In California, less than two-thirds of counties have an abortion clinic. But nearly 80% have at least one “crisis pregnancy center,” according to a database compiled by CalMatters.

Abortion rights advocates and lawmakers have long accused these centers — also known as anti-abortion centers — of coercing vulnerable people into remaining pregnant by misleading them about abortion procedures and contraceptive methods. In rural areas with acute primary care shortages, “crisis pregnancy centers” outnumber abortion clinics 11 to 2, a CalMatters analysis shows.

While center supporters vehemently deny the accusations about misleading pregnant people, they’ve become the next battleground for California lawmakers bent on protecting abortion rights and offering services for people who live in states where abortion is banned.

“They’re the next way in which the anti-abortion movement will try to stop people from getting access to abortion here,” said Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a Democrat from San Ramon and member of the Women’s Legislative Caucus, which has spearheaded the state’s legislative push for enhanced abortion protections.

Regulating “crisis pregnancy centers,” however, has proven to be exceptionally challenging even in the nation’s self-proclaimed “abortion safe haven.”

“They’re the next way in which the anti-abortion movement will try to stop people from getting access to abortion here.”
— Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, Democrat from San Ramon

This legislative session, two bills attempting to regulate the centers died quietly in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, including one authored by Bauer-Kahan. Officially, no one knows why the bills were killed in the Legislature’s opaque suspense file maneuvers, in which votes are not public, but it’s no secret that Democratic lawmakers are fearful of passing laws that might spur litigation from abortion opponents. Even before the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion opponents had used the courts to steadily chip away at abortion protections.

“Even a state like California is treading very carefully,” said Margaret Russell, an associate constitutional law professor at Santa Clara University. “Who wants to waste public resources on a lawsuit going up to the Supreme Court with the risk that the law would become even worse?”

Alexandra Snyder, CEO of Life Legal Defense Foundation and former director of a pregnancy center in Santa Clarita, said the bills had clear “legal problems (and) constitutional problems” and would be “tied up in the courts at tremendous expense for the next five years.”

A “chilling effect”

At an Assembly Health Committee hearing in April, staff from the Alternatives Pregnancy Center in Sacramento dressed in hot pink — a color also frequently donned by the state’s abortion rights advocates — and lined up in opposition to a bill requiring the state Public Health Department to conduct an “awareness campaign” about reproductive health and abortion options.

The measure made no mention of pregnancy centers opposed to abortion, but public testimony accused them of manipulating women by advertising “abortion education” or counseling services that are a means to scare them away from abortion and of falsely claiming “abortion pill reversal” is scientifically tested. Abortion pill reversal — which involves giving patients high doses of the pregnancy hormone progesterone — is not supported by most doctors, including the nation’s leading association of pregnancy and women’s health specialists. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states the procedure is “unproven and unethical” because it has not been backed by clinical studies.

Three weeks later the measure was dead — a rare win for the anti-abortion movement in California.

“We didn’t go there to necessarily stop the bill. We live in California, we know that. We didn’t think that was possible, but it’s clearly possible,” said Heidi Matzke, executive director of Alternatives Pregnancy Center.

Even the measure’s author, Santa Clarita Democrat Pilar Schiavo, was surprised.

“I was disappointed,” Schiavo said. “It literally didn’t say anything about crisis pregnancy centers. That’s as safe a bill as you can get.”California legislators have struggled to regulate these centers since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a state law known as the FACT Act that required reproductive health centers to notify clients about abortion and birth control options. It also required unlicensed centers to tell clients they were not medical facilities. Anti-abortion groups opposed it, arguing “crisis pregnancy centers” should not be compelled to say something that conflicts with their religious beliefs. The justices agreed in a 5-4 vote, dealing a bruising blow to abortion rights nationwide.

California’s use of a “government-drafted script” violated the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protections, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion.

“By requiring petitioners to inform women how they can obtain state-subsidized abortions — at the same time petitioners try to dissuade women from choosing that option — the licensed notice plainly ‘alters the content’ of petitioners’ speech,” Thomas wrote.

“Because we have this history of the reproductive FACT Act, I think people are really worried about creating bad precedent,” said Cathren Cohen, a staff attorney at the Williams Institute and the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at UCLA. “The anti-choice movement is very litigious. They know the federal courts are on their side.”

What has resulted is a “chilling effect,” even in states like California, Cohen said.

“Who wants to waste public resources on a lawsuit going up to the Supreme Court with the risk that the law would become even worse?”
— Margaret Russell, associate constitutional law professor at Santa Clara University

At least one lawsuit has been filed in reaction to the flurry of abortion protections California passed last year. The claim, filed “on behalf of pro-life pregnancy care centers” by the Life Legal Defense Foundation, seeks to block the state’s requirement that health insurers cover abortion services with no out-of-pocket charges.

Cohen testified in support of Bauer-Kahan’s “crisis pregnancy center” bill during an Assembly Judiciary Committee hearing in March. That measure would have reinforced the state’s false advertising law to prevent facilities that provide pregnancy-related services from making false or misleading claims about abortion. It also allowed people who sought services and were harmed to later sue for damages.

The measure was carefully crafted to avoid the previous issue of compelled speech that prompted the Supreme Court to rebuke California, Cohen said, “but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be challenged.”

Bauer-Kahan, who successfully passed two abortion protection bills last session, told CalMatters it’s unlikely she’ll reintroduce this measure but remains committed to exploring future options.

“It’s really important that we get our arms around it,” Bauer-Kahan said.

Conflicting narratives

So what happens inside a “crisis pregnancy center”? It depends on who you ask.

At the national level, abortion opponents don’t mince words when it comes to the goals of the centers: They exist to stop women from getting abortions. Convention trainings, e-books, and online courses from the largest anti-abortion center networks in the country offer strategies on how to talk to women who call asking about abortion.

At least three-fourths of California centers are affiliated with national organizations.

Proponents of the primarily faith-based nonprofits disagree with the characterization that their work is underhanded. Training materials from one of the largest networks in the country, Care Net, specifically say “manipulation is never an option,” though it recommends “speaking persuasively” as a “life advocate.”

Centers say they give women with unplanned pregnancies alternatives to abortion by providing material support: free diapers, parenting classes and sometimes housing.

“We are a safety net for women that want to carry,” said Marie Leatherby, president of the California Alliance of Pregnancy Care and executive director of Sacramento Life Center. “(For) most women, it’s just a great place to start your pregnancy.”

Leatherby said after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the organization worked hard to root out any “bad actors” that used deceptive practices. It requires members to state whether they are medically licensed facilities, and many disclose online that they do not provide or refer for abortions.

“We set the bar so high because we’re always scrutinized,” Leatherby said. “If they want to have the abortion, they are free to come and go. We let people know we don’t do that here but they can come in and sit and figure out what they want to do.”

Despite safeguards that Leatherby and other California center proponents say are in place to ensure women aren’t misled, it still sometimes happens.

“The anti-choice movement is very litigious. They know the federal courts are on their side.”
— Cathren Cohen, staff attorney at the Williams Institute and the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at UCLA

Numerous journalism investigations across the country have detailed instances in other states in which women were tricked into walking into a center rather than a Planned Parenthood site, shown an altered ultrasound image, or more recently had their data tracked. Many make assertions about the risks of abortion, side effects of contraceptives, and efficacy of “abortion pill reversal” that may be grounded in research but are taken out of context.

For instance, many centers’ websites say emergency contraceptives like Plan B or ella cause early abortions of a fertilized egg, which has been debunked by multiple research studies. They also emphasize the potential for abortion to cause depression or other negative mental health impacts when decades of research indicate a wanted abortion “does not cause significant psychological problems,” according to the American Psychological Association.

Gabriel, a Sacramento-area resident, said she visited a pregnancy center in 2016 seeking an abortion. She was about six weeks pregnant with a minimum-wage job and no health insurance. She and her boyfriend struggled to provide for their toddler and knew they weren’t ready for a second kid, Gabriel said. She had already visited a Planned Parenthood but couldn’t afford its $450 out-of-pocket fee. Her boyfriend saw a pregnancy center advertisement and hoped it could do the procedure for free.

CalMatters agreed to use only Gabriel’s middle name to protect her privacy. Her family doesn’t know she sought an abortion.

The center worker promised to help over the phone and never indicated that it did not perform abortions, she said. Gabriel didn’t realize it was a religious organization until halfway through the 45-minute appointment, she said. The staff member gave her “random scary statistics like 80% of couples who go through abortion together break up” and told stories of people who regretted the decision — and waited until the end of the appointment to tell her the center did not do abortions.

Gabriel was so uncomfortable with her experience that she left a review on Yelp warning other women to be cautious.

“I was definitely stressed and embarrassed. The rational part of my brain told me this was part of their fear tactic, but at the same time he and I were only like 22 or something still trying to figure our lives out,” Gabriel said. “Naturally part of me was wondering if they were right about everything.”

The center “was kind of our last resort…and them not being able to help us in the way we needed, and on top of that being talked into something I know I didn’t want, was a lot of emotional pressure,” Gabriel said.

Reproductive health deserts

Increasingly, “crisis pregnancy centers” across the country are seeking to be licensed by state health departments. Approximately half of the centers in California are medically licensed facilities, according to the California Alliance of Pregnancy Care. Proponents say it helps fill a community need, while opponents say it gives women in reproductive health deserts even fewer choices.

“We have a looming primary care provider shortage in California,” Cohen said. “It’s apt to note that they’re filling a gap because we do need more reproductive health care providers, particularly in rural areas, low income areas, (and for) people of color.”

The breadth of medical services offered at centers opposed to abortion varies widely, with most performing only pregnancy testing and ultrasounds. The state does not set a minimum service requirement for licensing.

Only 10% of the California centers provide prenatal care and none offer contraceptives, according to a 2022 report by The Alliance, a national coalition of organizations supporting abortion rights. Last year, State Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a consumer alert warning that the centers do not offer comprehensive reproductive health care.

There are at least 176 “crisis pregnancy centers” in California, according to a CalMatters analysis. That compares to 166 abortion clinics, according to state data. At face value, the difference of 10 seems negligible, but pregnancy centers are more likely to be located in areas where there are primary care shortages. Abortion clinics, on the other hand, tend to be located in urban areas where primary care shortages are less likely. Clinics like Planned Parenthood also offer services like cervical cancer screenings, HIV treatment, gynecological care and annual exams.

In rural areas of the state where primary care is insufficient, people have a 25% chance of living near a “crisis pregnancy center” compared to a less than 5% chance of living near an abortion clinic, according to a CalMatters analysis.

More than 13.1 million state residents — roughly one third-of the state’s population — live in a primary care shortage area, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

Matzke, with Alternatives Pregnancy Center in Sacramento, takes particular issue with the claim that she runs a fake medical clinic.

“From the moment they walk in the door, I want them met with medical professionals,” Matzke said. “The moment they leave, I want them being walked out by medical professionals. And that’s who we are.”

Alternatives is licensed as a free clinic by the California Department of Public Health. The staff includes three doctors, five nurses, a nurse practitioner, a phlebotomist to draw blood and several medical assistants, Matzke said. In addition to pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, Alternatives offers sexually transmitted disease tests, gynecological care and prenatal care up to 25 weeks. The clinic does not conduct or refer for abortion: It says so on the front door.

“Every woman knows where to go to get an abortion. You know, you can go to Planned Parenthood…but most women don’t know that free resources like ours exist,” Matzke said.

In some ways Alternatives is an outlier among centers in California, offering more medical services than most. In other ways, it’s not. It does not provide contraceptives. It also advertises “abortion pill reversal.”

Although most doctors reject abortion reversal, plenty of pregnancy center advocates claim it worked for them. Atoria Foley, a patient of Alternatives who testified against Assemblymember Schiavo’s bill, took the abortion pill mifepristone, which blocks absorption of progesterone, on two separate occasions, she said. She felt pressured into getting an abortion by her child’s father, she said, and immediately regretted it. The clinic staff got her a prescription for progesterone, she said, and her daughter was born roughly seven months later.

“There’s not any sort of condemnation or shame around that. It’s just, let’s take care of you and love on you and guide you through this,” Foley said.

According to a scientific review, between 8% and 46% of medication abortions are unsuccessful if the pregnant person does not take the second pill, which causes the uterus to contract and expel its contents, similar to a miscarriage. The first randomized control study of abortion pill reversal in the U.S. was stopped in 2020 after several participants were hospitalized for uncontrolled bleeding, according to study authors.

Abortion rights advocates are adamant: Pregnancy centers have no place in California. They are a “physical manifestation of the anti-abortion movement,” Schiavo said. Betsy Butler, a former state senator and executive director of the Women’s Law Center at UCLA, which contributed to The Alliance report, agreed.

“How do we reign them in? Why are they allowed to impact women like this? What can the state do about that? We have to answer this question,” Butler said.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Yesterday, North Coast News ran a segment that showed activists for the houseless picketing a clean-up event sponsored by PacOut Green Team, a group of volunteers organized by Pacific Outfitters that goes around and picks up trash from the county’s greenspaces.

NCN reported that the picketers are working under the “Stop the Sweeps” banner. That’s a movement that advocates for the rights of people experiencing homelessness to camp in public places, and which often demonstrates at evictions of encampments.

PacOut told NCN that it’s only concerned with cleaning up trash and limiting the pollution, and there was some back and forth in that segment. Today, Eureka Mayor Kim Bergel issued a press release in support of PacOut, and urging community members with some time on their hands to get involved.

From Eureka Mayor Kim Bergel:

As Mayor of the City of Eureka and longtime supporter and volunteer of the PacOut Green Team, I am shocked and bewildered by the recent attacks by community members on this incredibly valuable program. The City partners with PacOut on Eureka based events. These events are well coordinated with the Eureka Police Department (EPD) and Community Services Department. EPD provides notifications to all campers. Included in these notifications are visits by the City’s Homeless Outreach Workers and Mental Health staff to provide and offer services. There are very clear guidelines that personal belongings are not disposed of and are appropriately documented and stored if encountered.

I regularly receive concerns from the public regarding the trash and garbage found in our greenbelts. The environmental impacts of litter and plastic on Humboldt Bay and sensitive habitat around the Bay are well documented. The PacOut Green Team provide an invaluable service to our community and our local environment. I attend clean ups whenever I can and I strongly encourage all community members to volunteer and see for themselves the great work and service provided by the PacOut Green Team. Be a part of the solution. The more oars to row the boat makes for a healthier and more sustainable community. Join us!

UPDATE, June 16, 9:53 a.m.:

Several readers have been wondering out loud (in written form, on social media, mostly) whether Caltrans will raise the speed limit on this stretch once the highway improvements are complete. We reached out to Public Information Officer Myles Cochrane, who had this to say on the matter:

Ultimately, safety is our number one priority.

A reasonable time after project completion, a study known as an Engineering and Traffic survey (E&TS) will be conducted to analyze any speed-limit changes that may or may not be implemented.

We do not currently have an estimated timeline for when the E&TS will occur.

You can read more here: Setting Speed Limits | Caltrans

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With the summer road construction season now upon us, Caltrans this afternoon officially broke ground on two major components of the Eureka-Arcata U.S. 101 Corridor Improvement Project — namely, an undercrossing at the Indianola Cutoff and a half-signal at Airport Road.

The project will also see the closure of existing median openings that allow cross-freeway traffic at Mid-City Motor World, Bracut Industrial Park and the Bayside cutoff.

A variety of stakeholders gathered in windy conditions near the construction site Thursday afternoon to announce the project launch.

“I can’t believe we’re actually here,” Caltrans District 1 Manager Matt Brady said, “and it’s so exciting to see this project coming about and being built.”

Brady went on to emphasize the impetus for the $46 million construction project — a series of deadly collisions along this stretch of Highway 101, particularly at the Indianola Cutoff.

“When I first moved to Humboldt County 22 years ago, I saw the signs,” he said. “What did the signs say? They said this was a ‘Blood Alley.’”

Brady noted that Caltrans has made other improvements to the “Safety Corridor” between Humboldt County’s two most populous cities, putting in a cable median barrier, making adjustments to the on- and off-ramps, and replacing and widening bridges.

The project is currently scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025.

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Fourth District Humboldt County Supervisor Natalie Arroyo, who is also a board member of the Humboldt County Association of Governments (HCAOG), addressed the small crowd, thanking Caltrans personnel for their collaboration and noting the connection between this project and the Humboldt Bay Trail, which is expected to be completed by the end of next year. 

HCAOG Director Beth Burks said her organization first recognized the dangers of this freeway crossing more than two decades ago, and those dangers persist to this day.

“For those that commute, I feel like I hear daily stories of near misses that they experienced [and] that they witnessed, so I think it can’t come too soon that we will get this project underway and get it completed,” Burks said. “When the HCAOG board first began prioritizing this project, there were 85 collisions in a five-year period, including five fatal fatal collisions that, some of them, involved multiple people.”

The rate of collisions declined somewhat when the seven-mile stretch was turned into a “safety corridor,” complete with flashing signage, automated “Your Speed” indicators and a reduced speed limit of 50 miles per hour (down from 60). But those stopgap safety measures were never meant to be permanent. 

California Highway Patrol Sgt. Matt Harvey took a turn at the microphone and recounted a 2002 traffic collision at the Indianola intersection that claimed the lives of four people, including a mom, her son and her father.

“I think it goes without saying that the addition of an under-crossing at Indianola cutoff and a traffic signal to our south will save lives [and] give parents of young drivers, like me, a little extra relief when children are driving through the area,” Harvey said. “My own mom refuses to turn left onto the Indianola cutoff from 101. She drives all the way to Eureka and back to get to Indianola cutoff.”

Watsonville-based construction company Granite has been awarded the $46 million contract to build this project, and the company’s North Coast area manager, Justin Ingram, was on hand to mark the occasion. He noted that Granite has done work in Humboldt County in the past and looks forward to doing more projects in the future.

Caltrans Project Manager Jeff Pimentel urged those in attendance — and presumably, by extension, those in the public — to follow Caltrans District 1 on social media for updates as the project progresses. (Here’s a link to their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.)

Once the speeches were over, many in attendance grabbed golden shovels and bunched together, shoulder to shoulder, for a photo op:

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Look out, Eureka! The Del Norte Street Pier Park, commonly known as “Shark Park,” just got a lot sharkier, with a group of artists – including Peruvian-Canadian artist Chris Dyer – painting a colorful mural on the bathroom near the playground. 

The project, titled the “Spiritual Shark Tank,” was organized by local muralist Ben Goulart, who offered to do a free mural for the City of Eureka. Staff from the City’s community development department worked with Goulart and identified the bathroom building at Del Norte Pier Park as a place that needed a little makeover. He decided that a shark-themed mural would be the perfect fit. 

So a few days ago Goulart and his apprentices Mariqus Eurgene Ludd and Scott Robertson got to work, pressure washing the building and then adding two coats of primer. On Wednesday the team began painting the mural and was joined by Dyer, who was covering one of the walls with a shark-like creature in his own psychedelic style, and local artist Blake Reagan, who was also adding his work to a section of the mural. 

Dyer poses in front of his creation

A big fan of Dyer’s art, Goulart saw on social media that Dyer was going to be in Humboldt to teach a painting workshop at a healing retreat in Willow Creek and hit him up to see if he wanted to work on a mural while he was in town. Dyer said he was happy to take the job and was excited to be asked to paint an aquatic creature, which is a subject he often features in his art. 

“[Goulart] just told me that we were painting at this spot called the ‘Shark Park’ and we’re painting sharks,” Dyer told the Outpost as he was spray painting the wall on Wednesday. “And I was like ‘sweet. I’m a Pisces, I like to paint fish, I can paint my own version of a shark’…I’ve never painted a shark, but I guess it’s technically a kind of fish.”

Dyer has been a professional artist for nearly 20 years and has painted canvases, skateboard decks and walls all over the world. His work is featured in many museums, including the Bob Marley Museum in Jamaica and the Street Art Museum in Amsterdam, and he has been written about in Thrasher and High Times magazines.

One of his signature street art styles is what he calls “fish bombing,” where he paints stylized fish on a wall or object in different cities that he visits. Dyer could only commit to one day of work and was finishing his creation on Wednesday, but Goulart said that the other three artists will be painting for another few days, covering all four sides of the building with the trippy aquatic scene. After the painting is complete, the whole thing will be covered with sealant, to protect the mural from weather and graffiti. 

Though Dyer has spent some time in Humboldt before (he has designed clothes and done brand management for Satori Movement and has attended Reggae on the River), this project is Dyer’s first permanent mural in Humboldt, and he was happy to contribute his creature – which he referred to as an “interdimensional robotic shark” – to the area.  

“I’m happy to see empty walls turning into art-ified walls,” Dyer said. “That’s always a positive thing for everybody…I’m happy about leaving more of my personal expression for Humboldt, which is a place that I’ve always enjoyed.”

Well, the last couple of hours have been quite a roller coaster ride.

I woke up to comments assuring me that the photo we published last night, of Chicago Bulls legend Scottie Pippen enjoying a meal at Shamus T. Bones a few hours earlier, was not in fact Scottie Pippen at all. 

This despite the fact that the man in the picture looks quite a lot like Scottie Pippen.

Then I discovered that the kid who sent me the photo has a YouTube channel in which he and his pals pull pranks and stunts. Some of those same pals were in the picture with the purported Pippen.

At that point, I updated last night’s post to indicate that I now harbored a strong suspicion that I had been pranked, and perhaps this was not Scottie Pippen at all.

However.

Afterward, people started reaching out to us to say that they, too, spotted Scottie at the Shamus T. Bones, and they too had pictures.

For instance: Fellow kid @s.1grammer told us “It is him,” and sent his own picture, which, as he said, is a lot clearer.

“Picture is more clear it’s him,” this kid says. “Voice is exactly the same as interviews I’ve heard. This picture is more clear and you can see him better it’s him %100.”

Here is Michael Acevedo getting his selfie. Acevedo, you will note, is not a teenage prankster but a grown-ass man, and he used email to contact us, exactly as an adult would do.

Asked to describe his interaction, Acevedo said:

I just asked if it was cool to get a pic with him… I saw others go over for a closer pic with him but I didn’t want to be overly intrusive. He was getting a lot of sneak pics and attention for sure. Basically had a crew with him… 

Shortly after this, our original tipster, Cayden Woods, reached out. This is the kid I described as “an absolute baller,” and that’s a statement I will stand by, whatever the facts turn out to be.

Cayden pleaded his case. Look at his Instagram stories, Cayden said. You can totally see it’s him! I wasn’t lying.

Summoning my best impersonation of a high-school principal, I confronted Cayden with the cold hard evidence of his YouTube prank channel. You are a known prankster! Don’t try to deny it! What do you have to say for yourself, young man?

What he said was this:

NOOO

THATS FROM LIKE 2 YEARS AGO

we stopped that awhile ago

OG3 for life tho🐐

I promised Cayden yet another update, which you are reading now, and proceeded to curse him to hell if he is lying to me. He responded

that’s fair 😭 but i swear it’s not a prank

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Now, for reference purposes, here is a video of the verified real Scottie Pippen throwing shade on a former teammate just a couple of weeks ago:

“LeBron James is probably one of the greatest winners to ever play the game.” @ScottiePippen

🚨FULL STORY HERE: https://t.co/cGIT8cCqsr pic.twitter.com/JIWJNYMqVq

— Gimme The Hot Sauce Podcast (@gimmehotsauce21) May 30, 2023

And after having considered all of this, the Outpost believes that the preponderance of the evidence will show that, yes, in fact, the great Scottie Pippen himself was in fact in Eureka last night, and had dinner at Shamus T. Bones.

But we don’t trust ourselves anymore! Nothing makes sense! You have to tell us: Is that Scottie Pippen?

In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law to shield California renters from double-digit rent hikes and arbitrary evictions.

Nearly four years later, the state announced its first enforcement action against a landlord under the California rent control law.

Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced that San Jose-based developer and property manager Green Valley Corporation will be on the hook for hiking the rent on 20 Silicon Valley tenants by an average of 151% — far in excess of the cap set by the law. The settlement also states that the company unlawfully evicted six tenants without providing a “just cause,” another violation.

“When the Legislature writes a law and the governor signs it, it’s the law, it’s not a suggestion, it’s not a recommendation, it’s not a ‘if you want to,’” said Bonta.

The attorney general noted that this was a first for his office. “But it won’t be the last,” he said

Under the terms of a settlement filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, Green Valley, which also does business under the name Swenson Builders, will be forced to pay $391,130. Of that, $331,130 will be refunded to tenants in overpaid back-rent.

“This is a strong reminder that the California Tenant Protection Act is the law of California and that law will be enforced,” said San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, who authored the 2019 law when he was in the Assembly.

The settlement concludes a year-and-a-half long investigation by the Attorney General’s office.

As San Jose Spotlight reported last year, Swenson increased the rent on nearly two dozen tenants living near San Jose’s Japantown in 2021. Some of those tenants reached out to local legal aid organizations, which brought the issue to the state’s Department of Justice. The company reimbursed three tenants and admitted in a letter that the rent hikes were “higher than permitted by law.”

Tenant rights groups have decried the 2019 law as toothless ever since it took effect. Bonta’s announcement of the state’s first-ever enforcement action amounts to a very public flashing of fangs.

“It’s been really frustrating that the Legislature passed [the rent cap law] and then appeared completely unwilling to actually enforce it,” said Shanti Singh, a lobbyist and spokesperson for Tenants Together, a statewide renter advocacy organization. “The Legislature has been doing tenants very few to no favors right now, so Bonta is picking up their slack and we’re very appreciative of that.”

A rent cap in name only?

The 2019 law, introduced by Chiu and co-authored by then-Assemblymember Bonta, capped annual rent hikes to 5% (since increased to 7%) plus inflation.

The law also requires landlords to put forward a “just cause” before evicting a tenant without compensation. Justifiable reasons include not paying rent, breaching the terms of a lease agreement or engaging in criminal activity on the premises of the rental property.

State law has long limited cities from enacting their own rent regulation policies or expanding existing ones. When lawmakers agreed to implement a statewide cap in 2019, it was a historic break from a decades-long aversion to anything that even smelled of rent control.

Bu t the law didn’t specify who would actually hold scofflaw landlords to account. Instead, it was left up to tenants, often short on cash and without a lawyer on speed dial, to challenge violations in court. Housing researchers have been unable to figure out just how widely or thoroughly the law is actually followed or enforced, but renter advocates like Singh say violations are “rampant.”

10% rent hikes allowed under California rent control law

In recent years, the maximum allowable rent under the law has ballooned across California. When the law went into effect, inflation was below 2%, translating to a cap of around 7%. Since then inflation has soared. Over the last two years, landlords in certain parts of the state have been legally allowed to raise rates up to the law’s 10% ceiling.

Earlier this year, Los Angeles Democratic Sen. María Elena Durazo introduced a bill to bolster the 2019 rent cap law. Though an earlier version of the bill was watered down to remove language that would have lowered the rent cap to 5%, the bill still includes a provision setting financial damages for tenants who sue their landlords. It also explicitly empowers local and state prosecutors to sue on their behalf.

Durazo’s bill passed out of the Senate last month and is now awaiting consideration before the Assembly.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

After State Farm declared in late May that it wouldn’t sell any new home insurance policies in California, people shopping around for new insurance had one fewer option. When days later it was revealed that Allstate had quietly made the same decision last year, Californians are now left wondering: How bad is this? And how should the state respond?

The “crisis” in California’s insurance market was caused by “a laser focus only on affordability,” said Nancy Watkins, a principal at Milliman, an actuarial firm, at a legislative hearing on Wednesday. The companies are operating with “very crude tools” at the expense of availability and reliability, she said.

She said the current regulatory system is too rigid. “It’s like you’ve got your steering wheel locked straight ahead, you’ve got your speed set on cruise control, and now you find yourself on the Pacific Coast Highway,” she said. “What insurance company would agree to that?”

Home insurance premiums in California are a little cheaper than the national average — and much lower than premiums in other disaster-prone states like Florida and Louisiana. That’s without accounting for the fact that California has some of the most expensive housing in the country.

California still has about 115 companies offering home insurance, said Michael Soller, a deputy commissioner for the state’s insurance department. As for whether more companies are likely to follow State Farm and Allstate, “we don’t think that will happen,” he said.

Consumer and insurance industry groups and other experts have ideas for what they’d like to see California do in the wake of the news — few of which they agree upon. Here’s the debate over four of those ideas.

Require State Farm to keep issuing new policies

There’s disagreement whether this idea, backed by the group Consumer Watchdog, is legal.

The idea hinges on how insurance prices are regulated in California. Under current laws, insurance companies can’t just charge whatever they want: They have to submit their proposed rates to the insurance department, which they back up by explaining their projected costs, losses, revenue and more. State regulators can approve a company’s proposed rates, or deny them, if they think, for example, the rates are unjustifiably high, or so low that they could put the company’s finances at risk.

Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog, said if a company suddenly says that it’s not going to take the same number of customers that it had projected when it got the department’s approval, then it has changed the assumptions on which the approval was based.

“They granted themselves a de facto rate increase by reducing the risk” in a state where that’s illegal, said Rosenfield. The department could issue a notice to State Farm, he said, and tell the company it needs to keep selling new home insurance policies until it submits new rates and those rates are approved.

The insurance department disputes that it has the power to do this. “Their claims are not supported by law,” said Soller, the deputy commissioner. “There’s a reason why it hasn’t been done by any insurance commissioner before.”

Let insurance companies use forward-looking catastrophe models

The kinds of data and statistical models insurance companies can use to set prices may sound like a nighttime sleep aid, but it’s a matter of lively discussion in insurance circles.

When a company tries to justify rate changes, it is required to rely on past losses to project future losses. It can’t use factors like the locations of new homes it is covering — whether they’re in downtown San Francisco or rural wine country — or the increased risk of wildfires due to climate change.

“We do it in a very old-fashioned way, and it needs to be updated,” said Rex Frazier, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, an insurance industry group that counts State Farm as a member. He supports the use of forward-looking models, which are generally provided by other private companies. California already permits insurers to use models for earthquake insurance.

If a company is trying to figure out how much it should charge for earthquake coverage, it would look at proximity to fault lines, Frazier said, but for wildfire insurance, California doesn’t do that.

“For wildfire it just says ‘Well, looking backward, what have you paid over the last 20 years for wildfire clients?’” he said.

Consumer groups generally oppose letting insurance companies use models, fearing that companies will use them to justify extreme price hikes, and that complex math will make scrutiny a challenge.

“They’re just very sophisticated crystal balls,” said Amy Bach, executive director for United Policyholders, a consumer group. Modeling companies generally see their models as intellectual property, which can pose a challenge for transparency. “Our fear is that they overstate risk,” said Bach.

About a week and a half after State Farm’s announcement, the insurance department said it would host a public workshop on use of models in insurance pricing, ahead of considering regulations. The workshop will take place on July 13.

On Wednesday, the Assembly’s insurance committee held a hearing on models. When asked by a legislator whether the department was moving toward incorporating catastrophe models, a department representative confirmed that it was.

“Historic losses do not fully account for growing wildfire risks, or risk mitigation measures taken by communities,” said Michael Peterson, a deputy commissioner at the insurance department, during the hearing.

Address the increasing cost of insurance — for insurance companies

Insurance companies are just like us: They buy insurance! When insurance companies buy it, it’s called “reinsurance.”

The cost of reinsurance has risen dramatically, and State Farm cited “a challenging reinsurance market” as one of the reasons it decided to stop selling new home insurance policies in California.

When insurance companies explain their costs to the insurance department as part of the process for justifying their prices, they aren’t allowed to include the cost of reinsurance. The department hasn’t historically permitted it, Soller said, because it doesn’t regulate reinsurance.

“What are insurers supposed to do when, on the one hand, the Department of Insurance is telling them ‘maintain your solvency’ and then, on the other hand, when their costs go up, you can’t charge for it,” said Frazier.

Insurance industry groups say it would help if they could incorporate the cost of reinsurance into their prices. But consumer groups say that the move would cause premiums to spike.

“Californians would see immediate massive rate hikes — both as soon as that went into effect and ongoing,” said Carmen Balber executive director of Consumer Watchdog. A reinsurance provider regulated by California would address problems she sees with the reinsurance market, Balber said, but that doesn’t exist currently.

Reduce the risk of disasters

The underlying problem is that disasters happen in California — at an increasing rate thanks to climate change — and that homes are at risk. They’re in the middle of the woods, or surrounded by flammable grasslands, or on the edge of bluffs that are expected to erode. Making homes less likely to burn, flood or collapse would be good for homeowners and would also make California feel less risky to insurers.

There’s no shortage of ideas for how to reduce risk, and there’s been action on this front in recent years. The insurance department, for example, has required insurance companies to consider whether homeowners take certain steps to protect their homes — like installing fire-resistant vents and clearing out vegetation under decks — in their prices.

California has set aside $2.7 billion for wildfire resilience over the past three years, according to the insurance department. When the department convened a group of environmental advocates, researchers, and public policy and insurance experts to make recommendations on how to reduce the risks of climate change, they came up with a long list. Among the recommendations:

• Create statewide hazard maps so that future risks are more clear to the public
• Increase funding to retrofit homes
• And apply fire-resistant building codes in areas with moderate to higher fire risk.

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions would ultimately be the best way to reduce the risk, said Alice Hill, chair of the group convened by the department and a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. But the world will get warmer even if we reduce emissions, she said, so focusing on where and how homes are built remains important.

“That could mean not building in areas that are just becoming too risky,” Hill said.

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