Permits in the five-county Bay Area were down last year, dropping 10% to 16,535 from 18,457 the year prior, according to data from California’s housing department.

RELATED: The Bay Area’s building boom is coming to an end. It could be years before housing production climbs back

Here are five charts that explain the slowdown in construction in the Bay Area — which cities are building the most, how much of the new housing is affordable, and where the Bay Area is at in achieving its housing goals.

1. San Jose, San Francisco are permitting the most new housing

San Jose led the Bay Area in housing production — in 2023, it permitted 3,104 units of housing. It was followed by San Francisco, with 3,055 permits, and Santa Rosa, with 1,708.

But smaller cities are lagging behind in their housing goals. Of the 102 jurisdictions in the nine-county region, 40 issued fewer than 50 building permits.

A handful of small cities — Foster City, Albany, Sausalito and Hercules — issued fewer than 10 building permits, and they were only for accessory dwelling units, also known as mother-in-law cottages.

2. The Bay Area is already behind on its housing goals

Every eight years, the state’s housing department determines a certain number of homes that a jurisdiction must build in that timeframe, based on population and job growth trends. Bay Area cities and counties’ eight-year cycle began on January 31, 2023 and goes through January 31, 2031.

That number — called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation — is divided into four categories:

• Very-low-income housing that would be affordable for people making less than half of the area’s median income
• Low-income housing for people making 51-80% of median income
• Moderate-income housing for people making 81-120% of median income
• Above-moderate-income housing for people making more than 120% of median income

The median household income in the Bay Area was $115,321 as of 2022.

3. Alameda County completed the most homes in 2023 — though most of them are market-rate

Alameda County led the way in home construction in 2023, completing a total of 5,586 units, with most of them aimed at households making above-moderate income.

Meanwhile, Santa Clara County permitted more units — which means construction there could surpass Alameda County in 2024, if all those units are built.

4. The decline in construction is driven mostly by a slowdown in multifamily construction

Multifamily developers are having some of the most trouble finding financing for their buildings, driven in part by rising costs and stagnant rents. Meanwhile, construction of accessory dwelling units, known as ADU’s or mother-in-law cottages, has remained steady over the last three years.

5. Building low-income housing costs an average of $817,000 per unit in the Bay Area.

Of the 440,000 units the state expects to see the nine-county Bay Area build by 2031, 180,000 are expected to be “affordable” — targeted at low-income and very-low-income households.

Already, the region has over 40,000 affordable units in the construction pipeline that could be built as soon as they get financing, according to a recent report from the affordable housing financing group Enterprise Community Partners and the Bay Area Housing Financing Authority, known as BAHFA.

But building affordable housing is expensive — often even more than market-rate housing. Affordable housing units in the Bay Area require an average subsidy of $286,000 per unit. Construction is most expensive in San Mateo county, where they can cost an average of $825,000 per unit.

The deal would put the price tag for a two-dosage pack of FDA approved naloxone, often known by the brand name Narcan, at $24, a 40% drop from the current purchase price, state officials said at a news conference Monday.

That lower price will allow the state’s health agencies to “stretch the opioid settlement fund dollars much further,” and purchase far more of the life-saving medicine than they otherwise would be able to afford, according to Elizabeth Landsberg, director of the California Department of Healthcare Access and Information.

States, including California have been awarded billions of dollars from settlements reached with several pharmacies and drug distributors who were sued for their role in fueling the opioid epidemic.

That discount on state-funded naloxone does not necessarily translate to lower prices at the drug-store for everyday shoppers, where naloxone usually costs around $45 per two-dose pack, according to experts. But it does mean that the state will be able to send more naloxone to the non-profits, schools, police departments and other organizations who currently qualify for free doses from the state’s plan.

Naloxone is a safe and easy to use nasal spray which can be administered to people of all ages who are suffering from an opioid overdose. In 2022, a record-breaking 7,385 Californians died from opioid overdoses. The vast majority of those deaths, 6,473, were fentanyl-related.

Governor Newsom touted the new deal with Amneal Pharmaceuticals in a news release Monday, comparing it to the state’s effort to offer insulin at a deep discount.

“California is disrupting the drug industry… securing life-saving drugs at lower and transparent prices,” Governor Newsom said. “As we continue the effort to bring $30 insulin to the market, the state is now set to purchase life-saving naloxone for almost half of the current market price — maximizing taxpayer dollars and saving more lives with this miracle drug.”

In the Bay Area, fentanyl reached deeper into the cradle last year, killing three Bay Area infants and toddlers in one six-month period, including 3-month-old baby Phoenix Castro, of San Jose, who was sent home from the hospital with her drug-using father despite a social worker’s warnings that she was unsafe.

The state’s new partnership with Amneal Pharmaceuticals is not without controversy. The pharmacy group is a named defendant in dozens of lawsuits across the country alleging that they engaged in deceptive marketing practices to distribute opioids, in many cases after downplaying their addictiveness.

Last year Governor Gavin Newsom called on the state to manufacture its own naloxone, but there are still no solid plans for when, or how that would be achieved. State officials said the deal with Amneal Pharmaceuticals, which will last 3 years, will bridge the gap as they try to come up with their own manufacturing plan.

California’s move to purchase Naloxone stands in marked contrast to the efforts in some states like Idaho where lawmakers have sought to limit who can get access to the overdose reversing medication.

Chelsea Shover, assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, said that the state’s naloxone distribution efforts have been incredibly important in arming people at the front lines of the opioid crisis with a life-saving medication that they might not otherwise be able to afford.

“It enables naloxone to get into the hands of people who are most likely to be able to respond in the event of an overdose,” Shover said.

Without a valid housing element in place, cities face a penalty called the “builder’s remedy,” which effectively allows housing developers to bypass local zoning and design restrictions to propose projects far taller and denser than typically allowed, so long as 20% of the units they propose are affordable.

The projects run the gamut from a 412-foot tower in Menlo Park at the former Sunset Magazine headquarters to a sprawling 1,464-unit development near the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport.

The builder’s remedy projects largely target affluent cities around the Bay that have been some of the most resistant to adding new housing, especially at higher densities.

Search for builder’s remedy projects around your area on the map. Click on a dot to reveal details about the number of units and the developer.

How the Bay Area News Group made this map

To use the builder’s remedy, developers submit a preliminary application, which locks in the ordinances and standards, including the builder’s remedy, at the time of submission. That means that if a city does come up with a compliant housing element shortly after an application is submitted, the builder’s remedy will still apply to their project since they submitted it when the penalty was in effect. The developer then submits a full application within 180 days of its preliminary application. This map includes both preliminary applications and final applications.

Federal prosecutors say that, back in 2019, Al Eyani acquired at least four firearms, 44 rifle scopes, magazine rounds, monoculars and night vision goggles. He then stashed those items in two different shipping containers scheduled to depart from the Port of Oakland. To conceal the firearms, he reportedly disassembled them into their component parts, wrapped them in separate pieces of aluminum foil, and hid them in automobiles inside each container.

Law enforcement officers seized the items before they shipped out.

“Such actions not only pose significant risks to national security but also contribute to destabilizing regions and potentially fueling conflicts,” said San Francisco Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Tatum King in the press announcement.

Al Eyani’s wife was also separately sentenced to three years probation for making false statements to the FBI during an investigation into the matter.

When California’s cannabis shops opened their doors six years ago this month, they inaugurated the world’s largest market for legalized recreational marijuana.

This historic step would transform the state, predicted supporters and opponents. Californians would get justice and gobs of money — or fall victim to reefer madness.

What’s life like after legalization? Pretty chill. The passionate claims made by both sides ended up being overstated. The sky hasn’t fallen, and the state has some more money. But there are some new challenges, such as accidental ingestion by children and emergency medical problems among elders.

And there’s still a lot we don’t know. Surprisingly, the state has no good historical data about the number of acres in cultivation. Statistics about youth usage are woefully incomplete. There is no roadside sobriety test for cannabis, and the CHP doesn’t track accidents that involve drivers who are high on pot. A study by the Rand Corporation and Institute of Labor Economics found no relationship between county laws that legally permit dispensaries and reported violent crime, but there is no statewide data on dispensary-related robberies.

Let’s take a close look at some of the key arguments around marijuana legalization — and how the statistics stack up.

Where can you buy it?

The rollout of Proposition 64, which was enacted in 2016 and implemented in 2018, has been uneven across the state. The measure allows local control, so more than half of California’s cities and counties ban commercial cultivation and sales. There are currently 3,599 licenses for cultivation, with the largest amount of acreage in Santa Barbara County, followed by Humboldt and Lake counties. There are 695 licenses for storefront retail dispensaries, most in the urban hubs of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Is the state richer?

Tax revenues were a major selling point for legal cannabis.

And that promise has proven true: Since commercialization, the state has earned more than $5.7 billion in cannabis tax revenue.  A lot of that money goes to running the program. Some of it pays for projects like anti-drug education, child care, environmental cleanup and research.

But revenues have fallen somewhat short of projections. Cannabis legalization was promised to generate an estimated $1.4 billion a year in new tax revenue within a few years. It got close in 2021, reaching $1.3 billion at its peak in mid-2021. But funds have slumped since then, falling to just over $1 billion in 2022, with similar revenues expected for 2023.

What’s the problem? Cannabis is an entirely new market, so early predictions were prone to error. And illicit weed is still abundant, undercutting legal sales.

Also, pot prices are down, reducing profits. Since legalization, the average wholesale price for a pound of California cannabis flower has plummeted from $1,600 to $643, according to Cannabis Benchmarks, the nation’s provider of data for U.S. cannabis markets.

Why? The law of supply and demand: Legalization created a “green rush” of growers, boosting supply. But demand has stayed steady, and many communities restrict sales.

For people in the business, it’s been a stressful roller coaster ride, with consolidations and price drops that have wiped out many growers and distributors.

“There’s a ton of disruption in the business,” said Edward Schmults, CEO of StateHouse Holdings Inc., created through the merger of four smaller California cannabis companies: Harborside, Loudpack, Urbn Leaf and Sublime. Consolidation creates the efficiencies needed to survive, he said.

“About 30% of the brands have gone away in 2023,” he said. “To run a profitable business, stores are focusing on fewer and bigger brands, because they need consistency.”

Are more people using it?

A major argument against legalization was that it could hurt youth by increasing usage. Although researchers don’t yet have enough data to confirm a trend, available information suggests that access and usage hasn’t increased.

For years, marijuana has been readily available to teens, but commercialization didn’t make access easier, according to the California Healthy Kids Survey. The percentages of students in all grades who reported that marijuana was very easy to obtain stayed steady, or slightly declined, between the years 2013-2015 and 2017-2019. Of youth who use marijuana, 44% said they got it from friends; 19% said it was bought at a dispensary.

Available information shows no obvious effect of commercialization on youth cannabis consumption. The Healthy Kids Survey found that rates of current usage fell slightly between 2013-15 and 2019-21. (Alcohol and tobacco use also declined.) The federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health found a similar trend, with rates slightly rising, then falling.

Certainly, the pandemic kept kids at home, under parents’ watchful eyes. Perhaps regulatory safeguards, such as requiring proof of age at dispensaries, are working. Only time will give the final verdict.

Among all Californians, usage has increased — modestly. After commercialization, about 14.2% of Californians ages 12 and older used cannabis within the past month, up from 10.5% before legalization, according to the national survey.

Does easy access mean that Californians are more stoned than other Americans? Maybe. Use in California is slightly higher than use in the United States overall, where it is still largely illegal — 15.7% vs. 14.3%. But perhaps its popularity isn’t the result of legalization, but a cause of it.

Are arrests down?

In the 1960s, selling cannabis was a felony in the same class as heroin, punishable by a two- to 10-year prison term. In the decades since, law enforcement became more relaxed, but still disproportionately hit people of color, crippling their prospects for jobs, loans, housing and benefits.

By all measures, legalization has succeeded in ending this costly, futile strategy. Arrests fell by more than half, from 15,000 in 2016 to 6,000 in 2017. Police now no longer spend time on marijuana arrests and can spend more time on solving more dangerous crimes.

There are still situations where it is illegal to use, possess or cultivate cannabis — for instance, if you have too much, are selling illegally or driving while high. But sentencing is lighter.

Many Californians who for years were saddled with criminal records have gotten them cleared, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. By April 2023, California courts have expunged, sealed, or resentenced 206,502 out of an estimated 227,650 qualified cases.

Are medical emergencies increasing? 

Opponents feared that young children would mistake edibles for candy, with potentially dangerous consequences. Their concerns were warranted.

While state law requires that all cannabis goods be sold in “child-resistant” packaging, the packaging isn’t “child-proof.” Since commercialization, the number of calls to the California Poison Control Center about cannabis exposure in children aged 5 and younger has jumped from 329 to 807 a year.

Alarmed parents call after they discover that a child is holding or chewing on a package, potentially ingesting several items, said Justin Louis of the Center, which is advocating for stronger regulation of edibles. Although hospitalization is rarely needed unless the child develops breathing problems, close monitoring is essential.

Poison Control calls by adults are also increasing, primarily from those using manufactured products like edibles and vapes. The high potency of many of today’s cannabis strains – up three-fold since 1996, according to the DEA – could explain the trend. Vaping fluids and products for ‘’dabbing’’ deliver concentrated amounts of THC.

While cannabis-related visits for hospital emergency care jumped in the two years after commercialization, they have dropped as consumers gain greater familiarity with the drug.

But there are problems among California’s elders, who use cannabis for chronic health problems. Emergency room visits for those aged 65 and over increased by 1,804% between 2005 and 2019, according to a study by the UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Fed up with high housing costs and other quality-of-life issues, and untethered from the office by remote work, California residents left in droves during the pandemic. Increased deaths and a steep drop in international migration due to COVID-19 restrictions also contributed to a population decline.

The state population shrank by more than 75,000 residents to just under 39 million people in 2023, a 0.2% dip from the year before, according to recently released census data. The decline was less than the 0.3% annual slide in 2022 and the 0.9% drop in 2021. Over the three years, the state’s population fell by 1.4%, or more than 538,000 residents.

While officials and experts believe a return to growth is on the horizon, there’s still plenty to unpack in the recent migration shifts and their potentially lasting consequences. Here are five charts that help explain who left, where they went and how much money they took with them.

California lost $29 billion in taxable income to other states

In 2021, fleeing California residents took billions of dollars in personal income to other states, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis of the latest available IRS data.

On a net basis, the Golden State lost $5.6 billion in residents’ taxable income to Texas alone. California also lost $4.4 billion to Nevada, $3.5 billion to Florida and $2.6 billion to Arizona. In total, the state lost $29 billion to other parts of the country.

A decline in taxable income undoubtedly played a part in California’s current budget shortfall of at least $37.9 billion, though stock market fluctuations that hammered wealthy residents’ investment returns were likely a bigger factor, said Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, a pro-business think tank. On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his annual spending plan to close the budget gap.

Bellisario said it was unsurprising that Sunbelt states such as Texas and Florida, which became prime destinations for fleeing Californians during the pandemic, saw the largest gains. In addition to offering less expensive housing and a lower cost of living, many also boast growing tech sectors that have attracted high-income workers.

The five-county Bay Area region lost $1.2 billion in taxable income to Travis County, Texas, home to Austin, a burgeoning tech hub. The Bay Area also lost $747 million to Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, another upstart Silicon Valley rival.

“The big concern you have is that some of the population moving out are the future entrepreneurs and the people who are going to be starting businesses,” Bellisario said. “Everybody wants a piece of what San Francisco or Silicon Valley has.”

More than 800,000 fled the Golden State annually during the pandemic

In 2021 and 2022, more than 800,000 residents packed up and left California in each of those years for other parts of the country, according to the latest available census data.

Compare that to 2018 and 2019, the two years before the pandemic hit, when 650,000 to 700,000 people left the state each year. Data for 2020 was unavailable.

Which states siphoned the most residents away from California? The usual suspects: Texas, Arizona, Florida, Washington and Nevada.

Those states also saw among the largest increases in California migration compared to pre-pandemic years, though none experienced nearly as big a spike as Idaho. The Gem State, a new hotspot for Silicon Valley billionaires, saw the number of incoming Californians surge by 191% from 2013.

But the data also shows fewer California residents left in 2022 than the year before, a trend experts expect should continue. And with international migration returning, the state’s population woes could soon subside.

“As we turn the page to 2024, the data is pointing less to an exodus and more to population stabilization across California and the Bay Area,” Bellisario said.

A California brain drain?

During the pandemic, more people with graduate or professional degrees left California than arrived from other parts of the county, a remarkable reversal for a state with a powerhouse economy and world-class universities.

According to the latest available data from the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization in Washington D.C., roughly 30,200 more people with advanced degrees left California than arrived in 2021. In 2018 and 2019, the numbers were about equal. The data does not account for international migration.

For most of the past two decades, California has had more U.S. residents leaving than coming to the state, largely driven by the departures of less-educated and lower-income residents. But with the freedom of remote work and more high-paying jobs available in different parts of the country, highly educated workers have increasingly looked elsewhere.

Some of the state’s largest companies have also moved out. California-born companies, including Tesla, Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, all opened new headquarters in Texas over the past few years.

Yet in 2022, more highly educated workers came to California and fewer left than in 2021, according to the data. William Frey, a demographer with Brookings, said that’s evidence the trend, like other recent migration shifts, could be reverting to a pre-COVID norm.

“It’s too soon to tell what’s permanent and what’s a pandemic effect,” he said.

At the health care giant’s San Jose medical center, hundreds of workers pushing for higher wages and better working conditions chanted, waved signs and shook purple and gold pom-poms to enthusiastic honking from passing drivers.

“We’re short-staffed — I’m doing the job of two people,” said Julio Rivera, 57, an anesthesiology technician who has worked at the medical center for 29 years and was marching the picket line with a bullhorn. “I can’t keep up with my bills. Everything is up. Gas is up. Food is up. I have a car payment.”

Across the bay at Kaiser’s Oakland Medical Center, many drivers honked in solidarity with the hundreds of workers who took to the picket line. But not all. One man stuck his head out the window while passing by, and yelled, “You guys should go back to work, there’s a bunch of sick people!”

The Bay Area job action is part of the largest health care strike in U.S. history, with 75,000 Kaiser workers across the country stopping work over pay and understaffing that affects patient care, according to the workers’ unions. Workers also picketed in Fremont, Redwood City, Santa Clara, Antioch, Richmond, San Francisco, South San Francisco, San Leandro, Walnut Creek, Vallejo and Santa Rosa. Picket lines also went up across Southern California, as well as Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

The health care giant serves 9.4 million patients in California. Its contract with tens of thousands of workers expired Sept. 30. The company on Wednesday said negotiations were continuing and that “there has been a lot of progress, with agreements reached on several specific proposals.”

Wednesday’s strike continued a recent pattern of disputes between Kaiser, its workers and labor organizers. Last year, mental health professionals walked out amid demands that the health care provider increase staffing. In 2021, facilities were affected as health care workers participated in a sympathy strike as engineers engaged in a dispute lasting months.

Yvonne Esquivel, 46, a pediatric medical assistant at Kaiser’s medical offices in Gilroy, said Kaiser has failed to replace enough workers after large numbers fled health care careers amid upheaval from the COVID pandemic.

“We are all just burnt out,” said Esquivel, a negotiations observer for the largest union, the SEIU-United Health Workers. “We are tired of doing the work of two or three people when people vacate their posts. The time we have to interact with our patients and make them comfortable — we don’t have that anymore.”

Kaiser said the strike did not involve its nurses union or physicians, and hospitals and emergency departments would be open during the strike. “Our facilities will be staffed by our physicians, trained and experienced managers and staff, and in some cases, we will augment with licensed and qualified contract staff,” Kaiser said Wednesday in a statement.

Still, some non-urgent appointments and procedures may be delayed, with patients contacted in advance to reschedule, the company said.

Kaiser shut down some out-patient pharmacies. Patients visiting the Oakland Medical Center pharmacy at 3600 Broadway said it was jam-packed early Wednesday morning as other nearby Kaiser pharmacies shuttered.

“It was crazy when I came in there,” said Gary Haynes, 70, who picked up medicine for his mother. “There were so many people.”

Kaiser urged patients to order medications by mail at kp.org/pharmacy or by calling 888-218-6245 in Northern California.

At Kaiser in San Jose, as more than 500 workers picketed at a one intersection, patients described efficient functioning inside the medical center.

Bibi Bruce, 74, showed up for a knee injection to treat debilitating osteoarthritis, thinking the strike might prevent her from having the treatment, she said. Instead, she received it promptly, with the nurse telling her shifts had been changed to ensure important procedures would go ahead. “They’re extremely well organized,” said Bruce, a retired teacher. “I was really impressed.”

Workers voted to strike for up to 10 days, and the three-day strike could be extended if negotiations fail to bear fruit.

The job action comes amid a nationwide escalation in labor unrest, with several high-profile strikes involving Hollywood writers, actors, auto workers and hotel workers. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently vetoed a bill that would given unemployment benefits to striking workers in California.

Unions say understaffing could lead to dangerously long wait times, mistakes in diagnosis and patient neglect. The unions want raises of about 6% a year for four years. Kaiser said recently that it leads in total compensation everywhere it operates, and has offered a $23 an hour minimum wage starting next year for California workers. The company said it has hired more than 50,000 workers in the last two years nationally, including 9,800 into jobs represented by the unions planning to strike.

RELATED: Kaiser workers go on strike around Bay Area: Five things to know

Keyli Campbell, a Kaiser medical assistant and union steward, said Wednesday the health care giant is out-of-touch with its overworked staff, who are also feeling the bite of rising prices.

“Y’all know what you pay in premiums,” Campbell said. “I don’t make hardly any of that. In 2020, we were heroes. Now we’re being treated like zeroes.”

Fentanyl is a powerful opioid that’s 50 times more potent than heroin and is often laced in other, less dangerous street drugs like painkillers, which teens buy online illicitly. It was behind 588 deaths last year of California youths aged 15-24.

Ed Ternan discussed what happened to 22-year-old Charlie, and the work his organization is doing now to prevent more fentanyl youth deaths.

Q: Can you tell me a little about your son, Charlie?

A: Yeah, Charlie was our youngest of three…. He attracted a lot of people to him. He had tons of friends, and would connect friends with each other. And yeah, so he was a really good soul.

Q: Can you walk me through what happened in the lead up to when he passed away?

A: Charlie died on May 14th, 2020. So it was in the first couple of months of the pandemic…He was living with us for a couple of months….  He was doing fine. And then about a month before he was due to graduate, he and some friends decided to return to Santa Clara (University). He lived off campus as a senior, so he returned to his fraternity house… And that’s when after being there about a week, Charlie decided… that he would play some video games and wait for a five o’clock job interview that afternoon. And so when most of the house left (to go out), he asked around… if anybody had any Xanax, because he was going to just take a Xanax and chill out and play video games… Somebody came forward and said that they knew a plug (dealer) on Snapchat. And they connected with this person, and they bought a number of Xanax bars and a Percocet. Now Charlie was familiar with Percocet because of a back surgery he had… The last time anybody talked to him was about 3:15 (p.m.) And he never made the five o’clock phone call for the job interview… We know he took one pill, and it turned out to be a counterfeit made of fentanyl.

Q: And so from there, did you pretty quickly get a call from one of his fraternity brothers? Or how did you hear?

A: It was horrible. We got a knock on the door about 10 o’clock that night from some dear friends and our pastor… After a sleepless night, the next morning we got a call from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputy. And he said – we’ll wait for the tox (toxicology) report. But I’m going to tell you now this is fentanyl. And there have been seven deaths from these M30s (fentanyl laced pills) in the last 10 days here in Santa Clara County. And we strongly suspect that Charlie is going to be number eight.

Q: At that point in time did you know much about fentanyl?

A: It’s not like I never heard (of) it, but I certainly did not think about it in the context of street drugs.

Q: So when did you decide to found the nonprofit Song for Charlie? What was the early goal and where did you focus your efforts in those early days?

A: We formally established Song for Charlie in December of 2020. That was just six or seven months after Charlie passed… We connected with other families and found that it was happening across the country… And we basically said we want to warn you all and everyone else, that these counterfeit pills are out there… We partnered with the social media companies to put out awareness campaigns very quickly.

Q: So how did the conversations go with the tech companies?

A: We started by reaching out to the people at Snap. That’s where Charlie and his friend connected with the dealer. And we got in touch with the executives there and we were able to convince them to work with us. Remember… in 2020 and early 2021, it was not widely known that fentanyl had moved from the heroin supply into these counterfeit pills…. we started working with some executives at Google. We were introduced to people at Meta. Of course, Google people introduced us to the YouTube team. The YouTube folks introduced us to people at TikTok. So by mid 2021, we had formal working relationships with all the major social media platforms and Google/YouTube.

Q: Can you talk about some of the some concrete examples of ways that they’ve really helped your organization

A: Ad credits. So advertisers will buy space on TikTok or YouTube or Snapchat. But these companies also donate the ad space to certain nonprofits and philanthropy groups. So we’ve gotten, you know, the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars of ad credits from these platforms.

Q: I’ve spoken to parents who are involved in lawsuits against Snapchat… They’re really upset just about how the spread of some of these pills is facilitated through some of these social media platforms. What’s your take on that?

A: Well, it is certainly a problem. And it is a problem for Snap, and Meta, and TikTok. So then the question is: Do they know it’s a problem and are they working to solve the problem? And my experience is that, yes, they are … taking it very seriously. And in the last couple of years, they’ve made dramatic improvements in how they find and take down drug content and share information with law enforcement… So what we need to do, and what’s happening behind the scenes, is these companies are working together at a certain level to share signals. Because one thing that’ll happen is a dealer will promote his or her menu on say Instagram where the post will stay up, and then they’ll jump over to Snapchat, where the content disappears, to arrange the meet up.

Q: There’s many local and state politicians who think that we should increase penalties on drug dealers, particularly fentanyl dealers, and particularly those who have a larger supply of fentanyl. What’s your thoughts on the current debate?

A: At Song for Charlie, we don’t take positions publicly on these legislative issues because it’s just not our lane. We really focus on education and awareness. (But) I personally have opinions… These chemicals are extremely potent, which makes them way more profitable for the manufacturers who make them illicitly, for traffickers who bring them into the country, and the dealers who sell them locally… My position is compassion for users, consequences for sellers.

Q: What happened to the dealer in your son’s case?

A: I probably shouldn’t give too much detail, but he was a juvenile at the time of the transaction, which put it in a whole different category. He’s now an adult. So any consequences that came his way have now been expunged from his record. He is still walking the streets. He was never charged with anything having to do with homicide. They were able to charge him with drug selling and that’s all.

Q: And so what do you make of that? On a personal level?

A: You know, we gave up on that very early on. My wife, Mary, and I, and Charlie’s two older siblings decided that we cannot put our energy into quote-unquote, “seeking justice.”  It was not going to be healthy for us processing our grief and our mental well-being. So we really let that go. We think that was a good decision… Anyone who has gotten a conviction will say it didn’t bring my child back, and I woke up the next morning really not feeling any better… We focus our energies on the awareness and education side to prevent these tragedies.

Q: Have you gotten fulfillment out of that work of educating people and spreading awareness?

A: We have. We are making great strides… We are getting the message out very successfully…  And our approach has been validated by the fact that the California Department of Health Care Services reached out to us in December, and asked us to help them. And so in August, we’re launching a program now to help educate parents… So some coaching tips on how to bring it (fentanyl) up… how to keep the dialogue going. And then what to do… where you can get Naloxone (a medication which reverses the effects of a fentanyl overdose) or where you can send your kid in California if you’re concerned that there’s mental health issues and maybe some substance issue.

For additional resources, see here.

Ed Ternan

Age: 62

Title: President and co-founder of Song for Charlie

Residence: Pasadena

Education: MBA at Pepperdine University, Undergraduate degree from Santa Clara University.

Family:  Wife, Mary, who is the other co-founder of Song for Charlie. They have two children, who are 32 and 29. Charlie would have been 25 this year.

Five fast facts about Ed Ternan

• Avid reader
• Student of Stoic philosophy
• Music lover, especially piano rock
• Homebody; unhappy traveler
• Married into a large legacy family at Santa Clara University

Roughly half of all Latino, Black and Native American workers earned $32,329 or less in 2021 — $10,000 less than the state’s median per capita income. That’s compared to less than one-third of White workers and one-quarter of Asian workers statewide during the same year, with White workers holding the majority of executive jobs across the state despite comprising about a third of the overall workforce.

“It’s unfortunately no surprise that the latest pay data reinforces what we already know: Women and communities of color continue to bear the burden of low-wage jobs,” said California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who has advocated for a number of equal pay initiatives across the state.

The new data — which surveyed 7.3 million employees at private California companies with staff of 100 or more — mirror a longtime trend nationwide. Despite a surge of progress from the 1980s to early 2000s, the wage gap between men and women has all but frozen in the two decades since. Today, American women are still earning 82 cents for every dollar made by their male counterparts, an increase of just two cents since 2002, according to recent data from the Pew Research Center.

Women in California fared far better than the national average. But even so, they still made just 88 cents for every dollar made by men. And according to the new data, 54% of all workers in California earning $32,239 or less in 2021 were female.

There are roughly as many Latinas as White men in the state’s workforce, at around 18%. But while White men comprise 38% of the top earners making $239,200 or more, Latinas make up just 2% of that group, according to the new state data.

The disparities were stark for all workers of color, no matter their gender. Only around 1% of Latino workers, 2.5% of Black workers and 3% of Native American workers earned $239,200 or more. Meanwhile, around 11% of White workers made that much.

Particularly striking was the fact that Latino and Hispanic workers represented 38% of California’s workforce — yet represented only 7% of those making the top salary bracket of $239,200 or more. The numbers were nearly as disappointing for Black workers, who comprised 6% of the workforce but just 2% of the highest earning group.

Meanwhile White workers — 33% of the overall California workforce — made up a staggering 53% of the top salary bracket, while also being much more likely to hold senior executive and management roles across the state. Latinos made up the largest share of laborers and service workers, at 69% and 54% respectively.

Those figures were similar to disparities reported in 2020, the first time the survey was conducted across the state.

“The latest employee pay data shows we still have work to do and, more importantly, shows exactly where employers need to make changes to improve the pay of women and communities of color,” said Lourdes Castro Ramirez, the state’s business, consumer and housing agency secretary.

For years, California has been pushing to close the wage gaps between men, women and communities of color, and increase wage transparency. New state legislation that took effect this year requires employers to publish salary ranges on their job listings. As part of that bill, employers with 100 or more staff — which were already required to submit data on how much they pay their employees — are also mandated to compile those reports with more detail, breaking down their staff by race, ethnicity and sex.

Tracking wage data is important, Kish explained, because reporting, analyzing and watching such data has been used as a tool to reduce wage gaps in other countries, such as the United Kingdom and Denmark.

“We have an opportunity to use these laws around transparency,” Kish said, “And say, let’s (use this information to) close every possible disparity that we can.”

Despite such progress, the state has a long way to go. In 2020, wage gaps cost women a collective $46 billion in California alone, according to analysis from the California Budget & Policy Center, while causing people of color to forfeit another $61 billion for the same reason.

“California’s strong pay equity and transparency laws have put us on the right path,” Siebel Newsom said in a news release, “but we still have work to do to realize our shared values of equal pay and opportunity for all Californians.”

So it seems like a no-brainer that liberal-minded Austin or Phoenix, where you can buy a nice house with a pool for $500,000, would be the top stops on the California exodus pipeline.

But it turns out the biggest draw for Bay Area transplants is in an entirely different direction.

Try our rainy neighbor to the north: Seattle.

King County, Washington, topped the IRS migration list of out-of-state relocation destinations for people leaving four of the five core Bay Area counties in 2021: Alameda, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara.

More than 7,600 Bay Area residents moved to Seattle in the thick of the COVID pandemic, which set off a remote-work revolution that freed employees from being bound to abodes near the office.

But wait … Seattle?

It’s a revelation that surprised even Russell Hancock, CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a regional think tank.

“I think of Seattle as Silicon Valley with the same stuff. I mean, similarly fraught — rising prices and a lot of crowding,” Hancock said. “So people are saying, ‘I’ve had it. I’ve had it with the Bay Area. I’ve had it with San Francisco. I can’t deal with any more homelessness. I’m tired of seeing needles and feces on the street.’ Well, that’s all up in Seattle as well. So that’s why I’m surprised.”

But in many ways, Seattle is a natural destination for Bay Area refugees, experts say. It has similar politics, a well-developed tech sector, no state income tax and relatively cheaper housing.

No, housing in Seattle is not cheap. But it is less expensive than in most of the Bay Area. The median home price in Santa Clara County was $1.47 million this June. In King County, it was $815,000.

The only major Bay Area County with a lower average housing cost — Contra Costa — also happens to be the only one for which Seattle is not the top out-of-state destination for residents on the move. Instead, Contra Costans moved in higher numbers to Phoenix’s Maricopa County or Las Vegas’ Clark County, Nevada, where housing costs are even lower.

While politicians in red states like to believe that liberal politics and policies are driving away Californians — indeed, one in three votes cast in California in the 2020 presidential election were for Donald Trump — experts say the cost of housing is still the No. 1 reason they packed their bags.

“You cannot overstate the importance of housing in people’s decisions to leave the state,” said Hans Johnson, a demographer and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “I’m not saying politics don’t matter. I’m not saying income taxes don’t matter at all, but they’re certainly not the main reason.”

Cue the Stephens family — Christine and Blake and their two children, a 4-year-old son and a 14-month-old daughter.

Over the previous 10 years, they moved seven times, from Hayward to Santa Clara and North San Jose, always searching for a better place to raise their kids and save money for a down payment on a place of their own. They finally settled into a $3,200 “bare bones” rental in Fremont, where they bundled up in the winter when the heating gave out and sweltered in the summer without air conditioning.

Still, when Blake was offered a software engineering job at Amazon in Seattle in November 2020, he was reluctant to take it. He’d miss their friends. Besides, Seattle prices were sky-high, too, weren’t they?

“He was honestly, like completely against it,” Christine said, “until I pulled up Zillow.”

In the Bay Area, $1 million could buy them no more than a 1,400-square-foot, 3-bedroom home with a tiny lot in a bad neighborhood, she said. A mobile home would cost half that, but they’d still have to pay rent on the space.

In Bellevue, just outside of Seattle?

For $1.1 million, they found their ideal home in a quiet neighborhood with a top-rated school district: a five-bedroom, three-bath, 3,000-square-foot house with huge windows overlooking a green preserve with 50-foot pine trees and big-leaf maples. Their backyard faces a nature trail that runs along a quiet stream.

“On a quiet day like today, I can sit on my back deck and listen to a waterfall. I don’t want to understate it. My husband and I are constantly (saying) it’s hard to go on vacation now because the places that we stay are not as nice as” our home, Christine Stephens said. “We could never have afforded something this size in the Bay.”

It wasn’t long ago that Seattlites were the ones clamoring to trade in 152 days of rain each year for the sun-soaked Bay Area.

From 2011-2014, the net flow of migration between the two regions was tilted largely in the Bay Area’s favor, with more Seattle-area residents moving to many Bay Area counties than the reverse. But ever since 2015-2016, Seattle claimed the upper hand. And the pandemic kicked that up a notch.

In 2019, King County gained a net 619 people in family moves to and from Santa Clara County. In 2021, that number more than doubled, to 1,639.

Maricopa County (Phoenix) and Travis County (Austin, Texas) are among the other big, metro-area counties that routinely turn up as the top destinations for on-the-move Bay Area residents. And for Californians as a whole, Texas (105,000) drew more than twice as many transplants as Washington state (47,000) from the Golden State in 2021, the most recent year of relocation data from the IRS.

Still, most people who left the Bay Area didn’t even leave the state. Nearly 69% of people who relocated out of Alameda County, for example, moved to another part of California in 2021. Experts say that many people who flee the Bay Area are looking to relocate to cheaper, more bucolic counties nearby where housing prices are lower.

Although the Stephenses might see a world of difference between Silicon Valley and Seattle, the two region’s dueling chambers of commerce might as well be sisters.

Their problems are so similar that the Seattle chamber sent down a delegation in June to see how San Jose is tackling its most intractable issues — housing, homelessness and public safety.

As much as the two regions share problems, however, they also share some of the same attributes — beauty and recreation opportunities abound.

“What we found is that by far the number one reason people want to be in the Puget Sound region is access to outdoors and lifestyle choices,” said Seattle chamber spokesman Lars Erickson, “being able to get on a sailboat and into the mountains and have access to the natural amenities.”

Housing costs have skyrocketed in both regions – King County by 151% and Santa Clara County by 184% since 2012. But as the Stephenses found out, $1 million will go a whole lot farther in Seattle and its tech-heavy suburbs like Redmond, home to Microsoft, than in San Jose and its Silicon Valley neighbors.

They don’t miss Blake’s hour-long commutes, or the car break-ins they experienced over and over, or worrying about their children’s education.

From time to time, though, Christine finds herself feeling homesick for the Bay Area. They miss their friends and the energy of the place, the cute shops and abundant eateries in downtown Campbell, Palo Alto and Mountain View.

In their Bellevue neighborhood, the best they can find are two pizza places, she said. “And they’re not awesome.”

“If I could go back tomorrow and have what I have here,” she said, “I would do it.”