This week in the Golden State: Survival’s getting expensive. A sweeping new UCLA survey shows that millions are skipping retirement, racking up debt, or slashing basic needs just to stay housed. In LA, oil workers are being phased out with little more than a pat on the hard hat. San Francisco NIMBYs are hitting fever pitch in response to an imminently reasonable zoning plan. It seems the only thing both sides can agree on is that Miami is a repellent blueprint. Across the Bay, Oakland is so buried in garbage the public works director is openly dropping F-bombs. We’ve also got Compton on horseback, a clock that ticks for 10,000 years, and your occasional reminder that California’s tectonic plates hate you.

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STARTLING NEW SURVEY

California’s cost of living isn’t just expensive, it’s eating people alive, according to the newly released results of UCLA’s California Health Interview Survey. Nearly 6 million adults worry regularly about paying rent or mortgage, with many skipping retirement savings, racking up credit card debt, or cutting back on health care just to stay housed. “Millions of Californians have been struggling to get by,” said CHIS director Ninez Ponce, whose sweeping survey paints a stark portrait of the state’s interconnected crises. One in 10 adults has medical debt; nearly half of low-income residents can’t afford enough food. The survey also shows wildfires taking a toll beyond their immediate destruction: A third of adults inhaled smoke in the last two years, driving asthma complications. Mental health fallout is rising too, particularly among those exposed to disasters and hate-fueled violence, which also spiked in 2024. For a state built on dreams, the data reads more like a warning label. The cost of survival in California is going up, and fast. (We aim to do something about it.)

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🤫 Everything you should know

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🛢️👷 😟  - FOSSIL FUELED AND FIRED  — A slow-motion layoff crisis is slamming California’s oil refinery workers as plants shut down in the state’s lurching sprint toward a green energy future. At Phillips 66 in LA, nearly 1,000 workers — including high school grads pulling six figures — face unemployment with zero transferable credentials and even less corporate remorse. The state lobbed $30 million at a retraining scheme that’s slow, bureaucratic, and mostly unused. Meanwhile, workers juggle 12-hour shifts, cancer treatments, toddlers, and online classes — while their livelihoods vanish under fluorescent lights, political dithering, and the stink of regulatory indifference. “To go out and look for another job that’s even somewhat comparable, it just doesn’t exist,” said Wilfredo Cruz, who now works 72-hour weeks and studies cybersecurity on his lunch breaks. Phasing out oil can be quick work; phasing in new futures isn’t. — CalMatters

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🏢 🦩 🌁  - MIAMI-BY-THE-BAY?  — San Francisco’s housing fight has entered its “Miami Beach panic” phase. Mayor Daniel Lurie’s rezoning pitch — modestly dubbed the “family zoning plan” — aims to stave off the state’s dreaded builder’s remedy by allowing mid-rise buildings in underdeveloped neighborhoods along major transportation corridors. Meanwhile, frantic NIMBYs are Photoshopping Soviet bloc nightmares into their scare fliers and breathless PowerPoint presentations. Lurie’s side warns of a state-led skyscraper invasion should the City not seize the initiative and start building on its own. Everyone agrees on one thing: they don’t want Ocean Beach to become South Beach. What’s really at stake? Local control, affordable housing, and whether San Francisco will succumb to its own destructive inertia. — SF Chronicle

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🗑️ 😡 🗑️  - TRASH COURSE IN FAILURE — Across the Bay, Oakland is drowning in trash, 18 million pounds of illegally dumped garbage last year alone. The city’s acting public works director is “piping mad, dropping F-bombs kind of furious” about it. Sidewalks, schoolyards, and whole neighborhoods are clogged with mattresses, busted appliances, rotting food and even airplane tires. “When I was nine, I was homeless in that park, and it was clean,” said Vincent Ray Williams III, who now leads volunteer cleanups across the city. No longer. Dumping has become so normalized that residents dump first and ask questions…never. It’s the city’s job to clean up, right? Nope. Enforcement is weak, cleanup efforts are backfiring with increasing regularity, and volunteers are burning out. The latest fixes? Bigger bins, more cameras, and maybe a remix from hometown hero MC Hammer: “U Can’t Dump This.” — NY Times

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🎙️ 💬 🎧 - ON THE POD: CALIFORNIA LOVE

Tupac and Dre laid the track in 1995 with a big assist from Roger Troutman and an iconic talkbox. Years later, Walter Thompson-Hernández turned the SoCal banger into a love letter of his own. The California Love podcast is part memoir, part adventure, featuring horseback rides through Compton, flights over L.A., and deep dives into home, memory, and what it means to belong in the City of Angels. Enjoy all eight episodes on NPR One. — LAist 89.3

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🤔 ⌛ 🌎  - THINKING FOR THE LONG-TERM

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Based in San Francisco’s Fort Mason, the Long Now Foundation is humanity’s long-game think tank, dreaming in millennia while the rest of us can’t plan past lunch. Their mission: stretch society’s attention span beyond quarterly earnings and election cycles. They build big, weird stuff — like a 10,000-year clock in a mountain — to remind us that the future’s real, and we’re already screwing it up. Slowly, but surely. — Long Now Foundation

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🏃‍♂️ 💨 ✋ FAST FIVE

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1. 🏅 Another day, another Nobel Prize for surging UC Berkeley. Berkeleyside
2. 🗻 New study says CA glaciers disappearing for first time in the Holocene . Science
3. 🏗️ San Diego a national laggard in new apartment construction. Axios
4. 🪔 California becomes third U.S. state to make Diwali official state holiday. AP‍
5. 🫨 West Coast’s two gigantic faults could team up for monster quake. LA Times