Recent Comments

My first ever comment here- totally disagree with Caruso write up. Besides my belief that SY Ranch is a considerably better food and service experience than Carusos in every regard, the faux everything about Miramar (including Carusos) is apparent at every turn. Wearing a sport coat to give appearance of “fine dining” is so spot on with all of Miramar- give everything an “appearance” but ignore the substance. We moved to SB to get away from having to give any appearances. Plus- the hotel guests are 80% people coming up from LA for a weekend - so that’s another reason to avoid :)

Expecting a SY Kitchen-related place to appear soon in the Via Vie space

Evening with Malcolm Gladwell is hosted by Kara Swisher, which makes me doubly excited. Thanks for sharing the County petition. Maybe there’s more to the story but this code sounds misguided or outdated. Exactly what I was talking about in my last post about finding red tape we can eliminate to help business without compromising on environment. And I know a lot of other things the County can be doing with their supposedly limited resources…

I would love to see everyone's housing bills that show their costs have skyrocketed that would result in landlords having to increase rent every year to folks who have stayed in that same apartment/house. On top of the fact that we know they aren't charging rent based on a zero net profit so there was already a cushion built in when they rented it. If you work with anyone who rents, you've probably heard plenty of horror stories of folks having to find a new apartment because the landlords are increasing rent without making any marked improvements to their rentals. Yes, it is greed whether you like that word or not, it's the truth. Again I've owned my home for 4 years and the largest increase has been our HOA fees, all other costs are very slight increases that would warrant a 2% increase on rent at most but I have a feeling those increases are not breaking the bank for the vast majority of landlords who are probably using the specter of "inflation" or "rising costs" or as some of the disgusting comments here have mentioned "illegal immigrants" to raise rents on tenants. The MAGAism of all this is really sick.

Unless you are living off grid 100%, not paying for any maintenance, not paying property tax or insurance, your costs of homeownership HAVE increased in the past four years.

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Good luck finding people to work at boutiques and restaurants that charge $100/meal with your racist, classist plan!

Somehow 1000's of low income, low-skilled, undocumented (not allowed to legally work in the US) people live and thrive in our community. And yet, according to the activists, we are in dire need of low income housing to house all the people making 60-80k a year. What would happen if all those people who were not supposed to be working here left? Would 1000's of units become available at "market rate"? Would the market respond with added inventory with lower prices? Would certain businesses suffer due to a lack of cheap, exploitable labor? Would others thrive due to a fair market? Would incomes and wages rise due to the market requiring a higher figure to attract workers? Why yes. Yes they would. Until reality is discussed, this whole conversation is an exercise in academic discourse. Not in real life and certainly not in practice. We need to raise the standard of living downtown. Attract higher incomes and high wage professional jobs. Not add more low income housing and tourist focused low wage jobs. Oh, and ENFORCE THE LAWS already. Cheaters are cheaters. Make them pay. This might be a shock to some of you but people who live in low income housing do not shop at boutiques or eat $100 meals. They barely contribute to the city's tax base and now the city wants to hit those people with a regressive sales tax increase. The very people who can afford it the least! (Sales taxes hit the lowest income people the hardest). When you pack the downtown corridor with low income, or worse, Govt housing, you get low income results while removing future value from the tax rolls. Add the tourism industry and you end up with the inevitable... the lowest common denominator.

This is not what every property owner I know or have heard of is experiencing! The fact that insurance is going up , if you can even get it, makes headlines! Maintenance costs are astronomical with the going rate for handymen more than doubling, materials have gone up so much that's another headline maker, utilities up, and plumbing and other work has gone up steeply. I've had plumbers tell me I should have done a number of things awhile back because prices have gone up so much. Seriously, are you being serious?

Lucas is right. Without even getting into the complicated economics, even the most basic premise of Paul's argument is incorrect. Any homeowner can tell you their costs tend to go up every year.

The Tri-County Produce project (53 units, average size 830 sqft) could be improved. Option 1: eliminate all residential parking and reduce the height to 3 stories. Option 2: 4 stories, but AB 1287 project with 100 units (average size 446 sqft).