It's Thursday. We're talking about this year's housing trends and what to pay attention to in 2023. Plus, Los Angeles greets rising Covid cases with apathy. |
 | | Homes in the hills in Tiburon in Marin County.Jim Wilson/The New York Times |
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Few of California's problems are as intractable as the housing crisis. An upsetting number of people here live on the streets. And buying a home, or often even renting one, is out of reach for many residents of the state. |
As 2022 comes to a close, we're looking back at the world of housing. This year, state legislators passed several bills to spur housing development and Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to crack down on cities that weren't developing fast enough. Housing issues notably came to a head in fights over U.C. Berkeley student enrollment and in the Silicon Valley town of Woodside, which boldly declared itself a mountain lion sanctuary in an attempt to prevent duplexes from being built. |
To get a better sense of how all of these stories add up and what larger trends emerged this year, I spoke to Conor Dougherty, an economics reporter for The Times who focuses on housing and is based in Los Angeles. We talked about falling home prices, the impacts of remote work and what else Conor will be paying attention to in 2023. Here's our conversation: |
Soumya: So what were the big themes this year when it comes to housing? |
Conor: Pure and simple: Gravity exists. We knew a rise in mortgage rates was coming. It came. Home sales and home price growth slowed down and have now fallen. And this national trend has been most pronounced in California, because the prices were highest here. |
That's something that some Californians might be welcoming. Even if you're disappointed that your own home is losing value, everyone realizes our market is overheated. The bad news is that housing as we think about it isn't going to be any easier next year. |
Conor: If home prices are falling, but mortgage rates are still quite a bit higher — they've basically more than doubled — it's not any easier to buy a house. On top of that, there's still not a lot to buy, for two reasons. |
The first is the classic thing: California doesn't have enough housing relative to demand. The second is a more short-term issue, which is that we had very, very low interest rates for two years. Everyone who could do so either bought a new home or refinanced to this rock-bottom rate, so now they have no incentive to move. So it's kind of this Pyrrhic victory, that home price growth has slowed down, but it's not really any easier to get a house if you're looking to buy. |
Rents have also gone up quite a bit from two years ago in much of the state. And home prices are still up a lot from where they were at the beginning of the pandemic. So it's still very expensive to live in California, and there's no obvious short-term way out of that. And that was our problem going into 2020 and that's our problem going into 2023 and it's probably going to be our problem going into 2030, but we can slowly dig our way out and I think that's basically the theme of the whole state right now. |
Soumya: It sounds like two steps forward, one step back. Or even, two steps forward, two steps back. |
Conor: I think it's two steps forward, two steps back. And that's because home prices have slowed down, but it's not really that much more affordable. |
Soumya: How does that affect our homelessness problem? |
Conor: What's going to be very interesting for 2023 is how people react to homelessness. Because I think voters' attitudes have grown both darker and more optimistic. Looking at the mayoral election in Los Angeles and looking at elections around the state, we have seen, in general, a willingness among voters to fund (i.e. tax themselves more to pay for) bigger homelessness initiatives. What's worrisome is that at the same time, they have shown a greater degree of — for lack of a better term — fed-upness. |
People are increasingly willing to fund extensive homeless programs and increasingly willing to vote for politicians who promise to change zoning and other things that would make housing easier to build, but they expect to see results relatively quickly. And what's worrisome is that it seems unlikely that anybody can show material results in the time-frame that voters expect to see them. |
Soumya: Why is that? It feels as though we put so much money toward housing programs, and in Sacramento there's a slew of pro-housing bills passing each session. Why is it so difficult to create more housing? |
Conor: In all sorts of fundamental ways, we have made it very, very expensive to live in California. And the past five years have shown us that the things that make housing so difficult to build here are so distributed and are so inherent. The state government, the local government, and this agency and that agency — it so permeates everything we do and who we are that all those things have to change for the situation to change. I think that's happening, but this is not a one bill or a one legislative session fix. |
Soumya: Any final things you're paying attention to in 2023? |
Conor: With the rise of work from home, there are all sorts of employees who would just rather not be here, and increasingly can choose not to be. I think California's inhospitableness to families and to our middle-class is going to start to catch up with us. And I think remote work will be the prism through which that's viewed. People who have a really tough time with California housing can increasingly opt out, and that will be the most interesting thing to watch. |
 | | Deepwater Wind turbines stand in the water off Block Island, R.I.Michael Dwyer/Associated Press |
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- Wind farms: Several dozen companies are competing for leases to build massive floating wind farms in deep ocean waters off the California coast, CalMatters reports.
- Settlements: The vaping company Juul Labs has reached settlements covering thousands of lawsuits over its e-cigarettes, which had been consolidated in a California federal court pending bellwether trials, The Associated Press reports.
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- Contract extension: The Fresno Unified School District board is set to vote on a contract extension through 2026 that will increase Superintendent Bob Nelson's retirement benefits, The Fresno Bee reports.
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- Theranos: Ramesh Balwani, the former chief operating officer of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos, was sentenced on Wednesday to nearly 13 years in prison for defrauding investors and patients about the company's business and technology.
- Robocops: Supervisors in San Francisco on Tuesday backpedaled on a policy that would allow the police to use robots to deploy lethal force.
- Airtags: Two women sued Apple over the dangers of its AirTag tracking devices in the hands of stalkers, saying the company had failed to heed warnings from advocacy groups and news reports.
- S.F. tourism: Tourists spent nearly double in 2022 than they did in 2021 in San Francisco, a sign of a partial economic recovery as the pandemic has eased, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.
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 | | Linda Xiao for The New York Times. |
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 | | A set of stairs in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles.Philip Cheung for The New York Times |
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Today's tip comes from Maria King Carroll, who lives in Peoria, Ill.: |
"One of my favorite activities in Los Angeles is to walk on one of the 40-plus sets of "secret stairs" that link the hills of the metropolis to what lies below. These public stairways, built prior to the freeways, take the walker through some historic neighborhoods with terrific views of the surrounding city. The stairs are so secret that some of my friends in Southern California had never heard of them." |
Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We'll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter. |
We're writing about how Californians celebrate the holidays. Do you relax by the beach, visit Disneyland or make tamales with your family? Maybe you always travel to a special spot within the Golden State? |
Email us at CAtoday@nytimes.com with your California holiday traditions and memories. Please include your name and the city where you live. |
We may include your email response in an upcoming newsletter or in print. By emailing us a response, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us ("Your Content"). If you do not accept these terms, do not submit any content. |
 | | Frank Fiscalini, a former vice mayor of San Jose, center, at his 100th birthday party in Campbell.Model A Ford Club of America, Santa Clara Valley Chapter |
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And before you go, some good news |
Frank Fiscalini, a former vice mayor of San Jose, turned 100 last month, and his three daughters gave a lot of thought to what would be an appropriate gift for their dad. |
Fiscalini was an educator who served as superintendent of the East Side Union High School District and later was on the boards of Opera San Jose and History San Jose, The Mercury News reports. And, for many years, he drove a classic 1929 Model A Ford. |
So Fiscalini's children asked the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the Ford Model A Club of America if they could get their father a ride in one of the classic cars for his birthday. The club's president said yes, but when its members found out who the recipient was, the single ride was upgraded to a parade. |
On Nov. 26, a caravan of vintage cars rolled from the retirement community in Campbell, where Fiscalini now lives, to his daughter's house in San Jose. "It was a wonderful ride," Fiscalini said upon his arrival in a 1931 Model A town sedan. |
Thanks for reading. We'll be back tomorrow. — Soumya |
Briana Scalia and Isabella Grullón Paz contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com. |
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