#Prop10 would make California’s housing shortage worse. #NoOn10

#Prop10 does nothing to address California's housing shortage. It will create a patchwork of rent laws around the state and lead to landlords converting rentals to Airbnb's. #NoOn10 https://t.co/54FR1vCmqj

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) July 18, 2018

#Prop10 would make California’s housing shortage worse. #NoOn10 https://t.co/gVU0QuNPi6

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) July 14, 2018

Sacramento's high taxes and extreme regulations are making the state unaffordable for anyone but the very rich.

Sacramento's high taxes and extreme regulations are making the state unaffordable for anyone but the very rich. https://t.co/4u4NqGsIhR

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) May 21, 2018

"The only way to bring down prices is to build more housing. But you can't do that with rent controls, mandatory solar panels, strict zoning limits, ridiculously high taxes and absurd environmental restrictions." https://t.co/6aCvOJ93hR #CAPolitics #rentcontrol

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) May 21, 2018

Home prices in California are sky-high and our political leaders mouth platitudes about the “housing crisis.” So what’s their answer? Adding $10,000 to $30,000 to the cost of all new homes in California whether homebuyers want solar panels or not. https://t.co/5kHXs5DOmt

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) May 21, 2018

With no letup in home prices, the California exodus surges...

With no letup in home prices, the California exodus surges... https://t.co/UjxuULfh3F

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) May 5, 2018

California’s crazy one-party liberal politics is why I had to finally leave the state -- and I’m not alone

"California isn’t the future, rather, it’s what America’s 2016 election of Donald Trump saved the nation from becoming." @ChuckDeVore https://t.co/wEoyhKVQJi #CAPolitics #CAExodus

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) April 16, 2018

Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, infamously tweeted a link in early April to a story calling for a bloodless civil war to solve America’s problems. The piece, “The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War: Why there’s no bipartisan way forward at this juncture in our history — one side must win” was authored by Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira.

The duo assert that this new civil war will follow a path blazed by California 15 years ago, namely, the crushing of the Republican Party. “The Democrats won; the Republicans lost,” they intone, “California is the future…”

Living and working in places like Washington and San Francisco as Teixeira and Twitter’s Dorsey do, tends to distort the view of the real world....

In 2011, after spending my adult life in California, working in the once-thriving aerospace industry there, serving 19 years in the state’s National Guard and six years in the legislature, I picked up my family and moved to Texas.

The first benefit of moving was buying a home that was close to twice as large as our old home in California for $110,000 less—providing needed room to care for two ailing parents.

That home prices and rents in California average 55 percent higher than in Texas isn’t just due to the former’s good weather—the Golden State’s high taxes, capricious regulations, onerous lawsuit climate, and powerful unions all contribute to constraining the supply of new housing while jacking up the price of existing housing....

From the CA Dept. of the Obvious: "Proposed corporate tax hike in California could drive more businesses to Texas." https://t.co/IQRZ8KbcPr via @SFBusinessTimes

— Jon Coupal (@joncoupal) April 13, 2018

The middle class is fleeing CA. Normal ppl can't live there anymore. Housing prices are too high, wages too low. CA increasingly consists of tech oligarchs & their imported, low-wage servants.

The mid class is fleeing CA. Normal ppl can't live there anymore. Housing prices are too high, wages too low. CA increasingly consists of tech oligarchs & their imported, low-wage servants. CA is developing the economic structure of Latin America. How long before it's Venezuela?

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 6, 2018

Do you think older homeowners should be able to transfer some or all of their #Prop13 tax benefits to new homes in order to help free up some much-needed housing supply in California?

Do you think older homeowners should be able to transfer some or all of their #Prop13 tax benefits to new homes in order to help free up some much-needed housing supply in California? https://t.co/JOnaIbpQyj @HJTA @CAREALTORS @CaliforniaBIA

— NFIB California (@nfib_ca) March 26, 2018

New from HJTA: a calculator that tells you how high your property taxes would be without #Prop13. Hang on to something, it may knock you off your chair. https://t.co/QyIivrgHei #CAPolitics

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) March 8, 2018

Silicon Valley will soon see a 'mass migration' of tech companies and talent...Cities like Denver, San Antonio and Houston are primed to be the new hubs

Why?
Hint: Lack of affordable housing https://t.co/VP0rOkViYg

— Scott Sherman (@ShermanSD7) December 28, 2017

..."Silicon Valley is going to leave Silicon Valley — that's already happened," Kelman told CNBC's "Power Lunch."

"The technology companies, the Wall Street companies, they're chasing the talent, [and] the talent is chasing affordable housing."...

California is in a housing crisis. Proud to join @HJTA & @joncoupal to discuss how we can improve affordability

California is in a housing crisis. Proud to join @HJTA & @joncoupal to discuss how we can improve affordability https://t.co/mfgS4x7dpt pic.twitter.com/bQXEBOtKIq

— Phillip Chen (@PhillipChenCA) August 12, 2017

Housing is so expensive across California that Joel Singer, CEO of the California Association of Realtors, said last fall that “only about one-third of our fellow citizens can afford to buy a median-priced home in the Golden State, down from a peak of 56 percent just four years ago.”

https://t.co/WJPNYMRuaP

— Riverside County GOP (@RPRC) March 27, 2017

...Californians who own their homes spend more than a quarter of their total income on housing, the highest ratio in the nation. In 2014, Golden State renters paid 33.6 percent of their income on housing — third-highest in the nation. Despite rent-control laws — actually, in part due to those laws — San Francisco has the most unaffordable rental costs in the world, according to Nested, an international real estate service. Los Angeles is tenth on the list. Three of the five costliest housing markets in North America are found in California: San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles.

The housing crisis isn’t confined to the state’s elite coastal enclaves. In Riverside County, part of a region east of Los Angeles known as the Inland Empire, only 39 percent of households “are able to purchase a median-priced home, which in February was $334,440 for a single-family home,” the Desert Sun reported last March. The national average is 58 percent.

The California housing crunch is the product of a dire shortage of homes. Over the last decade, developers have built an average of 80,000 homes each year. But that number is about 100,000 units short of what’s needed to keep up with demand. According to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the state will need to build roughly 1.8 million units between 2015 and 2025 “to meet projected population and household growth.” That would be like building more than 10 new Oaklands or nearly six new San Joses over that time.

Developers aren’t fools. They know that there is a great demand for housing in California. The profit motive would make them happy to build all those additional Oaklands. But California’s regulatory climate and development policies have eaten away at that incentive. The hurdles to building homes are high and solidly rooted: the most imposing is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which allows opponents of development to shut down projects in the courts, often with no environmental basis. But because the lawsuits can disrupt and suppress projects, the law has become, as the Hoover Institution’s Loren Kaye says, a “tool for abuse.”...

You’d thought he’d forgotten about the economy, hadn’t you?

◼ ‘Our North Star’: White House tweets another photo of guess who? - Twitchy

NEW: Misery Index about to soar in CA, US

◼ The “Misery Index” is inflation plus the unemployment rate. For example, today the U.S. unemployment rate is 7.9 percent and inflation is 1.7 percent. So the “Misery Index” (rounding off) is 10 points. - Chriss Street/Cal Watchdog

Anything above 10 points is considered a tough time for the economy.... With inflation about to force the Fed to raise rates, the Misery Index is about to soar well above 10 points. And it will be even higher in high-unemployment California.

◼ California's high taxes bring low - Dan Walters/Sacramento Bee

One of the annoying anomalies about government services in California is that while we carry one of the nation's highest state and local tax burdens – over 10 percent of personal income – we consistently rank very low in what those many billions of tax dollars provide.

That disconnect is very evident in public education, the single biggest consumer of tax dollars as well as the most popular thing that governments do.

Despite our high taxes, California consistently ranks in the lower quadrant of per-pupil spending and much of that money has been diverted into an almost impenetrable thicket of specialized pots.

Meanwhile, the outcomes, as measured by academic tests and high school graduation rates, range from poor to mediocre.

New study confirms economy was destroyed by Democrat policies

◼ A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left's race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act--enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy. - examiner.com

The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.

...Obama himself is even on the record personally helping sue one lender (Citibank) into lowering its lending standards to include people from extremely poor and unstable areas, which even one of the left's favorite blatantly partisan "fact-checkers," Snopes, admits (while pretending to 'set the record straight').

-Even The New York Times admitted that there is "little evidence" of any connection between the "Republican" deregulation measures Obama blames, like the Gramm-Bleach-Liley Act (signed into law by a Democrat), and the collapse of the housing market.

But non-Fox media have spent years deliberately and relentlessly inoculating people against the facts, training them to mindlessly blame Bush for being in charge when Democrat policies destroyed the economy. So here we sit, to this day, still watching Obama excuse and shrug off endless economic failures, illegal government takeovers and utter national bankruptcy with zero accountability.

Despite new evidence the Community Reinvestment Act led to riskier lending and played a key role in the subprime mortgage crisis, the Obama administration is broadening the anti-redlining regulation´s authority and scope, spooking bankers.

◼ Clinton Added Teeth To CRA, Obama Turned Them Into Fangs - IBD

Through executive orders, Clinton set strict numerical lending targets for banks in "underserved" neighborhoods, while ordering regulators to crack down on alleged bank redlining.

The new rules for the first time mandated that banks use "innovative" or "flexible underwriting practices." Compliance required banks to pass a heavily weighted "lending test" or suffer holds on expansion plans.

The CRA overhaul "has been a disaster," said ex-BB&T CEO John Allison in his recent book on the financial crisis. He argued it's forced "banks to participate in making high-risk housing loans to low-income buyers who would not meet traditional bank lending standards."

Added Allison, who now heads the Cato Institute: "The default rates on these low-income loans are extraordinarily high."

..."DOJ wants banks to have a physical presence in the inner city," Washington-based Buckley Sandler LLP recently told clients, adding that "banks should carefully monitor loan data to determine whether an appropriate volume of loan originations emanate from minority areas."

Federal Regulators Admit That Clinton's Mortgage Scam Caused the Economic Crisis

◼ "Federal regulators for the first time are laying out rules," this is from the AP, "aimed at making sure that people who borrow money for mortgages can afford to repay them." Do you realize what this means?" - Rush Limbaugh

I'm telling you: It's a tantamount admission that the subprime mortgage mess was exactly what it was. It was people who were given loans that could never pay 'em back, and they were not picked on. It was not predatory lenders that went out and found them. This was social engineering by Democrats. (summarized) "The American dream is everybody should have a house. It's not fair that certain Americans should have houses and other Americans don't."

So here came the subprime mortgage plan, and it basically was a federal program that ordered banks to lend money to people that had no way of paying it back, lend money to people that didn't have to take a credit test and pass it, lend money to people that everybody knew would never pay it back. By the way, if you're new to the program, I want to explain this again. Because the economic mess that we are in was caused and is the result of, predominantly, this....

So they're admitting here what caused the financial crisis. "Lenders will be required to verify and inspect borrowers' financial records." Now, I know you're saying, "Wait, I had to go through that every time I got a loan." Right, you have. Understand what this was. This was for people who never were going to be able to repay. They didn't have to go through it like you did. That's what the scam of the program was.

OBAMA DONORS WITH SOROS TIES PLOT TO USE EMINENT DOMAIN TO MAKE MONEY

◼ DEMOCRATIC DOMAIN - Andrew Stiles/Washington Free Beacon

Local officials in San Bernardino County, Calif., met last week to consider a controversial proposal to use eminent domain powers to seize and refinance underwater mortgages.

The plan, which is being championed by wealthy investors with deep ties to the Democratic Party, has drawn criticism from opponents who see it as an egregious violation of property rights and an exercise in political cronyism.

“This is a group of folks who want to come in and use the government to help acquire properties for them and provide an impressive return on their investment,” said Steven Greenhut, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank.

The meeting in San Bernadino took place amid revelations that the investors and county officials were involved in secret negotiations for nearly five months before the proposal became public.

The county, along with the cities of Ontario and Fontana, has created a joint authority to consider a plan to restructure mortgages for certain borrowers who are “underwater,” meaning they owe more than their homes are worth. Officials estimate that as many as 100,000 mortgages in San Bernardino County are underwater.

The new authority would apply eminent domain power, which allows governments to forcibly acquire private property for public benefit. However, rather than seizing the physical properties in this case, the authority effectively would be purchasing the mortgages owed by the property owners, with the aim of restructuring them and selling them to investors who could then turn a profit by flipping the homes.

NET WORTH OF AMERICAN FAMILY FALLS 40% IN 3 YEARS

◼ The Federal Reserve’s detailed survey of consumer finances showed families’ median wealth plunged from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010 — a 39 percent decline. That put them on par with median wealth in 1992. - Ylan Q. Mui/Washington Post

The Fed’s data underscore the depth of the wounds of the Great Recession and how far many families remain from healing. The median value of Americans’ debt did not change between 2007 and 2010. Meanwhile, the housing market crash inflicted particularly severe damage, with the Fed showing that the median value of Americans’ equity in their homes plunged 42.3 percent between 2007 and 2010.

The Great California Exodus — the epic failure of the Progressive Left

◼ A leading U.S. demographer and 'Truman Democrat' talks about what is driving the middle class out of the Golden State. - Allysia Finley/Wall St. Journal

"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak," says Mr. Kotkin.

While many middle-class families have moved inland, those regions don't have the same allure or amenities as the coast. People might as well move to Nevada or Texas, where housing and everything else is cheaper and there's no income tax.

And things will only get worse in the coming years as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his green cadre implement their "smart growth" plans to cram the proletariat into high-density housing. "What I find reprehensible beyond belief is that the people pushing [high-density housing] themselves live in single-family homes and often drive very fancy cars, but want everyone else to live like my grandmother did in Brownsville in Brooklyn in the 1920s," Mr. Kotkin declares.

"The new regime"—his name for progressive apparatchiks who run California's government—"wants to destroy the essential reason why people move to California in order to protect their own lifestyles."

◼ One very dirty and not so secret thing about Gov. Moonbeam’s November tax initiative is that while it is touted by the Lefties as an “education initiative” not one dime will end up in the classrooms. Half of the projected (heh) $7 billion raised will go straight into unionized teachers’ pension fund with the rest going to state employee pension funds. What a racket. - Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom

Obama campaign co-chair tied to subprime mortgage crisis

◼ Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, the Democrat who was named a national co-chair of President Obama’s re-election campaign on Wednesday, served on the board of a company that is widely blamed for helping start the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007. - Daily Caller

Beginning in 2004, Patrick served two years on the five-member board of ACC Capital Holdings, the parent company of Ameriquest Mortgage. He was paid a $360,000 annual salary for his efforts, according to “All The Devils Are Here,” a history of the financial crisis by Bethany McClean and Joe Nocera.

Last week State Attorney General Kamela Harris was reportedly whooping up what the Wall Street Journal calls an “election windfall” for California from the Obama Administration’s new $25 billion foreclosure settlement with commercial banks.

◼ Loan Bailout Rips Off Middle Class - Wayne Lusvardi/Cal Watchdog

Reportedly, $18 billion of this shadow bailout will be for California. Only $5 billion will be in actual cash. The rest will be in loan write-downs. Of the $5 billion, only $1.5 billion will be to compensate borrowers who suffered foreclosures from 2008 to 2011. This will be in the form of $2,000 “gifts” having no connection to the unpaid balance on loans or anything else.

The other $3.5 billion will be for state and local government regulatory programs. So government will end up getting 70 percent of the cash. Big whoop!

Liberal columnist Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times calls the Obama foreclosure bailout “the Big Whoop” –- a slang term sarcastically meaning “big deal,” typically used in the negative to indicate something is not a big deal (“So you got $2,000 from Obama four years after you lost your house? — Big whoop!”.)

...The loan write-offs are likely to eventually lead to more, not fewer, foreclosures. Forgiven homeowners will face the reality that they still can’t make payments even on lowered loan balances with even lower interest rates. Without incomes from well-paying jobs, all this will be is a tax write-off for commercial banks....

There is an indication that banks have already begun processing foreclosures in preparation for Obama’s “Big Deal.” In the fourth quarter of 2011 in California, 61,517 Notices of Default were filed, according to the Dataquick real estate data service. Of these, 60,289, or 98 percent, were homeowners who were delinquent on multiple loans, such as a primary mortgage and a home equity loan....

And loan-defaulted homeowners with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans cannot participate in this bailout, which may lead to more voter outrage....

Another huge problem with the foreclosure bailout program is the component to help those with “underwater” mortgages — meaning the loan is more than the market value of the home.

Any public housing agency in California is required to include a clause in any subsidy program that any increase in value of the property has to go to the agency. Otherwise, it would be a violation of the “gift of public funds” prohibitions. More at the link.

Barney Frank Cashes Out - America loses its poster boy for term limits.

◼ Barney Frank Cashes Out - America loses its poster boy for term limits. - John Hayward/Human Events

Frank is also 71 years old, and his congressional career has allowed him to, shall we say, “amass” a sizable fortune. This was a good time to call it quits, especially as Democrat hopes of retaking the House in 2012 have grown dimmer.

It’s a predictable, if unfortunate, end to a career that included setting up the subprime bomb that nearly destroyed the U.S. economy. If you’re upset about the big bonuses paid to executives of the bailout-sucking Fannie Mae, remember that Frank was literally sleeping with a top Fannie Mae executive while he sat on the House Banking Committee. Frank lied repeatedly to protect the Fannie Mae racket from oversight, and the resulting cost to the American people was nearly incalculable.

And yet, it remains the official Democrat Party storyline that absolutely no one in government had anything to do with the subprime crisis. They don’t just finger the evil banks as 70% or 80% responsible. It’s essential to preserving their mythology that the corruption of characters like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd be completely obscured.