Author Archives: Public Press staff

By Ben Christopher, CALmatters After months of signature gathering and legislative wrangling, here’s the final list of propositions that made the cut for the November election. On the list are proposals to slash the gas tax, split the state in three, reintroduce rent control, absolve major corporations of their legal debt and borrow billions to […]

By Farida Jhabvala Romero, KQED News Majed Balawi has spent months and nearly $25,000 in his quest to apply for a visa for his wife, who lives in war-torn Yemen. Balawi, is a naturalized U.S. citizen and he worries his wife might not survive the ongoing bloodshed and famine faced by millions of people in […]

By John Fensterwald, EdSource California plans to spend $13.3 million over six years to identify and replicate successful ingredients of community engagement, an essential but, for many school districts, elusive part of local control — the shorthand for setting budgeting and academic priorities under the state’s school financing law. The new money — included in […]

By Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local First things first, here it is. Here’s the 137-page historical study of a laundromat, underwritten to the tune of $23,000 by Robert Tillman, who hopes to build an eight-story, 75-unit tower atop where the washers and dryers now churn at Mission and 25th streets. And it turns out that, decades […]

By Chris Nichols, Capital Public Radio/CALmatters Toy cars are scattered across the floor in Marie Camacho’s small one-bedroom apartment in Sacramento. Photos of her 4-year-old boy, Julian, line the walls. The 32-year-old single mom juggles two part-time jobs, but she can’t stand to be away from her son. “He likes being around his mom,” said […]

By Nico Savidge, EdSource More than 1.3 million low- and middle-income students attend California’s public colleges and universities each year without having to pay tuition, thanks to financial aid programs in each of the state’s higher education systems that cover those bills. A California law that allows for a free first year of tuition at […]

By Elizabeth Castillo, CALmatters As the food court at a Sacramento mall buzzed with families on a recent summer day, Emily Wickelgren and her daughter Thea were enjoying lunch at Subway. The 7-year-old opted for water with her sandwich instead of soda or juice. “I do have unusual kids in that neither one of them […]

By Tonya Mosley, KQED News Fix Caroline Camhy didn’t have a plan the night she decided to grab a lawn chair and sit along the Caltrain tracks near her home. It was Oct. 20, 2009, and all she knew was that teenagers were killing themselves, and she had to do something. “At that point I […]

By Zach St. George, Bay Nature On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy washed into the eastern United States. The storm killed 191 people, razed much of the Jersey Shore, flooded part of Lower Manhattan, and damaged or destroyed 600,000 homes. All told, it caused something like $65 billion in damage and economic loss. Sea level […]

By Matt Levin, CALmatters When the California Housing Finance Agency was created in 1975 in Gov. Jerry Brown’s first term, the mission was simple: help low- and moderate-income families buy their first home. More than 40 years later, amid skyrocketing housing prices and near-record low homeownership rates, that goal is getting harder and harder to […]