West
Residents explain why they fled the Bay Area: Homelessness was 'just getting out of hand'
Former residents report having found better quality and cost of living outside the Bay Area, where homelessness and housing prices have skyrocketed.
“It’s a challenging place to live — the most expensive metro area in the country for consumer prices and buying a home. In a recent poll of Bay Area residents, nearly half said they were considering leaving in the next few years,” the East Bay Times reported.
One family who left the Bay Area to live in Idaho said that homelessness had become a problem.
“The homeless situation in downtown Martinez was just getting out of hand,” Ken Freeze told the Times.
(Nearly half of Bay Area residents considered leaving the city due to rising costs and costs of living, according to a report.)
“Beautiful Marina Park was just littered with needles. People didn’t want to take their families down there,” he added.
MASK MANDATES RETURN FOR HEALTH CARE FACILITIES IN DEEP BLUE STATE
In 2005, Freeze and his wife bought several acres of land in Placerville, California, with plans to retire.
“But by the time retirement rolled around, the state had changed too much for them,” the Times reported.
Per the Times, “They decided to swap out the foothills of the Sierra Nevada for the foothills in Idaho, and move to Meridian, a fast-growing suburb of Boise. They’d first traveled there in August 2017 for the total solar eclipse, and were struck by the good condition of the roads and how affordable the homes were.”
But the Freezes weren’t the only ones attracted to the area.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to crack down on homelessness, cleaning up trash and threatening to strip municipalities of funding if they do not take action against the issue. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
“In the short time we’ve been here, areas that when we first moved here were just open fields are now apartment complexes and buildings,” Freeze told the East Bay Times. “I’d just like to see them pull back the reins a little bit and let the infrastructure take a breath.”
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Another Bay Area couple felt the housing squeeze and saw prices elsewhere “too good to pass up.”
They found a house in Phoenix they loved and “now pay less for their mortgage than they did for their one-bedroom in San Bruno.”
As the Times reported, “It came with a pool, palm trees and a view of the mountains. ‘You can’t get all that in California anymore, unless you’re Elon Musk,’ [Jared] Troutman joked.”
A family from Oakland moved to the South due to the area feeling like a “third-world country.”
“I didn’t want to wait until everything got worse than it already was,” Mary Ezell-Wallas said.
Oakland Homeless encampment (Getty Images)
“Living in Oakland was stressful every day and night,” she said.
She explained further, “It’s so much better down here.”
Ezell Wallace, a resident of Oakland for nearly four decades, ran a beauty parlor in the 90s. She said Oakland had good shopping downtown back then.
“We could get anything we wanted real fast,” Ezell-Wallace said.
She added, “I thought Oakland was one of the greatest places there was.”
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Alaska
‘Minimal fire activity observed’, Firefighters work to put out fire in area burned in 2014 Funny River Fire
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Firefighters are battling a human caused fire on the Kenai Peninsula, the Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection (DOF) said.
The Killey River Fire was discovered Friday evening, DOF said. A pilot and a boat operator reported it.
“It is burning along the edge of the waterway in the burned area of the 2014 Funny River Fire,” DOF said. The fire “is about 2.25-miles up the Killey River from its confluence with the Kenai River.”
As of Saturday morning, the fire was about 8.2 acres.
“[Precipitation], helicopter bucket drops, and the air tanker slowed the fire and allowed firefighters to cut saw line and build hose lays around the fire,” DOF said Saturday.
In a note from Saturday on the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center Situation Dashboard, it said minimal fire activity was observed after firefighters worked “around snags in the old fire scar. The crew engaged to secure the west side of the fire with anticipation of strong gusts from the east.”
Burn permits have been suspended in the Kenai-Kodiak area, as well as the Fairbanks and Delta prevention areas, DOF said.
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Arizona
Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt booed at Arizona commencement over AI, sex harassment claims from much-younger girlfriend
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was roundly booed by students at the University of Arizona’s graduation Saturday — following backlash over his selection as commencement speaker over sex abuse allegations from his much-younger ex girlfriend.
Tech billionaire Schmidt, 71, was discussing artificial intelligence and automation when students began jeering him, Business Insider reported.
However, he had been expecting a hostile reception regardless of what he said following allegations of rape and sexual harassment made in a lawsuit by ex Michelle Ritter.
Multiple left-wing and feminist student groups handed out flyers at Friday night’s commencement detailing the allegations made against Schmidt by 31-year-old tech entrepreneur Ritter, who was Schmidt’s lover and business partner.
Students were urged to “turn their backs to the stage” when Schmidt came on, “and/or boo to make it clear that the University of Arizona and greater community that we represent, whether from Tucson or beyond, do not support abusers being platformed,” reported the Arizona Daily Star.
Schmidt, who has long been public about having an open marriage, denies the allegations from Ritter.
The boos started for Schmidt when he appeared to admit some of the mistakes he made during his time at Google.
“We thought that we were adding stones to a cathedral of knowledge that humanity had been constructing for centuries, but the world we built turned out to be more complicated than we anticipated,” said Schmidt, who left Google in 2011.
“The same tools that connect us also isolate us. The same platforms that gave everyone a voice — like you’re using now — degraded the public square,” he added.
The boos for Schmidt grew louder as he discussed AI, which critics warn risks obliterating the jobs market for new graduates.
“I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you. There is a fear,” Schmidt said, as he was briefly drowned out by boos.
“There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create,” he said, describing the fears as “rational” before insisting young people should adapt or else.
“The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will have shaped artificial intelligence,” he said.
California
3 people killed, several others injured after driver crashes into crowd in Oakland, California
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Three people were killed and several others were injured after a driver crashed into multiple cars and pedestrians late Saturday night in Oakland, California, authorities said.
The crash happened shortly after 11 p.m., according to officials.
Three people were pronounced dead at the scene and five others were injured, the Oakland Fire Department said. Two of those injured were in critical condition. The driver involved in the crash was also injured, though officials described those injuries as minor.
Authorities did not immediately release additional details about what led to the crash, and the driver’s identity was not made public.
The crash remains under investigation, officials said.
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