Economy

When Resi Salvador’s three little brothers walk through the door, they make a beeline for her, seated at a folding chair at her parents’ kitchen table. They snuggle into her arms. Resi laughs. She’s home. Just a few feet away in the living room stands a bunkbed, where Resi sleeps when she’s home. All told, […]

California's governor delivers a bold speech on homelessness — but shies away from the bolder recommendations of his own task force.

Los Angeles County will stop billing people millions of dollars a year for the costs of their incarceration in an effort to lighten the financial burden on former inmates. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to eliminate all criminal administrative fees over which the county has discretion after hearing  testimony from […]

Carmen Preciado has always been able to identify the precise spot along Middlefield Road that marks the end of her world and the beginning of another. “When I go to the other side, it’s just like: ‘Oh, this is a rich people area,'” said Preciado, a 31-year-old single mother and life-long Redwood City resident. “You […]

Last May, Burger Patch first opened its doors in midtown Sacramento with a sign that said “No Cash Accepted.” The owners of the organic and vegan burger joint were worried that a cash register might invite theft.  But customers kept showing up with only cash. Sometimes the cashiers would accept it, working around the digital […]

Tens of thousands of families still owe juvenile justice fees that California has since abolished.

On a recent school day in Fresno, Fernando Valero repaired a 32,000-pound diesel truck with failed sensors. Then he crawled under another truck before lifting it with a floor jack. The morning school work left his hands black from grease. And his day was just getting started. After lunch, Valero left Duncan Polytechnical High School […]

One by one, wildfire victims, bondholders and insurers have signed onto PG&E's plan for emerging from bankruptcy reorganization. Only Newsom now stands in the company's way — and he has threatened a public takeover if big changes aren't made at California's largest investor-owned utility. 

It’s official: The gap between the Bay Area’s haves and have-nots is wider than anywhere else in the state. Top income earners in the Bay Area make 12.2 times as much as those at the bottom of the economic ladder, according to new research from the Public Policy Institute of California, which analyzed 2018 U.S. […]

Options for addressing the state's most pressing social problem  range, at best, from limited to imperfect. What would you choose?