Month: December 2016

By David Jackson / San Diego UrbDeZine

A Population Boom and a Housing Crunch. Rising prices and short supply are making it increasingly difficult to pay the rent in San Diego. If you’ve attempted to search for a place to rent in San Diego you’ve probably encountered more than a few roadblocks and had your fair share of frustrations. The challenges multiply if you’ve tried to find something affordable anywhere near where you work.

Housing prices have soared over the last several years to the delight of homeowners and landlords, but to the dismay of renters, especially those with lower incomes. The effects are being felt most directly by low income residents and millennials. New low income housing is needed in the short term with further developments in the coming years to prevent the city’s housing crisis from turning into an economic one.

A study by the London Group published by the San Diego Chamber of Commerce highlights one of the root causes for the housing shortfall, a lack of new building permits being issued in San Diego County.

By Ernie McCray

The last two months of this year have been a living hell for many people, including me, considering our social and political sins but I’m definitely not going to classify 2016 as the worst year of my life – as a lot of people seem to be doing.

I mean by nature I tend to give very little value to my crummy times and tons of bonus points to the moments wherein my soul is filled with hope. Where there’s hope there’s got to be a good year. And I’m pretty much hoping for this and that all the time.

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

San Diego City Councilwoman Myrtle Cole’s contentious election as Council president last week culminated with her appointments to the various City Council committees.

Few of us know that these committees exist or what they do, but by the time issues are brought before the full City Council for legislative action they have been discussed and pretty much finalized in a committee.

Cole’s appointments to the Public Services and Livable Neighborhood (PS&L) committee denies a seat at the table for those of us who live in communities south of 8. Her selection of Council members Chris Cate (chair), Lorie Zapf (vice chair), Barbary Bry, and Chris Ward is enraging, deeply concerning and unacceptable. Here’s what PS&L does:

It’s that time of the year when media and press outfits turn reflective and ponder the “best” or “most important” stories they’ve published over the last 12 months. We’ve done something similar here after reviewing our archives from 2016, and have come up what we think are the “top stories” from OB and Point Loma for the year.

The “stories” are really news, photos, analysis and opinions about real issues within the communities of the Peninsula, a number of which have continued from last year. So, here they are, the top 15 stories – not in any precise order, but in some kind of semblance of importance, with the mostest at the beginning

1. Short Term Vacation Rentals

Definitely a hold-over issue from 2015, short term vacation rentals continue to spark an invigorated opposition from coastal communities – including OB. The loss of community that vacation rentals pose for Ocean Beach and other beach communities was explored here in The Loss of Community .

Wolf-Pac: A PAC Dedicated to Getting Money Out of Politics

By Paul Keleher and John Lawrence

The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) on 21 January 2010 that freedom of speech prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation.

The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations.

A well known Ocean Beach man – who goes by his nickname “G-Rock” – was badly injured Christmas night in a vehicle-pedestrian accident; he’s currently hospitalized but is expected to recover.

Police reported that “G-Rock” was hit by a car at Ebers Street and Voltaire Street in Ocean Beach. It was determined by police that drugs or alcohol were not involved.

G-Rock’s name is Glyn Abraham Franks, according to a cousin, who contacted the OB Rag looking for any information about what happened. (Media called him “Glen”.) Franks is mentally challenged but has lots of friends in the community, as he was born and raised in OB.

He’s also an aide to his dad, Glyn Franks of 2nd Chances, Bread of Life food distribution.

There’s been lots of rumors and reports of the closing of Rancho’s in Ocean Beach – the well-loved veggie Mexican restaurant on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard.

Eater San Diego went as far as including the closing of OB’s Ranchos on its list of “The Saddest Restaurant Closures of 2016”. The food blog quoted Troy Johnson of San Diego Magazine:

Rancho’s in Ocean Beach. Vegan and vegetarian-friendly Mexican food that had been a staple for the community for 30 years. Salsa that renewed my faith in life. Its closing is a sure sign of the Armageddon and bistrofication of San Diego’s last affordable beach town. Hopefully Cheesecake Factory will take its place so that I can finally throw myself off Sunset Cliffs with confidence.

Well, the OB Rag can now report – with some confidence – and paraphrasing Mark Twain’s famous quote,- that –

… the report of Rancho’s death is an exaggeration.

Until recently, American women didn’t even own their own bodies.

By Jill Richardson / Other Words

From his campaign rhetoric to his transition appointments, our next president has placed himself squarely in a conservative movement calling itself the “alt-right.” That movement, the Los Angeles Times reports, “generally embraces and promotes white nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny.”

As a privileged, white, and heterosexual woman, I’ve never considered my rights under attack to the same degree as the other groups in that list. But to this incoming bunch, feminism is a dirty word.

Maybe it’s time to review what feminism is, and why it emerged in the first place.

How many times have you heard that? How many times have you said to yourself that you will not be caught up in any type of scam or fraud scheme because you are too smart for that?

I’ve said it a dozen times, and wouldn’t you know it – I got caught twice this week. Damn fool!

The first time was when I purchased a skin ointment to erase my wrinkles. (See my article on my New Years Resolution . A “free” trial and just pay shipping. That has been resolved, after I saw a $89.90 bill on my credit card.

But let me tell you about this other one.

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Maria Garcia recently release her long awaited book based on the award winning San Diego Free Press series The History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights. The site of the book release—the historic Marston House—was no accident.

By Daniel Gutierrez / Medium.com

Their labor is all the more praiseworthy in that they will not see the fruits of their sacrifices; but they can be certain that their labor will not be wasted. Nothing in this world is ever lost; tiny drops of water form the ocean. Mikhail Bakunin

There’s no doubt that the latest Star Wars film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, provides an uncanny reflection of our own times. The movie was released at the tail-end of a year that saw the death of countless poets, the demise of popular democracy across multiple countries, and the increasingly visible reconfiguration of a nationalist tendency throughout the global north. Looking towards next year, with the coming elections in both Germany and France, it should be clear that 2016 was not just one unjust, anomalous year?—?rather, its the first bad year in a new cycle defined by injustice.

By Jim Miller

In my final column of 2015, I wrote about the most underreported story of the year according to Project Censored’s annual list: “2016 will be the year when half of the world’s wealth will be controlled by the top 1%.” After reporting the dismaying details of that story, I ended with the following analysis:

So putting this all together, we are just about to end a year where we learned that global plutocracy is becoming more and more firmly entrenched and that the beneficiaries of that very system are not just responsible for an immoral level of economic inequality and human suffering but also for speeding us toward an apocalyptic end to the climate crisis.