Are local unions saber-rattling over a potential strike, or is it just an oblique way to throw hair at a mayor who beat their chosen candidate last fall? Planning Commissioner and former CM Pierluigi Oliverio chats on the phone with Opp Now about the latest skirmish between City management and unions over new contracts. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreCA isn't the first state to attempt to legally codify the access to housing (see ACA 10 perspectives here): for instance, if we look at NY's '80s-established “right to shelter.” Brooklyn Law School Real Estate Finance professor David Reiss discusses how local housing shortages are exacerbated by zoning codes that constrain and discourage new construction. He emphasizes our need for comprehensive, long-term strategies to increase housing supply—which are more effective than top-down controls, like laws guaranteeing shelter rights. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreGavin Newsom is sounding like John Calhoun. Ash Kalra channels the wild fringes of Critical Race Theory. All because SCOTUS enforced the 14th Amendment. Local GOP chair Shane Patrick Connolly unpacks why the Left is so insistent on discriminating against Asian Americans in college admissions. An Opp Now exclusive Q&A.
Read MoreIn this Opp Now exclusive, Tobin Gilman chimes into the ongoing debate on whether SJ Council should direct funds primarily toward short- or long-term supportive housing projects. Whereas some like Khamis and Holtz posit the Measure E reallocation stemmed from “competing visions” about housing, Gilman says it was much simpler: all about consequences for our General Fund.
Read MoreSan Jose State University locked Dr. Elizabeth Weiss out of the skeletal curation facility because she posted an allegedly offensive Twitter photo in 2021. Weiss then sued SJSU for suppressing her First Amendment rights, and the case has reached settlement. Opp Now exclusively chats with Weiss about De Anza College's termination of “not Woke enough” director Tabia Lee—and how both situations highlight narrow-mindedness in local higher ed.
Read MoreIn 2021, tenured San Jose State University Anthropology professor Elizabeth Weiss was punished—her research facility access was revoked after a scathing public letter by the Provost—for posting a Twitter picture of herself with a human skull. Weiss's legal challenge just reached a settlement, contingent on her resignation from SJSU. Here, she exclusively discusses the university's “cowardly” submission to Woke cancel culture with Opp Now.
Read MoreContinuing an Opp Now exclusive series, two housing and urban design experts parse ACA 10's consequences—or lack thereof—for our housing market. Under ACA 10, CA would enshrine the right to housing into its constitution, and require that local jurisdictions “fulfill this right, on a[n]... equitable basis.” Two opposed takes below.
Read MoreThe specter of censorship looms over public school districts, as some locals worry their school libraries are pulling content parents label as inappropriate. Really, do parents have the constitutional right to request—even demand—a book is removed from their public school's selection? Opp Now asked four legal experts (three from CA) to speak to this controversy. Their exclusive varied takes below.
Read MoreTime has validated former CM Johnny Khamis' opposition to SJ's slow and wasteful Housing First ideology. After the most recent Council voted to continue draining city coffers with its Measure E compromise, Khamis examined why SJ is devoted to a discredited housing dogma in an exclusive conversation with Opp Now's Christopher Escher.
Read MoreHaving gotten a bailout in the latest California state budget, Bay Area Transit agencies are seeking further subsidies from bridge users. If the $1.50 toll hike is passed by state legislature, transit agencies will be able to return to business-as-usual despite carrying a fraction of the passengers they transported in 2019. Mark Joffe reports in this Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreThe latest kerfuffle at SJ City Council about interim vs. permanently subsidized housing revealed not just competing ideologies, but also a competing sense of what housing metrics SJ should monitor. SCC Libertarian Party secretary Brian Holtz suggests that removing SJ's affordable housing mandates will accelerate new construction (who knew the free market works better than constrictive laws?): allowing the City to prioritize more valuable metrics like supply, cost, and population change. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreMarc Ang, former Director of Outreach at Californians for Equal Rights (CFER), was a local leader in the “No on 16” fight against affirmative action in 2020. Here, Ang celebrates and unpacks the SCOTUS' landmark decision that bans discriminatory race-based college admissions, and why he believes it's a “win” for all CA'ns who oppose racism. An Opp Now exclusive.
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