Goodbye, L.A. and San Francisco. Hello, Riverside and Central Valley. California moves east
LA Times, SARAH PARVINI and HAYLEY SMITH: “Moving to Lake Arrowhead wasn’t always part of Natalie Camunas’ plan.
When the 35-year-old and her partner purchased a small cabin in the mountains two years ago, they intended to use it as an investment property that they would rent out to vacationers looking for a forest escape. The couple bought the 670-square-foot home for $189,000, Camunas said, when housing prices in Southern California were climbing, but before they smashed records and hit an all-time high.
But after quarantining in their apartment in Los Angeles’s Fairfax district as the COVID-19 pandemic spread, discovering dead rats in their home and dealing with a bug infestation, they decided to make their move to San Bernardino County official in the fall of 2020.”
Bay Area homes are increasingly bought as trusts. Here's why it matters
The Chronicle, SUSIE NEILSON: Last year, nearly 1 in 10 homes for sale in the Bay Area was technically bought not by a person, but by a financial structure known as a trust — the largest share of homes bought this way in the region in at least 20 years.
From 2000 to 2021, the share of homes purchased by a trust across the San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose metro areas increased steadily from about 2% to nearly 10%, according to data analyzed by The Chronicle from the real estate listing site Redfin.
Legal and industry experts told The Chronicle that most of these trusts are likely set up by individual families hoping to preserve their wealth for their descendants. But the data includes some corporate trusts, which have grown in popularity as investment vehicles for property in the Bay Area and beyond.“”
California’s malpractice payouts would rise under a deal to avoid a costly ballot fight
MELODY GUTIERREZ, LA Times: "Cash payments in California medical malpractice cases would go up for the first time in nearly five decades under a deal between rival interest groups announced Wednesday that avoids a costly battle at the ballot box in November.
The overhaul to the long-standing Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975, known as MICRA, will be outlined in a bill scheduled to be introduced Wednesday in the California Legislature, with the deal requiring that it be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom before June 28 — the deadline for removing a related measure from the Nov. 8 statewide ballot.
“I never thought this would happen,” said trial attorney Nick Rowley, who bankrolled the effort to gather voter signatures for placing a measure on the ballot. “I never thought we would work out a legislative solution.”
Ron DeSantis’ feud with Gavin Newsom ramps up amid San Francisco ‘dumpster fire’ insult
The Chronicle, SOPHIA BOLLAG: “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis fired the latest volley this week in his feud with his California counterpart, Gov. Gavin Newsom, calling San Francisco a “dumpster fire” and saying he doesn’t want Golden State businesses moving to Florida.
A video posted to Twitter by the news site The Recount shows DeSantis warning that California businesses that have moved from San Francisco to Austin also brought liberal employees with them.
“Those employees would vote the exact same way they voted that turned San Francisco into the dumpster fire that it is,” he said. “It is a problem because I do think there's a class of voters who would come to Florida and they would continue to vote the same way.””
Funding will help seal thousands of abandoned oil wells in Southern California and statewide
OLGA GRIGORYANTS, LA Daily News: "Gov. Gavin Newsom recently proposed additional $200 million dollars in the state budget to seal abandoned wells.
California has 5,356 so-called orphaned wells from the coast to Bakersfield to the Inland Empire, according to state officials. Oil and gas wells are designated orphaned when they are abandoned by companies who refuse to safely plug them. Deserted wells, on the other hand, are those that are not properly maintained. Both can pose threats to groundwater and public safety.
The program will cost California about $974 million and take decades to complete, officials said Wednesday."
Parts of SoCal face full outdoor watering ban by September if conditions don’t improve
LA Times, HAYLEY SMITH/IAN JAMES: “The Metropolitan Water District said Wednesday that the unprecedented decision to reduce outdoor watering to one day a week for about 6 million Southern Californians could be followed by even stricter actions in September if conditions don’t improve, including a total ban in some areas.
“If we don’t see cutbacks, or conditions do not get better, the Metropolitan board has given me the authority to ban all watering as soon as Sept. 1,” MWD general manager Adel Hagekhalil said Wednesday. “We know what this means to communities, we know what we are requiring here, but we’re facing a challenge. We do not have the supply to meet the normal demands that we have.”
The news came as residents of the Southland scrambled to unpack the latest restriction, which will take effect June 1 and apply to areas that depend on water from the State Water Project. The MWD’s board has never before taken such a step, but officials said it became an inevitability after California’s driest ever January, February and March left snowpacks shrunken and reservoirs drained.”
READ MORE oin the drought: Bay Area Drought Map & Tracker -- Chronicle
Kamala Harris went to California to recharge. She returned to Washington with the coronavirus
LA Times, NOAH BIERMAN: “Vice President Kamala Harris can’t seem to catch a break. Every unsettling laugh or awkward monologue becomes a viral video. A buzzy book out next week, “This Will Not Pass,” portrays her role in the Biden administration as slight, despite promises she would be an influential vice president.
So last week, she went to California to recharge. She came back a day early only to test positive for the coronavirus.
Here are five questions that have frequently come up since the vice president has been isolating at her residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory:”
A year after disappearing, federal informant in Trump probe found dead at L.A. high school
LA Times, NATHAN SOLIS: “Valentin Broeksmit, an informant who worked with federal authorities investigating former President Trump’s relationship with the German financial giant Deutsche Bank, was found dead Monday on a high school campus in the El Sereno neighborhood.
Broeksmit, 46, was reported missing by friends and family a year ago, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. He was last seen driving a red 2020 Mini Cooper around 4 p.m. on April 6, 2021, on Riverside Drive at Griffith Park. His car was found, but Broeksmit remained missing — until Monday, when the L.A. County coroner’s office identified his body.
Cleaning crews at Woodrow Wilson High School found Broeksmit’s body just before 7 a.m., according to Sgt. Rudy Perez with the Los Angeles School Police Department.”
(OP-ED) Governor’s higher-ed plan offers a major breakthrough
Cap.Weekly, MICHELE SIQUEIROS: “Gov. Newsom proposed one of the most consequential higher education policies this year: a 70 percent college attainment goal by 2030 and multi-year investment compacts with the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) to collectively grow enrollment over the next five years by 21,000 new seats while closing racial equity gaps in enrollment and completion.
The fate of the proposal is now in the hands of the Legislature.
The demand for a college degree in California has never been higher. The UC recently announced that, for a second year in a row, application rates shattered previous records, with 211,000 students applying to pursue their college dreams at California’s premier universities.”
How LAUSD superintendent’s online presence fosters connections
EdSource, KATE SEQUEIRA: “For Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, social media is like second nature. Sometimes a conversation will trigger an idea or sentiment he finds valuable to the LAUSD community, and he’ll turn to his phone to share his thoughts. Other times, he’ll scroll through posts to find where his voice can help quell confusion or clarify goals.
“I’m meeting them where they are, and they’re meeting me where I am,” Carvalho said. “For me, that’s the power of social media. It can be misinterpreted, it can be misused, but its power is also undeniable.”
That desire to share information comes to him at all times, he said, recalling an April board meeting where the topic at hand encouraged him to slip out his phone and quickly share that he was personally reaching out to a number of chronically absent students to support them and learn about what they’re facing to better combat current attendance issues within the district.”
More kids were hit by upper airway infections during COVID Omicron surge, studies show
LA Times, RONG-GONG LIN II/LUKE MONEY: “During the winter Omicron surge, hospitalized coronavirus-positive children were more likely to be hit with COVID-related upper airway infections than at other times of the pandemic, putting them at greater risk of severe disease, new data suggest.
One study found that the rate of upper airway infections — such as a type of bronchitis known as croup — among hospitalized coronavirus-infected children nearly tripled during the Omicron era.
“Young children are especially vulnerable to [upper airway infection], given their small and relatively collapsible airways,” according to the study, published recently in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.”
As COVID cases ‘swell’ in the Bay Area, this time it’s on you to weigh the risks
LA Times, ERIN ALLDAY: “Coronavirus cases are ticking up again across the Bay Area as the region enters a fifth “swell” of the pandemic, but this wave will likely look very different from earlier surges, with far fewer people seriously ill and needing hospital care, health officials say.
It also will play out differently in other remarkable ways: Though no one yet knows how high cases will climb before this wave crests, health officials don’t expect to have to put back in place mask mandates and other broad mitigation measures. That shifts the burden of responsible pandemic behavior squarely onto individuals’ shoulders.
The United States as a whole has entered a new chapter of the pandemic, staggering from two years of crisis response toward coexistence with the coronavirus. On Tuesday, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on PBS’ “NewsHour” program that the country is “out of the pandemic phase,” though much remains uncertain about what life with the virus will look like as it becomes endemic.”
Aiming for ‘zero waste,’ L.A. backs new restrictions on plastic food ware
LA Times, SUSANNE RUST: “The City Council unanimously approved more than a dozen measures Wednesday to tighten restrictions on plastic bags, utensils, food containers and other disposables with a goal of making Los Angeles a “zero waste” city.
The measures, 14 in all, direct the city attorney to draft ordinances to expand the already existing plastic bag ban and bind city government to uphold zero-waste endeavors across its facilities and events, among other initiatives.
Immediate changes will take place only at city-owned and sponsored events and properties — where there will be restrictions and bans on single-use plastics and polystyrene — while the city attorney works with the departments overseeing litter, waste and procurement to draft citywide ordinances.”
Full coverage: 30 years since the 1992 L.A. riots
STAFF: “Thirty years ago, the police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted, and L.A. burned.
Today, a Mexican American family still grieves for their father, shot dead in his car after running an errand for a friend. A supermarket rooftop patrolled by Korean immigrants with guns is a hangout for hipsters. Parts of South L.A. are gentrifying, while other neighborhoods are filled with empty lots. Many Angelenos are deeply pessimistic about race relations.
Times journalists reflect on the scars that remain from those violent days and what has risen from the ashes.”
‘I heard this shot’: ‘Rust’ armorer recounts the moment of Alec Baldwin’s fatal blast
LA Times, MEG JAMES, AMY KAUFMAN, DIEGO MEDRANO: “Six months after actor and producer Alec Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set of the western “Rust,” the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office released hundreds of documents and dozens of videos from its investigation.
Dash-cam footage from deputies and detectives arriving at the Bonanza Creek Ranch movie set minutes after the shooting, set videos, crime-scene photos, lengthy witness interviews and a 204-page case report summarizing the investigation were included in the trove of evidence. Deputies’ lapel cameras captured footage from the scene, depicting Baldwin and others struggling to make sense of what they had just witnessed.
The records and videos, released earlier this week, shed more light on the roles of Baldwin, the film’s assistant director and safety officer Dave Halls, and Hannah Gutierrez Reed, who was working on just her second project as head armorer.”
They opposed the Ukraine war. Now, this Russian couple must battle the U.S. immigration system
LA Times, DEEPA FERNANDES: “For six days the Russian couple were kept separately, in frigid detention cells under 24-hour fluorescent lights, unaware of each other’s whereabouts. Then, without warning, Anton and Julia, both 27, found themselves briefly reunited near his holding cell in a San Diego border patrol station.
Julia needed the tickets in Anton’s pocket that identified the couple’s luggage. She whispered she was being transferred to an immigration detention facility in Louisiana. Her husband’s heart sank. Anton wanted to tell his wife that everything was going to be OK. Instead he asked her if she had memorized the phone numbers for their sponsor and attorney.
The couple hugged twice, a luxury Anton said other couples weren’t permitted at the border station. Then Julia was whisked away.”
Russia takes economic aim at countries aiding Ukraine, where it continues shelling the east
LA Times, NABIH BULOS/LAURA KING: “Moscow on Wednesday turned off the natural-gas spigot to the front-line Eastern European states of Poland and Bulgaria, signaling its willingness to take sharp economic aim at those who aid Ukraine.
Russian forces, meanwhile, rained shells on eastern Ukraine as they pressed ahead with their devastating 2-month-old invasion.
Addressing the first such supply disruption since the war’s start, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov strongly hinted that other European economies may be next. He told reporters Wednesday that if some customers “decline to pay under the new system” Russia has instituted — mea
