Bear Essentials July 7th: A Generational Housing Win
A Generational Housing Win
Hyperbole fails us when one of the single most frustrating impediments to housing production — CEQA abuse — finally falls with the stroke of the governor’s pen, but we’ll try: it’s a galactically big deal. While Sacramento streamlines, Altadena’s scorched lots lure corporate flippers, and a billion-dollar IV drip and some private equity defibrillators may shock CA high speed rail back to life. Elsewhere, L.A. deputies bust criminal fencing rings, a USC podcast serves up big ideas, and satellites reveal orchards morphing into condos. Plus our Fast Five: ICE raids, funding freezes, the A’s hapless quest for a new ballpark, the AI cash geyser, and Bear vs. Bruin bragging rights.
Let’s get to it…
WHAT’S THAT? COULD IT BE…PROGRESS!?!?!
With a budget bill penstroke, California just cleared a mountain of bureaucratic deadwood that has stymied the state’s housing production efforts for generations. Once deemed the “third rail” of California politics, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has long been NIMBYs’ favorite tool of obstruction, gumming up all manner of desperately needed projects from housing to hospitals and transit hubs under often dubious environmental premises. But that was before AB 130 and SB 131, two bills tacked onto this year’s state budget to recalibrate toward progress and common sense. Taken together, the legislation hauls most infill housing — and a few civic essentials — out of CEQA’s litigation morass, swapping years of paper warfare for real construction schedules. The payoff is huge: quicker, cheaper apartments near transit, more open space saved from sprawl (and wildfire risk), and a state bureaucracy reminded that its job is to house people, not fetishize process. After decades of interest-group driven gridlock, California has delivered a genuine, growth-minded reform. We’re here for it — literally.
🤫 Everything you should know
🏗️ 🔨 🧾 - ALTADENA ASH GRAB — After the Eaton Fire vaporized 6,000 Altadena homes, calculators fired up even before the hammers began swinging. Corporate players — lottery king Edwin Castro’s Black Lion, Ocean Development, private-equity ghost ships like Iron Rings — have snapped up half the burned lots, 42 percent owned by just six outfits. Locals still digging through ash have watched in real time as their neighborhood morphs into a Monopoly board. A natural tension has developed between legitimate competing priorities: capital-on-demand, with fresh money, faster rebuilding, and desperately needed new housing stock, versus consolidation that risks erasing Altadena’s working-class character. Whichever vision wins, spreadsheets — not soot-stained families — will decide the community’s second act. — Dwell
🚅 🤞 💰 - HIGH SPEED HOPE? — California’s bullet-train corpse has a new necromancer: CEO Ian Choudri. Armed with a potential $1-billion-a-year “cap-and-invest” defibrillator and the promise of private capital, he’s trying to jolt life into the molasses-slow 171-mile Central Valley starter line, now $35 billion deep and menaced by a possible claw-back of $4 billion in committed federal funding. Supporters call the gambit Japanese-style realism, skeptics have other designs on the state funds in question. If the pieces fall into place, Choudri’s revival act could morph from séance to showcase — turning political punch-line into 210-mph proof-of-concept for the state. — SF Chronicle
🛍️ 💸 🚔 - BAD BARGAINS BUSTED — Boosters loot your local Target, fences launder it at your corner bodega: voilà, capitalism’s ultimate discount aisle. Recently, deputies staking out Quickmart and Big Apple corner stores in Downtown L.A. watched shoppers hauling stuffed bags through the front door only to exit lighter and richer. The officers then seized a million bucks — plus sunscreen and hair gel — from safes and backrooms. The county’s turbo-charged task force has opened nearly 2,500 cases and already made more than 1,000 arrests. Their activity comes with a message: your $3 Biosilk probably comes with court dates soon. — LA Times
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🎙️ 💬 🎧 - ON THE POD: IDEAS IN ACTION
Ideas in Action is USC’s podcast series that turns campus brainpower into sharp, accessible conversations. Recorded on the University Park and Health Sciences campuses, each episode cuts across disciplines—medicine, policy, arts, tech—to explore ideas aimed at enriching both mind and society, right in line with the university’s mission. — USC: Ideas in Action
👷 🏗️ 🏘️ - BIG CHANGES IN THE BAY
Watch a decade reshape the Bay Area from orbit: orchards morph into condo canyons, Tri-Valley cow pastures become culs-de-sac, and forgotten wetlands return to green. The SF Chronicle’s cool new interactive map pairs USGS/NASA land-use data with before-and-after aerials, pinpointing the region’s fastest flips from nature to high-density — and back again across time. Take it for a spin! — SF Chronicle
🏃♂️ 💨 ✋ FAST FIVE
- 😞 ICE Raids Derail Los Angeles Economy as Workers Go Missing. Bloomberg
- 🥶 Trump Admin’s eduction funding freeze hits California hard. KQED
- ⚾ Will the Athletics’ $1.75B stadium on the Vegas Strip ever be built? Guardian
- 🤖 SF AI startups seeing green as VC investment surges. SF Examiner
🐻 Who's No. 1? UCLA and UC Berkeley stake their claims on social media. LA Times
