Instead, while some of the small growers who characterized the illegal business have been licensed, the new market has quickly become dominated by a handful of huge corporate farmers. Hoping to save the small growers from extinction, the California Legislature is considering rolling back some of the very environmental guardrails that were supposed to make the legal industry more sustainable.

This is a big mistake. While the intent of proposals like Senate Bill 508, introduced by John Laird, D-Monterey, may be laudable, removing environmental safeguards would set a bad precedent, and it won’t save the beleaguered growers who are struggling to survive in the new market.

In fact, it will probably hasten their demise.

The state’s environmental regulations are not to blame for the struggles of small farmers. County permitting decisions, the local political climate in places where there is opposition to the industry, and the inability of law enforcement to completely eradicate illicit cultivation have been much bigger hurdles.

But the largest obstacle has been simple economics.

Cannabis prices have fallen rapidly since the product became legal, and that shouldn’t be a surprise. Prior to legalization, about 80% of the cost of producing weed came from trying to avoid law enforcement, according to a RAND Corporation report. With that huge cost of production gone, larger growers entered the market and were able to use technology and other efficiencies to lower their costs.

The result is a glut of supply that has driven down the price, making it nearly impossible for small farmers in the remote forested mountains of Northern California, who once dominated the industry, to compete.

Changing the environmental rules wouldn’t change this economic reality. Instead, it would punish the small growers who navigated the permitting system and are playing by the rules. And it would give still another advantage to the large corporate farmers who have had little trouble creating and expanding their operations.

The state should focus on changes that would actually help small growers. Increasing law enforcement spending against illicit producers for at least five years would send a clear message.

Limiting the size of farms, which would give small growers a chance to compete while they establish their businesses, would also help. This was part of the original intent of Prop. 64, but the state created a loophole that allowed larger farms to be created and dominate the market.

California needs to make it easier for small growers to reach their customers. Large farmers have the resources to build vertically integrated businesses where cultivation, processing and distribution are all under one umbrella, while small growers currently lose much of their revenue to middlemen.

When voters agreed to legalize marijuana for recreational use, they were told they were helping both small farmers and the environment. The state can and should continue to pursue each of these goals, instead of retreating on both.

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula is a professor of health policy, economics and law at USC and former president of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy. Michael Sutton is former president of the California Fish and Game Commission. They wrote this commentary for CalMatters.

Chinese leaders have been adroit at extracting economic concessions from the United States in exchange for commitments that are usually restatements of prior agreements and seldom honored. Wildly uneven bilateral trade with China first hit American workers in the 2000s in the form of massive job losses. It then hit American consumers during and after the Covid-19 pandemic in the form of shortages and dependencies. Now, as China aligns with Russia and grows increasingly bellicose toward its Asian neighbors, it fuels the hit on American national security interests.

We shouldn’t expect Biden to turn all this around in one meeting. However, we should expect he won’t revert to the theater of unaccountability and handshakes that described U.S.-China relations for so long. The interests of American workers, consumers and security aren’t served by offering China’s leadership an open hand when it comes to trade.

In retrospect, normalizing trade with China was a destabilizing event in this country. American corporations rushed overseas to sell to Chinese consumers and took with them their manufacturing to take advantage of the huge and impoverished Chinese workforce. American factory workers saw their jobs leave for Asia, and more were laid off in the resulting flood of Chinese imports. U.S. manufacturing employment, a middle-class bulwark for Americans holding less than a four-year degree, was reduced by nearly 6 million over the next decade. California alone lost more than 650,000 jobs from 2001 to 2018. Addiction and mortality rates increased.

American shoppers, meanwhile, benefitted from cheaper prices at big box stores stocked with imports. But those price reductions evaporated years before the pandemic revealed that many crucial material goods – be it personal protective equipment for health workers or building materials for home construction – simply aren’t made here anymore.

This black swan event brought reality into relief: The United States has deindustrialized to a point where many supply chains were subject to grinding international bottlenecks.

Overreliance on Chinese trade has a lot of responsibility for that.

Bill Clinton argued “the more China liberalizes its economy, the more fully it will liberate the potential of its people” to persuade Congress to normalize trade ties. George Bush was both too permissive and too disengaged. Barack Obama thought dialogue would bring about true market and political liberalization. Donald Trump, acting unilaterally, thought tariffs and browbeating Chinese leadership would close those trade deficits and reshore U.S. manufacturing capacity. None of it worked.

President Biden has maintained virtually all of Trump’s tariffs. He’s also enacted federal investments that create not only domestic manufacturing capacity but demand for it as well. He’s checked outbound investment in Chinese companies and erected export controls on technologies like semiconductor manufacturing equipment critical to industrial advancement and military platforms. He’s shown a willingness to work with allies against unfair Chinese trade. Consider, for example, the ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and European Union to create a clean steel bloc.

I hope the president will remember this, all accomplished since Washington adopted a tougher line on Chinese trade. Because, when he meets Xi today, the resiliency America is re-establishing can’t be traded away again.

Scott Paul is president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, an association of a number of large domestic manufacturers and the United Steelworkers union.

One ray of hope shines bright — the more than 300,000 Chinese students who attend American universities, signaling the generosity of both governments. These young scholars enliven my classroom and enrich research programs around the country. Many come away with warm affection for America: our free press and raucous debates, our music and movies, even calling professors by their first name.

Still, the backdrop to the Biden-Xi summit remains ominous. In recent months, the U.S. has shot down China’s spy balloon floating across the Midwest, limited technologies exported to Beijing, and implored Xi to push his ally, Iran, to defuse the bloody Israeli-Hamas conflict. Protestors will greet Xi on his arrival to California, spotlighting his oppression of writers and religion.

But the wide panorama of Chinese students in the America — acquainted with both societies — offers fresh lessons. I asked several across the nation hosted by colleagues what hopes these young scholars hold for this week’s Bay Area gathering. Here’s what I heard:

• Yi. Biden should express “deep respect for (Xi’s) family heritage, his father a notable figure in Chinese history (a military hero, then distributed land to rural peasants). He is quite stubborn and firmly believes in his convictions.” Biden should be “eager to advance cooperation with China openly and sincerely (in) the economy, education and health care.”

• Zhang. “Opening markets would be a good thing, the return of Google. When my mother had chemotherapy, the better medicine from the U.S., with fewer side effects, was no longer available.”

• Hui. “Xi emphasizes our confidence in traditional (Confucian) culture, that is, how we view the modernization process with Chinese characteristics. Traditional wisdom emphasizes harmony and development. These are common values (shared by both nations).”

• Li. “The narrative in China is that America is a big bully, intervening into others’ domestic affairs. Maybe nudges are seen as condescending. I very much hope they can build trust.”

• Zixi. “China should avoid misrepresenting or vilifying the U.S. in global discourse. I desire greater collaboration and mutual respect, particularly among younger generations.” America “should invite more Chinese students, perhaps with a tuition discount.”

Washington remains obsessed with stratospheric interests, such as selling semiconductors to China, cultivating allies that surround the People’s Republic. White House advisors briefed reporters last week, objectifying the Chinese people, dryly suggesting that Biden seeks to “manage the competition, preventing the downside risk of conflict.”

Instead, these students invite Americans to rise above cultural caricature and grim narratives of geopolitical combat. They yearn to know us better and for us to reach out to them.

Bruce Fuller, a sociologist working on education in East Asia, has taught at UC Berkeley and Harvard for 34 years.

“Water leaking in cell from chase again” was written by a prisoner on a maintenance sheet on the first floor. “Sink drain needs cleaned (sic) out,” another wrote. “Wall, sink, toilet area leaking,” wrote an occupant of another cell.

Steven Baumgartner’s toilet does not flush properly.

“It’s been doing it ever since I’ve been here, and I’ve been here for a year,” he said. He reported it six months ago. “In fact, I was going to report it again.”

There are so many unhealthy conditions of confinement that have existed so long that they’re practically invisible to men there. Well, invisible to some.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to convert San Quentin into a rehabilitation center does not address the deplorable living conditions at the 171-year-old prison.

The list of problems on the maintenance sheets in the west block span time periods from a few days to several weeks or even months. Some problems don’t get fixed.

“Hot water won’t shut off — second request,” a prisoner in cell 1-W-33 wrote.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s whopping $14.4 billion budget and the governor’s $360.6 million price tag to turn San Quentin into a rehabilitation center has seemingly turned away from the existing problems with the prison’s infrastructure. Little has been said about the $20 million the governor promised for “various improvement projects,” but maintenance needs topped $1.6 billion in 2021.

The overcrowded prison places an excessive strain on its aging infrastructure. Each cell was originally designed to hold one prisoner. Today, most cells are doing double duty, housing two men.

It’s not easy to have work done. Harry Terry, who lives in a cell on the first floor, asked maintenance to look into a lack of hot water in his sink. He told me his toilet button sticks, too, and that he has listed the problem twice.

“It’s been at least two or three months,” Terry said. “Now I’m just living with it.”

Correctional officers say they call maintenance “if it’s an emergency.” For everything else, an inmate building clerk collects the maintenance sheets to create a record and write a work order.

Every floor has maintenance problems. I counted 12 on the second floor; none on the third (because a new sheet had been placed there); five on the fourth floor and 10 on the fifth. The problems are wide-ranging: cells in need of paint, no hot water, lights burned out, sinks clogged, water leaks, ventilation problems and toilets clogged or having low pressure.

Toilets present a particularly gross sanitary problem when they do not flush properly, due to problems with water pressure.

For years, prisoners in the west block have been waiting for San Quentin to repair the leaks in the first-floor chase where standing water has been accumulating — along with dust, dirt and possibly mold from years of moisture.

At some level, the conditions in the west block have a criminogenic effect on some of the men who live there because the underlying message received is that no one cares.

Money will not fix these problems, though. People will.

Kevin D. Sawyer is an award-winning incarcerated journalist and former associate editor of San Quentin News. This commentary was originally published by CalMatters in partnership with Prison Journalism Project, which publishes independent journalism by incarcerated writers and others impacted by incarceration.

We believe in that principle today as much as we did then. But as we watch with horror the ever-escalating war in Gaza and Israel, we are also acutely aware that the conflict poses a growing peril that could tear our faith communities here in America irreparably apart.

Indeed, the lines are being drawn. Members of the Jewish community feel that Muslims leaders have not gone far enough to denounce Hamas for its brutal, life-destroying rampage against 1,400 Israeli civilians, the deadliest one-day spasm of anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust. They also feel threatened by the dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents across the United States, including at pro-Palestinian rallies on college campuses.

At the same time, American Muslims feel dread at the new wave of Islamophobia. Muslims are resentful at being pressured to speak out against Hamas’ actions when they feel that there has been relative silence by many Jews over the oppression Palestinians have endured for decades under Israeli occupation. They see the media as being one-sided, and elected officials downplaying the disproportionate loss of life of more than 10,000 people in Gaza.

Muslim leaders feel that the prevailing pro-Israel zeitgeist in American society makes it unsafe for them to speak up for Palestinians or risk being labeled antisemites or supporters of terrorism, the censure of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib being one example. Meanwhile, Muslim children are facing bullying in schools.

It is striking that Jews and Muslims alike feel that their own fear and vulnerability is being ignored by society at large, that they have been rendered invisible. Yet despite that commonality of feeling, it is clear that our two communities are being pulled apart. The dominant approach has been profoundly tribal. Most of us are too angry and traumatized to hear the other side and acknowledge that there may be truth in both narratives. Nowadays the credo is “You are either with us or against us.” All of this carries the potential for more than fear, loathing and mutual recriminations and is already leading to violence.

This reversion back into the stockade by members of both communities is a tragedy because, during the two decades since 9/11, which brought tens of thousands of Jews and Muslims across the United States into sustained and positive contact, the two of us have witnessed and participated in the building of a vibrant network of Muslim-Jewish cooperation. This bond was further strengthened by shared Jewish and Muslim apprehension over the rise of white supremacist ideology, which has contributed to increased levels of antisemitism and Islamophobia, putting the security of Jews and Muslims at risk. Yet just at the very moment when the Muslim-Jewish alliance is needed more desperately than ever to stand together against violence and bigotry, and in support of core American principles of democracy and pluralism, we find ourselves lashing out at one another.

This downward trajectory can still be turned around, but it will take active involvement of many of us in both communities, from communal and spiritual leaders to grassroots members. Now is the time for Jews and Muslims who have built friendships over the past two decades to show courage and pick up the phone and call each other, acknowledge the other’s pain and fears, even if we don’t agree on solutions to the crisis.

We appeal to our fellow Muslims and Jews to look out for the safety of the other. If you notice any suspicious activity, promptly notify the authorities. Be an upstander when riding the train or bus and watch out for your fellow Jew in the yarmulke or the Muslim woman in the hijab.

Counsel your children. Help them understand the conflict and enable them to see the humanity in their fellow students. Caution them against making ethnic remarks, and guide them on how to respond if bullied. Keep that lunch appointment with your Jewish colleague, or a walk in the park with your Muslim neighbor. Organize small interfaith prayer groups and forums designed to evoke empathy. The Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom’s Listening and Sharing sessions are one example of gatherings organized to share each other’s pain and be heard in a safe space.

For the sake of both our communities and the well-being of American society, Muslims and Jews in the United States must hold tight together to the common tenets of our Abrahamic faiths and embrace our shared humanity. If we do, we stand a chance of salvaging and enhancing the relationships we have spent decades cultivating. The oasis of Muslim-Jewish friendship and trust is simply too precious to be sacrificed to the false totem of tribal loyalty.

Sabeeha Rehman and Walter Ruby are co-authors of “We Refuse To Be Enemies. How Muslims and Jews Can Make Peace, One Friendship At A Time” (Arcade Publishing, 2021). ©2023 The Baltimore Sun. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency. 

This should be obvious but apparently isn’t, which is why the auto industry is now wringing its hands over electric vehicle sales problems. General Motors, Ford, Mercedes, Nissan, Toyota and even Tesla have raised red flags about slowing demand. GM scaled back plans for 2024 and said it would delay the opening of a new electric truck factory. Ford is considering cutting shifts at its F-150 Lightning plant. Nissan is transferring more resources to hybrids rather than EVs. Mercedes has described the EV market as “ brutal.” And Toyota’s chairman, Akio Toyoda, said last month that “people are finally seeing the reality” of EVs.

The problem, it seems, is that the so-called next wave of EV buyers isn’t cooperating. The EV is not trickling down. At least not for those prospective buyers.

But this should have been obvious. It certainly was for Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, founders of Tesla Motors. In a now well-known tale, Eberhard and Tarpenning in 2003 gathered consumer data for their nascent company by driving up and down the streets of Palo Alto and peering into driveways to see what kinds of cars the wealthy suburbanites owned. What they found tucked between the $2 million homes was Priuses. Many of the driveways contained one luxury car and one Prius, which was the environmental darling of the day. So they’d see a Porsche and a Prius. Or a BMW and a Prius. Or a Lexus and a Prius.

Economists have since identified this phenomenon. They call it “conspicuous conservation,” a wrinkle on Thorstein Veblen’s century-old theory of conspicuous consumption. The idea is that some modern consumers purchase products as a way of displaying their green virtue.

In 2003, Eberhard and Tarpenning couldn’t have known the term “conspicuous conservation,” but they had the wisdom to understand what they were seeing: Environmentalism had come to the doorstep of the wealthy. Thus, they concluded, they could sell electric cars to the affluent. And they believed the EV would eventually trickle down to the middle class.

In its early years, this was the real genius of Tesla. Selling to wealthy environmentalists and enthusiasts became a goal. And it kept the company afloat until its bizarre stock market performance later enriched it.

Eberhard and Tarpenning, however, seldom got due credit for their flash of genius. Up to that point, Detroit’s marketers had believed that electric cars should start at the bottom of the market and rise up. No sane consumer, they thought, would pay more for a vehicle that offered less. Therefore, a top-down economic model wouldn’t work.

Clearly, Detroit was wrong. Wealthy enthusiasts bought Teslas. And here we are now, and the time has come for the EV to trickle down — and it’s not happening. Working-class consumers just aren’t cooperating. It seems that they have their own ideas about what to do with their disposable income.

None of this is new, of course. Middle-class consumers have always had many reasons for buying cars. They need their vehicles to go to work, to Grandma’s, to college and to go on vacation. They need them for all these things, and yet they need them to be inexpensive.

What they don’t need is a costly second car. And, too often, EVs have become just that. An EV’s initial cost is still too high and its practicality too low, especially for the less affluent.

Tesla knew from the beginning that trickle-down would be necessary and would be a challenge. And now that promise is coming due.

Buyers of the next wave won’t purchase an EV so they can park it next to their Porsche.

Charles J. Murray is a Chicago-area author who writes about the history of technology. His most recent book is “Long Hard Road: The Lithium-Ion Battery and the Electric Car.” ©2023 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

A few nights ago, I finally reached my friend Riham. She told me about her family’s dilemma: Do they all remain in one house and risk the whole family being wiped out in one Israeli airstrike? Or should she and her husband split up and divide their kids between them to increase the chance that some will survive?

Riham told me that she and her husband decided to hunker down in separate places, hoping that at least one of them will remain alive to care for their children who make it through.

My hand shook as I hung up the phone. I am a doctor and my frequent travels to Gaza focus on health care. I’m also a father. I can’t imagine my wife, kids and me being forced to make a similar choice.

From my California home, I watch news of the Israeli bombardment of a trapped population of 2.2 million people, over half of them children.

4,100 children dead

At least 4,100 children are among the more than 10,000 people that have been killed in Gaza in the past month, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Monday. Hundreds more are buried beneath the rubble, presumed dead.

U.S. President Joe Biden called humanitarian assistance “a critical and urgent need.” Yet he continues to send weapons to Israel to continue pummeling Palestinians in Gaza, while uttering toothless statements about the importance of protecting civilian life, which Israel ignores.

I personally knew hundreds of children in Gaza from the psychosocial rehabilitation work we do there. I laughed with them; they told me their hopes and dreams. I hugged them goodbye before I departed after my last trip, just five months ago.

How could killing these children possibly be justified as “self defense?” This justification can only happen in a world that has so thoroughly dehumanized Palestinians that our children are no longer seen as children.

Growing up under brutal Israeli military occupation in the West Bank city of Nablus, subjected to checkpoints and curfews, I experienced first-hand being treated as less than human. The escalating Israeli rhetoric and violence against us has gone ignored and unchallenged by Western governments for decades. And now, our children are paying the price with their lives.

Father and a doctor

I keep imagining how Dr. Mohamed Abu Musa must have felt when he learned that his home was bombed and his son killed. The doctor, whose story has been internationally broadcast, works at the emergency room of Nasser Medical Complex in Southern Gaza. He had been at the hospital for 10 days straight, treating countless critically wounded people.

I imagine being in his shoes, overwhelmed with the horror, not able to go home and see my family. I can feel the wave of panic that would wash over me as I spot my wife, frantically describing our son to the ER nurses. “His name is Yousef, he’s 7 years old, he has fair skin with curly hair, he’s handsome.” I imagine a nurse locating my child’s body under a shroud, one of many corpses piled up in the corridor.

And then, I need to block out those images. I am a father, yes, but I’m also a doctor. Even before the bombardment began, Gaza’s health care was in a dire situation due to 16 years of Israel’s illegal siege and naval blockade and 55 years of Israeli military occupation.

Hospitals and clinics had chronic shortages of medication, medical supplies and diagnostic equipment such as X-ray machines. Limited electricity impacted everything from surgeries to dialysis. The siege restricted every aspect of daily life including preventing Palestinians from being able to travel, and controlling what goods could enter Gaza.

As Israel began bombarding Gaza, the Israeli government further tightened the siege, cutting off water, food, electricity and fuel.  In the past four weeks, Israel killed 192 medical professionals, including many of my friends and colleagues, and many more have been displaced, forcing hospitals to function with a fraction of their staff. In addition, Israeli bombs damaged or destroyed 120 health care facilities and 40 ambulances. One-third of the hospitals and two-thirds of primary health care clinics are no longer functioning. Others are on the verge of closing. The rationed fuel for generators is almost gone.

Health care crisis

If the Biden administration is serious about protecting civilians, it must insist that Israel’s complete siege and blockade be lifted, and safe corridors for sufficient humanitarian and medical aid be established, so that the most vulnerable of our population — children — can be reached without delay.

Most important: Biden and the entire world must reject the systematic dehumanization of those children. After all, children in Gaza would not need humanitarian aid if the world did not permit Israel to bomb and besiege them.

Dr. Yousef Khelfa is an oncologist in Sonora, California, and co-founder and former president of the Palestinian American Medical Association.

New York is considering a similar law that would also ban a fifth substance previously included in California’s law — titanium dioxide, which is used in Skittles. That’s why the California measure got dubbed the “Skittles ban” (a name that stuck even after titanium dioxide was cut from the draft).

California is the first state to go beyond Food and Drug Administration regulations by banning the other four additives. Should it have deferred to the FDA?

Sluggish safety review

The challenges facing the FDA make the case for state action. Sluggish and irregular safety reviews, a fast-track ingredient approval loophole that is abused by manufacturers and a focus on acute food poisoning over long-term diet all hinder the agency’s ability to address the growing risks associated with our food supply.

The FDA is required to review the safety of any new food additive and grant approval before it can be used. If evidence indicates that an additive is unsafe, the FDA is supposed to decline or limit its use. Three of the substances in California’s law were approved by this standard review: potassium bromate, red dye No. 3 and brominated vegetable oil. But the FDA is reevaluating the safety of the latter two and has proposed, though not finalized, a rule to ban brominated vegetable oil from the food supply.

The fourth substance set to be banned in California, propyl paraben, was approved through what’s effectively a loophole in the FDA system. Ingredients classified as “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) are exempt from the additive category and thus from careful FDA review. Congress crafted this exemption to be used infrequently, primarily to keep common ingredients like salt and spices on the market without an onerous approval process. But as food companies sought to avoid the rigorous food additive review, GRAS applications piled up.

Voluntary notification

Without the resources to research the applications and lacking further support from Congress, the FDA allowed manufacturers to skip the application and determine GRAS status with only a “voluntary notification process.” This means companies can choose whether to let the FDA know they believe their substance is GRAS — in which case FDA can affirm that decision — or they can self-affirm GRAS status and market the substance without ever notifying the FDA. Thousands of substances have entered the food supply this way. Even when companies voluntarily notify, as was the case for propyl paraben in 1984, the FDA does not conduct a full safety review to affirm GRAS status.

Since GRAS notification is voluntary, the FDA does not know all the substances in our food supply. One study found that of the 4,284 GRAS determinations made as of January 2011, just 582 were cleared through the FDA’s voluntary notification process.

Although the FDA has the authority to revoke GRAS status or an additive approval, the agency reviews the safety of greenlighted ingredients sporadically, rather than regularly — and often slowly.

Take for example, trans fat from partially hydrogenated oils, a GRAS substance used for decades in commercial baked goods and other products. A 2004 citizen petition asked the FDA to look into the safety of these oils, but it wasn’t until 2015 that the FDA determined that they were not GRAS and banned them in food starting in 2020. By the time the FDA got around to this, New York City had already banned them in restaurants (in 2006), as had California (in 2008).

The under-regulation of food additives is part of a larger challenge. FDA vetting focuses more on acute risks, such as foodborne illness, than on longer-term risks from diet. Of the agency’s more than $1 billion budget for its foods program, only 7% goes to nutrition and labeling, its major strategies to address diet-related disease. Yet while foodborne illness causes about 3,000 deaths per year, 1.5 million deaths in 2018 — more than half of all deaths that year — resulted from conditions linked to diet.

Patchwork of bans

But states moving to ban substances isn’t a perfect solution either. They generally don’t have the resources to conduct comprehensive safety reviews, and it would be more efficient to beef up the FDA’s infrastructure than to duplicate costly systems across states and potentially create a confusing patchwork of bans.

We desperately need change at the federal level. The Government Accountability Office reported on flaws in the GRAS system in 2010, and the FDA has not addressed the majority of the recommendations, such as regularly reviewing the safety of GRAS substances and requiring companies to provide basic information about these substances. The FDA urgently needs additional congressional funding to take action on food safety for all ingredients, with a particular eye toward diet-related chronic disease.

In the meantime, states like California will have to keep taking the lead on evaluating harmful ingredients and show the federal government how it can be done.

Emily Broad Leib is a clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School and faculty director of the school’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. ©2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

The Portal, a project to extend service from the Caltrain station at Fourth and King streets to the Salesforce Transit Center, is now expected to cost $8.25 billion for just 1.3 miles of additional service.

Since funding for the project is not yet secured, this is a good time to reevaluate and, ideally, shelve this project.

The project is being proposed by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, a partnership of San Francisco, the East Bay’s AC Transit, Caltrain on the Peninsula and the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

It is hard to know how many Caltrain riders would use the extension since the Transbay Joint Powers Authority has not released a post-COVID ridership model. A 2009 analysis from Cambridge Systematics estimated 31,500 weekday riders, but this is now implausible given that weekday ridership throughout the entire Caltrain system averaged only 21,366 in September.

Caltrain no longer produces entrance or exit statistics by station, so we do not know how many of these riders are going all the way up to the station at Fourth and King streets. In 2019, about 47% of Caltrain trips began or ended at the San Francisco terminus. But this ratio may be lower today given the number of companies that have left or downsized in downtown San Francisco.

Extending Caltrain just 1.3 miles provides limited benefits to existing passengers and probably won’t attract many new ones. Riders alighting at Fourth and King can currently transfer to one of two different Muni metro lines that go to various downtown San Francisco locations.

While a single-seat ride to Salesforce Transit Center is undoubtedly more convenient, it would only save most riders a few minutes. This time savings is unlikely to lure many car commuters out of their personal vehicles. As a result, the costly extension would have little impact on climate change.

The Transbay Joint Powers Authority hopes to obtain federal funds to cover about half the project costs. But the Federal Transit Administration considers the quality of state and local funding commitments when choosing which projects to support.

In the case of The Portal, the transbay authority’s funding plan includes $550 million from the California High-Speed Rail Authority. But it is unclear how that agency would find these funds because it does not even have enough money to complete its initial operating segment, from Merced to Bakersfield.

The bullet train’s challenges not only threaten to undermine The Portal’s funding, but also undermine another justification for the project. Planners expect the Caltrain service to Salesforce Transit Center to be augmented by high-speed rail service from Central and Southern California. But that would require an additional tens of billions of dollars to finish the bullet train, money that has yet to materialize. And with the federal budget deficit rising against a background of higher interest rates, it is hard to see the federal government coming up with additional bullet-train funding in the next few years.

Given funding and engineering challenges for high-speed rail, it is unlikely that bullet trains would reach San Fracisco until at least the late 2030s.

Under these circumstances, the transbay authority should defer its bid for federal funds until the bullet train’s Pacheco Pass segment is clearly on track. And, even then, advocates should provide solid evidence that Caltrain and the bullet train would deliver a large number of passengers to downtown San Francisco.

Marc Joffe is a federalism and state policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

Over the last decade, Houston has accomplished incredible things when it comes to addressing homelessness. Overall homelessness has decreased by more than 60%. We effectively ended veteran homelessness in 2015 (and to this day can get homeless vets back into housing within a few weeks), and an end to chronic homelessness is tantalizingly in sight.

Our progress has been well documented, and communities from all over the world frequently reach out to us to ask how we did it and how they can do it, too. When the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed asking what Houston can teach L.A., journalist Marshall Ingwerson nailed it when he listed the three keys as scale of effort, excellent organization and pragmatism.

Our community has historically benefitted from an abundant supply of affordable housing. As we have identified funding for both rental assistance and supportive services, we have been able to create an inventory of permanent housing that gives us options to present to clients that fit their needs and preferences.

Allow me to brag about our organization, the lead homeless response system in the region, for a moment. We unite service partners and maximize resources to rehouse people as quickly as possible. Our oversight of the local Homeless Management Information System gives us client-level data, allowing us to make decisions grounded in fact rather than anecdotes. And we listen to our partners. While our partners rely on us to build capacity and provide big-picture planning and strategy, we rely on their practical knowhow to get us from theory to implementation.

We are pragmatic to a fault. In 2011, the founding partners of what was deemed The Way Home coalition made two commitments: that we would invest all available public resources into permanent housing, and that we would prioritize the most vulnerable — those most likely to die due to homelessness — for housing first. This laser focus has served us well.

Pragmatism also means not getting distracted by shiny objects, or problems of the moment. We remain focused on the big picture.

But what does this mean to Californians who are reading this and wondering how they can do it too?

The first step in that journey needs to be to set aside individual priorities and commit to collective impact. The scale, organization and pragmatism in Houston have really only worked because, when we formalized the Continuum of Care in 2012, leaders at key agencies (nonprofits, public housing authorities, elected officials, government workers, etc.) were willing to say, “What I have been doing hasn’t been working, and I am willing to admit that and try something different.”

For nearly a century, all of these groups had been responding to homelessness, but we had yet to resolve it. Whether it was allocating staff to serve clients that may never come through their doors through coordinated access, or eliminating or changing programs that they had offered — sometimes for decades — the partners of our system were willing to change from what they had always done. People were more open to collaboration, which can be uncomfortable, shared accountability, constructive problem-solving and a focus on data-driven decisions.

When the data showed it was working, it only made it that much easier.

Still, Houston has changed in a decade. Our housing market is getting tighter and less affordable. Each new day can pose new challenges. But I know we will continue our progress because — when I come to work — I don’t see hand wringing. I see a continued, shared commitment.

Sara Martinez is the vice president of communications and development for the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County. She wrote this commentary for CalMatters.