SACROMENTO – After voters in November sent a clear message that rising costs of living were the highest concern, they came to the legislature where California lawmakers vowed to take decisive action.
“Our tasks This session is urgent and clear,” Council President Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) told lawmakers at the start of the 2024-2025 legislative meeting in early December. “We need to chart new paths moving forward, and it starts with a focus on affordability.”
Despite proposed laws to make California a more affordable place to live, state voters are becoming increasingly pessimistic about their economic future, according to a new poll from the UC Berkeley Government Institute co-hosted by The Times. Almost half of California voters felt it was worse than last year, with 54% feeling less hopeful about their financial well-being.
When state leaders were asked to appoint them to the most important issue of the year, cost of living, affordability of housing, and homelessness broke above the list. This far outweighs concerns about crime and public safety, taxes and immigration.
“The biggest problem is the economics: it’s the cost of living,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll. “Both Democrats and Republicans agree.”
After President Trump returned to the White House in January, California’s fear of the future and current financial well-being have increased dramatically, according to Daikamilo. Within months, Trump wiped out new tariffs on goods imported from countries around the world, sending turbulence into the global economy, and his administration began cutting federal agencies and programs.
Changes among voters are driven primarily by partisan loyalty, with Democrats in California outpacing Republicans by a margin of nearly 2-1.
Before Trump’s election in August, 46% of state Democrat voters were cheerful about their financial well-being. According to polls, only 9% felt that way in April. Also, optimism declined among voters declared “no party preferences,” but not to a much lesser extent. Only 9% of Republicans were hopeful before Trump’s election, jumping to 57% in April.
“I’ve never seen it before,” DiCamilo said. “I’ve been voting in California for over 40 years, and over the last five or so, it seems like everything’s been turning on the party. Democrats will say one thing, Republicans will say it. [another]. It’s incredible. ”
In Sacramento, democratically-led Congress and Gov. Gavin Newsom know that addressing the high cost of living in California is essential, and that not doing enough to address voter concerns can have consequences. But hopes for quick financial relief have been lost to the slow, deliberative political process of legislation at the Capitol.
Democrats have introduced numerous new bills to reduce the deficit for building permits to save billions of Californians on utility bills, limit renters’ additional fees, and target the financial burdens that plague residents.
However, pending bills are not expected to cause dramatic changes to long-standing economic issues in California, which voters care most about, such as the housing affordability crisis, homelessness, and general cost of living.
James Gallagher, Congressional Republican leader in Yuba City, said the financial struggles among many Californians were the result of years of false, liberal leadership, dismissing the latest push in Sacramento, and rejecting the damages as too little or too late.
“What I’ve read about most of these bills is that they haven’t done much,” Gallagher told The Times. Most of them are working on fringe issues rather than reaching the meat in question. “To actually do something about affordable prices, [the Democrats] We have to go back to our previous ideas. ”
Trump’s victory in November was praised in part in part for his campaign’s promise to address the high prices and economic uncertainty that many Americans face. The economic upheavals over the past five years are the main reason for the pessimism that many people feel today.
Jerry Nickelsberg, a faculty member at UCLA Anderson forecasting, said the fiscal policy aimed at surfacening household budgets during the Covid-19 lockdown caused higher inflation and raised prices faster than usual. Although inflation has been declining since 2020, voters have noticed a sharp rise in daily costs, such as gas and groceries.
The growth in worker payments during that time has not been walking. Sarah Bourne, vice president of the California Institute of Public Policy (PPIC), said food, beverage and energy prices rose 28% compared to before the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We feel these things on pumps, utility bills and grocery stores,” Born said before a council committee in late March. Inflation has reduced wage increases by 26% to 2.9% since January 2020, she said.
“To me, these are all the facts that you need to understand why Californians are financially annoyed. Do you feel like you’re earning 26% of your wages, but stepping on the water at the end of the day? That’s very frustrating,” Bourne said.
California is one of the most expensive states in the United States to buy or rent a home in the United States. The crisis has been exacerbated over the past decade due to increased housing costs and rents, and several policies such as the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, have been curbing new developments since the 1970s.
According to US Census data, rents in California are 50% higher than the national median. One in six middle-class Californians spend more than half their income on housing, according to PPIC, a non-profit research center.
For years, Democrats have opened loopholes with existing laws and sought to promote new developments to address housing shortages. According to a recent PPIC analysis, high prices have contributed to the growth trends of homelessness and Californians, and the trend of neighbouring states leaving the grasslands at a cheaper price, rather than greener.
“California has strangled him very hard over the years by building adequate housing,” Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) told The Times.
In this session, Wiener introduced Senate Bill 677. This failed at the Senate Housing Committee earlier this month, but could expand SB 9, a “double bill” from 2021, allowing people to split into two lots into single family lots and build up up to three units in the property. The committee has moved forward another of Wiener’s Bill SB 79. This proposes that houses between four and seven stories can be built near major transport outages.
SB 681, part of the Senate Democrat Caucus’ affordable package and introduced by Senator Ishawahav (D-Hayward), proposes several measures to address the housing crisis. The debtor closes the homeowners association’s fine at $100 after believing the loan was granted, making the permit rationalization and housing crisis law permanent.
Other laws supported by Democratic leaders would streamline applications for new housing developments, prohibit additional rental payments and expand affordable housing for farm workers.
“It’s still an ambitious effort to curb the rise in energy costs in Congress and put fee payers first,” he told committee members last week, Senator Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park)’s SB 254, chairman of the Senate Committee of Energy, Utilities and Communications. The bill in part forces the California Public Utilities Commission to provide official statements justifying approved rate increases, and also requires investor-owned utilities to fund $15 billion to mitigate wildfires and connect customers to the grid.
The law is opposed by San Diego Gas and electricity. He said it has not addressed the underlying issues, and that interest rates may rise and may be unconstitutional.
California Republicans have provided unique solutions to the issue of affordability, including a bill from Gallagher, which forced the Utilities Commission to cut by 30%, and a bill from Gallagher, which forced AB 1443, sponsored by Congressional member Leticia Castillo (R-Home Gardens), which would exempt the tips they gain. California Republicans also had bills that would expand tax credits for renters, as well as Wahab’s SB 681 measures.
Gallagher criticized the new Congressional committee, which was created to focus on housing, childcare and food aid for those in need, and considered pushing for low-carbon and renewable alternatives, arguing that discussion of issues rather than taking swift action is deaf.
“Californians don’t need more government committees and need real action to cut their costs. For decades, Legislative Democrats have been making our states out of hand,” Gallagher said. “The faces change, but the parties and the broken ideas remain the same: they cut off the home, raise taxes, and raise the costs of the working family.”
Times staff writer Phil Willne contributed to this report.
Source link
