California
California homeownership at highest level since 2010
California’s progress toward making the state friendlier for house hunters comes in baby steps.
When my trusty spreadsheet looked at homeownership data from the Census Bureau for the states and the District of Columbia, it found an average 55.9% of California households lived in a home they owned last year.
It’s a bit of a landmark moment: The last time the owners’ share of housing had been higher was in 2010 at 56.1% – just after the Great Recession officially ended.
Now, the situation is still ugly. California has the nation’s third-lowest ownership share, just ahead of New York’s 53.3% and D.C.’s 40.2%. By the way, California rivals Texas was seventh-lowest at 63.6% and Florida was 18th lowest at 67.3%.
The tops state was West Virginia, ranking No. 1 with a 77% homeownership rate. The national rate was 65.9%.
Let’s remember that homebuying since 2019 benefitted from the Federal Reserve’s extended generosity – cheaper interest rates used as a stimulus to a coronavirus-chilled economy. Developers met some demand, too. California building permits in the last four years were one-third higher than the pace of the 2000s. Still, recent homebuilding runs one-third below the 1990-2010 average.
Plus, the ownership rate may have been boosted a bit by California’s population outflow in recent years. These exits skew toward younger, lower-income folks, a group more likely to rent than own.
It added up to California enjoying a small ownership uptick since coronavirus was added to our economics vocabulary.
California ownership rose 1 percentage point in four years – though 33 states did better. Texas ownership has risen 1.2 points since 2019. Florida was up 1.3 points.
Nationally, ownership is up 1.4 points since 2019. The nation’s biggest leap was found in North Dakota, up 4.3 points to 65.7%.
Let’s politely say more work must be done: Yes, California ownership is at a 13-year-high, but it’s also essentially at where it was in 1993.
Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com
California
2 dead, 3 injured in shooting in Louisville’s California neighborhood
USA epidemic of gun violence and mass killings
Find out about the growing problem of gun violence and mass killings in the USA and learn how the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) categorizes different types of gun violence.
Two men are dead and three others injured in a mass shooting in the California neighborhood Saturday night, Louisville Metro Police said.
Second Division officers initially found four men with gunshot wounds in the 2200 block of Garland Avenue when they arrived at 7:30 p.m., LMPD spokesperson John Bradley said in a statement.
Two men were pronounced dead at the scene, while the other two were taken to the University of Louisville Hospital for treatment. As of Sunday, one man was in “critical but stable condition,” while the other was in stable condition, Bradley said.
A fifth man was later found in the area, Bradley said Sunday. He was also taken to UofL Hospital, but his condition was unknown.
Police had not located a suspect Saturday night. LMPD’s homicide unit is investigating, Bradley said. Anyone with information about the shooting could call LMPD’s anonymous tip line at 502-574-5673.
The two men who died have not yet been identified.
Reach reporter Leo Bertucci at lbertucci@gannett.com or @leober2chee on X, formerly known as Twitter
This story has been updated to add video.
California
California man beheaded his 1-year-old son with a knife, authorities say
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A man has been arrested on suspicion of beheading his 1-year-old son, Northern California authorities said.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Friday that deputies responding to an early morning family disturbance call found a woman outside a home who told deputies that her husband Andrey Demskiy, 28, assaulted her and her mother.
Deputies forced their way into the house in northern Sacramento County when they learned Demskiy was inside with the boy. As they took him into custody, they found a “severed child’s head” in the bedroom where Demskiy was detained.
Detectives said Demskiy used a knife to behead his son after his wife and mother-in-law left the house, according to the statement. He was in custody and ineligible for bail, and was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.
The sheriff’s department and the county public defenders office did not respond to emails seeking information on whether Demskiy had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
California
Protests Swept California Campuses Last Year. Schools Are Now Blocking Them | KQED
At UC Santa Cruz, police arrested one student who was using a megaphone during a demonstration on Oct. 7, according to an eyewitness who spoke to LookOut Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office public arrest reports show one person was arrested on the Santa Cruz campus for obstruction of a public officer and battery without injury that day.
While no arrests were made, Pomona College has suspended 12 students for the remainder of the 2024–25 academic year following an Oct. 7 demonstration in which they entered, damaged and vandalized a restricted building, according to the student newspaper. The college also banned dozens of students from the four other campuses of the Claremont Colleges, a consortium that includes Pomona.
Private colleges have implemented their own policy changes. Pomona College now requires students and faculty to swipe their ID cards to enter academic buildings. Since last semester, students and visitors entering USC are also required to show a school or photo ID.
Some students are still facing charges from last year’s protests
Few charges have been filed after UCLA’s encampment made headlines in April when counterprotesters led an attack on encampment protesters while law enforcement did not intervene for several hours. The following day, 254 people were arrested on charges related to the protest encampment. In October, two additional people were also arrested for participating in the counter-protester violence.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office is pursuing three felony cases against individuals arrested at UCLA in relation to violence during last spring’s protests.
Meanwhile, the city attorney’s office is reviewing 93 misdemeanor cases from USC and 210 from UCLA, according to information it provided to CalMatters last month.
Lilyan Zwirzina, a junior at Cal Poly Humboldt, was among the students arrested in the early morning of April 30 following protesters occupying a campus building and ignoring orders to disperse from the university. Law enforcement took her to Humboldt County Correctional Facility, where she faced four misdemeanor charges, including resisting arrest. Zwirzina thought she’d have to cancel her study abroad semester, which conflicted with the court date she was given.
“I was pretty frustrated and kind of freaked out,” Zwirzina said. Authorities dropped the charges against her in July.
The Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office didn’t pursue charges against 27 of the 39 people arrested, citing insufficient evidence. The 12 remaining cases were referred to the Cal Poly Humboldt Police Department for investigation. Those cases remain under investigation, according to the university.
For 13 people, including students, arrested at Stanford University in June, the Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen has not pressed charges as of Nov. 20, according to information his office provided CalMatters.
Elsewhere across the state, some district attorneys are pursuing misdemeanor and felony charges against student protesters. Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer is pursuing misdemeanor charges against 50 people, including two UCI professors, a teaching assistant, and 26 students, stemming from a protest at UC Irvine on Oct. 22, 2023. Charges include failure to disperse, resisting arrest and vandalism.
At Pomona College, 19 students were arrested on April 5 on charges of trespassing after some protesters entered and refused to leave an administrative building. Students arrested either had their cases dismissed or have accepted community service in lieu of further legal action. James Gutierrez, the attorney representing the arrested students, said he asked that the college drop charges against its students, citing their right to protest the use of paid tuition dollars.
“They are righteously demanding that their colleges, the ones they pay tuition to and housing fees and pour a lot of money into, that that university or college stop investing in companies that are directly supporting this genocide and indirectly supporting it,” he said.
Students fight back against campus protest policies
As administrators face the challenge of applying protest policies more uniformly and swiftly, the truer test of California public higher education institutions’ protest rules will be playing out in court.
In one already resolved case, UC leadership agreed in August to comply with a court order requiring the campus to end programs or events that exclude Jewish students. A federal judge ruled some Jewish students in support of Israel who were blocked from entering the encampment had their religious liberties violated — though some Jewish students did participate in UCLA’s protest encampment.
Now, students have filed at least two lawsuits against their campuses and the UC system for violating their rights while ending student encampments last spring. In September, ACLU NorCal filed suits against the UC and UC Santa Cruz for not providing students due process when they immediately barred arrested students from returning to campus.
“Those students should have gotten a hearing, an opportunity to defend themselves or to explain themselves, and the school would have shown evidence of why they created a risk of disturbance on campus,” Chessie Thacher, senior staff attorney at ACLU of Northern California, said.
UC Santa Cruz spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason said the university “appreciates the court’s careful deliberation” and that the university “is committed to upholding the right to free expression while also protecting the safety of its campus community.”
In October, ACLU SoCal filed lawsuits on behalf of two students and two faculty members against the UC and UCLA, alleging the actions the university took to break down the encampment violated their free speech rights.
UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez told CalMatters via email that the university would respond in court and that UCLA “fully supports community members expressing their First Amendment rights in ways that do not violate the law, our policies, jeopardize community safety, or disrupt the functioning of the university.”
“The encampment that arose on campus this spring became a focal point for violence, a disruption to campus, and was in violation of the law,” Vazquez said in the email statement. “These conditions necessitated its removal.”
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