Good morning. It’s Wednesday, May 29.
- California duplex law fails to produce more housing.
- More UC campuses join strike over protest crackdown.
- And Coachella Valley politician dies from fentanyl.
Statewide
1.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation to allow homeowners to build duplexes on their single-family lots in 2021, housing advocates hailed it as a game-changer and opponents warned that it would ruin neighborhoods. Nearly three years later, housing units completed under the law number in the dozens. A policy analyst explained: “Cities have imposed limitations on height, square footage and even landscaping to make it more difficult for homeowners to subdivide their properties profitably.” Wall Street Journal
- Backyard cottages, or ADUs, are another story. One in every five homes built in California last year was an ADU, new data showed. Mercury News
2.
Nearly a third of the academic workers across the UC system are now picketing after workers at UCLA and UC Davis walked off the job Tuesday, joining the rolling strike begun last week at UC Santa Cruz. Union organizers have said the strike is a response to unfair labor practices in the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests. Among their demands: amnesty for those who were arrested or face discipline for their actions during the unrest. CalMatters | Reuters
- “The real divide in Gen Z is not left-right but moderate versus extreme.” At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, students talked about yearning for an alternative to the militancy embraced by their peers. Wall Street Journal
3.
Community solar projects make clean energy available to more households while taking pressure off larger facilities. A proposal to incentivize them has brought together a rare coalition of supporters, including unions, ratepayers, developers, and environmentalists. But state officials are siding instead with California’s private utilities, which don’t like the idea. “You would think, given California’s ambitious clean-energy goals, that the state would be eager to incentivize solar projects of all shapes and sizes,” wrote the S.F. Chronicle’s editorial board. “Think again.”
4.
Turn toward the mountains from Highway 395 just outside of the city of Bishop and you’ll find yourself on the highest paved road in California. Rock Creek Road rises nearly 2 miles above sea level, or 10,239 feet, tracing a canyon through the Eastern Sierra to the trailhead at Mosquito Flat campground. From there, one of the mountain range’s classic day hikes meanders along a chain of eight dazzling lakes. California Through My Lens | AllTrails
Below, a photo tour of Little Lakes Valley.
Northern California
5.
Six of San Francisco’s colorful Victorian homes known as the Painted Ladies are virtually identical. They were built by the same architect in the 1890s in the Queen Anne style. Yet their property taxes range from $1,100 to $43,000. The reason is Proposition 13, the controversial 1978 law that bases property taxes not on what your home is worth but what you paid for it. The Painted Lady taxed at $1,100 has had the same owner for 50 years; the one paying $43,000 changed hands in 2020. S.F. Chronicle
6.
A Humboldt County judge resigned Monday and promised to never again seek judicial office as part of an agreement with state authorities. In February, California’s judicial watchdog agency accused Judge Greg Kreis of years of boorishness and cronyism, including once calling a public defender “Jewboy” and shoving him into a lake. Kreis admitted to an astonishing list of ethical violations, including nepotism, prejudicial misconduct, abuse of authority, and failure to remain faithful to the law. North Coast Journal | Lost Coast Outpost
7.
On May 17, when David DePape was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, the judge in the case failed to give DePape an opportunity to address the court. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley later realized her “clear error” and set a new sentencing hearing for Tuesday. This time, DePape spoke, apologizing for harming Pelosi, the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi. “I should have left when Nancy wasn’t there,” he said, breaking into tears. “I feel horrible about hurting Paul Pelosi.” The judge gave him the same sentence. N.Y. Times | Politico
8.
Fun fact: In 2016, San Francisco became home to the nation’s only pissoir of its kind, according to the urinal mapping site Urinal.net. The outdoor urinal on the edge of Dolores Park was welcomed by some locals who noted their longstanding use in Europe. The French also eat horse meat and snails, the columnist Robin Abcarian retorted: “that doesn’t make it right.” Some neighbors complained that it was obscene while a Christian group sued, arguing that pissoirs discriminate against women and people with disabilities. Yet eight years later, the lawsuit long since dismissed as meritless, the pissoir stands. On sunny weekends, when parkgoers may unwind over a bottle of rosé, the line is said to stretch more than a dozen people long.
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Southern California
9.
Construction of the world’s largest wildlife bridge is coming along nicely. Roughly the size of a football field, the $100 million Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing aims to suture together vast tracts of fragmented wildlife habitat that has been separated by a stretch of Highway 101 for decades. “When the number one threat to wildlife worldwide is the loss of habitat, we can’t write these places off,” said Beth Pratt, the project’s lead fundraiser. “Environmentalists like me usually don’t like bulldozers, but this is the world’s most hopeful construction site.” Washington Post
10.
A high-profile Coachella Valley political figure died from a fentanyl overdose, a county coroner revealed on Tuesday. On March 5, friends of Brian Nestande, a former state Assemblymember and former chief of staff for the late Rep. Sonny Bono, grew concerned when he failed to show up for an election night party for Senate candidate Steve Garvey. They went by Nestande’s Palm Desert home the next day and found him dead, police said. Nestande was 60. Desert Sun
11.
Last year 11-year-old Tycho Elling became the youngest person to earn his associate’s degree from Irvine Valley College. But he has a competitive younger sister named Athena. She enrolled at the same school weeks later, and last Thursday she graduated cum laude, five months younger than her brother was when he walked across the stage. During the college president speech, he noted that she was the youngest graduate ever. “It was sort of the finalized moment that — woohoo! — I beat [Tycho],” Athena said. Washington Post
In case you missed it
12.
A quick catch-up on headlines from the last five days or so:
- Johnny Wactor, a former “General Hospital” actor, was shot and killed Saturday when he interrupted thieves stealing the catalytic converter from his car in Los Angeles, his family said. Detectives were hunting for suspects. L.A. Times | KABC
- Everyone seemed to have a story about how wonderful Bill Walton was. The San Diego basketball legend died Monday at 71 after a battle with cancer. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said “he was the best of us.” The Nation called him “a trailblazing radical.” Bill Plaschke called him “an eternally kind and genuinely quirky soul.”
- The Sacramento climber Alex Honnold set a new speed record on Yosemite’s El Capitan, climbing the Salathé Wall route in 11 hours, 18 minutes — more than 8 hours faster than the previous record. “Pretty pooped,” he texted. S.F. Chronicle
- Humboldt County held its biggest event of the social calendar over the weekend: the 56th annual Kinetic Grand Championship, a cross between Burning Man and Nascar. A giant mechanical bull on wheels took the top prize. Redwood News | Lost Coast Outpost
- Also: a bear broke into a Monrovia home and left with only Oreos; Lynwood’s own Venus Williams is getting her own Barbie Doll; and the governor of New Hampshire called Gov. Gavin Newsom “just a prick.”
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The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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