Euro 2024: Spain bounces France to reach final

• July 9, 2024

MUNICH — Spain reached the European Championship final with a 2-1 victory over France on Tuesday with 16-year-old Lamine Yamal becoming the youngest scorer at a major tournament.

France took an early lead when Randal Kolo Muani headed in a cross from Kylian Mbappé, who played without a mask, before Yamal’s moment of brilliance in the 21st minute. Dani Olmo scored what was to prove the winner four minutes later.

“We were in a difficult stretch after not expecting to concede so early. I just took the ball and wanted to put it right there. I am very happy,” Yamal said.

“I don’t try to think about it too much, just enjoy myself and help the team, and if it goes my way, then I am happy (for the goal) and for the win.”

Spain, which is chasing a record fourth European Championship title, will play England or the Netherlands in the final on Sunday in Berlin.

They play each other in Dortmund on Wednesday.

“We knew they were a great team, and they proved it again tonight,” France coach Didier Deschamps said. “Even though we were fortunate to open the scoring, Spain made things difficult for us.

“They were superior in terms of control and technique. The team that gave the best impression was Spain. So they deserve to win tonight.”

There was surprise in Munich when Mbappé took to the field without the mask he has been wearing since getting his nose broken in France’s opening group game at Euro 2024.

Mbappé had been complaining the mask was impeding him, and ditching it appeared to have an immediate effect as he created the game’s opening goal in the ninth minute with a tantalizing cross to the back post that was headed in by Randal Kolo Muani.

That was the first goal France had scored at Euro 2024 that wasn’t a penalty or an own-goal. Fortunately for Les Bleus they had also been exceptional at the back, allowing just one goal, a retaken penalty by Poland’s Robert Lewandowski in the group stage.

But there was no stopping Yamal’s stunning equalizer in the 21st minute as he became the youngest player ever to score at a men’s European Championship — or World Cup — when he curled the ball past Mike Maignan and in off the left post from 25 yards.

And Spain turned the match around completely four minutes later when Olmo’s goalbound-shot was turned into his own net by France defender Jules Koundé. It was originally adjudged by UEFA to have been an own-goal but was later awarded to Olmo.

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“We are very close, just one more step to go. It is incredible what the team is doing. We deserve to be in the final, one step from glory,” Olmo said. “Whether it is my goal, or Koundé’s, it doesn’t matter. A goal is a goal. The important thing is that we are in the final.”

France dominated possession in the second half but couldn’t make it count.

Théo Hernández should have done better when he blazed a good chance over the bar late on, and Mbappé did similar with four minutes remaining.

Spain could have been further ahead between those chances as another powerful strike from Yamal flew narrowly over the crossbar.

​ Orange County Register 

Full reservoirs, but California sticks with water rationing

• July 9, 2024

California’s regulatory policy often is at odds with reality, but the latest water-conservation rules seem extreme even within that context. The State Water Resources Control Board has approved new mandatory conservation standards that comply with a package of state laws passed by the Legislature in recent years. They will force us to use less water by imposing targets on suppliers.

This isn’t rationing for individual households, but the net result might be the same as water agencies are forced to meet the targets or face fines. The water agencies will then impose restrictions and raise prices. Conservation is an important part of any water strategy, but as usual the state prefers the stick to the carrot.

Now for some perspective. After bountiful rainy seasons, California’s reservoirs are nearly full Castaic is at 92-percent capacity, as is Don Pedro, Comanche and Oroville. A few years ago, the U.S. Drought Monitor placed virtually all of California in drought conditions, some in the most severe categories. Now none of the state is facing any level of drought.

Certainly, California needs to design its water policy for the long term given that Mother Nature does what she does, nevertheless it’s hard to get Californians’ buy in – and all such policies ultimately need public support – to conserve water when there’s plenty of it. The new policies are extremely costly, too. That money could be better spent expanding water capacity.

The water board staff estimates the compliance costs at $4.7 billion through 2050 and the benefits at $6.2 billion, but residents shouldn’t put much stock in these numbers given the long time period. CalMatters interviewed water agencies, which question the rules’ cost effectiveness and the financial impact on lower-income Californians.

In its January analysis, the Legislative Analyst’s Office argued the rules are “unnecessarily complex … and will be administratively burdensome to implement. Outdoor water use by these customers represents only a small fraction (less than 3 percent) of the state’s total water use.” The rules were later watered down, but the concept hasn’t changed.

The policy is called, “Making Conservation a California Way of Life,” but Californians already have made it a way of life. Residents and businesses consistently meet water-conservation targets. But state officials and environmental groups seem more interested in changing our lifestyles than in adopting policies that provide plenty of water to serve a growing economy.

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“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail,” an environmental group told the publication. Yet the state has routinely failed to prepare by expanding water storage. It should capture more water during rainy seasons so it’s available during dry ones rather than promote conservation for conservation’s sake.

The state also needs to increase groundwater storage, invest in storm-water capture, build desalination facilities and jumpstart investments in water recycling. Around 50 percent of the state’s water flows out to the Pacific, so it’s wasteful to not use more of it for human beings.

In terms of conservation, a rate structure that accurately reflects water usage and availability will do more to promote conservation than bureaucratic rules. When gasoline is in short supply, prices rise. The same concept should apply to all commodities. These rules will add to our cost of living without increasing water abundance, which makes it a typical California approach.

​ Orange County Register 

The Church singer Steve Kilbey made a concept album by accident. So he kept going.

• July 9, 2024

Only after Steve Kilbey of the Church had finished the band’s 2023 album “The Hypnogogue” did the singer-bassist realize he’d made a concept album by accident.

“I started thinking about it and I realized a lot of the songs could be about someone living in the future who can’t write songs anymore,” says Kilbey, the last original member of the Australian rock band, about the songs on the record.

Kilbey says the imaginary device that gives “The Hypnogogue” its name is “a weird amalgam of machine, human and vegetable” and other things that can delve deeply into a person.

“It can extract music from their dreams and their past lives,” he says. “Music that the person themself doesn’t know how to access.”

A sci-fi concept album about a dystopian future where burnt-out rock stars can plug into a machine to mine music from their dreams?

That would have been plenty for most songwriters. But when Kilbey was asked if there any outtakes to use on a digital deluxe edition of “The Hypnogogue,” he instead took what was left over, wrote a bunch of new songs, and recorded a second installment of the story, the 2024 album “Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars.”

“Then, for good measure, I wrote a novella about the whole thing as well, if people are really interested in delving into this world of this guy,” Kilbey says of Eros Zeta, the fictional future rock star at the center of both the albums and now book.

“It wasn’t ever a big master plan,” he says. “Just an organic little bit, by little bit, by little bit, as opposed to a great big brainstorm.”

The Church often gets categorized as new wave because they emerged during that scene’s heyday in the late ’70s and ’80s, but the band, over its 25 albums with Kilbey as the only constant, is really something more complex, a dreamy kind of neo-psychedelia with hints of post-punk, goth and more in the mix.

With alternative radio hits such as “Under the Milky Way, “An Unguarded Moment,” and “Reptile,” the band has long been popular in Southern California. The group returns this month for shows at the House of Blues in Anaheim on Friday, July 12 and the United Theatre on Broadway in Los Angeles on Saturday, July 13. Afghan Whigs and Ed Harcourt are also on the bill.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Kilbey talked about concept albums, songwriting, the role a listener plays in making an album, why he wasn’t happy with the Church’s set at Cruel World Festival in Pasadena in 2022, and more.

Q: How do these albums fit into the category of concept albums?

A: There’s two concept albums that spring to mind, and one of them is ‘Ziggy Stardust’ [by David Bowie]. It’s a very flimsy concept. Some of the songs you have to figure out yourself why that is even on there. Then you have an album like ‘Tommy’ [by the Who] where every song follows on from the last one, and they tell an ongoing, understandable, logical sort of left-brain story about this kid and his adventures. Or there’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ [by Pink Floyd] as sort of a loose concept album. It’s not a story so much but it’s an album about these ideas, these sort of ideas that trap us and plague us.

So I made it fit. And if someone, for some reason, said, ‘Write another song about hitting a gong,’ I would damn well make that fit, too.

Q: And the listener intuits the connections and stories they include?

A: I find people do the work for themselves. If you just give an album a title – ‘Songs from a Hanging Man’ – then all of the songs, people will listen to in that context. I find when I’m listening to my favorite artists I’m doing a lot of work, figuring it all out and really enjoying it as well. And realizing how music and words are really just a door you can open into a room in your mind where you can really enjoy yourself.

Q: The new albums have that great Church sound, but there are also other things in there. ‘No Other You,’ for instance, has bit of a Bowie feel.

A: It’s all there. It’s like, ‘OK, I can write a very David Bowie song right here. The old me, maybe 30 years ago, would have said, ‘No, you can’t use that. That’s too David Bowie.’ And now I go, Hang on, people like what David Bowie can do. And if there’s anybody on this planet who can do a good copy of David Bowie, it’s me. So that song wanted to be David Bowie and I let it be David Bowie.

But that’s what our hero [in the twin concept albums) is. He’s a faux rock star. I don’t know, I’ve done a sort of AI where I’ve recombined different aspects of David Bowie into that one song. People say, ‘Oh, there’s Pink Floyd moments and there’s prog moments. I’ve just sort of let it all be there. I’m not protesting, ‘Oh, I can’t be like anybody else anymore.’ Once upon a time, I couldn’t bear to be like anybody else. Now if start singing and it’s like David Bowie, I just let it be. It doesn’t matter anymore.

Q: But the inspirations never overwhelm the Church qualities. How does that stay consistent?

A: What I’m really good at is spotting potential in things really quickly. Because you’ve got a bunch of musicians improvising. And they could improvise something brilliant and none of them would notice. That’s sort of where I come in. I’m like, ‘Stop! That thing there. What’s that?’ Let’s go and work on that.’ We just noodle around and fiddle about and play guitar and hit the drums and muck around on keyboards. And eventually, something usually starts to take shape.

Q: I saw the Church at Cruel World in 2022. The current band lineup is terrific.

A: That wasn’t a very good show for us. If I’d seen that, I wouldn’t have thought that was very good. We sort of had problems and we’re also standing there in the sun at five o’clock on a really hot day. It wasn’t the way we should really be. There are some people who are so brilliant they can operate under any conditions, big, small, hot, cold, in the day, in the night, whatever it is. And then there are others who need some conditions to be right, otherwise it won’t be exactly as it’s supposed to be.

Q: I do feel like the Church is best listened to at night in a dark theater.

A: I agree. It’s nocturnal stuff. The Church is for sort of a rainy night and, like, getting in the mood of what it’s all about. Not chucking us on a stage with all those other bands from the ’80s. I don’t really like festivals or playing with other bands. Ideally, I’d have it all to myself. That’s selfish, isn’t it? The other guys are always saying we should play more festivals. I’m like, ‘Oh, keep my fingers crossed that doesn’t happen.’

Q: You’ve done 25 albums with the Church and twice that many as a solo artist or different band. Talk about that prolific creativity.

A: It’s interesting. I don’t really know where it’s all coming from. All I know is when I need it, especially if I smoke some marijuana, it seems to easily come and I never go away empty-handed. Also I just sort of feel like I’m not very good at many things. The most simple things bewilder me. But I’ve learned to understand over such a long period of 55 years, how it all works for me. I have this kind of arrangement with whatever it is that feeds me all the stuff I need, as long as I’m not doing something awful.

When I try to use my muse to help me do something awful, when I’m trying to just do something to make some money or something, it doesn’t like it and it doesn’t work out. Then it leaves me on my own and goes, ‘You (bleepin’) write that jingle, my old son, because I’m not involved.’

I want to create extraordinary music. I guess I’m being a bit snobbish. My music is sort of for intelligent people. I was watching a video the other day and there’s AC/DC at a concert, and 45,000 Germans, mainly men and boys. And no, they wouldn’t like what I do. You know, it’s not about fighting and drinking and shagging girls. It’s about something else.

Q: So what is it about?

A: I don’t know what it is, but I know it when I find it. I don’t exactly know what my mission statement is but I know what it isn’t. I can see a niche in the market where sort of David Bowie leaves off and the Beatles begin, and Lou Reed and Marc Bolan and Bob Dylan. Somehow all of this can be combined in a new way and recontextualized. I don’t think any of those people completely explored everything they had in them. They couldn’t. Nobody can.

So there would be a song by one of those people that would raise an implication for me. The implications of that song would inspire me to go on delving into whatever it was I thought I’d found in there.

Q: How did you pick the name Eros Zeta for your rock star protagonist?

A: Well, you need a character and you start going what would he be called? Jim Smith? Nah. Napoleon Clandestine? So I just sat there throwing combinations together. I was struck a long time ago, as I was taking my second set of twins to school, and there was a kid in our neighborhood named Eros. I’d never seen any blokes whose name was Eros. It started to work upon me, like, this is not just an unuseable name. It could be used.

I’m collecting information all the time. If I see a sign that says, ‘Ramp Speed 25,’ I go, ‘Can I use that?’ I was watching TV the other night and I heard this word, ‘decohere.’ I’d never heard that word before. So now I’ve got ‘decoheres’ floating around in my mind just waiting for the right opportunity to come out.

Q: I feel like I’ve heard that on television recently too…

A: – ‘Dark Matter’? [on Apple TV+]

Q: Yes, ‘Dark Matter’!

A: That’s sort of what I want my songs to be like, like anything can happen. And when it’s all over it’s just sort of some interesting things to think about time and space and love and ethics and morality. And the gods and hell. ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia. Bob Dylan and ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ and all the stuff I like. It’s a huge melange.

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​ Orange County Register 

Solar panels can generate $691 a year in homeowner savings, study says

• July 9, 2024

Solar power panels have long seemed an appealing option in California, a state with lots of sunny days that adores its electronic gadgetry and environment, yet is saddled with the highest residential electricity rates in the continental U.S.

But how much does going solar shave off those electricity bills? A major new study by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that analyzed 500,000 households across the U.S. in 2021 offers the best snapshot to date on estimated savings of rooftop solar for American consumers.

The study found the median American household saved an estimated $691 a year when all the costs and benefits were included.

Corda Solar employee Brad Alvey, bottom, hands a solar panel to Brendan Baumgartner while installing solar panels at a home in Danville, Calif., on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

“This is one of the most comprehensive, household-specific, national estimates of rooftop solar impacts on household energy burden,” said lead investigator Sydney Forrester, a policy researcher in the Energy Markets and Policy Department at the Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center in the hills of Berkeley.

Much previous research has focused only on direct utility bill savings of solar power, which can be misleading. For instance, if the cost of installation is excluded, the median household would erroneously calculate $1,987, not $691, in savings.

The new study provides a more complete accounting because it includes upfront installation fees and ongoing loan or lease payments, as well as any solar incentives. And it compares the benefits reaped by households with different incomes.

Nationwide, installation of solar panels in low-income households reduced the proportion of the family budget spent on energy from 7.7% to 6.2%, an estimated savings of $660 a year, the study said. In moderate-income households, it reduced the the proportion they spent on energy from 4.1% to 3.3%, saving $674 a year. And in higher-income households, the amount spent on energy dropped from 2.4% to 1.9%, saving $711 a year.

The study did not look at actual savings, because that data is not available. Rather, it modeled the household savings based on estimates of income, household utility bills, local electricity prices and consumption. Almost everyone in the study was a single family homeowner, with a few multifamily or rental homes.

In 2018, KB Homes Bridgepoint at Patterson Ranch development in Fremont had solar included with the purchase of the new homes. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)

Not every home reaps a benefit from solar power, the researchers found. On average, solar adoption reduced the cost of energy for about three-quarters of  U.S. households.

The benefits of solar power varied by region. In the West, especially California, high electricity prices and a competitive solar marketplace led to the greatest cost reduction. Homes in the Midwest experienced lower costs, although they were less pronounced. Homes in the Northeast also saw a benefit, although their overall energy costs remain high due to dependence on non-electric sources, such as propane and fuel oil.

In the South, solar power actually increased the overall cost of energy, because electricity prices from conventional sources are so low. For low-income Southern families, the cost of solar exceeded the benefit by $435 a year.

Low-income residents in the U.S. West who have installed solar power experience the greatest benefit with the proportion of estimated household income spent on energy falling from 7.3% to 5.7%, saving an estimated $821 a year.

But low-income residents continue to need assistance to help reduce energy costs, the researchers added.

“Solar is a great strategy for reducing energy costs,” Forrester said. But he added that it “should be considered as a complementary strategy” along with bill assistance and “weatherization” that helps insulate homes.

And Forrester cautioned that “while low-income households benefit more than other groups, there is a risk if they fall behind on payments to finance the projects.”

GRID Alternatives employees Tony Chang (L) and Sal Miranda install no-cost solar panels on the rooftop of a low-income household on October 19, 2023 in Pomona, California. GRID Alternatives has installed no-cost solar for over 29,000 low-income households located in underserved communities which are most impacted by pollution, underemployment and climate change. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Power bills have been rising across the nation. The average price of electricity per kilowatt hour has jumped from 13 cents to over 17 cents over the past decade, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. California’s residential rates are far higher — close to 30 cents, second highest in U.S. behind Hawaii.

Energy costs are typically a bigger burden for low-income households, which tend to spend a far larger percentage of their income on utility bills than higher-earning households, according to the Energy Department.  Many live in old and drafty homes and cannot afford modern and more efficient appliances.

“I applaud the paper’s overall goal, which is to raise awareness about the potential for rooftop solar to help alleviate energy burden for low-income disadvantaged community households,” said Eric Daniel Fournier, research director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “We strongly believe in the potential of rooftop solar… to address this important equity issue.”

The benefits of rooftop solar for low income households are most prominent in areas with higher electricity rates, such as California, he added.

Stanford University’s Ram Rajagopal, director of the Stanford Sustainable Systems Lab, called the findings “extremely valuable.”

“It shows that the cost of energy that you get from rooftop solar is very competitive for low and middle income consumers,” he said. “It reduces their energy burden, given access to the right incentives.”

The study is also important because it stresses the need for additional strategies, such as weatherization and bill assistance, said Rajagopal.  His research, published in the March issue of the journal Nature Energy, has also shown that commercial and industrial rooftops, such as those atop retail buildings and factories, have large unused capacity to produce solar power  — and could bring affordable clean energy to low-income communities around them, reducing “the solar equity gap.”

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The study falls short by not describing the practical barriers to the implementation of rooftop solar within low-income disadvantaged communities, Fournier noted. It also didn’t include any savings created by energy storage components — backup battery systems, he added. California policy now encourages the parallel adoption of solar panels and power storage units.

In future work, the Laboratory team will study the potential of solar savings for a broader variety of homes, including renters and multifamily dwellers, Forrester said. She hopes to expand the study to include “community solar” and other strategies that don’t require rooftop ownership.

What’s missing, she added, are low-income residents who would like to save money on energy bills but couldn’t afford the upfront costs.

“Any additional cost to solar adoption will increase the barrier,” she said, “and this is more likely in the case of older homes or those with deferred maintenance.”

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​ Orange County Register 

As bird flu spreads on dairy farms, an ‘abysmal’ few workers are tested

• July 9, 2024

Nada Hassanein | Stateline.org (TNS)

Public health officials are concerned about bird flu, which so far has been detected in three dairy farmworkers — two in Michigan and one in Texas — as well as in cattle in a dozen states.

The farmworkers’ symptoms were mild, and researchers have not found that the H5N1 virus, also known as bird flu, can spread from person to person. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is little risk to the general public. However, flu viruses evolve, and H5N1 could mutate and gain the ability to infect people more easily.

“The reason public health authorities are and should be on high alert is because this is a potential high-consequence pathogen,” said Meghan Davis, an epidemiologist and microbiologist at Johns Hopkins University.

That’s why state officials are so focused on testing and surveillance of dairy workers. But they are encountering significant challenges.

H5N1 is deadly to domestic poultry and can wipe out entire flocks in a matter of days, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says. As a result, the poultry industry has responded vigorously to the threat, culling entire flocks when they detect even one infected bird. But H5N1 is milder in cows, and the response on dairy farms has been less aggressive.

The CDC and USDA have advised dairy farms to monitor for the virus in cattle and humans, but testing remains voluntary, except for herds moving across state lines.

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In addition, dairy farms are often in remote rural areas, and workers have little access to transportation and no sick leave. As a result, it’s difficult for them to travel to health care providers for testing and treatment. Many dairy workers, who are mostly immigrants, speak Indigenous languages like Nahuatl or K’iche, according to the National Center for Farmworker Health, a nonprofit that offers support and training for centers that focus on the health of farmworkers.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, emphasized that the current bird flu strain isn’t a pandemic threat to humans. That’s why, he said, this is the perfect time to get the right testing and surveillance measures in place.

“If you can’t get it right with something that’s as forgiving as this virus has been, in terms of its inefficiency in infecting humans, it really doesn’t bode well for when the stakes are higher,” Adalja said.

So far, cases of the virus have been documented among domestic livestock in Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming, according to the USDA. Last month, federal officials announced grants to farms to offset the cost of milk loss from sick cows. Four states — Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico and Texas — are launching voluntary pilot programs to test for the virus in dairy farms’ bulk milk tanks.

In Michigan, where the virus has been detected in 25 herds, Tim Boring, director of the state Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said efforts are focused on trying to help farmers recoup losses and agree to testing. Last month, the agency announced it would use a combination of federal and state money to give as much as $28,000 to up to 20 affected farms.

The state also launched a study to find out if there are antibodies in people exposed to sick cows, aiming to determine if there have been any asymptomatic infections.

Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive, said the state is working with community health clinics and local health departments to reach farmworkers.

“They not only know the farms in their counties, but they also know many of the farmworker organizations,” she said.

Dairy farmworkers, who are often immigrants, can’t afford to miss a day of work, and can be reluctant to reach out to request testing or say they feel sick, advocates say.

“This is a population of people that is just vastly underserviced when it comes to both outreach and trust established with state and federal agencies,” said Elizabeth Strater, strategic campaigns director at United Farm Workers, a labor union. “This is a group of workers that are some of the poorest workers in the United States.”

Immigrants make up 51% of daily labor at dairy farms, and farms that employ immigrants produce 79% of the nation’s milk supply, according to the National Milk Producers Federation.

Amy Liebman of the Migrant Clinicians Network, an education and outreach group of experts in migrant health, said testing should be administered on the farms rather than in clinics.

“Dairies are in rural areas, very isolated geographically. You’re not going to get all these workers in one place to be able to do any kind of surveying or testing. It is a matter of really trying to go to where the workers are,” she said.

But it hasn’t been easy getting farm owners to agree to that. The Texas state health department told Stateline it has offered on-site testing to farmers, but as of mid-June, it had tested only about 20 symptomatic dairy workers who volunteered for testing. It also has given personal protective equipment to “interested dairies” and posted a notice online offering to deliver the equipment.

Coordination among state or local agricultural and health departments is key to tracking viral spread. A lack of coordination and monitoring can be contributing to underreporting cases.

“I think it is definitely more widespread than is currently reported,” said Dr. Shira Doron, chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine. “The barriers between the agencies are really hampering our efforts right now.”

The CDC has offered a $75 payment to any farmworker who agrees to be tested and provide blood and nasal swab samples to the agency. But Doris Garcia-Ruiz, who directs farmworker outreach at Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, said that won’t make up for days of lost income.

“If they take the time off to go to their doctor’s office, they don’t have sick leave, so they’re not going to get paid,” she said.

The CDC’s latest figures show that at least 53 people have been tested in the cattle outbreak, with a majority of those in Michigan. Strater says that’s not enough.

“That’s abysmal,” she said. “Our method of testing is so passive. They’re relying on workers reporting to medical clinics; these are workers that are not going to be taking themselves for medical treatment unless they’re experiencing something life-threatening.”

Getting workers to use personal protective equipment also is a challenge. The CDC recommends that workers wear respirators, waterproof aprons and coveralls, unvented safety goggles or a face shield, and rubber boots with sealed seams that can be sanitized. It also advises that workers follow a specific sequence of steps to remove the PPE at the end of a shift to avoid contamination.

“Dairy work is very wet, very hands-on,” said Christine Sauvé, who leads community engagement at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. “While some industries are very familiar with PPE … the full recommendation from CDC is new and different. And so that really needs the full promotion from the employer, and then also from the state agencies.”

Sauvé worries that Michigan is prioritizing farmers’ losses, rather than farmworkers’ health, in its response. While the risk to the public is low, she and other experts say the population of farmworkers shouldn’t be forgotten.

Bethany Alcauter of the National Center for Farmworker Health described bird flu threat as “kind of a ticking time bomb.”

“Maybe it hasn’t fully gone off yet. But if we don’t manage it well, it could,” Alcauter said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Corporations want you to rent, not own. Can lawmakers stop them?

• July 9, 2024

By Holden Lewis | NerdWallet

If you rent a house when you would rather own, pin some of the blame on corporate landlords.

The 10 biggest institutional investors owned more than 430,000 single-family rental homes at the end of 2023, and they continue to acquire houses to rent out to middle-class families. Corporate landlords seek to dominate the neighborhoods they target, simultaneously reducing the inventory of houses to buy while expanding the stock of houses to rent.

Members of Congress have introduced bills to force the largest institutional investors to dramatically cut their holdings.

Renting costs less than buying

The United States suffers from a housing shortage of between 1.5 million and 5.5 million units, depending on whom you ask. Institutional investors benefit from the shortage because it pushes prices higher, making homeownership unaffordable for many. The median home resale price rose to a record $419,300 in May, according to the National Association of Realtors. Mortgage rates have remained above 6.5% since May 2023.

Consequently, it costs more to buy a starter home than to rent in the 50 largest metro areas, according to a Realtor.com report in March. According to Zillow, the median rent for a three-bedroom house was $2,200 in June. That’s $32 less than the principal-and-interest payment on a median-price house at the average mortgage rate in May — after making a 20% down payment. But who has $83,860 for a 20% down payment on a $419,300 house? The combination of high prices and interest rates forces many would-be homeowners to rent.

‘Significant market power’

Renters occupy about 15.9 million single-family homes, according to the Census Bureau. Corporate landlords own about 3% of them. That doesn’t seem like much, but corporate-owned rental houses are concentrated in a few metro areas, mostly in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Texas, Arizona and California. In metro Atlanta, just three companies owned 19,000 houses at the beginning of 2022, for an 11% market share, according to research by Georgia State University geographer Taylor Shelton.

“These companies own tens of thousands of properties in a relatively select set of neighborhoods, which allows them to exercise really significant market power over tenants and renters because they have such a large concentration of holdings in those neighborhoods,” Shelton said in a news release.

Shelton says the corporate landlords’ market share has increased since then. “The reality is that the corporate stranglehold on the single family rental market in places like Atlanta has only gotten worse,” he said in an email.

Raising rents, charging fees

Invitation Homes owned 12,726 rental houses in metro Atlanta at the end of 2023. The company exercised its market power by raising the average rent there 7.1% last year, according to the company’s annual reports, while the area’s median home price went up 1.3%, according to the National Association of Realtors. Invitation also stacks up to $145 in mandatory monthly fees on top of rent: up to $40 for smart home technology, $9.95 for quarterly air filter delivery, $9.95 to manage utility billing and up to $85 for internet.

Corporate landlords raise rent and charge ancillary fees because they can. “These institutions have outsized power in our housing market, and that influence is growing,” said U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, in an email. “By 2030, Wall Street could control 40 percent of U.S. single-family rental homes.”

How corporate landlords get so many houses

Big corporations have two main methods of accumulating rental houses: buying homes when the owners list them for sale and build-to-rent. In recent years, build-to-rent has dominated.

In the build-to-rent model, a company constructs houses that are intended for the rental market from the time the company buys the land. According to an Urban Institute analysis, construction was started on 120,000 build-to-rent houses in 2022 — 12% of all single-family starts.

The other way these companies collect houses is by buying them on the resale market. When they do, corporations have the resources to outcompete folks who browse for houses online.

Progress Residential is the largest corporate landlord, with 85,000 houses. It bought most of them on the resale market, competing with ordinary people. But Progress has an edge over people, a company executive explained in a 2021 episode of the Leading Voice in Real Estate podcast.

“We have an incredibly effective system for acquiring homes one at a time,” Progress’s then-CEO, Chaz Mueller, said. Every 15 minutes, the company got an update of newly listed homes in its markets. When an algorithm identified a house that met its criteria, the company’s acquisition team made an offer “within a couple of hours of the home going on the market. So we’re able to analyze it very quickly, make an offer. Our offers are all cash, very flexible closing, basically whenever the seller wants to move out,” Mueller said.

A bill to make them sell

Merkley, the Oregon senator, has introduced a bill that would force corporate landlords to sell their houses. The End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act “is intended to give all families a fair chance to buy a decent home in a decent community at a price they can afford, because houses should be homes for families, not a profit center for Wall Street,” Merkley said in an email.

His bill would make corporate landlords sell at least 10% of their inventories of single-family rental homes every year for 10 years or face steep tax penalties. A similar bill was introduced into the House, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Washington.

Are corporate landlords giving people what they want?

Corporate landlords point out that they build houses in a country that needs millions more dwellings. “We continue to do our part in solving the housing shortage by providing new premium housing options in desirable family-friendly locations across the country,” said David Singelyn, CEO of AMH, the third-largest corporate landlord with about 60,000 houses, in a recent earnings call.

Sean Dobson, CEO of The Amherst Group (fourth-biggest, 50,000 houses), made a similar point when he was interviewed for Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business podcast in March. He described a family that outgrows an apartment, but can’t afford to buy a house. Then the family rents from Amherst: “These are homes that [the] resident would have a very difficult time getting into without us,” he said.

Holden Lewis writes for NerdWallet. Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @HoldenL.

The article Corporations Want You to Rent, Not Own. Can Lawmakers Stop Them? originally appeared on NerdWallet.

​ Orange County Register 

Get ready for the sixth annual Pacific Food and Wine Classic in Newport Beach

• July 9, 2024

Dozens of Southern California eateries and wineries will join forces for one all-inclusive afternoon in Newport Beach at the sixth annual Pacific Food and Wine Classic. Billed as “an exclusive VIP only experience,” the annual food carousal returns on Saturday, Sept. 21.

Highlights this year will include executive chef Steve Kling of Ying Chang and Robert Adamson’s Strong Water Anaheim, who, most recently, were finalists for the 2024 James Beard Award; a whole-pig feast by Lola’s by MFK; and desserts care of chef Fabio Viviani of Jars Sweets & Things.

Other notable chefs preparing fare this year are Stefano Ciociola (of Benchmark), Karla Vasquez (Chelas Mexican Kitchen), Jose Angulo (Descanso), Matthew Luna (Five Crowns, Sidedoor), Adolfo Morales (Great Maple Restaurant), Alan Sanz (Maizano), Leslie Nguyen (Miss Mini Donuts), Adrian de La Torre (Rancho Capistrano Winery), Louise Chien (Scratch Bakery Cafe), Toshi Muira (Ten Asian Bistro), Leo Razo (Villa Roma and Cambalache) and Vincent Espinoza (Xacalli), to name a few.

SEE ALSO: The Ecology Center announces summer Community Table dinners for 2024

In addition to the grand wine pavilion hosted by the San Luis Obispo Wine Collective, which will feature grapes from San Luis Obispo coast, and the grand tasting pavilion, a 40-by-60-foot pavilion featuring chef creations and craft cocktails galore, attendees can check out the taco garden to get their paws on some of the best tacos Orange County has to offer.

Tickets cost $199 for general admission (starting at 2 p.m.) and $250 for early admission (1 p.m.).

Pacific Food and Wine Classic is presented by the O.C. Restaurant Association. The outdoor event (though some of it will be held inside a tented area) takes place at the Newport Dunes Waterfront Resort along the Back Bay water.

As always, the Pacific Food and Wine Classic is a 21-and-over affair.

​ Orange County Register 

Disneyland signals plans to celebrate 70th anniversary in a big way

• July 9, 2024

Disneyland appears to be gearing up for a 70th anniversary celebration in 2025 to rival the yearlong parties for the 50th and 60th anniversaries that brought new or returning parades, fireworks shows and nighttime spectaculars along with themed decor, food and merchandise.

Disneyland cast members will launch 70th anniversary preparations with a “Road to the 70th” backstage party on July 17 — the Anaheim theme park’s 69th birthday.

The “Disneyland Forever” fireworks and projections on Sleeping Beauty Castle celebrating the park’s 60th anniversary in 2015. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

ALSO SEE: Disneyland sells out of Oogie Boogie Bash tickets in 11 days

Disneyland employees — known as cast members in Disney parlance — will celebrate the Road to the 70th with backstage photo ops, Porto’s Bakery treats, puzzle contests, tours of Walt Disney’s fire station apartment and other activities.

While Mickey Mouse never misses a chance to celebrate a significant milestone, it’s still far too early to start saluting the septuagenarian park’s eighth decade – even by Disneyland standards.

Thousands crowd on Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland in 2015 as the park celebrated its 60th anniversary with a 24-hour party. (File photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

ALSO SEE: Disneyland to close Space Mountain during busy summer season

When will the 70th anniversary celebration officially start? How long will it last? What’s the theme?

Disneyland officials have not yet released any details on the 70th anniversary celebration.

But the early cast member kick-off suggests the 70th anniversary will be a big party on par with the 50th and 60th anniversary celebrations that each stretched for more than a year.

Disney characters dance on the steps of Main Street Station wearing their 100th anniversary costumes at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, on Thursday, January 26, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

ALSO SEE: Disneyland starts Halloween 2024 earlier than ever before

Disneyland’s 70th anniversary might feel a lot like Disney’s 100th anniversary — when the park celebrated the company’s centennial in 2023. A 70th anniversary is known as a platinum anniversary — the same metallic color theme that dominated Disney100.

Disneyland celebrated Disney100 in 2023 from January to September, when the party moved to Epcot in Florida for the remainder of the year.

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Disneyland didn’t do anything for the 65th anniversary in July 2020 — because the park was closed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 60th anniversary stretched over two years — from May 2015 to September 2016. The 50th anniversary ran just as long — from May 2005 to September 2006.

A time capsule was buried during the 40th anniversary in 1995 with plans to unearth the park’s memories, messages and milestones on July 17, 2035 — Disneyland’s 80th anniversary.

​ Orange County Register