The L.A. Department of Transportation's effort to slow down traffic, a possible compromise to end the DACA debate, the income needed to buy a home in SoCal.
How one LA street will change to cut down on road deaths
Los Angeles is in the middle of an ambitious plan called Vision Zero, with the goal of completely eliminating traffic deaths in the city by 2025.
To see it in action, keep an eye out on Spring St. in downtown over the coming months.
The way traffic flows on this one-way street, from left to right, is curb, street parking, two travel lanes, a bike lane, street parking and curb.
"The bike lane is on the same side of the street as all of the bus stops, so it has the potential to cause conflicts," says KPCC transportation reporter Meghan McCarty-Carino.
Once the project is done, it'll instead go: curb, bike lane, a concrete buffer, parking, two travel lanes, parking and curb.
"One of the other things that will happen is all of the crosswalks will be changed into high-visibility crosswalks," she adds.
That's achieved by repainting them with parallel white stripes that run through the space to make them easier to see by drivers.
Hundreds of other projects like this will break ground in Los Angeles in the coming years, sometimes with resistance by residents.
"What a lot of advocates say is, 'Just give it some time, let's look at the data,'" says McCarty-Carino, "and then there's another camp that's just fed up with how this is affecting their communities and their commutes."
How much you need to earn to afford a $500K house in SoCal
Anyone who's in the market for a house knows it's expensive. But it's pricier now than it's ever been, according to a new report from the real estate data firm CoreLogic.
The median price of a house in Southern California is now $507,500, a new record for the area. To find out what kind of income is needed to afford a house at that price, what sorts of jobs here pay that much, and what factors are driving home prices to new heights, Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Robert Kleinhenz of Beacon Economics.
What the $507,500 median price says about the So Cal housing market
It’s been a long-awaited increase to the point where we surpassed the last peak almost a dozen years ago. It’s come at a time with the economy has shown steady improvement. We’ve got one of the longest expansions on record both locally and nationally, so the rise in the home price is in part a response to an economy that’s doing fairly well.
How much a person needs to earn to afford a $507,500 house
You need over $100,000 to afford that home, but the median household income in the region is about $68,000.
So Cal's housing market affordability will worsen in 2018
It's anything but normal. The fact that we’ve hit a new record high is actually worth noting because it means affordability is eroding and has been coming down for some time. Interest rates are decent but on the rise, so looking ahead at 2018, we expect affordability will get worse. A supply constraint is driving home prices up on the demand side.
$100,000 minimum income presumes a 20% down payment, which is also about $100,000
This assumes if you’re going to be buying a house, you’re doing so with a 20% down payment and no more than 30% of your monthly income will go to housing. This is the minimum qualifying income. If you have heavier debt load, then your qualifying income is going to have to be somewhat higher.
More than half of So Cal households spend more than 30% of income on housing
The share of households that spend at least 30% of their income on mortgages, based on American community survey data for LA County, is 50.4%. A first-time home-buying household will end up spending more than 30% because the logic is you try to get the most house you can get with your income and all your other financial factors. So for a period of time, a household is likely to spend more than that 30% on their mortgage. It’s not just the mortgage, it’s also insurance and taxes. The idea is that over time with appreciation in their home, they’ll be better off and that share will go down, because if it’s a fixed mortgage rate and fixed monthly payment, that won’t go up over time -- only property tax and insurance. And if your income goes up, that monthly payment becomes a smaller amount.
So Cal housing is twice expensive as the national average
So Cal is one of the most expensive markets in the county. The median price across the U.S. is $254,000. Our housing market is about twice that except for the Inland Empire, where home prices are much lower, but along the coast you’ve got to have at least $100,000 to have a somewhat comfortable living and it’s tough to do here.
So Cal jobs that pay enough to be able to afford a house
Tech jobs and a lot of other professional jobs in business, in management. In the medical field, it’s not just physicians who can take home six figures. Managers on up, they’re probably in the ballpark of $100,000 per year or more.
California is only building half as many homes per year as needed
Another thing to keep in mind with high home prices, we're just not building enough,. That would stablilize home prices. … It’s going to become ever more expensive to live here, and going one step further, if it’s hard to land a home here, then employers are going to have a hard time hiring people, so it limits our potential to grow as fast as we can here. We should be building 200,000 annually statewide, but we’re building 100,000. This is not a new problem here in So Cal. We had this problem prioer to the recession and in the ‘80s. Supply of homes lagging the demand for homes has been a chronic problem for the state and it drives home prices up even faster.
What high housing prices mean for the California economy as a whole
If we’re not building enough homes to meet the needs not just of entry-level but middle-income buyers, it limits our abilty to grow as an economy. We know there’s been out migration from California to other states offset only by international in-migration to the state, and part of that is due to the fact that it's too expensive.
Does Trump's new DACA plan have a chance?
On Thursday, the White House released a skeleton-plan to reform the nation's immigration policies. It would provide a path to citizenship for the nearly 800,000 young people currently covered by the DACA program and about a million more young people who are now eligible.
But Trump's proposal now faces stiff opposition from Democrats. That's due, in part, to what the White House is asking for in return: a $25 billion trust fund for a border wall, expedited removal of people who overstay their visas, new limits on so-called chain migration, and an end to the visa lottery.
And that's just the Democrats. Republicans have objections too.
So is the White House proposal at least a step in the right direction?
Take Two sought two different perspectives:
Jeremy Carl, research fellow for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University:
I'm not surprised that, in general, [Republican lawmakers] have been supportive. This is their president from their party. This has been a core issue for him, and they don't want to get on the wrong side of him.
On the other hand, I think a lot of the folks who are more concerned about border security issues were concerned that, even as an opening bid, this gave away a lot of things that they didn't feel that they needed to give away. And the question was: is that just a gambit because he's confident that the Democrats simply won't do anything? Or is that a serious bid to do something.
Louis DeSipio, professor of political science and Chicano studies at the University of California in Irvine:
I think the changes to legal immigration — particularly family migration — are the hardest [for Democratic lawmakers to take]. Democrats seemed open to spending some money on border security. Whether it's called a wall or not is up in the air.
I think they're open to changes to the visa lottery, but the legal immigration changes would take a lot of negotiation.
(Written answers have been edited for clarity).
Motion Picture Academy releases new procedures for allegations of sexual misconduct
On Saturday, three months after it booted Harvey Weinstein, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences enacted new procedures for dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct against its members.
Vanity Fair's Rebecca Keegan spoke with A Martinez about what the new code entails.
"Over the summer they will launch a website for anonymously reporting. They also have a phone number where the membership department will field calls. A committee will take those reports and allegations into account, gather evidence and determine which to forward onto the board of governors to consider either taking someone's membership away fully...or suspending a member."
Plus, in another break with tradition, Casey Affleck will not attend this year's awards ceremony. Though it's been a tradition in recent years for the previous Best Actor award winner to present the current year's Best Actress award, Affleck bowed out.
"Casey Affleck had previously settled two lawsuits regarding sexual harassment in connection with a film that he made. There was a feeling among some that he should not have won last year for that reason...According to a Deadline story last week, Affleck withdrew himself from the process, not wanting to distract from the moment for the actress who wins."
Plus, how HBO snatched up the buzziest film at the Sundance Film Festival, "The Tale." Many critics raved about the Jennifer Fox autobiographical feature starring Laura Dern. It depicts Fox's sexual abuse at the hands of her track coach, played by Jason Ritter.
And the 1961 musical classic "West Side Story" is getting a reboot. Over the weekend, casting director Cindy Tolan, tweeted out a casting call for an upcoming "West Side Story" project directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Tony Kushner.
PLEASE SHARE.#WestSideStory#StevenSpielberg #TonyKushner pic.twitter.com/5hgxuwxLm2
— cindy tolan (@cindytolan1) January 25, 2018
Kushner and Spielberg have previously collaborated on "Munich" and "Lincoln."