California

  • 14 Nov 2011 at 2:52 PM

College Students Reveling In The Awesomeness Of The Shattered American Dream

By Bess Levin

As you may have heard, when the housing market collapsed, California was hit pretty, pretty, pretty bad. Particularly screwed was the town of Merced, which is third only to Las Vegas and Vallejo, CA in “metropolitan-area foreclosures,” where “builders were [once] coming into the area by the bulkload” and are now desperate to put warm bodies that can pay something, anything in the hundreds of empty houses. It’s obviously a very depressing situation, unless you happen to be a student attending school at the University of California-Merced, in which case, ka-motherfucking-ching. According to the Times, UC-M undergrads, whose school enrolls 5,200 but only has enough on-campus housing for 1,600, are moving into the nearby McMansions en-masse, creating a win-win for all.

The finances of subdivision life are compelling: the university estimates yearly on-campus room and board at $13,720 a year, compared with roughly $7,000 off-campus. Sprawl rats sharing a McMansion — with each getting a bedroom and often a private bath — pay $200 to $350 a month each, depending on the amenities…students willing to share houses have been “a blessing,” said Ellie Wooten, a former mayor of Merced and a real estate broker. Five students paying $200 a month each trump families who cannot afford more than $800 a month.

And for less than $100 extra a month, you can score yourself an even sweeter set up, new friends and the opportunity to have a major news outlet take gratuitous* pictures of you in the bath** where it appears as though you’re about to be electrocuted.

Heather Alarab, a junior at the University of California, Merced, and Jill Foster, a freshman, know that their sudden popularity has little to do with their sparkling personalities, intelligence or athletic prowess. “Hey, what are you doing?” throngs of friends perpetually text. “Hot tub today?”…Gurbir Dhillon, a senior majoring in molecular cell biology, pays $70 more than his four housemates each month for the privilege of having what they enviously call “the penthouse suite” — a princely boudoir with a whirlpool tub worthy of Caesars Palace and a huge walk-in closet, which Mr. Dhillon has filled with baseball caps and T-shirts…Jaron Brandon, a sophomore and a senator in the student government, does his homework in the Jacuzzi in his six-bedroom house, on a waterproof countertop that he rigged over the tub.

There are, of course, a few minor downsides to McMansion life, like the hobos (“Lance Eber, the crime analyst for the Merced Police Department, said vacant houses were frequent targets of theft, most recently of copper wiring. They also attract squatters, who sometimes encamp beneath covered patios, he said”), vying for parking spots (“one parks on the street, two park in the garage and two in the driveway. Whoever is getting up for an 8 a.m. class parks last”), yard work (“after an unsuccessful attempt at tending the yard with a hand mower, they now pay $50 a month to a gardener”), and the neighbors, who are having a hard time swallowing the fact that they’re living alongside kids when they were banking on stay-at-home moms of loose morals. Continue reading »

  • 22 Aug 2011 at 4:25 PM

Man With Bong Will Bring Bankrupt California Town Back From The Brink

By Bess Levin

When Ruth Rooney bought a home in Vallejo, California in 2005, Bloomberg reports, “there were few vacancies and the historic Hill neighborhood attracted young professionals.” Then the city lost the US Navy’s Mare Island shipyard, it’s largest employer and filed for bankruptcy and now? Rooney’s property value has “dropped 70 percent in six years” and Vallejo attracts a different type of “professional” to the area. One that can do a “job” out of your car or anywhere it’s convenient to drop trou.  Continue reading »

  • 15 Jun 2011 at 10:39 AM

Twenty-Two Year Old Formula 1 Heiress Singlehandedly Saving California Housing Market

By Bess Levin

Petra and dad

As I’m sure many of you know, after 90210 creator Aaron Spelling died, his wife Candy decided to downsize. She put her house on the market and moved into a $35 million 15,555 square foot condo, figuring it wouldn’t be too long before the place sold. Unfortunately, at the end of 2008, not too many people were looking for homes that had names (“The Manor”), 57,000 square feet, rooms solely devoted to gift-wrapping and asking prices of $150 million. Though she was probably advised to knock a few zeros off, Candy, the little known inspiration for Heather Locklear’s Melrose Place character, held her ground and refuse to budge on the price. Recently it started looking like the house that shows about teenagers getting high and humping built would never get sold, until a little lady named Petra Ecclestone swooped in and saved the day. Continue reading »

  • 08 Apr 2009 at 11:05 AM

Tax Riots Aren’t Just For Breakfast Anymore

By Equity Private

For years it seemed California could pretty much spend itself past drunken sailor levels and tax the stuffing out of everyone to keep the debt payments current. The state’s goal to be the leading tax-and-spend municipality was boosted not insubstantially by skyrocketing real-estate prices (and the heavy taxes thereon) and permitted some absolutely eye-popping defined-benefit plans for government workers. Now, with pension funds dizzy from repeated blows to the head, tax receipts looking dismal, IOUs instead of refund checks and ballooning unfunded liabilities, California is going to need more than an oversubscribed bond issuance (fueled by tax free status, we might add) to pull the chestnuts out. As if the times were not rough enough, the citizenry are starting to get pissed. (It’s about time?)

An angry mob of thousands converged on an Orange County parking lot in southern California on a recent Saturday morning for an anti-tax protest, stunning even the organizers with the size of the turnout. It was just one in a series of public demonstrations that have cropped up around the state.
Talk of a brewing tax revolt has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, and many political analysts are skeptical, though they concede that the taxpayer mutiny that led to the landmark Prop 13 was similarly dismissed by political professionals.

California’s anti-tax crusaders talk revolt [Reuters]

  • 16 Jan 2009 at 4:06 PM

We Will Gladly Pay You On Tuesday For A Bloated Pension Obligation Today

By Bess Levin

California’s controller says he will begin a 30-day delay on tax refunds and other payments starting Feb. 1 because the state is running out of money.
Controller John Chiang said Friday he must delay $3.7 billion in payments next month because lawmakers have failed to address California’s growing deficit.
With a $41.6 billion shortfall over the next year-and-a-half, the state is on the brink of issuing IOUs.
Chiang says his office must continue education and debt payments but will defer money for tax refunds, student aid, social services and mental health programs.
A severe drop in revenue has left the state’s main bank account depleted. The state had been relying on borrowing from special funds and Wall Street investors; those options are no longer available.

Calif. tax refunds to be delayed starting Feb. 1 [Associated Press]

  • 20 Oct 2008 at 12:13 PM

I See What You Did There

By Equity Private

Remember, not too long ago, how much noise Congresscritters were making about “rewarding irresponsible investment bankers”? Well, CNBC has come full circle today. After The Beard was prodded after bailing out state and local governments, since we are in the bailout mood, you just knew that CNBC was going to ask why we are rewarding all those irresponsible state governments with bailouts.
Ah, the symmetry runs strong with that one.

  • 17 Oct 2008 at 9:30 AM

California To Sell Body For Money (U.S. As Crack Whore Understudy) Second Edition

By Bess Levin

So when Arnie came, hat in hand, begging for like $8 billion dollars to repair the disaster that is California, we snickered a little. Yes, we admit it, we snickered. Ok, ok, municipal bankruptcy is not funny at all. We know. (Sheesh, you guys have a bunch of Munis or what?)
All that as background should tell you exactly why we say “What the fuck, Arnie,” when we see something like this:

California sold $5 billion in short-term municipal notes Thursday in a deal that helps the state meet its cash needs and one that was upsized twice in the final 24 hours because of strong investor demand.
The state will return to the market at a later date to raise the additional $2 billion toward its $7 billion total cash-flow borrowing needs for fiscal 2008-09, Bill Lockyer, California’s state treasurer, said in a statement.
To woo enough investors to take on such a large block of debt, California set the initial yield ranges to relatively high levels for short-term paper. Demand for the offering was sufficient that the final yields were at the low end of ranges first quoted to individual investors.

This really sucked because we were so revved up making fun of California that any success on their part totally killed our schadenfreunde buzz. Weak, man. Seriously. Weak.
I guess Cramer’s totally generic and borderline irresponsible “Go Munis” message the other day managed somehow to hit home.
California Increases Offering Twice to Meet Demand for Munis [WSJ]