Redevelopment funding ended in 2012, and the city was slow to begin to replace it. The 20% portion of redevelopment funding that was dedicated to the creation of affordable housing accounted for millions of dollars used to subsidize larger affordable housing projects. The newly created... Continue

My wife received a phone call and an email the other day announcing that she was a first-place winner in the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes; $5.1 million was awaiting deposit into her bank account. Wisely, she made no response on the phone other than to say... Continue

The community is buzzing about Pacaso, the new, well-funded corporation offering fractional home ownership. Already challenged by AirBnB, vacation rentals and vacant second homes, residents are justly worried about Pacaso and its approach to home ownership and how it will affect neighborhoods. A neighborhood without... Continue

When human beings lived tribal lives in relative isolation from one another, before the technology of the wheel and all that followed, tribal culture provided a coherent framework within which each individual had a place and role; individual differences were less significant than cultural similarities... Continue

Public opinion notwithstanding, the U.S. Constitution does not enshrine a right to privacy. Yes, it does provide protection against unlawful search and seizure, which implies that unless warranted, homes and cars and laptops cannot be searched, but a sharply worded “right” to privacy can’t be... Continue

When Sigmund Freud authored Civilization and Its Discontents in 1929, the world was in the throes of social, economic and political upheaval. The 1920s brought with it a post-WW1 era of explicit sexuality, financial excess then collapse, and world politics riven by domination, resistance and... Continue

Ever since the largest trees in my neighborhood were cut down, including a Red Mahogany Eucalyptus topping out at one-hundred feet tall, habits of the wildlife in my yard have changed. Squirrels, for one, disappeared entirely for several months. There had been a crew of... Continue

Andrew Cuomo is just the latest high-profile man to become ensnared in the #me too movement. By today’s count four women have come forward with complaints about his flirtatious sexual advances, and in my experience, where there are four, there are forty. Men like Cuomo... Continue

Our planet’s major religion is a materialist ideology that’s quickly bringing civilization to its ultimate crisis: consumerism. Having transformed humankind into Homo economicus, consumerism has invaded and replaced virtually all indigenous cultures, producing a homogeneous world civilization based on accumulation of wealth. Although we think... Continue