placed under the courts’ jurisdiction. Failure to protect is often \u003ca href=\"https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/neglect_ch2.pdf\">considered neglect\u003c/a> or emotional abuse in the child welfare and justice systems, including when it’s related to domestic violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of 2015, 48 states and four U.S. territories had “failure to protect” laws: Maryland, Wyoming and Puerto Rico did not. The statutes designate the crimes as \u003ca href=\"https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1641&context=healthmatrix\">misdemeanors or felonies\u003c/a>. In California, neglect is usually charged as a \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=270.&lawCode=PEN\">misdemeanor.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Failure to protect charges \u003ca href=\"https://capitalandmain.com/child-law-penalizes-moms-for-abusive-partners-10-16\">can lead to life sentences\u003c/a> for parents in six states — Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina and West Virginia. In\u003ca href=\"https://talkpoverty.org/2019/10/25/failure-protect-child-welfare/index.html\"> Texas, the maximum penalty is 99 years\u003c/a>. For some non-offending parents, the penalties have been more severe than for the abuser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some states, such as New York and Washington, have moved in the \u003ca href=\"https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1641&context=healthmatrix\">opposite direction \u003c/a>to protect the rights of abuse victims. The New York Court of Appeals in 2004 ruled that \u003ca href=\"https://www.nyclu.org/en/cases/nicholson-v-williams-defending-parental-rights-mothers-who-are-domestic-violence-victims\">witnessing domestic violence did not constitute neglect\u003c/a> and couldn’t be the sole basis for removing children from the non-offending parent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Susan Rubio, a Democrat from West Covina, two years ago carried a bill that would have compelled California to study domestic violence in the child welfare system. She told her colleagues at the time the law “fails to recognize” the trauma of a parent “who is a domestic violence survivor.” The bill did not reach Gov. Gavin Newsom.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Would changing domestic violence law matter?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Despite Rubio’s setback, some advocates for domestic violence victims outside of the Capitol are building a case to change California’s law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Pritzker Center report calls for \u003ca href=\"https://pritzkercenter.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Pritzker-Domestic-Violence-Report-Endnotes_final.pdf\">California to consider legislative\u003c/a> reforms similar to the New York Court of Appeals ruling. The report also calls for \u003ca href=\"https://pritzkercenter.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Pritzker-Domestic-Violence-Report-Endnotes_final.pdf\">better training\u003c/a> in the complexities of family violence for all child welfare workers, court officers and such mandated reporters as teachers and coaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we could have legislation that said being victimized by domestic violence is not sufficient basis for charging neglect,” said Sheedy, the former director of LA County Domestic Violence Council.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This would be similar to California laws prohibiting the use of \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2085\">poverty\u003c/a> or homelessness as the sole basis for the removal of a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But others are urging more modest changes even as they express misgivings with the current policy. They worry about rescinding a policy intended to protect a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are definite concerns with ‘failure to protect’ and how it’s being used — it’s being used as a stick,” said Julie McCormick, a lawyer with the Children’s Law Center, a nonprofit legal organization representing children in the dependency system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, she said, “I wouldn’t say CLC (Children’s Law Center) has the stance that it should be gone. It’s too nuanced to do something blanket. I think that’s why it’s so hard to come up with legislation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Partnership to End Domestic Violence also has looked at the failure to protect the law. It isn’t calling for significant changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an issue we’ve tried to look at a couple of ways, but what makes sense statewide is tricky,” said Krista Colon, the partnership’s director.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Ending generations of domestic violence\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Jackie, the mother of four boys who was frightened by the warning that she could lose her kids, became an advocate for domestic violence victims after her experience. She is now a parent-partner with the Los Angeles Defense Lawyers and helps other parents navigate the system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her sons are now 18, 13, 12 and 7. She is stylish and engaging with a ready smile, but she harbors deep trauma. She lived with an abusive partner, the father of her three younger boys, for 10 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11969527\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11969527\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in a business suit sits in front of a desk.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/092923-LA-Domestic-Violence-AJ-CM-31-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jackie at her office in Monterey Park on Sept. 29, 2023. Jackie is a domestic violence survivor and is now a family advocate for Los Angeles Defense Lawyers. \u003ccite>(Alisha Jucevic/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“At first, he was the perfect guy,” Jackie said, “Then I moved in with him and little things started happening, like yelling and pushing me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She grew up with domestic violence in a large, multi-generational Latino household. When her ex-partner became abusive, she thought it was normal. Her grandmother told Jackie she had “to stay. Hispanic men are just like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Raphael, Jackie’s oldest son, said he remembers being afraid during the fighting, but as the big brother, he had to be strong to protect his siblings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jackie called 12 shelters before finding one to take her and her sons. Most shelters don’t accept boys older than 8. Raphael was 11, so he went to live with his biological father.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My dad told me my mom and my brothers were in the shelter. I didn’t know what that meant, and it really scared me,” Raphael said, “It was really tough because I missed my brothers.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/4g9zMARbCo8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/4g9zMARbCo8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Although the boys weren’t taken, child welfare’s threat to do so was devastating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was drastic and traumatizing,” Jackie said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet, she said, calling child welfare saved her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I was living through it, I thought I was doing what I needed to do to protect my kids,” Jackie said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most abused mothers do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2023 Domestic Violence Impact Fund.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>With tax revenues in a free fall comparable to the Great Recession and the dot-com bust, California faces a projected $68 billion budget deficit next year that will require spending cuts and reserve funds to close, state finance officials said today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4819\">new estimate\u003c/a> from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, released as Gov. Gavin Newsom finalizes his January budget proposal, reflects a substantially delayed tax-filing period this fall where collections came in far below what lawmakers expected when they adopted a spending plan over the summer. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"California Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek\"]‘I go with the word ‘serious.’ A serious budget problem.’[/pullquote]This projected deficit would be a record for California. But officials noted that it is partly because the budget has grown so much in recent years — the most recent was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/06/california-budget-deal-what-you-need-to-know/\">more than $300 billion\u003c/a> — and that the state has closed similar or worse spending gaps, by percentage, in the past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Legislative analyst Gabriel Petek cautioned that California is better prepared to respond to the situation than during the economic recession 15 years ago because it has since built several multibillion-dollar rainy-day funds. However, the state is also looking at a structural deficit of about $30 billion annually going forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I go with the word ‘serious.’ A serious budget problem,” Petek said during a briefing with journalists. “I would stop short of calling it a crisis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for Newsom’s Department of Finance, said the administration will have different numbers when the governor presents his 2024–25 spending plan next month, but Newsom is preparing to address a significant deficit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Both the Governor and the Legislature have a substantial challenge before them in closing a very large revenue gap in this budget,” Palmer told CalMatters. “The IRS, with the best of intentions, created a situation this year that is entirely new territory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Severe winter storms prompted the federal government to delay the income tax filing deadline for most Californians from April until November, and the state followed suit, giving an incomplete picture when legislators and the governor \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/06/california-budget-deal-what-you-need-to-know/\">crafted the budget this summer\u003c/a>. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"H.D. Palmer, spokesperson, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Department of Finance\"]‘Both the Governor and the Legislature have a substantial challenge before them in closing a very large revenue gap in this budget. The IRS, with the best of intentions, created a situation this year that is entirely new territory.’[/pullquote]It already accounted for a $30 billion deficit after two years of record surpluses driven by economic recovery and federal aid related to the coronavirus pandemic. But those collections were ultimately another $26 billion below estimates — a drop of 25% from the prior year — digging a financial hole based on money the state committed in its spending plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year looks weak as well, according to finance officials. California has been hit particularly hard by inflation, which pinched the housing market; a stock market downturn, affecting capital gains; and a drop in investments in the tech industry, which has pulled back on initial public offerings. Overall tax revenues are projected to be \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/newsletter/california-edd-unemployment-contractor/#wm-story-1\">$58 billion below assumptions\u003c/a> in the multi-year budget window.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that tax revenues will begin growing again next year, the recovery will likely be slow, opening up long-term funding shortfalls that could affect essential programs in future years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are enough options available to address this immediate problem,” Petek said. “Our high-level suggestion to the Legislature is just to be judicious about reserves because there’s a lot of uncertainty ahead, so preserving some of that resilience would be helpful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His office recommended that Newsom declare a fiscal emergency, allowing the state to dip into as much as $24 billion of its rainy-day funds and that legislators pull back on one-time spending allocations that have not yet been distributed, potentially saving $10 billion or more that had previously been set aside for transportation, environmental and education programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Petek also suggested that California could cut the deficit by nearly $17 billion over the next three years by recalculating its constitutionally mandated funding obligation to schools and community colleges, Proposition 98, based on the lower revenues. Though this would decrease the state’s base education funding over the long term, Petek said the immediate effects could be offset with reserves. [aside label='More Stories on California' tag='california']That option, in particular, could encounter stiff resistance in the Legislature. Assembly Speaker \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/robert-rivas-1980/\">Robert Rivas\u003c/a>, a Hollister Democrat, released a statement last week when it became clear that tax revenues would be substantially below estimates, committing to a budget that “protects classroom funding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom and lawmakers are also likely to confront months of tremendous pressure from advocates arguing that their priorities should be protected in any budget solutions. Statements started rolling out mere minutes after the Legislative Analyst’s Office published its report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California leaders have stepped up before to prioritize Californians who are struggling to get by and they must continue this in 2024,” said Pete Manzo, president & CEO of United Ways of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Republican legislators chastised their Democratic colleagues for continuing to make new spending commitments in recent budget cycles even as it became clear that the economy was increasingly shaky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Hopefully, the supermajority will see it is time for a more realistic budget strategy,” Senate Republican Leader \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/brian-jones-1968/\">Brian Jones\u003c/a> of San Diego said in a statement, “instead of throwing money at a laundry list of projects that sounds nice on the national television debate stage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>With tax revenues in a free fall comparable to the Great Recession and the dot-com bust, California faces a projected $68 billion budget deficit next year that will require spending cuts and reserve funds to close, state finance officials said today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4819\">new estimate\u003c/a> from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, released as Gov. Gavin Newsom finalizes his January budget proposal, reflects a substantially delayed tax-filing period this fall where collections came in far below what lawmakers expected when they adopted a spending plan over the summer. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>This projected deficit would be a record for California. But officials noted that it is partly because the budget has grown so much in recent years — the most recent was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/06/california-budget-deal-what-you-need-to-know/\">more than $300 billion\u003c/a> — and that the state has closed similar or worse spending gaps, by percentage, in the past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Legislative analyst Gabriel Petek cautioned that California is better prepared to respond to the situation than during the economic recession 15 years ago because it has since built several multibillion-dollar rainy-day funds. However, the state is also looking at a structural deficit of about $30 billion annually going forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I go with the word ‘serious.’ A serious budget problem,” Petek said during a briefing with journalists. “I would stop short of calling it a crisis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for Newsom’s Department of Finance, said the administration will have different numbers when the governor presents his 2024–25 spending plan next month, but Newsom is preparing to address a significant deficit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Both the Governor and the Legislature have a substantial challenge before them in closing a very large revenue gap in this budget,” Palmer told CalMatters. “The IRS, with the best of intentions, created a situation this year that is entirely new territory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Severe winter storms prompted the federal government to delay the income tax filing deadline for most Californians from April until November, and the state followed suit, giving an incomplete picture when legislators and the governor \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/06/california-budget-deal-what-you-need-to-know/\">crafted the budget this summer\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>It already accounted for a $30 billion deficit after two years of record surpluses driven by economic recovery and federal aid related to the coronavirus pandemic. But those collections were ultimately another $26 billion below estimates — a drop of 25% from the prior year — digging a financial hole based on money the state committed in its spending plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year looks weak as well, according to finance officials. California has been hit particularly hard by inflation, which pinched the housing market; a stock market downturn, affecting capital gains; and a drop in investments in the tech industry, which has pulled back on initial public offerings. Overall tax revenues are projected to be \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/newsletter/california-edd-unemployment-contractor/#wm-story-1\">$58 billion below assumptions\u003c/a> in the multi-year budget window.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that tax revenues will begin growing again next year, the recovery will likely be slow, opening up long-term funding shortfalls that could affect essential programs in future years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are enough options available to address this immediate problem,” Petek said. “Our high-level suggestion to the Legislature is just to be judicious about reserves because there’s a lot of uncertainty ahead, so preserving some of that resilience would be helpful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His office recommended that Newsom declare a fiscal emergency, allowing the state to dip into as much as $24 billion of its rainy-day funds and that legislators pull back on one-time spending allocations that have not yet been distributed, potentially saving $10 billion or more that had previously been set aside for transportation, environmental and education programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Petek also suggested that California could cut the deficit by nearly $17 billion over the next three years by recalculating its constitutionally mandated funding obligation to schools and community colleges, Proposition 98, based on the lower revenues. Though this would decrease the state’s base education funding over the long term, Petek said the immediate effects could be offset with reserves. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>That option, in particular, could encounter stiff resistance in the Legislature. Assembly Speaker \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/robert-rivas-1980/\">Robert Rivas\u003c/a>, a Hollister Democrat, released a statement last week when it became clear that tax revenues would be substantially below estimates, committing to a budget that “protects classroom funding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom and lawmakers are also likely to confront months of tremendous pressure from advocates arguing that their priorities should be protected in any budget solutions. Statements started rolling out mere minutes after the Legislative Analyst’s Office published its report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California leaders have stepped up before to prioritize Californians who are struggling to get by and they must continue this in 2024,” said Pete Manzo, president & CEO of United Ways of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Republican legislators chastised their Democratic colleagues for continuing to make new spending commitments in recent budget cycles even as it became clear that the economy was increasingly shaky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Hopefully, the supermajority will see it is time for a more realistic budget strategy,” Senate Republican Leader \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/brian-jones-1968/\">Brian Jones\u003c/a> of San Diego said in a statement, “instead of throwing money at a laundry list of projects that sounds nice on the national television debate stage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "kevin-mccarthy-surprise-resignation-sets-off-mad-scramble-to-replace-him",
"title": "Kevin McCarthy's Surprise Resignation Sets Off Mad Scramble to Replace Him",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Lea este artículo en \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/calmatters-en-espanol/2023/12/la-dimision-de-mccarthy-desencadena-una-ola-de-especulaciones-sobre-su-reemplazo/\">español\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement Wednesday that he will leave Congress at the end of this month sets off a tidal wave of speculation on who will represent a wide swath of California’s agricultural heartland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement’s timing also sets up McCarthy, a Republican from Bakersfield, to be a potential political kingmaker if he gives an early endorsement. It’s a role he’s played before and relishes. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In announcing his resignation in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/kevin-mccarthy-my-next-chapter-house-gop-retirement-california-e4e593d7\">Wall Street Journal op-ed\u003c/a>, McCarthy reiterated that he will “continue to recruit our country’s best and brightest to run for elected office.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One thing is virtually certain: McCarthy’s replacement to represent his reliably conservative district will be a Republican. And one of the names on a possible list of GOP stalwarts is a big one — former Rep. Devin Nunes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sprawling Godzilla-shaped district is a GOP stronghold as ruby-red as any in California. Its voters supported former President Donald Trump — in 2016 and 2020 — and the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom by wide margins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also know the process for how McCarthy will be replaced, at least initially. Since he isn’t leaving his seat until, after the candidate filing deadline, it’s up to Newsom to decide whether to call a special election in early 2024 to fill the remaining months of McCarthy’s current term — which ends in Jan. 2025 — according to the California Secretary of State’s office. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said a special election would need to be called within 14 days of a vacancy but did not answer whether Newsom plans to do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We will have more to share once we have specifics from McCarthy about his planned departure,” said Erin Mellon, the spokesperson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the March primary and November general election, voters in the district will choose their next representative to serve a full two-year term starting in 2025. The filing deadline for candidates is now Dec. 13, according to the Secretary of State.[aside label=\"related coverage\" tag=\"kevin-mccarthy\"]The counties covered by McCarthy’s 20th Congressional District have recently become familiar with this process after Nunes departed at the end of 2021. Connie Conway was elected in June 2022 to fill out the remaining six months of Nunes’ term and served as a caretaker uninterested in re-election.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some of the potential candidates who could mount a campaign to replace McCarthy and why they may or may not choose to join the fray:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devin Nunes\u003c/strong>: longtime GOP member of Congress and staunch supporter of the former president who left his seat in late 2020 to take over as chief executive of Truth Social, Trump’s social-media venture\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen: \u003c/strong>Nunes has a mile-long list of political bonafides, including national name recognition, an $11 million campaign \u003ca href=\"https://rollcall.com/2021/12/08/taking-it-with-them-members-leaving-with-money-in-the-bank/#:~:text=Devin%20Nunes%20holds%20an%20enviable,return%20it%20to%20his%20donors.\">war chest\u003c/a>, and a bridge to the powerful MAGA wing of the Republican Party. He previously represented many Fresno-area voters who now comprise a sizable chunk of McCarthy’s district. He hasn’t disappeared from the local political scene and frequently is a \u003ca href=\"https://omny.fm/shows/ray-appleton/devin-nunes-joins-ray-for-the-entire-hour\">guest on local conservative talk radio\u003c/a>. Election to a GOP stronghold district could be a more secure job than Truth Social’s \u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/11/trumps-truth-social-is-an-unmitigated-failure.html#:~:text=%E2%80%94%20the%20blank%2Dcheck%20company%20trying,against%20%242.3%20million%20in%20sales.\">shaky prospects\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not\u003c/strong>: If elected, Nunes, who over nearly two decades in Congress had risen up the House ranks to lead the influential Intelligence Committee, would start over as a backbencher. Many speculate the chamber’s current thin GOP majority will be wiped out after the 2024 election, making for a miserable life as a Republican first-termer. He’s also branched out into various unrelated interests after joining Truth Social. He recently started \u003ca href=\"https://www.devinnuneswines.com/\">his own winery\u003c/a> with vintage wines such as \u003ca href=\"https://www.devinnuneswines.com/wines/\">Patriot Cabernet Sauvignon\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vince Fong: \u003c/strong>Republican assemblymember who represents Bakersfield\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen: \u003c/strong>At 44, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/vince-fong-1979/\">Fong\u003c/a> could serve for decades and move into a leadership position. The Princeton graduate has long been a favorite of McCarthy’s and served as his district director before his election to the state Assembly in 2016. He was also a former staffer for Republican Rep. Bill Thomas and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kmjnow.com/2023/09/28/gop-calls-on-newsom-to-convene-special-session-to-suspend-gas-tax/\">has helped lead\u003c/a> the failed Republican efforts to suspend California’s gas tax. A lifetime NRA member, he’s pushed back against the state’s Democratic majority on gun control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not: \u003c/strong>Fong is largely unknown in the wealthy Fresno suburbs that are an important part of McCarthy’s district and has no local government experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Shannon Grove: \u003c/strong>Republican state senator who currently represents a district that overlaps with much of McCarthy’s congressional seat\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen:\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/shannon-grove-1965/\">Grove\u003c/a>, a strong supporter of Trump, has built a well-known and popular political brand in Bakersfield, which makes up the bulk of her state Senate district. She won a high-profile \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2023/07/child-trafficking-bill-california-legislature/\">victory over state Democrats\u003c/a> in the Legislature to reclassify human trafficking of a minor as a felony, a bill\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>that Newsom signed. Redistricting brought her north to the wealthy and more conservative areas of Fresno and Clovis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not:\u003c/strong> Grove still is a relative unknown to a chunk of McCarthy’s district. She’d have to fundraise at a level she hasn’t achieved in the past. Her MAGA ties could turn off more middle-of-the-road voters in the Fresno suburbs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Valadao: \u003c/strong>Republican who currently represents the 22nd Congressional District\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen:\u003c/strong> The Republican from Hanford long has been held up as a political miracle — a Republican who gets elected in Democratic-majority districts. It’s a streak he kept alive for multiple terms until his defeat in the 2018 blue wave, only to regain his seat in 2020. He’s now staring down a rematch with Rudy Salas, his Democratic rival, in a year with Trump on the ballot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hopscotching one district over could make political life much easier. It wouldn’t be the first time a member of Congress moved districts for greener political pastures. Democrat Josh Harder declined to run for re-election in his Modesto-centered district in 2022, opting instead to \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-voter-guide-2022/us-house/house-races/#hot-district-9\">run in a safer Democratic district\u003c/a> centered in Stockton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not:\u003c/strong> Valadao would be viewed as a political carpetbagger. Moving over to McCarthy’s district would leave his current one wide open for Salas and the Democrats. Additionally, his vote to impeach Trump in early 2021 turned off the powerful MAGA bloc.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nathan Magsig\u003c/strong>: Fresno County supervisor\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen:\u003c/strong> Magsig, also a former Clovis mayor and councilmember, mounted a primary challenge in 2022 against incumbent Rep. Tom McClintock in the newly-drawn 5th Congressional District. He has a history of taking on conservative causes and made waves when he led a majority of Fresno supervisors to \u003ca href=\"https://www.fresnobee.com/fresnoland/article274709081.html\">sue the state\u003c/a> over the renaming of the unincorporated community previously known as Squaw Valley — now called Yokuts Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not:\u003c/strong> Magsig’s 2022 McClintock challenge went poorly and angered many Republicans. He has no name recognition in Bakersfield. He opted out of a logical next step to replace termed-out Assemblymember Jim Patterson, a Fresno Republican, and seems content to stay closer to home. There are no term limits for Fresno County supervisors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Connie Conway\u003c/strong>: Member of Congress and former state assemblymember\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen:\u003c/strong> Conway won a special election in 2022 to fill out the remainder of Nunes’ term. Her long history in the state Legislature gives her all-important name recognition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not:\u003c/strong> The former Assembly minority leader has shown little interest in making Congress her permanent home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>CalMatters Capitol reporter \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/alexei-koseff/\">\u003cem>Alexei Koseff\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The former House speaker's unexpected announcement on Wednesday sparked a wave of speculation on who will replace him. These are some of the potential candidates who could mount a last-minute campaign.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Lea este artículo en \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/calmatters-en-espanol/2023/12/la-dimision-de-mccarthy-desencadena-una-ola-de-especulaciones-sobre-su-reemplazo/\">español\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement Wednesday that he will leave Congress at the end of this month sets off a tidal wave of speculation on who will represent a wide swath of California’s agricultural heartland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement’s timing also sets up McCarthy, a Republican from Bakersfield, to be a potential political kingmaker if he gives an early endorsement. It’s a role he’s played before and relishes. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In announcing his resignation in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/kevin-mccarthy-my-next-chapter-house-gop-retirement-california-e4e593d7\">Wall Street Journal op-ed\u003c/a>, McCarthy reiterated that he will “continue to recruit our country’s best and brightest to run for elected office.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One thing is virtually certain: McCarthy’s replacement to represent his reliably conservative district will be a Republican. And one of the names on a possible list of GOP stalwarts is a big one — former Rep. Devin Nunes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sprawling Godzilla-shaped district is a GOP stronghold as ruby-red as any in California. Its voters supported former President Donald Trump — in 2016 and 2020 — and the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom by wide margins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also know the process for how McCarthy will be replaced, at least initially. Since he isn’t leaving his seat until, after the candidate filing deadline, it’s up to Newsom to decide whether to call a special election in early 2024 to fill the remaining months of McCarthy’s current term — which ends in Jan. 2025 — according to the California Secretary of State’s office. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said a special election would need to be called within 14 days of a vacancy but did not answer whether Newsom plans to do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We will have more to share once we have specifics from McCarthy about his planned departure,” said Erin Mellon, the spokesperson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the March primary and November general election, voters in the district will choose their next representative to serve a full two-year term starting in 2025. The filing deadline for candidates is now Dec. 13, according to the Secretary of State.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The counties covered by McCarthy’s 20th Congressional District have recently become familiar with this process after Nunes departed at the end of 2021. Connie Conway was elected in June 2022 to fill out the remaining six months of Nunes’ term and served as a caretaker uninterested in re-election.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some of the potential candidates who could mount a campaign to replace McCarthy and why they may or may not choose to join the fray:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devin Nunes\u003c/strong>: longtime GOP member of Congress and staunch supporter of the former president who left his seat in late 2020 to take over as chief executive of Truth Social, Trump’s social-media venture\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen: \u003c/strong>Nunes has a mile-long list of political bonafides, including national name recognition, an $11 million campaign \u003ca href=\"https://rollcall.com/2021/12/08/taking-it-with-them-members-leaving-with-money-in-the-bank/#:~:text=Devin%20Nunes%20holds%20an%20enviable,return%20it%20to%20his%20donors.\">war chest\u003c/a>, and a bridge to the powerful MAGA wing of the Republican Party. He previously represented many Fresno-area voters who now comprise a sizable chunk of McCarthy’s district. He hasn’t disappeared from the local political scene and frequently is a \u003ca href=\"https://omny.fm/shows/ray-appleton/devin-nunes-joins-ray-for-the-entire-hour\">guest on local conservative talk radio\u003c/a>. Election to a GOP stronghold district could be a more secure job than Truth Social’s \u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/11/trumps-truth-social-is-an-unmitigated-failure.html#:~:text=%E2%80%94%20the%20blank%2Dcheck%20company%20trying,against%20%242.3%20million%20in%20sales.\">shaky prospects\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not\u003c/strong>: If elected, Nunes, who over nearly two decades in Congress had risen up the House ranks to lead the influential Intelligence Committee, would start over as a backbencher. Many speculate the chamber’s current thin GOP majority will be wiped out after the 2024 election, making for a miserable life as a Republican first-termer. He’s also branched out into various unrelated interests after joining Truth Social. He recently started \u003ca href=\"https://www.devinnuneswines.com/\">his own winery\u003c/a> with vintage wines such as \u003ca href=\"https://www.devinnuneswines.com/wines/\">Patriot Cabernet Sauvignon\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vince Fong: \u003c/strong>Republican assemblymember who represents Bakersfield\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen: \u003c/strong>At 44, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/vince-fong-1979/\">Fong\u003c/a> could serve for decades and move into a leadership position. The Princeton graduate has long been a favorite of McCarthy’s and served as his district director before his election to the state Assembly in 2016. He was also a former staffer for Republican Rep. Bill Thomas and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kmjnow.com/2023/09/28/gop-calls-on-newsom-to-convene-special-session-to-suspend-gas-tax/\">has helped lead\u003c/a> the failed Republican efforts to suspend California’s gas tax. A lifetime NRA member, he’s pushed back against the state’s Democratic majority on gun control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not: \u003c/strong>Fong is largely unknown in the wealthy Fresno suburbs that are an important part of McCarthy’s district and has no local government experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Shannon Grove: \u003c/strong>Republican state senator who currently represents a district that overlaps with much of McCarthy’s congressional seat\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen:\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/shannon-grove-1965/\">Grove\u003c/a>, a strong supporter of Trump, has built a well-known and popular political brand in Bakersfield, which makes up the bulk of her state Senate district. She won a high-profile \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2023/07/child-trafficking-bill-california-legislature/\">victory over state Democrats\u003c/a> in the Legislature to reclassify human trafficking of a minor as a felony, a bill\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>that Newsom signed. Redistricting brought her north to the wealthy and more conservative areas of Fresno and Clovis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not:\u003c/strong> Grove still is a relative unknown to a chunk of McCarthy’s district. She’d have to fundraise at a level she hasn’t achieved in the past. Her MAGA ties could turn off more middle-of-the-road voters in the Fresno suburbs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Valadao: \u003c/strong>Republican who currently represents the 22nd Congressional District\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen:\u003c/strong> The Republican from Hanford long has been held up as a political miracle — a Republican who gets elected in Democratic-majority districts. It’s a streak he kept alive for multiple terms until his defeat in the 2018 blue wave, only to regain his seat in 2020. He’s now staring down a rematch with Rudy Salas, his Democratic rival, in a year with Trump on the ballot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hopscotching one district over could make political life much easier. It wouldn’t be the first time a member of Congress moved districts for greener political pastures. Democrat Josh Harder declined to run for re-election in his Modesto-centered district in 2022, opting instead to \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-voter-guide-2022/us-house/house-races/#hot-district-9\">run in a safer Democratic district\u003c/a> centered in Stockton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not:\u003c/strong> Valadao would be viewed as a political carpetbagger. Moving over to McCarthy’s district would leave his current one wide open for Salas and the Democrats. Additionally, his vote to impeach Trump in early 2021 turned off the powerful MAGA bloc.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nathan Magsig\u003c/strong>: Fresno County supervisor\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen:\u003c/strong> Magsig, also a former Clovis mayor and councilmember, mounted a primary challenge in 2022 against incumbent Rep. Tom McClintock in the newly-drawn 5th Congressional District. He has a history of taking on conservative causes and made waves when he led a majority of Fresno supervisors to \u003ca href=\"https://www.fresnobee.com/fresnoland/article274709081.html\">sue the state\u003c/a> over the renaming of the unincorporated community previously known as Squaw Valley — now called Yokuts Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not:\u003c/strong> Magsig’s 2022 McClintock challenge went poorly and angered many Republicans. He has no name recognition in Bakersfield. He opted out of a logical next step to replace termed-out Assemblymember Jim Patterson, a Fresno Republican, and seems content to stay closer to home. There are no term limits for Fresno County supervisors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Connie Conway\u003c/strong>: Member of Congress and former state assemblymember\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it could happen:\u003c/strong> Conway won a special election in 2022 to fill out the remainder of Nunes’ term. Her long history in the state Legislature gives her all-important name recognition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why it might not:\u003c/strong> The former Assembly minority leader has shown little interest in making Congress her permanent home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>CalMatters Capitol reporter \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/alexei-koseff/\">\u003cem>Alexei Koseff\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "California’s $50 Million Lifeline Saves Bankrupt Hospital from Closure",
"headTitle": "California’s $50 Million Lifeline Saves Bankrupt Hospital from Closure | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>California’s special emergency fund for financially distressed hospitals probably would not have passed the Legislature this year had it not been for the failure of a rural hospital off Highway 99 in the San Joaquin Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bankruptcy and closure of Madera Community Hospital spurred lawmakers to \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/08/california-hospitals-bailout-loans/\">allocate $300 million in loans for it\u003c/a> and other troubled medical facilities. The state began doling out the money this fall, earmarking up to $57 million for Madera alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Madera’s share of the money is on hold and in question because the hospital has not yet found a buyer or partner to reopen it almost a year after its closure. Madera Community’s state loan is contingent on securing a purchase or partnership deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Steve Stark, CEO, Orchard Hospital\"]‘When we submitted our application, we were down to less than three days of cash on hand.’[/pullquote]And, while some hospitals have started getting their checks, others that applied for money and did not qualify for it are raising questions about the process. They’re calling for more transparency with respect to how the state selects hospitals for funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Madera hospital seemed to get a lifeline from \u003ca href=\"https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281957443.html\">Adventist Health\u003c/a>, a West Coast system that had been in talks to take over the defunct hospital. Adventist backed out earlier this month, dealing a setback to Madera County’s hopes of reviving the facility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It marked the second failed effort to find a buyer for the hospital. Trinity Health pulled out of a deal to purchase the struggling hospital in December 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unfortunately, Adventist Health was unable to find a fiscally viable solution for the costly process of reopening and operating a closed facility,” Adventist Health officials said in an emailed statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=\"news_11959175,news_11958245\" label=\"Related Stories\"]Adventist Health had estimated that restarting services at Madera Community would cost at least \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Madera-LOI-20230727-final.pdf\">$85 million during the first two years\u003c/a> of reopening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following Madera’s closure in January, a number of community hospitals claimed that they, too, were in financial trouble. Two filed for bankruptcy and several cut service lines, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/11/california-hospitals-close-maternity-wards/\">including labor and delivery\u003c/a> units. The state responded by \u003ca href=\"https://hcai.ca.gov/california-announces-300-million-in-financial-support-for-community-hospitals-across-the-state/\">creating the Distressed Hospital Loan program\u003c/a>; 30 hospitals applied and 17 were selected to receive loans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four hospitals have received their checks, with the rest expected to go out in the upcoming weeks. Madera stands to receive the largest loan. The state recently increased the amount the hospital could qualify for by $5 million, bringing the total to $57 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Potential deals for Madera hospital\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Madera Community Hospital could still reopen and receive its loan if another buyer or partner comes through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two other suitors, American Advanced Management, Inc. and Praise Healthcare, LLC, have expressed interest in taking over. For now, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/local-news/2023-11-28/after-two-failed-deals-two-new-companies-look-to-run-bankrupt-madera-community-hospital\">Madera’s hospital still has dibs on the $52 million\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The funding is currently reserved for Madera Community Hospital,” said Andrew DiLuccia, a spokesperson for the Department of Health Care Access and Information, which selected which hospitals would get loans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riley Walter, an attorney representing Madera Community Hospital in bankruptcy court, said the hospital’s board is awaiting paperwork from both suitors before it can move forward. He said he expects that to happen sometime this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If no suitors follow through on a deal and Madera Community loses out on its loan, the state loans could be returned to the emergency fund for other hospitals to use, said Joe DeAnda, a spokesperson for the State Treasurer’s Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hospitals want more transparency\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To qualify for loans, hospitals had to show both financial need and a path to viability. Hospitals with low levels of cash on hand had priority, according to the Department of Health Care Access and Information. Eligible facilities had to be public, community hospitals and not owned by large health systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some hospitals that did not receive loans said they wanted to see more transparency from the state’s program. At least one hospital administrator said he was unsatisfied with the response he received in the rejection email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steve Stark, CEO of Orchard Hospital in Butte County, said his hospital’s situation is similar to that of some of the hospitals that were granted loans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we submitted our application, we were down to less than three days of cash on hand,” Stark said. “We had received an audit letter from our auditors in our last fiscal year that indicated that we wouldn’t be around in 12 months. And so by all measures that we could accumulate, we felt like we were distressed, we still are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stark said one of the disqualifiers mentioned by the state was that his hospital is under a management agreement in which the Modesto-based company \u003ca href=\"https://americanam.org/\">American Advanced Management\u003c/a> oversees the hospital’s operations. (This is the same company that has expressed interest in taking over Madera Community Hospital.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other hospitals that were granted loans are also under management agreements, such as Dameron Hospital in Stockton, which has a partnership with Adventist Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an emailed response, DiLuccia from the state health care information department said, “provisions within the management agreement made a difference in applicant’s eligibility.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>California sends checks\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Chinese Hospital in San Francisco is one of the first four hospitals to receive its loan — close to $10.4 million. The 88-bed hospital has reported a net loss every single year since 2016, according to its financial records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Chung, the hospital’s president, said the hospital’s main challenge as a safety net provider is low reimbursements from Medi-Cal and Medicare that haven’t kept up with the growing cost of care. The hospital leans heavily on state and federal grants, as well as funds from private foundations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That has worked for 100-plus years, but it’s not able to sustain the hospital any longer,” Chung said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of its turnaround plan, Chinese Hospital is seeking to renegotiate reimbursement rates with both private and public insurers, Chung said. Those negotiations can be a hit or miss, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Low reimbursement was also a key challenge noted by Watsonville Community Hospital in Santa Cruz County, which qualified for a state loan of $8.3 million. The hospital emerged from bankruptcy only last year and operates under a nonprofit health care district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nancy Gere, spokesperson for Watsonville Community, said the hospital is renegotiating contracts with health insurance plans, which hadn’t been done in more than 10 years. The hospital is also considering the possibility of a general obligation bond to upgrade the facility and improve the hospital’s financial standing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Despite all these efforts, our expenses currently still exceed revenues, so the $8.3 million loan from the state of California is incredibly helpful,” Gere said. “The loan funds are being used to help stabilize our operations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://www.chcf.org/\">\u003cem>www.chcf.org\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> to learn more.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Earlier this year, the state created a loan program meant to help struggling hospitals stay afloat and to help reopen Madera County’s only hospital. Almost a year after its closure, Madera continues its search for a buyer or partner.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California’s special emergency fund for financially distressed hospitals probably would not have passed the Legislature this year had it not been for the failure of a rural hospital off Highway 99 in the San Joaquin Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bankruptcy and closure of Madera Community Hospital spurred lawmakers to \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/08/california-hospitals-bailout-loans/\">allocate $300 million in loans for it\u003c/a> and other troubled medical facilities. The state began doling out the money this fall, earmarking up to $57 million for Madera alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Madera’s share of the money is on hold and in question because the hospital has not yet found a buyer or partner to reopen it almost a year after its closure. Madera Community’s state loan is contingent on securing a purchase or partnership deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>And, while some hospitals have started getting their checks, others that applied for money and did not qualify for it are raising questions about the process. They’re calling for more transparency with respect to how the state selects hospitals for funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Madera hospital seemed to get a lifeline from \u003ca href=\"https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article281957443.html\">Adventist Health\u003c/a>, a West Coast system that had been in talks to take over the defunct hospital. Adventist backed out earlier this month, dealing a setback to Madera County’s hopes of reviving the facility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It marked the second failed effort to find a buyer for the hospital. Trinity Health pulled out of a deal to purchase the struggling hospital in December 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unfortunately, Adventist Health was unable to find a fiscally viable solution for the costly process of reopening and operating a closed facility,” Adventist Health officials said in an emailed statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Adventist Health had estimated that restarting services at Madera Community would cost at least \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Madera-LOI-20230727-final.pdf\">$85 million during the first two years\u003c/a> of reopening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following Madera’s closure in January, a number of community hospitals claimed that they, too, were in financial trouble. Two filed for bankruptcy and several cut service lines, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/health/2023/11/california-hospitals-close-maternity-wards/\">including labor and delivery\u003c/a> units. The state responded by \u003ca href=\"https://hcai.ca.gov/california-announces-300-million-in-financial-support-for-community-hospitals-across-the-state/\">creating the Distressed Hospital Loan program\u003c/a>; 30 hospitals applied and 17 were selected to receive loans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four hospitals have received their checks, with the rest expected to go out in the upcoming weeks. Madera stands to receive the largest loan. The state recently increased the amount the hospital could qualify for by $5 million, bringing the total to $57 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Potential deals for Madera hospital\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Madera Community Hospital could still reopen and receive its loan if another buyer or partner comes through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two other suitors, American Advanced Management, Inc. and Praise Healthcare, LLC, have expressed interest in taking over. For now, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/local-news/2023-11-28/after-two-failed-deals-two-new-companies-look-to-run-bankrupt-madera-community-hospital\">Madera’s hospital still has dibs on the $52 million\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The funding is currently reserved for Madera Community Hospital,” said Andrew DiLuccia, a spokesperson for the Department of Health Care Access and Information, which selected which hospitals would get loans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riley Walter, an attorney representing Madera Community Hospital in bankruptcy court, said the hospital’s board is awaiting paperwork from both suitors before it can move forward. He said he expects that to happen sometime this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If no suitors follow through on a deal and Madera Community loses out on its loan, the state loans could be returned to the emergency fund for other hospitals to use, said Joe DeAnda, a spokesperson for the State Treasurer’s Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hospitals want more transparency\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To qualify for loans, hospitals had to show both financial need and a path to viability. Hospitals with low levels of cash on hand had priority, according to the Department of Health Care Access and Information. Eligible facilities had to be public, community hospitals and not owned by large health systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some hospitals that did not receive loans said they wanted to see more transparency from the state’s program. At least one hospital administrator said he was unsatisfied with the response he received in the rejection email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steve Stark, CEO of Orchard Hospital in Butte County, said his hospital’s situation is similar to that of some of the hospitals that were granted loans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we submitted our application, we were down to less than three days of cash on hand,” Stark said. “We had received an audit letter from our auditors in our last fiscal year that indicated that we wouldn’t be around in 12 months. And so by all measures that we could accumulate, we felt like we were distressed, we still are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stark said one of the disqualifiers mentioned by the state was that his hospital is under a management agreement in which the Modesto-based company \u003ca href=\"https://americanam.org/\">American Advanced Management\u003c/a> oversees the hospital’s operations. (This is the same company that has expressed interest in taking over Madera Community Hospital.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other hospitals that were granted loans are also under management agreements, such as Dameron Hospital in Stockton, which has a partnership with Adventist Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an emailed response, DiLuccia from the state health care information department said, “provisions within the management agreement made a difference in applicant’s eligibility.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>California sends checks\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Chinese Hospital in San Francisco is one of the first four hospitals to receive its loan — close to $10.4 million. The 88-bed hospital has reported a net loss every single year since 2016, according to its financial records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Chung, the hospital’s president, said the hospital’s main challenge as a safety net provider is low reimbursements from Medi-Cal and Medicare that haven’t kept up with the growing cost of care. The hospital leans heavily on state and federal grants, as well as funds from private foundations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That has worked for 100-plus years, but it’s not able to sustain the hospital any longer,” Chung said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of its turnaround plan, Chinese Hospital is seeking to renegotiate reimbursement rates with both private and public insurers, Chung said. Those negotiations can be a hit or miss, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Low reimbursement was also a key challenge noted by Watsonville Community Hospital in Santa Cruz County, which qualified for a state loan of $8.3 million. The hospital emerged from bankruptcy only last year and operates under a nonprofit health care district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nancy Gere, spokesperson for Watsonville Community, said the hospital is renegotiating contracts with health insurance plans, which hadn’t been done in more than 10 years. The hospital is also considering the possibility of a general obligation bond to upgrade the facility and improve the hospital’s financial standing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Despite all these efforts, our expenses currently still exceed revenues, so the $8.3 million loan from the state of California is incredibly helpful,” Gere said. “The loan funds are being used to help stabilize our operations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://www.chcf.org/\">\u003cem>www.chcf.org\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> to learn more.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "californias-covid-rent-relief-program-struggles-as-funds-dwindle",
"title": "California's COVID Rent Relief Program Struggles as Funds Dwindle",
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"headTitle": "California’s COVID Rent Relief Program Struggles as Funds Dwindle | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>In March 2021, the Los Angeles film industry was just beginning to roar back to life after a prolonged COVID-induced slump, but Michael Addis, a freelance filmmaker, was still deep in the hole. For more than a year, he’d been racking up IOUs to his landlord and the tab stood at $43,792.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Addis turned to an emergency state program designed to help people like him pay down rental debt accumulated during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later, in the summer of 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom himself had touted the program, Housing Is Key, as the largest of its kind in the nation. “We’re laser-focused on \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/07/14/california-roars-back-governor-newsom-highlights-nations-largest-rent-relief-program-announces-over-1-billion-in-rental-assistance-requested-to-date/\">getting this assistance out the door as quickly as possible\u003c/a>,” he said at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Addis heard back 20 months after he applied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On June 5, 2023 — his 61st birthday — he received an email, which he shared with CalMatters, notifying him that a payment had been approved in full.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by then it was too late. Addis had already downsized, moving out of his apartment a few blocks from the Marina Del Rey harbor to a smaller spot in the San Fernando Valley. He had also borrowed money from members of his family to pay his old landlord back, hoping that he’d be able to write off the new debt with the relief funds from the state. But once the company that owns his apartment complex, Equity Residential, received a check from the state, they sent it back, citing program guidelines that deemed Addis no longer eligible for assistance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just painful to think that the money that was allocated to solve my problem was sent back and I’m still in debt and now I have to downsize again,” he said, explaining that he’s about to move to Simi Valley, even further from his teenage son, who lives with Addis’ ex-wife. “I’m not in any way leaning on the state but I had a bad year — a bad couple years — and there was a program to help. And they helped me in the worst possible way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Anya Svanoe, spokesperson, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment\"]‘Tens of thousands of people are at risk of being evicted or made homeless, not because they were ineligible, but because the state ran out of money.’[/pullquote]Addis’ long wait for California’s emergency rental relief program isn’t unusual. Though the application window closed in March 2022, more than 70,000 households still have applications pending on the eve of 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California lawmakers created Housing Is Key with billions of dollars in federal relief money, initially guaranteeing everyone who applied in time and was approved \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2022/03/covid-relief-california/\">would get paid\u003c/a>. The ultimate goal of the program was to \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2023/11/california-evictions-post-pandemic/\">stem a flood of evictions\u003c/a>, as state and local \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2021/06/california-eviction-moratorium-deal/\">emergency eviction bans\u003c/a> came to an end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many Californians, it’s been a vital lifeline. The program has sent more than $4.7 billion to nearly 370,000 lower-income households, according to data from the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a sizable, unlucky minority of applicants — tenants and landlords alike — have had to wait. … and wait and wait.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, many have borrowed money from friends and relatives, pleaded and haggled with impatient creditors, missed monthly payments and turned to online support groups for tips on how to sidestep the program’s red tape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still others have been evicted, though the state doesn’t maintain records on how many.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tenant rights advocates and anti-poverty groups accuse the state of perpetuating a cruel bait-and-switch on some of the state’s neediest. The state’s housing department blames some of those same advocates for the delay, pointing to \u003ca href=\"https://www.ktvu.com/news/judge-orders-california-to-stop-denying-rent-relief-applications\">a lawsuit that slowed down the application review process\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For those still waiting, the hold-up has taken on a new degree of urgency. Housing Is Key might soon be out of cash. Though California’s Housing and Community Development department, which oversees the program, recently “identified additional funding,” it’s unclear whether that will be enough to pay out every last valid claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How much is left?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The state’s housing department declined to estimate when the program will run out of money or how many people are likely to get help before that happens. That figure depends on two unknowns: How many of the as-yet unprocessed applications will ultimately be approved and, of those, how much rental debt each applicant is owed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Given this inherent uncertainty, we remain focused on assisting as many eligible households as possible with the funding we have available,” said Pablo Espinoza, the department’s deputy communications director.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the available figures offer a few hints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of early November, there were at least 33,658 initial applications still pending, \u003ca href=\"https://housing.ca.gov/pdf/covid19/more_info/covidrrinfo.pdf\">according to data published by the housing department (PDF)\u003c/a>. Another 39,401 applicants were initially denied, but awaiting an appeal review. That’s a total of 73,059 applications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=\"news_11967896,news_11952349,news_11949679\" label=\"Related Stories\"]Though CalMatters reported in early October that the \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/10/covid-rent-relief/\">department projected the program would soon be out of money\u003c/a>, program administrators were able to dig up some more. According to Espinoza, because the program is in its “final wind-down” phase, money initially set aside to pay administrative overhead or leftover from locally-run programs is now available to help renters. That’s left a new projected balance of roughly $171 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that’s “not nearly enough,” said Anya Svanoe, a spokesperson for Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, one of a handful of organizations that sued the department last year over its administration of the rent relief program. “Tens of thousands of people are at risk of being evicted or made homeless, not because they were ineligible, but because the state ran out of money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Svanoe points to the average pay out, published on the program’s online \u003ca href=\"https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/dashboard.html\">data dashboard\u003c/a>: $12,018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assuming that same average payment, the program’s current funding would only be able to cover a little more than 14,000 people. That would leave the remaining 58,830 applicants, or 80% of the total pool, out of luck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such a high denial rate wouldn’t be consistent with the history of the program. Housing Is Key administrators \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/covid-rent-relief-settlement-california/\">only denied 29% of completed applications\u003c/a> through mid-2022, according to data provided by the department and shared with a coalition of legal aid groups as part of a court settlement reached earlier this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The denial rate seems to be ticking up as the program draws to a close. In early October, a mere 17% of the remaining applicants had been denied. A month later, the figure was up to 38%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That high denial rate could reflect the fact that applications that have been pending this long are disproportionately complicated and more likely to be rejected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/15655936/embed?auto=1\" width=\"800\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked in October about the possibility that many qualified applicants would not ultimately receive help due to a lack of funds, Espinoza said the program funding was “not infinite” and was never intended to serve all eligible applicants, though he acknowledged that the department and other Newsom administration officials had \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/10/covid-rent-relief/\">falsely said otherwise in the past\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That realization has started to dawn on some long-waiting applicants. Cassandra Smith, a graphic designer and single mother who lives in Westmorland south of the Salton Sea, said she applied in February 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m trying to find a way to freelance or do whatever I can do to get the money to just pay it myself because I really don’t think they’re going to have enough money to pay people,” she said. “I can’t sit and depend on it and wait because it’s been two years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Unintended consequences?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Anti-poverty organizations have been pressuring the state to speed up the approval process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These people have been literally waiting for years for a program that is supposed to be an \u003cem>emergency\u003c/em> rental program,” said Madeline Howard, a staff attorney at the Western Center on Law & Poverty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Madeline Howard, staff attorney, Western Center on Law & Poverty\"]‘These people have been literally waiting for years for a program that is supposed to be an \u003cem>emergency\u003c/em> rental program.’[/pullquote]The Western Center and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment were two of the groups that sued the housing department in June 2022 over what they called an “opaque” application review process that harmed lower-income renters and people of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A month later, a superior court judge in Alameda County ordered the department to stop denying applications until the court had time to give the program’s review process a once-over. That pause lasted until January 2023, at which point the department was once again allowed to start sending out denials, so long as it explained why each request for assistance was being rejected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state ultimately settled the case, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/covid-rent-relief-settlement-california/\">agreeing to audit its past denials\u003c/a> and to make the application process more user-friendly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The housing department now lays some of the blame for the sluggish administration of the program on that court ruling, which prevented it from issuing full or partial denials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By early 2023, the program had “approved just about all of the applications we could identify as approvable” and “had let go most of the program staff,” Espinoza said. Getting the program up and running after the legal hold was lifted added more time. An amended contract from March 2023 between the state and the Mississippi-based accounting firm Horne LLP that administers the program tacked an additional year to the agreement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jackie Zaneri, an attorney with Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, dismissed the suggestion that the lawsuit is to blame for the program’s tardiness. Nothing in the legal order halting denials prevented the program from processing applications internally and paying out partial awards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They chose not to do that,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The worst kind of help\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For renters who do ultimately get help so long after they applied, it may come too late.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angela Okimoto, a 66-year-old former caregiver in Covina, has been waiting on her application since August 2021. In the meantime, she said she was evicted from the garage she was renting. Now she said she has no permanent home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rental debt listed in her application, which she shared with CalMatters, adds up to $15,270. But even if she wins her appeal, that check would go to her former landlord. That might improve her credit history, but it wouldn’t secure her a new place to live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Name, organization\"]‘All they tell me is, ‘Yeah, they’re working on it. … just be patient.’ I say, ‘I’m as patient as can be. It’s been two years.”[/pullquote]Okimoto said she checks the online portal and calls the hotline nearly every day anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All they tell me is, ‘Yeah, they’re working on it. … just be patient.’” she said. “I say, ‘I’m as patient as can be. It’s been two years. You can’t get any more patient than that.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Landlords are also among those waiting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cindy, who lives near Yuba City north of Sacramento and who asked that her surname not be published so as not to jeopardize her pending payment, said she bought her three-bedroom home in early 2020 and took on two tenants to help her with the mortgage. In late 2021, one of her tenants was unable to pay his rent, so she encouraged him to apply to Housing Is Key.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without his payments, she said she used credit cards to pay her mortgage. “That money is going to come so I’ll just use this to pay this bill,” she said she told herself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her payment for $13,600 wasn’t approved for nearly two years. She said she’s still waiting on the check in the mail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Had she known at the outset how long the approval process would take, “I would have probably made different arrangements — I don’t know, maybe borrowed money from my parents,” she said. “When I moved in, I had great credit,” she said. As in the case with Addis, the Simi Valley renter, Housing Is Key has a policy of not reimbursing so-called shadow debt, loans taken out to pay down rental debt. Cindy now says she has $20,000 in credit card debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, she said she unexpectedly lost her job of eight years.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Turning to strangers for help\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Leslie Pollock, a private chef in Santa Monica, wonders how she’ll ever be able to move out of her apartment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Living in a rent-controlled unit in Santa Monica, Pollock said she initially applied for help while recuperating from cancer treatment after the pandemic shuttered her business. Even so, she considers herself one of the lucky ones. She’s working again, cancer-free, and only owes three-and-a-half months rent. No one has threatened her with eviction yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But she still feels stuck. Her landlord is reluctant to do upkeep with the debt outstanding, she said, and she worries about being able to rent anywhere else with so much red ink on her record. Most frustrating of all, she said her application was approved a year ago, but the check was sent to the wrong address. She said she regularly calls the hotline to try to explain the situation, but can never get someone with decision-making power on the phone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I say, ‘Can I email?’ and they say ‘No, we don’t have capacity to get email,’” Pollock recalled. “They would just say ‘We can’t tell you anything,’ ‘We can’t tell you when that was approved,’ ‘We can’t tell you when that check was cut,’ ‘We can’t tell you …’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the applicants fed up with the program’s hotline or web portal have wound up in a Facebook group created by Bella Allen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The owner of a property management company in Long Beach, Allen set up the private group in 2021 to help a friend who was trying to navigate the new state program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years later the Facebook group’s membership has swelled to more than 3,000. Posts include triumphant screenshots of approval letters and despondent post-denial missives. There are requests for help translating the program’s bureaucratese, as well as rants about the state’s housing department or, more frequently, about \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2021/09/california-rent-relief-contract/\">Horne, the company hired by the state to administer the program\u003c/a>. There’s an occasional meme and no shortage of theories that verge on conspiratorial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the months have dragged on, the tenor of the posts have grown more desperate and irate. Allen said she has reached out to lawmakers, lawyers, journalists and legal aid groups, all to no avail. She said she spends hours after work and late into the night moderating the group and fielding questions as best she can. But she acknowledged that she isn’t an expert and has no inside knowledge of how the program works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know what to tell these people,” she said. “And I’m gutted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In March 2021, the Los Angeles film industry was just beginning to roar back to life after a prolonged COVID-induced slump, but Michael Addis, a freelance filmmaker, was still deep in the hole. For more than a year, he’d been racking up IOUs to his landlord and the tab stood at $43,792.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Addis turned to an emergency state program designed to help people like him pay down rental debt accumulated during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later, in the summer of 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom himself had touted the program, Housing Is Key, as the largest of its kind in the nation. “We’re laser-focused on \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/07/14/california-roars-back-governor-newsom-highlights-nations-largest-rent-relief-program-announces-over-1-billion-in-rental-assistance-requested-to-date/\">getting this assistance out the door as quickly as possible\u003c/a>,” he said at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Addis heard back 20 months after he applied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On June 5, 2023 — his 61st birthday — he received an email, which he shared with CalMatters, notifying him that a payment had been approved in full.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by then it was too late. Addis had already downsized, moving out of his apartment a few blocks from the Marina Del Rey harbor to a smaller spot in the San Fernando Valley. He had also borrowed money from members of his family to pay his old landlord back, hoping that he’d be able to write off the new debt with the relief funds from the state. But once the company that owns his apartment complex, Equity Residential, received a check from the state, they sent it back, citing program guidelines that deemed Addis no longer eligible for assistance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just painful to think that the money that was allocated to solve my problem was sent back and I’m still in debt and now I have to downsize again,” he said, explaining that he’s about to move to Simi Valley, even further from his teenage son, who lives with Addis’ ex-wife. “I’m not in any way leaning on the state but I had a bad year — a bad couple years — and there was a program to help. And they helped me in the worst possible way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘Tens of thousands of people are at risk of being evicted or made homeless, not because they were ineligible, but because the state ran out of money.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Addis’ long wait for California’s emergency rental relief program isn’t unusual. Though the application window closed in March 2022, more than 70,000 households still have applications pending on the eve of 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California lawmakers created Housing Is Key with billions of dollars in federal relief money, initially guaranteeing everyone who applied in time and was approved \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2022/03/covid-relief-california/\">would get paid\u003c/a>. The ultimate goal of the program was to \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2023/11/california-evictions-post-pandemic/\">stem a flood of evictions\u003c/a>, as state and local \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2021/06/california-eviction-moratorium-deal/\">emergency eviction bans\u003c/a> came to an end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many Californians, it’s been a vital lifeline. The program has sent more than $4.7 billion to nearly 370,000 lower-income households, according to data from the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a sizable, unlucky minority of applicants — tenants and landlords alike — have had to wait. … and wait and wait.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, many have borrowed money from friends and relatives, pleaded and haggled with impatient creditors, missed monthly payments and turned to online support groups for tips on how to sidestep the program’s red tape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still others have been evicted, though the state doesn’t maintain records on how many.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tenant rights advocates and anti-poverty groups accuse the state of perpetuating a cruel bait-and-switch on some of the state’s neediest. The state’s housing department blames some of those same advocates for the delay, pointing to \u003ca href=\"https://www.ktvu.com/news/judge-orders-california-to-stop-denying-rent-relief-applications\">a lawsuit that slowed down the application review process\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For those still waiting, the hold-up has taken on a new degree of urgency. Housing Is Key might soon be out of cash. Though California’s Housing and Community Development department, which oversees the program, recently “identified additional funding,” it’s unclear whether that will be enough to pay out every last valid claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How much is left?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The state’s housing department declined to estimate when the program will run out of money or how many people are likely to get help before that happens. That figure depends on two unknowns: How many of the as-yet unprocessed applications will ultimately be approved and, of those, how much rental debt each applicant is owed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Given this inherent uncertainty, we remain focused on assisting as many eligible households as possible with the funding we have available,” said Pablo Espinoza, the department’s deputy communications director.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the available figures offer a few hints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of early November, there were at least 33,658 initial applications still pending, \u003ca href=\"https://housing.ca.gov/pdf/covid19/more_info/covidrrinfo.pdf\">according to data published by the housing department (PDF)\u003c/a>. Another 39,401 applicants were initially denied, but awaiting an appeal review. That’s a total of 73,059 applications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Though CalMatters reported in early October that the \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/10/covid-rent-relief/\">department projected the program would soon be out of money\u003c/a>, program administrators were able to dig up some more. According to Espinoza, because the program is in its “final wind-down” phase, money initially set aside to pay administrative overhead or leftover from locally-run programs is now available to help renters. That’s left a new projected balance of roughly $171 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that’s “not nearly enough,” said Anya Svanoe, a spokesperson for Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, one of a handful of organizations that sued the department last year over its administration of the rent relief program. “Tens of thousands of people are at risk of being evicted or made homeless, not because they were ineligible, but because the state ran out of money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Svanoe points to the average pay out, published on the program’s online \u003ca href=\"https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/dashboard.html\">data dashboard\u003c/a>: $12,018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assuming that same average payment, the program’s current funding would only be able to cover a little more than 14,000 people. That would leave the remaining 58,830 applicants, or 80% of the total pool, out of luck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such a high denial rate wouldn’t be consistent with the history of the program. Housing Is Key administrators \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/covid-rent-relief-settlement-california/\">only denied 29% of completed applications\u003c/a> through mid-2022, according to data provided by the department and shared with a coalition of legal aid groups as part of a court settlement reached earlier this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The denial rate seems to be ticking up as the program draws to a close. In early October, a mere 17% of the remaining applicants had been denied. A month later, the figure was up to 38%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That high denial rate could reflect the fact that applications that have been pending this long are disproportionately complicated and more likely to be rejected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/15655936/embed?auto=1\" width=\"800\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked in October about the possibility that many qualified applicants would not ultimately receive help due to a lack of funds, Espinoza said the program funding was “not infinite” and was never intended to serve all eligible applicants, though he acknowledged that the department and other Newsom administration officials had \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/10/covid-rent-relief/\">falsely said otherwise in the past\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That realization has started to dawn on some long-waiting applicants. Cassandra Smith, a graphic designer and single mother who lives in Westmorland south of the Salton Sea, said she applied in February 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m trying to find a way to freelance or do whatever I can do to get the money to just pay it myself because I really don’t think they’re going to have enough money to pay people,” she said. “I can’t sit and depend on it and wait because it’s been two years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Unintended consequences?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Anti-poverty organizations have been pressuring the state to speed up the approval process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These people have been literally waiting for years for a program that is supposed to be an \u003cem>emergency\u003c/em> rental program,” said Madeline Howard, a staff attorney at the Western Center on Law & Poverty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Western Center and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment were two of the groups that sued the housing department in June 2022 over what they called an “opaque” application review process that harmed lower-income renters and people of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A month later, a superior court judge in Alameda County ordered the department to stop denying applications until the court had time to give the program’s review process a once-over. That pause lasted until January 2023, at which point the department was once again allowed to start sending out denials, so long as it explained why each request for assistance was being rejected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state ultimately settled the case, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/covid-rent-relief-settlement-california/\">agreeing to audit its past denials\u003c/a> and to make the application process more user-friendly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The housing department now lays some of the blame for the sluggish administration of the program on that court ruling, which prevented it from issuing full or partial denials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By early 2023, the program had “approved just about all of the applications we could identify as approvable” and “had let go most of the program staff,” Espinoza said. Getting the program up and running after the legal hold was lifted added more time. An amended contract from March 2023 between the state and the Mississippi-based accounting firm Horne LLP that administers the program tacked an additional year to the agreement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jackie Zaneri, an attorney with Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, dismissed the suggestion that the lawsuit is to blame for the program’s tardiness. Nothing in the legal order halting denials prevented the program from processing applications internally and paying out partial awards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They chose not to do that,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The worst kind of help\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For renters who do ultimately get help so long after they applied, it may come too late.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angela Okimoto, a 66-year-old former caregiver in Covina, has been waiting on her application since August 2021. In the meantime, she said she was evicted from the garage she was renting. Now she said she has no permanent home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rental debt listed in her application, which she shared with CalMatters, adds up to $15,270. But even if she wins her appeal, that check would go to her former landlord. That might improve her credit history, but it wouldn’t secure her a new place to live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Okimoto said she checks the online portal and calls the hotline nearly every day anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All they tell me is, ‘Yeah, they’re working on it. … just be patient.’” she said. “I say, ‘I’m as patient as can be. It’s been two years. You can’t get any more patient than that.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Landlords are also among those waiting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cindy, who lives near Yuba City north of Sacramento and who asked that her surname not be published so as not to jeopardize her pending payment, said she bought her three-bedroom home in early 2020 and took on two tenants to help her with the mortgage. In late 2021, one of her tenants was unable to pay his rent, so she encouraged him to apply to Housing Is Key.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without his payments, she said she used credit cards to pay her mortgage. “That money is going to come so I’ll just use this to pay this bill,” she said she told herself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her payment for $13,600 wasn’t approved for nearly two years. She said she’s still waiting on the check in the mail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Had she known at the outset how long the approval process would take, “I would have probably made different arrangements — I don’t know, maybe borrowed money from my parents,” she said. “When I moved in, I had great credit,” she said. As in the case with Addis, the Simi Valley renter, Housing Is Key has a policy of not reimbursing so-called shadow debt, loans taken out to pay down rental debt. Cindy now says she has $20,000 in credit card debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, she said she unexpectedly lost her job of eight years.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Turning to strangers for help\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Leslie Pollock, a private chef in Santa Monica, wonders how she’ll ever be able to move out of her apartment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Living in a rent-controlled unit in Santa Monica, Pollock said she initially applied for help while recuperating from cancer treatment after the pandemic shuttered her business. Even so, she considers herself one of the lucky ones. She’s working again, cancer-free, and only owes three-and-a-half months rent. No one has threatened her with eviction yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But she still feels stuck. Her landlord is reluctant to do upkeep with the debt outstanding, she said, and she worries about being able to rent anywhere else with so much red ink on her record. Most frustrating of all, she said her application was approved a year ago, but the check was sent to the wrong address. She said she regularly calls the hotline to try to explain the situation, but can never get someone with decision-making power on the phone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I say, ‘Can I email?’ and they say ‘No, we don’t have capacity to get email,’” Pollock recalled. “They would just say ‘We can’t tell you anything,’ ‘We can’t tell you when that was approved,’ ‘We can’t tell you when that check was cut,’ ‘We can’t tell you …’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the applicants fed up with the program’s hotline or web portal have wound up in a Facebook group created by Bella Allen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The owner of a property management company in Long Beach, Allen set up the private group in 2021 to help a friend who was trying to navigate the new state program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years later the Facebook group’s membership has swelled to more than 3,000. Posts include triumphant screenshots of approval letters and despondent post-denial missives. There are requests for help translating the program’s bureaucratese, as well as rants about the state’s housing department or, more frequently, about \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/housing/2021/09/california-rent-relief-contract/\">Horne, the company hired by the state to administer the program\u003c/a>. There’s an occasional meme and no shortage of theories that verge on conspiratorial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the months have dragged on, the tenor of the posts have grown more desperate and irate. Allen said she has reached out to lawmakers, lawyers, journalists and legal aid groups, all to no avail. She said she spends hours after work and late into the night moderating the group and fielding questions as best she can. But she acknowledged that she isn’t an expert and has no inside knowledge of how the program works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know what to tell these people,” she said. “And I’m gutted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The world’s oceans may be vast, but they are getting crowded. Coastal areas are congested with cargo ships, international commercial fishing fleets, naval vessels, oil rigs and, soon, floating platforms for \u003ca href=\"https://www.wri.org/insights/deep-sea-mining-explained\">deep-sea mining\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Pacific Ocean is going to get even busier: Nearly 600 square miles of ocean off California have been leased for \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/10/california-offshore-wind-humboldt/\">floating wind farms\u003c/a>, with more expected. Now the state is considering hosting another renewable energy technology in the sea: blue power, electricity created from waves and tides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB605\">new law\u003c/a> signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October instructs state agencies to study the feasibility and impacts of capturing ocean movement to create power and report back to the Legislature by January 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal is to jumpstart an industry that could fill in the power gaps as California tries to achieve its goal of transitioning to an all-renewable electric grid by 2045.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for all the interest in renewable energy — and the government subsidies — public investment in ocean energy has lagged. The technology that would make the projects more efficient, cost-effective and able to withstand a punishing sea environment is still under development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, a handful of small demonstration projects have been launched off the West Coast, although none has produced commercial power for the grid. Through 2045, the California Energy Commission’s new projections for future power do not include any wave and tidal power. Yet energy experts say there is great potential along the Pacific coast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Of all the energies out there, marine energy has been the slowest to develop. We are kind of where land-based wind was 20 or 30 years ago,” said Tim Ramsey, marine energy program manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/marine-energy-program\">Water Power Technologies Office\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Energy from waves and tides is generated by an action that the ocean almost always provides — movement. Although wave and tidal devices take different forms, most capture the ocean’s kinetic motion as seawater flows through cylinders or when floating devices move up and down or sideways. In some cases, that movement creates hydraulic pressure that spins a turbine or generator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with all developing energy technologies, Ramsey said, the cost to produce wave and tidal power is expected to be quite high in the early years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although there have been advances in technology, getting ocean-based projects from the pilot stage to providing commercial power to the grid is the next hurdle for the industry — and it’s a substantial one. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Tim Ramsey, marine energy program manager, US Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office\"]‘Of all the energies out there, marine energy has been the slowest to develop. We are kind of where land-based wind was 20 or 30 years ago.’[/pullquote]“It’s very expensive right now, and really hard to do. Working out in the water is very complex, in some cases in the harshest places on Earth. … Then being able to build something that can last 20 to 30 years. We’ve made progress, but we’re a decade away,” Ramsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Steve Padilla, a Democrat from Chula Vista and the author of the wave energy bill, said ocean power has “great potential” but it has been agonizingly slow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Folks have been busy focusing on other things,” he said, citing the state’s current push for floating offshore wind development. “There has been a combination of a lack of knowledge and awareness of the infrastructure and impacts. We know the state’s energy portfolio has to be as broad as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the California Energy Commission, which is taking the lead on the new state study, declined to comment about wave power, saying its work has not yet begun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The potential is enticing: The \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021/02/f82/78773_3.pdf\">National Renewable Energy Laboratory (PDF)\u003c/a> estimated that the total wave and tide energy resources that are available in the U.S. with current technology\u003cem> \u003c/em>are equivalent to 57% of 2019’s domestic energy production. While the report noted that the technologies are in the early stages of development, “even if only a small portion of the technical resource potential is captured, marine energy technologies would make significant contributions to our nation’s energy needs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Department of Energy’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/wpto-pbe-brochure-july2022.pdf\">Powering the Blue Economy (PDF)\u003c/a>” initiative, among others, provides grants and sponsors competitions to explore new and better technology. The fiscal year 2023 federal budget for ocean waves energy is $123 million, Ramsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One program is funding \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/articles/water-power-technologies-office-announces-nearly-18-million-continuing-marine\">research led by national labs\u003c/a>, including designs to improve wave-driven turbines and building better motor drives for wave-energy converters.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Motion in the ocean\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The idea of harnessing wave power has been kicking around California for decades. So has the state policy of ordering research into its potential: A \u003ca href=\"https://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/project_pages/energy/CA_WEC_Effects.pdf\">2008 study (PDF)\u003c/a> prepared for the Energy Commission and the Ocean Protection Council concluded that much more research was needed to better assess the potential impacts of wave and tidal energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time that study was released, one of the technology’s most ardent proponents was a young politician named Gavin Newsom. While mayor of San Francisco in 2007, Newsom proposed a tidal energy project near the Golden Gate Bridge. That idea was scrapped because it was prohibitively expensive. [aside postID=science_1984927 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/GettyImages-1309301200-1020x663.jpg']Not long after, as lieutenant governor, Newsom backed a pilot wave energy project he hoped would be up and running by 2012 or 2013. It wasn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the dream has not died. California is already hosting wave energy projects, including one being assembled at \u003ca href=\"https://altasea.org/our-future-is-blue/\">AltaSea\u003c/a>, a public-private research center that supports marine scientists focusing on the so-called Blue Economy. It operates out of a 35-acre campus at the Port of Los Angeles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Its CEO is Terry Tamminen, a former California environmental secretary, who had a hand in writing the new wave and tidal energy law. Tamminen said wave energy has been ignored by some state and federal officials in the face of “irrational exuberance” for offshore wind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said the smaller, cheaper wave energy development would help the state meet its clean energy goal and could produce power well before massive floating offshore wind projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of AltaSea’s tenants, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ecowavepower.com/\">Eco Wave Power\u003c/a>, is designed to deploy near shore, in breakwaters and jetties that roil with moving water. Its floating, paddle-like arms bob up and down in waves, triggering hydraulic pistons that power a motor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tamminen said the system is “ready to deploy. Within two years we could have a commercial installation of Eco Wave technology.” The demonstration project will be installed at a wharf in L.A.’s harbor and will not generate any significant power, he said. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Jason Busch, executive director, Pacific Ocean Energy Trust\"]‘A little bit of homework would have told you there isn’t much of a tidal opportunity in California.’[/pullquote]California is not likely to see much electricity from tidal energy, said Jason Busch, executive director of \u003ca href=\"https://pacificoceanenergy.org/\">Pacific Ocean Energy Trust\u003c/a>, an Oregon-based nonprofit fostering research into marine energy. He said the state of Washington is more conducive to this new energy, for example, because it has deep bays and estuaries for funneling water through turbine equipment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A little bit of homework would have told you there isn’t much of a tidal opportunity in California,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A small number of companies are preparing to launch pilot wave projects in other states. The Navy operates a \u003ca href=\"https://tethys.pnnl.gov/project-sites/us-navy-wave-energy-test-site-wets\">wave energy test site\u003c/a> in Hawaii; three developers are preparing to launch new projects in the water there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://pacwaveenergy.org/\">PacWave\u003c/a>, which operates two test sites off Newport, Oregon, is another demonstration project. A California-based company, \u003ca href=\"https://calwave.energy/about/\">CalWave\u003c/a>, which concluded a 10-month demonstration off the Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s research pier in San Diego, will deploy its wave-energy devices in a grid-connected, pre-permitted open-water test. The demonstration at the Oregon site is scheduled to begin next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11968805\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11968805\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02.jpg\" alt=\"A piece of high-tech equipment is seen floating in the open ocean where it will be submerged in order to detect wave energy.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This type of wave-energy device is moored in the open ocean, where it is submerged. Units like this from CalWave will be used in a project off the coast of Oregon that will provide power to the grid. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of CalWave)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Much is riding on the success of the project, which took 11 years to acquire permits. Some testing has been conducted with small-scale versions of the final device, but not in harsh open water conditions and with no expectation of supplying power to the grid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the first-of-its-kind full-scale deployment. Not in ‘nursery’ conditions. It’s the real world, off you go,” said Bryson Robertson, director of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.pmec.us/\">Pacific Marine Energy Center\u003c/a> at Oregon State University, which is constructing the two testing sites. “We want to prove that we can deliver power.” [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Bryson Robertson, director, Pacific Marine Energy Center at Oregon State University\"]‘We want to prove that we can deliver power.’[/pullquote]Robertson, an engineer who studies wave dynamics, said one of the technologies being tested places large, buoyant squares in the water just below the surface, attached by lines to the sea floor. Kinetic energy is created as the floats bob and pitch with the action of the waves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some companies’ technology sits atop the waves and others are fully submerged. Another is deployed on the surface and moves like a snake, with each segment creating energy from its movement. Each bespoke device is expensive, and some of the one-of-a-kind devices can cost $10 million to design and build.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The industry “hasn’t narrowed in on a winning archetype,” Ramsey said. Some smaller designs can be picked up and thrown off a boat, he said, while others are large enough to need a boat to tow them into position. [aside label='More Stories on Clean Energy' tag='clean-energy']To Busch, it’s a critical moment for ocean energy, with small companies requiring years to raise enough funding to continue testing. And with attention on the industry, they cannot afford to stumble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Early companies that got full-scale machines in the water committed the mortal sin of overpromising and under-delivering to shareholders. One by one they went into bankruptcy,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the second generation. These machines can only be developed toward commercial viability by putting them in the water and assessing their performance. That process is very long. Companies receive only limited private capital. The venture capital model does not fit marine energy. It’s a long slog to build and deploy and make money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the near future, wave and tidal energy may not provide huge amounts of power in the clean-energy mosaic that will form the grid, but the technology may prove to be one of the most versatile. Experts say marine power doesn’t have to be transported to shore to be useful — it could charge oceangoing vessels, research devices, navigation equipment and aquaculture operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Closer to shore, modest wave-powered projects could support small, remote so-called “extension cord communities” at the end of the power supply. Federal researchers also foresee ocean power being used for desalination plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wave-powered generators and other renewables are already supplying all of the needs of the Orkney Islands in Scotland, with the surplus energy used to create hydrogen to run ferries to the mainland.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Lots of unknowns\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>New technology often comes cloaked in questions: How will the wave devices impact marine animals, shipping and other ocean users? What about transmission lines and possible floating power stations? [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Tim Ramsey, marine energy program manager, US Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office\"]‘I think the potential is so enormous. If we can figure out how to do it cost-effectively, I know it will get solved. I hope the US is at the forefront of solving that.’[/pullquote]“Blue energy synergy” is a future possibility, with wave projects sited alongside floating offshore wind projects, allowing the power producers to share transmission lines and other infrastructure. The state report due next year is meant to answer those questions and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We still don’t fully understand all of the interactions of the device in the marine environment,” Ramsey said. “Until you can put devices in the water and get long-term data collection, we don’t know. We do try to extrapolate from other industries and activities in the ocean — oil and gas, offshore wind — but that only gets you so far.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the potential is so enormous. If we can figure out how to do it cost-effectively, I know it will get solved. I hope the U.S. is at the forefront of solving that. If we lose a big industry to overseas, that is a lost opportunity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The world’s oceans may be vast, but they are getting crowded. Coastal areas are congested with cargo ships, international commercial fishing fleets, naval vessels, oil rigs and, soon, floating platforms for \u003ca href=\"https://www.wri.org/insights/deep-sea-mining-explained\">deep-sea mining\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Pacific Ocean is going to get even busier: Nearly 600 square miles of ocean off California have been leased for \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/10/california-offshore-wind-humboldt/\">floating wind farms\u003c/a>, with more expected. Now the state is considering hosting another renewable energy technology in the sea: blue power, electricity created from waves and tides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB605\">new law\u003c/a> signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October instructs state agencies to study the feasibility and impacts of capturing ocean movement to create power and report back to the Legislature by January 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal is to jumpstart an industry that could fill in the power gaps as California tries to achieve its goal of transitioning to an all-renewable electric grid by 2045.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for all the interest in renewable energy — and the government subsidies — public investment in ocean energy has lagged. The technology that would make the projects more efficient, cost-effective and able to withstand a punishing sea environment is still under development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, a handful of small demonstration projects have been launched off the West Coast, although none has produced commercial power for the grid. Through 2045, the California Energy Commission’s new projections for future power do not include any wave and tidal power. Yet energy experts say there is great potential along the Pacific coast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Of all the energies out there, marine energy has been the slowest to develop. We are kind of where land-based wind was 20 or 30 years ago,” said Tim Ramsey, marine energy program manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/marine-energy-program\">Water Power Technologies Office\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Energy from waves and tides is generated by an action that the ocean almost always provides — movement. Although wave and tidal devices take different forms, most capture the ocean’s kinetic motion as seawater flows through cylinders or when floating devices move up and down or sideways. In some cases, that movement creates hydraulic pressure that spins a turbine or generator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with all developing energy technologies, Ramsey said, the cost to produce wave and tidal power is expected to be quite high in the early years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although there have been advances in technology, getting ocean-based projects from the pilot stage to providing commercial power to the grid is the next hurdle for the industry — and it’s a substantial one. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“It’s very expensive right now, and really hard to do. Working out in the water is very complex, in some cases in the harshest places on Earth. … Then being able to build something that can last 20 to 30 years. We’ve made progress, but we’re a decade away,” Ramsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Steve Padilla, a Democrat from Chula Vista and the author of the wave energy bill, said ocean power has “great potential” but it has been agonizingly slow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Folks have been busy focusing on other things,” he said, citing the state’s current push for floating offshore wind development. “There has been a combination of a lack of knowledge and awareness of the infrastructure and impacts. We know the state’s energy portfolio has to be as broad as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the California Energy Commission, which is taking the lead on the new state study, declined to comment about wave power, saying its work has not yet begun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The potential is enticing: The \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021/02/f82/78773_3.pdf\">National Renewable Energy Laboratory (PDF)\u003c/a> estimated that the total wave and tide energy resources that are available in the U.S. with current technology\u003cem> \u003c/em>are equivalent to 57% of 2019’s domestic energy production. While the report noted that the technologies are in the early stages of development, “even if only a small portion of the technical resource potential is captured, marine energy technologies would make significant contributions to our nation’s energy needs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Department of Energy’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/wpto-pbe-brochure-july2022.pdf\">Powering the Blue Economy (PDF)\u003c/a>” initiative, among others, provides grants and sponsors competitions to explore new and better technology. The fiscal year 2023 federal budget for ocean waves energy is $123 million, Ramsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One program is funding \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/articles/water-power-technologies-office-announces-nearly-18-million-continuing-marine\">research led by national labs\u003c/a>, including designs to improve wave-driven turbines and building better motor drives for wave-energy converters.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Motion in the ocean\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The idea of harnessing wave power has been kicking around California for decades. So has the state policy of ordering research into its potential: A \u003ca href=\"https://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/project_pages/energy/CA_WEC_Effects.pdf\">2008 study (PDF)\u003c/a> prepared for the Energy Commission and the Ocean Protection Council concluded that much more research was needed to better assess the potential impacts of wave and tidal energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time that study was released, one of the technology’s most ardent proponents was a young politician named Gavin Newsom. While mayor of San Francisco in 2007, Newsom proposed a tidal energy project near the Golden Gate Bridge. That idea was scrapped because it was prohibitively expensive. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Not long after, as lieutenant governor, Newsom backed a pilot wave energy project he hoped would be up and running by 2012 or 2013. It wasn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the dream has not died. California is already hosting wave energy projects, including one being assembled at \u003ca href=\"https://altasea.org/our-future-is-blue/\">AltaSea\u003c/a>, a public-private research center that supports marine scientists focusing on the so-called Blue Economy. It operates out of a 35-acre campus at the Port of Los Angeles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Its CEO is Terry Tamminen, a former California environmental secretary, who had a hand in writing the new wave and tidal energy law. Tamminen said wave energy has been ignored by some state and federal officials in the face of “irrational exuberance” for offshore wind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said the smaller, cheaper wave energy development would help the state meet its clean energy goal and could produce power well before massive floating offshore wind projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of AltaSea’s tenants, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ecowavepower.com/\">Eco Wave Power\u003c/a>, is designed to deploy near shore, in breakwaters and jetties that roil with moving water. Its floating, paddle-like arms bob up and down in waves, triggering hydraulic pistons that power a motor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tamminen said the system is “ready to deploy. Within two years we could have a commercial installation of Eco Wave technology.” The demonstration project will be installed at a wharf in L.A.’s harbor and will not generate any significant power, he said. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘A little bit of homework would have told you there isn’t much of a tidal opportunity in California.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>California is not likely to see much electricity from tidal energy, said Jason Busch, executive director of \u003ca href=\"https://pacificoceanenergy.org/\">Pacific Ocean Energy Trust\u003c/a>, an Oregon-based nonprofit fostering research into marine energy. He said the state of Washington is more conducive to this new energy, for example, because it has deep bays and estuaries for funneling water through turbine equipment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A little bit of homework would have told you there isn’t much of a tidal opportunity in California,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A small number of companies are preparing to launch pilot wave projects in other states. The Navy operates a \u003ca href=\"https://tethys.pnnl.gov/project-sites/us-navy-wave-energy-test-site-wets\">wave energy test site\u003c/a> in Hawaii; three developers are preparing to launch new projects in the water there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://pacwaveenergy.org/\">PacWave\u003c/a>, which operates two test sites off Newport, Oregon, is another demonstration project. A California-based company, \u003ca href=\"https://calwave.energy/about/\">CalWave\u003c/a>, which concluded a 10-month demonstration off the Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s research pier in San Diego, will deploy its wave-energy devices in a grid-connected, pre-permitted open-water test. The demonstration at the Oregon site is scheduled to begin next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11968805\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11968805\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02.jpg\" alt=\"A piece of high-tech equipment is seen floating in the open ocean where it will be submerged in order to detect wave energy.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/CMBluePower02-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This type of wave-energy device is moored in the open ocean, where it is submerged. Units like this from CalWave will be used in a project off the coast of Oregon that will provide power to the grid. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of CalWave)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Much is riding on the success of the project, which took 11 years to acquire permits. Some testing has been conducted with small-scale versions of the final device, but not in harsh open water conditions and with no expectation of supplying power to the grid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the first-of-its-kind full-scale deployment. Not in ‘nursery’ conditions. It’s the real world, off you go,” said Bryson Robertson, director of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.pmec.us/\">Pacific Marine Energy Center\u003c/a> at Oregon State University, which is constructing the two testing sites. “We want to prove that we can deliver power.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Robertson, an engineer who studies wave dynamics, said one of the technologies being tested places large, buoyant squares in the water just below the surface, attached by lines to the sea floor. Kinetic energy is created as the floats bob and pitch with the action of the waves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some companies’ technology sits atop the waves and others are fully submerged. Another is deployed on the surface and moves like a snake, with each segment creating energy from its movement. Each bespoke device is expensive, and some of the one-of-a-kind devices can cost $10 million to design and build.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The industry “hasn’t narrowed in on a winning archetype,” Ramsey said. Some smaller designs can be picked up and thrown off a boat, he said, while others are large enough to need a boat to tow them into position. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>To Busch, it’s a critical moment for ocean energy, with small companies requiring years to raise enough funding to continue testing. And with attention on the industry, they cannot afford to stumble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Early companies that got full-scale machines in the water committed the mortal sin of overpromising and under-delivering to shareholders. One by one they went into bankruptcy,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the second generation. These machines can only be developed toward commercial viability by putting them in the water and assessing their performance. That process is very long. Companies receive only limited private capital. The venture capital model does not fit marine energy. It’s a long slog to build and deploy and make money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the near future, wave and tidal energy may not provide huge amounts of power in the clean-energy mosaic that will form the grid, but the technology may prove to be one of the most versatile. Experts say marine power doesn’t have to be transported to shore to be useful — it could charge oceangoing vessels, research devices, navigation equipment and aquaculture operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Closer to shore, modest wave-powered projects could support small, remote so-called “extension cord communities” at the end of the power supply. Federal researchers also foresee ocean power being used for desalination plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wave-powered generators and other renewables are already supplying all of the needs of the Orkney Islands in Scotland, with the surplus energy used to create hydrogen to run ferries to the mainland.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Lots of unknowns\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>New technology often comes cloaked in questions: How will the wave devices impact marine animals, shipping and other ocean users? What about transmission lines and possible floating power stations? \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Blue energy synergy” is a future possibility, with wave projects sited alongside floating offshore wind projects, allowing the power producers to share transmission lines and other infrastructure. The state report due next year is meant to answer those questions and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We still don’t fully understand all of the interactions of the device in the marine environment,” Ramsey said. “Until you can put devices in the water and get long-term data collection, we don’t know. We do try to extrapolate from other industries and activities in the ocean — oil and gas, offshore wind — but that only gets you so far.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the potential is so enormous. If we can figure out how to do it cost-effectively, I know it will get solved. I hope the U.S. is at the forefront of solving that. If we lose a big industry to overseas, that is a lost opportunity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
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},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
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"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
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"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432309616/perspectives",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/perspectives/category/perspectives/feed/",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93dzIua3FlZC5vcmcvcGVyc3BlY3RpdmVzL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BlcnNwZWN0aXZlcy9mZWVkLw"
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},
"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/M4f5",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Planet-Money-p164680/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"
}
},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Political Breakdown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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