April 23, 2025

You may have heard of the recent resurrection of the dire wolf. This scientific miracle came about through extracted DNA from the blood of the gray wolf and rewritten into the genetic code to match the sequence from dire wolf fossils.

In California, we need another resurrection of an endangered species  — the California middle-class homeowner. Ironically, both the miracle and the tragedy are entirely man-made, and both phenomena possess the potential to unleash unintended consequences that could redefine our understanding of how we live on this planet. 

California’s housing crisis is not a naturally occurring condition. Nor is it an unavoidable result of market forces, population growth, or even the climate crisis. Rather, it is a deliberate policy choice propped up by decades of anachronistic zoning and construction policies that have allowed wealthy homeowners, entrenched local governments, and bureaucratic red tape to keep desperately needed housing from being built.

According to the California Association of Realtors 2024 Traditional Housing Affordability Index, only 15% of the state’s homebuyers could afford to purchase a median-priced existing single-family home. In Los Angeles, where the median list price is $1.2M, the numbers are even worse with only 13% of households able to purchase the median single-family home with a household income of close to $250K necessary just to qualify. The human cost of the layers of policy failures that have an omnipresent chokehold on housing development have regretfully come to define the image of the state itself. As of January 2024, there were over 187,000 homeless individuals in the state with over 5.2 million, or 18% of California adults reporting that their housing situation was unstable. Further, an EdSource analysis reveals that in Los Angeles County, nearly half (46%) of LAUSD employees, including teachers, are housing insecure, soaring rents making housing unaffordable for many residents. 

The extinction of the California homeowner is easy to understand with its ossified forms of local governments often resisting reforms and maintaining outdated zoning laws that hinder the construction of multifamily housing. These all contribute to an artificial scarcity of available homes. When all that is left of this once golden state are the ultra-rich and those who depend almost entirely on government assistance, a close look at the calcified remnants of a once vibrant middle class will reveal the following clues about how and why it became extinct:

• Impact of Zoning Laws: Restrictive zoning laws have historically prevented lower-income residents from accessing wealthier neighborhoods, exacerbating economic disparities and driving up housing costs. This has led to a decline in population in major cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, as residents leave in search of affordable living conditions. 

• Racial and Social Justice Issues: The housing crisis is intertwined with social justice, as exclusionary zoning practices often target low-income and nonwhite communities under the pretext of preserving neighborhood character. This systemic issue continues to hinder equitable access to housing. 

• Need for Reform: Despite state-level initiatives to promote housing development, local governments frequently ignore or resist compliance, worsening the crisis. Effective solutions require political will to dismantle exclusionary practices and streamline housing approvals. 

• Broader Economic Consequences: The housing shortage stifles economic growth, as businesses struggle to attract talent due to high living costs. With tech companies relocating to states with more affordable housing, California risks losing its competitive edge.  

With tech companies relocating to states with more affordable housing, California risks losing its competitive edge. 

• Unaffordable public higher education: The University of California system was initially designed to be tuition-free for California residents. However, over time, tuition and fees have increased significantly, making the UC system one of the most expensive public university systems in the nation further pricing out middle-class families from achieving a staple of middle-class upward mobility. For in-state residents, the total cost of attending UCLA for four years is approximately $170K. With the average median income in Los Angeles at approximately $87K, higher education is no longer affordable to a middle-class household living in Los Angeles County.

• Corruption and the Housing Industrial Complex: LA city officials face challenges in tracking homelessness spending, primarily due to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s (LAHSA) inadequate data collection and accountability measures. An audit of $2.4 billion in city funding revealed that poor documentation made it difficult to track expenditures, and the agency did not verify whether invoiced services were actually provided. The audit highlights insufficient financial accountability and a lack of uniform data standards, which increased the risk of misallocation of resources and hindered assessment of the effectiveness of homelessness assistance services.

While it may be hard to anticipate the consequences of reintroducing extinct species back into the ecosystem, we are indeed experiencing the consequences of failed housing policy across the once great state of California with the extinction of the middle-class homeowner unfold before us in real time. One might even argue that between the resurgence of the dire wolf and the deliberate perpetuation of our dire housing crisis, it is the latter that is far more predatory.

Lisa Ansell is the Associate Director of the USC Casden Institute and Lecturer of Hebrew Language at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Los Angeles.

I recently confronted the frightening truth that relying on technology over human insight, human intelligence (HUMINT), can be as life threatening to our personal health as it was to Israel’s security on October 7.  

I understood this too clearly when a doctor told me outside the operating room there was a chance my husband would not survive the procedure he was undergoing. No, he wasn’t wounded in battle – he had his chances long ago in Israeli wars and service in the reserves. No. this was from a combination of age and, dare I say, failure of the sophisticated technological tools we rely on to tell us if we are not well. A failure that reminded me of what we in Israel experienced on October 7 when technology did not withstand enemy tactics, prevent the breach of our borders, or warn our protectors of an attack in progress. 

HUMINT, a new word for me, is the intelligence gathered by humans. Spies. Agents embedded in enemy territory who supply intel on impending attacks. On October 7 we did not have HUMINT in Gaza, but we did have the tatzpitaniyot, the field observers, on our side of the border. They sit for hours, focused on screens aimed at Gaza. They observe. They study movement and tactics. They look for changes from the norm.  This they did with perfection, but their reports were ignored by their superiors.  

In our personal case, David suffered from chest pains when walking or exercising. “It’s my heart,” he said. He understood the warnings from his body, but no one really listened. Again, the field observers came to mind because they “live” in Gaza. They discover the slightest nuances of behavior that indicate danger. Like we do with our own bodies. The observers knew an attack from Gaza was imminent yet were ignored. They knew that those “trial balloons” with incendiaries and explosives were preparations for an invasion. They knew those gatherings of hundreds of Gazans along the fences were preparations for war.  They insisted an attack was coming but were ridiculed, their reports disregarded. HUMINT was ignored.

My husband insisted his chest pains were from his heart. He recognized the pain from 19 years ago when he had stents inserted. He knew. But his claims were rejected, nullified by advanced technology showing negative results for different tests that should detect heart disease.  He’s an 82-year-old man who was perhaps becoming delusional. Paranoid. Someone who does sit-ups and lifts weights every day and then goes to instruct gun owners how to shoot, is not paranoid. But he is 82. HUMINT was ignored.

 “Ah, come on. Your myocardial perfusion imaging is perfect. You have proof right here that your heart is fine!” 

This sounded like what the observers had endured:

 “Ah, come on, banot — girls. Hamas is just rattling the cage. They are deterred. Nothing to get hysterical over.”

My husband was luckier than our country. When pains became more frequent, he was finally referred to the emergency room and admitted.

The doctor on rounds the next morning read his history and listened to his heart. 

Here’s the difference. She understands HUMINT. She read his chart. She questioned. She listened carefully and intently— with kavana—to his heart. And she heard the heart’s plea for help. 

“There is a serious problem here,” she said. 

An angioplasty was scheduled. The procedure was complicated and risky but thankfully successful. Instead of suffering the cardiac arrest they said he was headed for, my husband was released after three days in ICU in time to celebrate Passover with the family.

Technology—hi-tech, computerized tests, sensors, and cameras—is not the end-all. These tools exist to assist, not replace. I pray that technology will never again overshadow HUMINT—the invaluable resource that listens to the “heart,” senses the nuances of change in the enemy, in patients, and in ourselves.

Why do we not listen to those who are in the best position to know?

Galia Miller Sprung moved to Israel from Southern California in 1970 to become a pioneer farmer and today she is a writer and editor. 

Fourscore years. That’s how long it’s taken for the Holocaust to evolve from what almost everyone considered the exemplar of evil to a shibboleth that can be denied, minimized or mocked. Men and women with ginormous public platforms and expertise drawn from Wikipedia have discovered that nothing so assures greater celebrity as going after the Jews, and above all their most horrific suffering. 

These self-made pundits remind their millions of followers on Spotify and YouTube that our government lied about COVID originating in a Chinese lab, about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, about Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election — so what else are they lying about? The answer comes with dismal predictability: The Jews. The elites don’t want you to know the Jews murdered JFK, are the hidden hand behind 9/11, that they operate a vast pedophilia ring. But the ultimate taboo, which these “brave” influencers will speak out about is the truth of the Holocaust. Far from harming them, their “revelations” assure a higher profile and greater status. Each is followed by ooh-I-can’t-believe-he-said-that squeals and, above all, clicks. Antisemitism is a social media goldmine.

Dan Bilzerian (social media following: 32 million) told Piers Morgan a few months ago: “I believe that Jewish supremacy is the greatest threat to America, and I think it’s the greatest threat to the world today.” He says he would bet his vast fortune that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was under 6 million, but in any case, “Jews have killed far more Christians than that. I mean it’s not even close, if you look at the Bolshevik genocide, the Holodomor … they basically invented the genocide.”

Candace Owens (social media following: 25 million) has gone Kanye West-level deranged, informing listeners on her YouTube channel that Frankists, a 19th-century cult founded by a Jewish apostate, are leading present-day pedophilia cabals, that AIPAC murdered JFK and that should anything happen to her, the Jews did it. She hasn’t gotten around to full-bore Holocaust denial — yet — but mocks the horror surrounding it. Because we live in an age in which everyone someone doesn’t agree with is just like Hitler, Owens suggests that Hitler is simply a bogeyman for the naïve. In an episode titled “He Who Must Not Be Named” — “he” being Hitler — Owens mentions the Holocaust only to take potshots at it, claiming the well-documented reports of Dr. Mengele’s sadistic experiments are “absurd.” Anyway, she says, the Allies did the same as the Nazis or worse. 

It’s this latter argument — we’ve committed monstrous crimes, so when our government declares someone an enemy, they’re hypocrites and we shouldn’t believe them — that resonates with people on the political left as well as right. And because our government and its allies have done some questionable if not terrible things throughout history, there is a need to reflect deeply on our predecessors’ actions — to try to consider their circumstances as best we can, then ask where they might have gone wrong. But that would require reasoned, informed analysis and nuance — precisely the opposite approach of what these latter-day gurus are doing. Their argument isn’t that the struggle against Nazism should be considered in less black-and-white terms — it’s to turn reality on its head, declaring the good side evil, and implicitly exonerating what used to be rightly condemned. 

Typical of our age’s “experts” is self-styled historian Darryl Cooper, who has called Winston Churchill “the chief villain” — worse than Hitler — of the Second World War and tweeted that Hitler’s invasion of France was “infinitely preferable in virtually every way” to wokeism. It’s a message at least partially palatable to the far left, who love his take on Churchill and the murderous imperialist Allies. 

But the main thing extremists of the left and right, not to mention the Islamists, can agree on is that the Zionists are behind every evil, Israel is committing genocide and the Holocaust is, if not made up in whole or part (“I don’t think a single Jew died in gas chambers,” podcaster Jake Shields tweeted), then at least exaggerated or exploited for the Jews’ nefarious purposes.  

This week we mark Yom HaShoah, remembering the 6 million Jews… Simply remembering and upholding truth become acts of defiance. So we must.

Holocaust denial is nearly as old as the Holocaust itself — which is to say, it’s very modern. Already by 1950, a French Communist, Paul Rassinier, had written a book doubting the existence of Auschwitz’s gas chambers and the Nazis’ policy of extermination. In 1959, American clergyman Gerald L. K. Smith published the claim that 6 million Jews were not killed during the Holocaust, but had peaceably immigrated to the United States during the war. Over successive decades the left and right nourished, and fed on each other’s, Holocaust denialism. By 1989 Sweden-based Radio Islam introduced Islamist Holocaust denial to Europe, making the great trifecta — far left, far right and Islamist — complete. It’s always been there, percolating on society’s margins — although it does depend on what one considers “the margins.” 

Now, with the advent of social media, it’s becoming mainstream. Not just widely discredited podcasters like Tucker Carlson, but largely respected ones like Piers Morgan, Theo Von, Stephen A. Smith and, above all, Joe Rogan are inviting on people with views that would have been scorned a few years ago but are now welcomed as daringly heterodox. 

This creates a real dilemma. Free speech is essential to a free society. Calling to censor views that are disgusting but not immediately dangerous — meaning, explicitly calling for violence — is a big mistake that can only backfire. Podcasters like Rogan can make a legitimate-sounding claim that in providing a platform to these figures, they are simply championing free speech. But as Douglas Murray told Rogan during his recent appearance on Rogan’s show: “I feel you’ve opened the door to quite a lot of people who’ve now got a very big platform, who have been throwing out counter-historical stuff of a very dangerous kind.” 

That about sums it up. This week we mark Yom HaShoah, remembering the 6 million Jews, including one million children, who were murdered in the Holocaust. Meanwhile we can’t help but think of the Jews murdered on Oct. 7, those still being held hostage, and the tsunami of antisemitism directed against the state founded with the vow “Never Again.” Simply remembering and upholding truth have become acts of defiance. So we must.

Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”