The popular 52nd Annual Oakland Greek Festival drew nearly 20,000 people this weekend to enjoy live music, traditional dance performances, food and crafts at the Ascension Cathedral.
The festival has been an absolute joy,” said Rev. Fr. Nicholas Mueller, presiding priest of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension. “We’ve welcomed many new visitors and been overjoyed to see friends who have been attending for years.”
Frosene Phillips, who performed Greek folk dances at the first festival in 1972, is now a volunteer and uses her previous experience as a journalist to help with the festival’s promotion and marketing.
“The festival truly is Greek hospitality on a grand scale,” Phillips said. “I love sharing our faith, food and culture with the greater Bay Area. Every year is like a spirited reunion for us all.”
People pass the wine-tasting tent during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) Nicoletta McCormick, 10, Mary Kolokithes,10, and Sophia Polyzos, 10, from right, perform with the Aionia Dancers during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) People check out the food booths during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) Ted Apostolou grills lamb skewers during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) The Koinonia Dancers perform during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) People check out the food and craft booths during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) Sylvia Kalivitis performs with the Mythos Band during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) People watch the Koinonia Dancers perform during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) Lamb skewers are grilled during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) The Koinonia Dancers perform during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) Bobby Kalivitis plays the bouzouki with the Mythos Band during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) The Koinonia Dancers perform during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) Lamb chops are grilled during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) People line up for lamb chops and souvlaki during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) The Aionia Dancers perform during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) People listen to the Mythos Band perform during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) Alice Counelis, 94, plays the organ with the Liturgical Choir during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) The Koinonia Dancers perform during the Oakland Greek Festival at the Ascension Cathedral in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, May 19, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
It’s “tearin’ up our hearts” to see so many pets waiting to find a family of their very own all across the Austin area! So, in honor of Justin Timberlake’s unofficial “It’s Gonna Be May” month, Austin area shelters are working together to get pets into loving homes — “no strings attached.” Join us May 20th-27th to meet all of the pets vying to win your heart and who “just wanna be with you!”
The value of a college degree largely depends on where you go, a new HEA Group study found.
And as college tuition continues to increase – more than 30% in the next five years for Cal State University – some are wondering if higher education is worth the investment.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley, president and CEO of College Futures Foundation, set out to answer that question when he commissioned the HEA Group to analyze how long it would take low and moderate income students to recoup the costs of attending colleges — from four-year institutions and community colleges to trade schools.
“We believe that we are in a crisis moment, particularly when it comes to higher education opportunities,” Oakley said. “We all know that the cost of attendance continues to rise. The public is asking questions about the value of a degree. There are a lot of conversations about whether or not your college degree still has the same value that it once promised.”
Oakley, who is the former chancellor of the California Community Colleges, said higher education is one of the largest investments that students and their families will make in their lifetime, so they should see a return on that investment.
The “Golden Opportunities” study by HEA uses data from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard to determine how long it takes 731,000 low and moderate income students at 292 higher ed institutions in the state to recoup their cost of attendance. Students whose family income is less than $75,000 a year are defined as low and moderate income.
The study calculated the net annual cost of attendance – books, housing, transportation and tuition – after all scholarships and grants are awarded. Then, HEA multiplied that figure by the number of years it would take a student to receive their credential: four years for a bachelor’s, two years for an associate’s and one year for a certificate.
HEA’s study measured the median salary of former students after 10 years of enrolling at each school and compared it to the salary of a high school graduate with no college experience – $26,073. That salary was then used to calculate how long it would take a student to pay down the cost of earning their degree.
The HEA Group found that generally, students who received associate’s degrees were able to recoup their educational costs quicker than students who received bachelor’s degrees or certificates.
According to the study, San Jose State University costs $47,769 for a low/moderate income student to attend. Graduates made $45,924 more annually than a student with no college experience. Under that scenario, the former student would recoup their costs of attendance in one year.
A student at De Anza Community College in Cupertino paid $9,117 to attend, and would earn $30,766 more on average than a high school grad without a college degree. In that case, the report found, the former student could get back their cost of attendance in less than six months.
But a student who attended Menlo College in Atherton would have to spend nearly four years earning a salary of $56,512 – barely $30,000 more than a high school graduate without a college degree – before they could recoup the $115,852 it cost to attend the private school.
Michael Itzkowitz, founder and president of the HEA Group, said the analysis aimed to get a bird’s eye view on what kind of economic outcomes colleges and universities are providing students.
“The number one reason why students attend higher education today…is for greater employability and to obtain a financially secure future,” Itzkowitz said. “The number one reason why students don’t attend college is because of cost.”
Itzkowitz said the survey found that most higher ed institutions in California (79%) allowed for low and moderate income students to regain the cost of attendance in five years or less, and nearly a third allowed students to recuperate their costs in under a year.
But 24 schools showed that students received no economic benefit from enrolling in college and earned even less than a typical high school graduate. Many of those schools were cosmetology schools or technical colleges.
“I’d argue that they may actually be worse off financially after they attend, being that they’re earning so little and they paid so much to earn their (credential),” Itzkowitz said.
In California and the Bay Area, Stanford University rose to the top of the list, providing students with the most bang for their buck — with graduates earning on average $73,901 more than someone with without a college degree — and essentially no cost of attendance. But Itzkowitz warned that schools like Stanford that provide the quickest return on investment didn’t necessarily enroll a high number of low and moderate income students. In fact, HEA’s study found that only 18% of Stanford students surveyed were recipients of the Pell Grant, which is available to low-income students who are enrolled full time. The grants do not have to be repaid.
Graduates of UC Berkeley, another highly selective Bay Area university, earned $60,440 more than the average high school grad. UC Berkeley also saw nearly a third of its students qualify for the Pell Grant, allowing them to recoup their cost of attendance in less than a year, the report found.
Oakley said that College Futures and the HEA Group hope to dive deeper into how race, ethnicity, gender and areas of study factor into students’ return on investment. The study’s data also doesn’t factor in how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted students.
“California remains one of the best states in terms of providing quality access to post-secondary education in the country,” Oakley said. “That being said, we still have a long way to go.”
OAKLAND — Two men were killed in Oakland traffic collisions Sunday night and Monday morning, and a person was detained in one of the deaths, authorities said.
The names of the men killed were not immediately released pending confirmation of their identities and notification of family members.
The fatality that resulted in a detention happened around 10:50 p.m. Sunday near the intersection of 73rd Avenue and Orral Street in East Oakland.
Initial reports were that a man riding a motorcycle was struck from behind by a car, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The woman driving the car was detained for questioning because she appeared to be under the influence of alcohol, authorities said. She had not been formally arrested as of early Monday.
The other fatal crash happened around 2:40 a.m. Monday in the 300 block of Grand Avenue, a few blocks from Lake Merritt.
Police said a man was driving an SUV eastbound on Grand Avenue when he left the roadway and crashed into a tree. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Anyone with information about either crash is asked to call police traffic investigators at 510-777-8570.
Pro-Palestinian students and their allies set up about 15 tents on the steps of UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza on Monday afternoon, vowing to stay put until the university system officially calls for an end to the deadly Israel-Hamas war, cuts its study-abroad program with Israel and divests from companies with ties to the country.
Some of the several hundred protesters, many wearing the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh around their heads and some waving “boycott, divest, sanction” signs, said they plan to camp out until the university system meets their demands and challenged police to arrest them. By late afternoon, about 50-100 people were sitting, reading poetry and chatting.
“We’ve been out here, and we’ll continue to be out here,” said Matt Kovac, a spokesman for UC Berkeley Divest Coalition, which organized the midday rally. “I don’t see mobilization stopping until the U.S. and UCs begin to take this seriously.”
In a statement Monday, the coalition that represents 75 student, staff, faculty and alumni organizations calling for UC to divest from companies doing business with Israel, said the University of California system invests in more than $2 billion in companies that supply arms.
UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said there are no plans to change the university’s investment policies and practices, and that with three weeks left in the semester, Berkeley is prioritizing students’ academic interests over disruptions on campus.
“We will take the steps necessary to ensure the protest does not disrupt the university’s operations,” Mogulof said.
The Israel-Hamas war, now in its seventh month, began after Hamas militants breached Israel’s border defenses on Oct. 7, 2023, rampaged through communities unchallenged for hours, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, while taking roughly 250 hostages back to Gaza. It was the deadliest assault in Israel’s history. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.
Retaliatory airstrikes by Israel have since killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials, at least two-thirds of them children and women. It has devastated Gaza’s two largest cities and left a swath of destruction in the narrow, 25-mile-long territory governed since 2007 by Hamas. Around 80% of the territory’s population have fled to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.
The United States is on track to approve $26 billion in additional aid to Israel, its close ally. The aid package approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday includes around $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, which experts say is on the brink of famine, and $4 billion for Israel’s missile defense. The U.S. Senate could pass the package as soon as Tuesday, and President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.
As the war rages, ideological divides have collided at college campuses across the country.
Columbia University canceled in-person classes on Monday after protesters rallied throughout the weekend at the Ivy League school’s New York City campus, where police last week arrested more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had set up an encampment.
Since those arrests, pro-Palestinian demonstrators have set up encampments on other campuses around the country, including at the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University, where several dozen protesters were arrested Monday morning after officials said they defied warnings to leave.
Stanford University in February shut down a similar demonstration after 120 days in which pro-Palestinian protesters had camped out at White Plaza starting Oct. 20. Eighteen pro-Palestinian protesters who disrupted a family weekend event at the campus in February were arrested and issued misdemeanor citations, the Stanford Daily reported.
UC Berkeley and other universities are under scrutiny from Congress, where lawmakers are investigating complaints about anti-semitism and the safety of Jewish students.
Monday’s protest at Berkeley comes just two months after a campus event featuring a speaker from Israel was canceled and its attendees escorted to safety after some 200 protesters surrounded Zellerbach Playhouse and broke down the doors, according to university officials. University chancellors said those actions of the protesters violated “some of our most fundamental values.”
Ori Rabina, one of a handful of Jewish students observing the protest, said he wants to believe that the protest was not held intentionally on Passover, one of Judaism’s holiest observances, which this year begins at sundown April 22.
A Pro-Palestinian protester holds a Palestinian flag while in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration in front of Sproul Hall where they set up a tent encampment and are demanding a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Gaza. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Pro-Palestinian protesters protest in front of Sather Gate during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration in front of Sproul Hall where they set up a tent encampment and are demanding a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Gaza. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Pro-Palestinian protesters protest in front of Sather Gate during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration in front of Sproul Hall where they set up a tent encampment and are demanding a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Gaza. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Pro-Palestinian protesters begin to set up tents in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration in front of Sproul Hall where they set up a tent encampment and are demanding a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Gaza. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Pro-Palestinian protesters gather in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration in front of Sproul Hall where they set up a tent encampment and are demanding a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Gaza. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
A Pro-Palestinian protester holds a Palestinian flag while in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration in front of Sproul Hall where they set up a tent encampment and are demanding a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Gaza. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Banan, a UC Berkeley graduate student with Justice for Palestine, (did not want to give her last name) speaks to Pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration in front of Sproul Hall where they set up a tent encampment and are demanding a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Gaza. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Pro-Palestinian protesters gather in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration in front of Sproul Hall where they set up a tent encampment and are demanding a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Gaza. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
The Jewish students from Tikvah: Students for Israel and Students Supporting Israel hung back and largely kept to themselves during the event. Rabina said demonstrators have a right to gather and advocate for their cause, including camping out on campus. He asserted that pro-Palestinian students and Jewish and Zionist students agree on wanting the violence in Gaza to end.
Tyler Gregory, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said he also didn’t believe the timing of the protest was intentional, but it would have an impact.
“People were already going into Seder ready to talk about Columbia (University). Now people are really worried about whether (the UC Berkeley demonstration) is going to stay peaceful or not,” Gregory said. “There’s just a heightened moment of fear because of what happened in Columbia.”
The protesters said their rally also comes amid escalating repression of pro-Palestine speech at UCLA and Pomona College in Southern California.
The demonstrators called their protest site “Free Palestine Camp,” chanted “disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest,” and “1,2,3,4 occupation has to go … 5,6,7,8 Israel is a terrorist state,” and played recordings of what they said was a noise similar to one Gazans hear from Israeli drones overhead.
UC Berkeley law student Malak Afaneh speaks to a large crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters during a planned protest on the campus of UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration in front of Sproul Hall where they set up a tent encampment and are demanding a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Gaza. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Berkeley Law student Malak Afaneh gave the speech she was stopped from giving last week when she and other protesters were asked to leave a backyard lunch hosted by Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.
“I will keep shouting this speech from the rooftops until Palestine is free,” Afaneh said Monday.
Critics who blame California’s 2014 Proposition 47 for runaway drug addiction, retail theft and urban squalor said Thursday they have collected enough signatures to qualify a November ballot measure that would restore penalties for serial thieves and treatment requirements for addicts.
Backers including owners of small businesses, social justice leaders and drug victim families gathered in San Francisco and Los Angeles to announce they have collected about 900,000 voter signatures, significantly more than the 546,651 required by April 23, and are turning them in to the Attorney General’s Office.
“Prop 47 achieved notable success in making California’s criminal justice system more equitable,” supporters of the proposed “Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act.”
“However, it led to unintended consequences over the past decade — repeat and often organized retail theft, inner-city store closings, and difficulty convincing people to seek drug and mental health treatment — that can only be corrected by the voters at the ballot box with modest amendments to Prop 47.”
Prop 47 was among a series of laws and initiatives over the last 15 years aimed at emptying California prisons that federal courts found overcrowded and addressing social justice concerns that have since been blamed for spurring brazen retail thefts, store closures and unchecked drug addiction.
Promoted to voters as the “Safe Neighborhood and Schools Act,” Prop 47 reduced most drug possession and property crimes valued at $950 or less to misdemeanors and allowed for resentencing of those serving felony sentences for those offenses. The pitch was to stop wasting costly prison space on drug addicts and petty thieves convicted of non-violent crimes.
Backers included former San Jose and San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne, progressive former San Francisco and now Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and then Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, now the state’s governor. Critics included most law enforcement officials like then Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, crime victim advocates and business organizations and then-U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Prop 47 passed with nearly 60% voter approval, and a 2020 ballot measure that would have toughened some of the penalties it and other criminal reform measures like Assembly Bill 109 and Proposition 57 had reduced failed by a similar margin.
But supporters of the proposed November initiative say there’s no way to fix the state’s theft and drug problems without walking back parts of Prop 47. Backers of the initiative include San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper, all Democrats.
Supporters stress that the proposed initiative would amend but not repeal Prop 47. It would make a third conviction for retail theft a felony, regardless of the amount stolen. Before Prop 47, a second conviction would become a felony, but the 2014 initiative eliminated consequences for repeat offenses. The proposed measure also would add penalties for dealing fentanyl, a cheap and deadly synthetic opioid, and provide incentives for convicted addicts to seek treatment.
Cooper said the legislative bill package mostly addresses organized retail thefts, but that what he and other law enforcement officials mostly see are individual thieves stealing with impunity under Prop 47.
“The real problem is individual thieves and the lack of accountability we all got stuck with since the passage of Proposition 47,” Cooper said in a post on X on the legislative bill package.
High-profile Bay Area coding school BloomTech, which touts “dream” technology jobs at companies such as Google and Amazon, has been sanctioned by federal authorities for allegedly deceiving students about loan costs and making false claims about graduates’ hiring rates.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in an order banned the school’s co-founder and CEO Austen Allred from student-loan activities for 10 years, and permanently banned the for-profit vocational institute, formerly called the Lambda School and also known as Bloom Institute of Technology, from all consumer lending.
The CFPB targeted the income-based repayment scheme used by nearly all BloomTech students that required payment of a percentage of income once graduates started earning at least $50,000 a year.
“BloomTech falsely claimed its ‘income share’ agreements were not loans, did not create debt, did not carry a finance charge, and were ‘risk free,’” the CFPB said in a news release Wednesday. “In fact, the agreements are loans with an average finance charge of $4,000. The loans carry substantial risk, as a single missed payment triggers a default and the remainder of the $30,000 ‘cap’ becomes due immediately.”
The school issued thousands of the income-share loans, but stopped offering them this year, according to the bureau’s order against the school.
BloomTech’s six- to nine-month training programs in subjects including web development, data science, and computer engineering typically cost $20,000 to $30,000 in tuition.
BloomTech, and Allred, enticed prospective students with job-placement rates as high as 86%, when internal metrics showed placement rates closer to 50% and sometimes as low as 30%, the news release said. “Allred tweeted that the school achieved a 100% job-placement rate in one of its cohorts, and later acknowledged in a private message that the sample size was just one student,” the news release said.
BloomTech, backed by Silicon Valley venture capital firms, advertised that top tech companies and Fortune 100 firms employed many of its graduates. But the school knew as early as 2018 that large corporations “rarely hired its graduates into high-paying, program-related jobs,” the CFPB’s order said.
Allred and the school violated the federal Consumer Financial Protection Act and Truth in Lending Act, the CFPB alleged.
Allred and the school agreed to sanctions without accepting wrongdoing, according to the order. The CEO and the school did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The San Francisco school, founded in Pleasanton in 2017 as the Lambda School, was renamed Bloom Institute of Technology, or BloomTech, in 2022, following a 2019 trademark lawsuit by San Francisco artificial intelligence company Lambda Labs.
In 2019, Lambda School paid a $50,000 fine to settle an allegation by the California Department of Consumer Affairs that it was operating without required approval from the California Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education.
The CFPB further targeted the school and its CEO over the claim that, “We don’t get paid until you do.” Many of the “income share” loans were sold to investors, so Allred and the school “often got paid long before a student finished the program and started earning a salary,” the agency said.
The CFPB ordered that BloomTech must stop collecting payments from graduates with “income share” loans who did not have a qualifying job in the past year. Such loans must have their terms amended to eliminate the finance charge for graduates who finished more than 18 months ago and obtained a qualifying job making $70,000 or less.
Current students with “income share” loans can quit the program and cancel the loans, or continue with a third-party loan. BloomTech will pay more than $64,000 in fines and Allred will pay $100,000 into a “victims relief fund,” the CFPB said.
It looks like a car-pocalypse! Hondas, Fords, Toyotas, Dodges, Hyundais, BMWs and Chevys sit in colorful rows, filling Bay Area car dealership lots — with nary a human in sight.
“We’ve got cars but nobody’s buying,” said Alan Le, sales manager at Premier Nissan of Fremont, where six rows of Rogues, Ariyas and other models line a parking lot that only two years ago, thanks to COVID disruptions, had just a single row of vehicles. “In the pandemic, people were fighting to buy cars.”
At some dealerships, salespeople loiter hopefully outside, watching for signs of life amid a sea of parked cars and trucks. At other car lots, sales staff linger gloomily at desks.
Rafael Diaz, general sales manager, speaks to The Mercury News at Sunnyvale Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Thursday, March 21, 2024. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
“Everybody’s waiting to see what the banks are going to do as far as interest rates,” said Rafael Diaz, general sales manager at Sunnyvale Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram.
In terms of prices alone, now is the best time to buy a new or used car since the pandemic, experts say. The COVID era’s supply chain disruptions, stimulus payments, bargain-basement interest rates and fear of public transportation conspired to tank inventory, drive costs through the roof and slam the brakes on dealer incentives starting in early 2021.
The “wild ride” and painful lesson in supply and demand appears over, said Ivan Drury, an analyst at Edmunds, which tracks the auto industry. Prices have fallen from record highs into a downward slide. And for buyers, the picture is expected to keep getting brighter.
Alan Le, a sales manager at Premier Nissan of Fremont, talks about the current car market on Thursday, March 21, 2024, in Fremont, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Two years ago, new-car buyers were paying thousands of dollars over manufacturers’ suggested retail price, Drury said. “Now, you can actually get a discount of thousands of dollars,” he said. “The tides have definitely turned.”
In the Bay Area in February 2023, cars took 29 days to sell, on average, Drury said. This February, they sat for 48 days. The longer vehicles remain unsold, the better the deals, Drury said. “That’s where we start to see the incentives flow,” Drury said.
There might be a healthy supply, but we’re still not back down to earth on car prices from record pandemic highs.
Thanks to inflation boosting the cost of making and shipping new cars, new-vehicle prices as of February were 14% higher than in February 2021, just before the COVID price surge hit, according to Brian Moody, senior editor at auto-research firm Kelley Blue Book.
New car prices in California skyrocketed from $42,593 in 2021 to a record-high $47,318 in 2022, but last year had fallen to $46,826, Moody said.
The price slide is likely to continue, experts and salespeople said. And the Federal Reserve has signaled that it may cut interest rates later this year.
A Dodge Challenger for sale at Sunnyvale Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Thursday, March 21, 2024. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Still, Bay Area residents not able to wait for better deals will find discounts on sticker prices and interest rates — but they vary widely by manufacturer, model and year.
“There are so many strange things happening in the automotive market,” Drury said. “When it comes down to the individual consumer, homework is king.”
One model of a manufacturer’s cars may not have a discounted or negotiable price, and another model may be “an amazing deal,” Moody said. Incentives offered by manufacturers through their financing partners mean interest rates can also vary widely.
At some Bay Area dealerships, painted messages on windshields tout price discounts and interest-rate specials, but generally only for the makes, years and models in less demand.
Mid-sized SUVs are sought after. Minivans are, if not cool, at least popular — Chrysler’s Pacifica hybrid is popular among tech workers with families, said sales manager Diaz.
Jesus Silva, a sales associate at AutoNation Honda Fremont, talks about the current car market on Thursday, March 21, 2024, in Fremont, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Many hybrids sell quickly. “People are so into hybrids right now,” said AutoNation Honda Fremont salesman Jesus Silva. Drivers for DoorDash and other gig-work firms buy them to save money on fuel, and middle-aged consumers wary of electric vehicles find them a good “stepping stone,” Silva said.
Sales of new electric vehicles are slumping nationwide over charging and range worries, and in the Bay Area, many who would buy them already have, experts say. Prices for EVs in the U.S. are down 13% compared to last year, with the leading models, Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y, cheaper than they’ve ever been, research firm Cox Automotive reported in early March.
Pricing by manufacturer between early last year and early this year fluctuated wildly, Cox Automotive data show. Nissan’s average price plunged 9%. Buick’s went down 5%, Ford’s fell 4% and Honda’s sank a little less than 2%. Tesla’s price plummeted 16%. But Chrysler’s and Jeep’s prices jumped 7% and Ram’s shot up 13%. Prices for Kia, Lexus, Hyundai and Mazda increased by around 4%. Toyota’s went up a little over 2% and Volkswagen’s rose less than 1%.
Many models from Toyota and Honda remain at a premium because of high demand, Drury said. Shoppers visiting AutoNation Honda Fremont may find ideals on Passports — large SUVs — and Ridgeline pickup trucks, but on most other models there is little or no room for negotiation, salesman Silva said.
For used vehicles, buyers are also seeing prices more enticing than in the recent past, thanks to a relatively plentiful supply — more than 2 million sat on dealers’ lots in early February, Moody said. California used car prices peaked in spring of 2022, took a dive in April 2023, bumped up again then slid. “We’re down at the lowest point in at least two years,” Moody said.
However, average prices in California for used cars at dealerships are still higher than before the pandemic disruptions, at $30,788 in 2023 compared to $27,718 in 2021. But they’re lower than 2022’s $31,063. Older used cars are still going for “a remarkable amount of money,” Drury said, noting that U.S-wide, the average price of a 9-year-old car is $16,000 — much higher than the pre-pandemic average of $9,000 to $10,000, Drury said. “The cheaper the car is the faster it sells because people are going for value,” Drury said.
The best deals are likely to be found on used cars 1 to 3 years old, Drury said, because falling new car prices are “pushing down the price of those near-new vehicles.”
Anyone planning to finance a used car may find interest rates that often top 10% to be a strong deterrent.
Julie Rice, right, from San Francisco, talks to The Mercury News about looking for a used Toyota RAV4 for her daughter Jessica, left, at Toyota Sunnyvale in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Thursday, March 21, 2024. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
“I feel like there’s a little bit of an inflection point — you don’t want anything that’s too, too old,” said Julie Rice, who was at Toyota Sunnyvale recently shopping for her daughter, Jessica, a 20-year-old Cal Poly student. Toyota’s RAV4 compact SUV seemed like a good bet.
Looking at prices of newer used cars “starts to cross into the territory of, ‘Why don’t we get a new car?’” said Rice, of San Francisco. She and her husband wanted to finance the car in their daughter’s name, and co-sign the loan, to build up her credit score. But with interest rates so high, Rice said she would make sure the loan carried no penalty for paying it off quickly.
Diaz at Sunnyvale Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram expects new-vehicle incentives to sweeten as long as interest rates are quashing demand. “The manufacturers will have to help out,” Diaz said. “They’re going to have to give dealers more rebates to move these vehicles.”
HAYWARD — A woman was stabbed to death Thursday evening and her husband was later arrested as the suspect, police said Friday.
The name of the woman killed, who is in her 50s, was not immediately released.
Police identified the husband as Gary Barronga Garcia, 66.
The stabbing happened about 5:46 p.m. Thursday at the couple’s apartment in the 25000 block of Cypress Avenue, police said. Authorities received numerous 911 calls regarding a woman screaming from inside the apartment.
As officers responded to the scene, witnesses reported that a man was seen walking out of the residence where the screaming was heard; he then left the area in a vehicle.
The woman was pronounced dead at the apartment from multiple stab wounds, police said.
At about 8:26 p.m. Thursday, Garcia contacted police in another city “to report his involvement in this incident,” police said. He was taken into custody there and was later arrested on suspicion of murder.
Police have not said how long the couple were married and have not released a possible motive for the stabbing. They said more details would be released when they become available.
Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Niedenthal at 510-293-7176.
The killing is Hayward’s second homicide of the year.
RICHMOND — Bicycle advocates are bracing for a pedestrian and bike lane to be removed from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, a shift transportation officials hope will alleviate traffic as alternative changes are studied.
This May, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission plans to seek approval from the Bay Conservation & Development Commission to remove the multipurpose lane Mondays through Thursdays, creating a shoulder for drivers to pull off to after collisions or breakdowns, said John Goodwin, MTC assistant director of communications.
The lane would be reopened to cyclists and pedestrians Friday through Sunday, under the current plan. This comes about four years after the pedestrian lane opened as a pilot program.
“It’s an attempt to balance legitimate competing interests,” Goodwin said.
Officials broke the news to bike advocates in a meeting Thursday. Warren Wells, policy and planning director for the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, and Robert Prinz, advocacy director with Bike East Bay, said the update came as a surprise. Both organizations had expected the lane to remain as is until a final report on the pilot program could be finalized and released this summer.
While Goodwin described use of the lane as “underwhelming,” the bicycle advocates have argued it serves as an important connector — especially for non-vehicle commuters who would otherwise have to rely on a bus — between the East Bay and North Bay. Wells said the lane can see between 80 and 250 users daily, depending on the day of the week and weather.
Initial reports also indicate the lane hasn’t amplified vehicle traffic, which has been an issue along the corridor long before the lane was installed, Wells, Prinz and Goodwin agreed. All three also acknowledged that long-term remedies will take years to develop.
“At the very least, we were expecting MTC to gather data on the cost and benefits of the pilot before making a decision,” Wells said.
The news came just days after the Bay Area Toll Authority Oversight Committee approved spending another $2.5 million on the Richmond-San Rafael Forward initiative. Most of those funds will go toward completing designs for an open road tolling project which would replace the existing toll plaza and allow traffic to flow more freely onto through the bridge. The remaining $1 million will cover a study into alternatives to a third high-occupancy vehicle lane on the upper deck where the multi-use lane currently exists.
John Grubb, chief operating officer of the Bay Area Council, an influential business advocacy group, thanked the commission for their decision.
Wells during the meeting shared his disappointment in seeing the commission move forward with evaluating another lane before a report on the multi-use lane trial could be finalized. Even after that meeting though, Wells said he thought the lane would remain in place until at least the summer.
Those expectations now dashed, the groups said they’re planning to continue advocating for bike and pedestrian access on the bridge.
“Whatever happens with the path, this issue is not going away,” Prinz said.
OAKLAND — A 20-year-old Modesto man was in extremely critical condition after he was shot in his car in East Oakland early Thursday, authorities said.
The shooting happened about 12:59 a.m. Thursday in the 1400 block of 17th Avenue.
Police said the victim was in his car and got into a verbal altercation with the occupants of another vehicle.
At least one of the other vehicle’s occupants began shooting at the victim who despite being wounded was able to drive a short distance before crashing into a building, police said.
Another person got the wounded man out of the crashed car and drove him to a hospital, authorities said.
Police have not yet said what the verbal altercation that preceded the shooting was about or why they believe the wounded man was in Oakland.
No suspect information has been released.
Police and Crime Stoppers of Oakland are offering up to $5,000 in reward money for information leading to the arrest of the shooter. Anyone with information may call police at 510-238-3728 or Crime Stoppers at 510-777-8572.
For decades, homeless people have camped along San Jose’s 140 miles of creeks and rivers. Now, at the direction of state regulators, city officials are devising an ambitious plan to move about a thousand people into shelter by the middle of next year.
On Friday, before a line of tents near Coyote Creek, Mayor Matt Mahan announced the plan in response to a state mandate to clear encampments polluting the city’s watersheds.
“What they’re telling us, which is what I’ve been saying all along, is that the status quo is unacceptable,” Mahan said.
To ensure homeless people have a place to go, the mayor and a handful of City Council members pledged to continue adding shelter space across the city, including a newly proposed group shelter with about 1,000 beds south of downtown.
Officials said the clean-up and shelter effort — which could start in earnest in about six months and must be completed by June 2025 — will cost tens of millions of dollars at a time when the city’s budget is already stretched thin.
But they maintain that the hefty price tag is worth it, not just to meet environmental requirements but to ease the human suffering on the street and ensure that neighbors feel safe visiting city parks and trails.
“We must treat this like the emergency that it is,” Mahan said. “This is going to be hard. It’s going to be challenging, and it’s going to be expensive.”
Pedro Reyes, who lives along the grassy floodplain near Coyote Creek and Tully Road, said he’d be open to accepting a bed at the new shelter. But Reyes, 39, added he’s also comfortable staying outside, despite tending to recent stab wounds after he said he was attacked at his encampment.
Besides, he said he doesn’t think he needs help. And even if he did, he finds it hard to trust people offering support.
“I can’t believe it when people are talking to me, like, sweet,” he said. “I don’t trust anyone.”
On Tuesday, the City Council is set to vote to direct officials to devise plan details, including which areas along waterways across the city need to be prioritized for clean-up and where no-camping zones could be established to prevent homeless people from returning. The city has an estimated 6,340 homeless residents, about 70% of whom are unsheltered.
The agency forcing the city into action is the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, which has recently ramped up pressure on cities across California to move encampments out of sensitive waterways that often empty into the ocean. It’s threatening San Jose with litigation and tens of thousands of dollars in daily fines if it fails to comply.
The city has long struggled with what to do about encampments along its creeks and rivers, dating back at least 10 years when it took multiple attempts to clear hundreds of people from a massive Coyote Creek encampment known as “The Jungle.”
More recently, the city cleared around 200 people from parts of Coyote Creek to make way for a flood protection project. In February, it set in motion plans to create a no-encampment zone along the downtown stretch of the Guadalupe River after clearing dozens of tents and RVs from the area.
Homeless advocates say clearing camps can be traumatizing for unsheltered people, who can be torn from encampment communities and forced to part with their possessions. Without providing a roof over their heads, advocates say, encampment sweeps do little but push homeless people into new neighborhoods.
“If you’re going to abate, you have to have a place for them to go,” said Todd Langton, founder of the Coalition for the Unhoused of Silicon Valley. “It’s common sense. It’s humanity.”
Under a 2018 federal court ruling, local governments across the Western U.S. are expected to at least offer shelter before clearing encampments. However, after frustrated officials petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to modify or do away with the mandate, the justices agreed to review the rule later this year.
Mahan, who’s expected to sail to reelection next week, has made adding tiny homes, safe overnight parking spots and other “interim” shelter options with supportive services a centerpiece of his push to end street homelessness.
Critics of that position argue that shelter, while needed, is but a temporary solution that won’t help many people out of homelessness without significantly more investment in permanent affordable and supportive housing. A city report from last year found that about half of the roughly 900 people who stayed in interim shelters in 2022 moved on to permanent housing.
Mahan and his allies on the council respond that faster and more cost-effective solutions are needed because building low-income homes can take years and cost as much as $1 million for a single unit.
“For far too long we have enabled unsafe, inhumane, and dangerous living conditions for the unsheltered by relying on woefully slow and brutally expensive projects,” Councilman Bien Doan said in a statement.
Doan on Friday announced the proposed 1,000-bed group shelter for his district, south of Highway 280 between Highways 101 and 87. Doan’s office declined to give potential locations and did not immediately respond to a question about how much it could cost.
Opening new shelters may cost less than new affordable housing, but keeping them up and running could be expensive in the long run. Earlier this year, the city estimated that if it follows through on plans to add hundreds more shelter units, total operational expenses could soon exceed $70 million annually, about twice the current cost.
SAN JOSE — A defense lawyer suggested in court Wednesday that David Castro’s infant daughter Phoenix died of accidental smothering while sleeping on the couch with her father, not from a fentanyl overdose.
But a Santa Clara County coroner who conducted the autopsy and found methamphetamine and fentanyl in the 3-month-old baby’s system vehemently disagreed.
“There is no indication of suffocation in this case,” Dr. Mehdi Koolaee testified during the second day of Castro’s preliminary hearing. “This is a drug death.”
The coroner also testified that he believed the baby died roughly 24 to 36 hours before she was rushed to the hospital the morning of May 13, 2023. That puzzling revelation is at odds with the story Castro told a detective: that he fell asleep on the couch with the baby on his chest the night before while watching a movie, and he didn’t notice anything wrong with her until the next morning when she was cold to the touch.
It also led to Castro’s arrest on felony child endangerment and other enhancements that could land him in prison for up to 10 years if found guilty.
Castro’s preliminary hearing is scheduled to end Thursday and will determine whether there is enough evidence to send the case to trial.
The charges against Castro are less severe than the murder charges against the parents of three other Bay Area infants and toddlers who have died of fentanyl poisoning since 2020.
While cross examining the coroner Wednesday, defense lawyer Mishya Singh pointed out that the baby died face down because blood had “pooled” there, making her face dark red. Although Koolaee agreed the baby died face down, he reiterated that “in my opinion, unsafe sleeping has nothing to do with this death.”
The defense lawyer also pointed out that the amount of methamphetamine and fentanyl in the baby’s blood stream was “low” and that she could have developed a tolerance for it because she was born with both in her system — opening the door to a different cause of death. She also said that because the blood tested by the lab was from the heart instead of the limbs, the concentration of drugs there could appear higher than they were when the baby died, another indication that something else could have been an overriding factor in her death, she said.
“Would it be fair to say your finding should have been ‘undetermined’ rather than drug poisoning?” Singh asked.
“No,” the coroner said.
“Would that mean you would have to admit you were wrong?” she asked.
“There is no reason to change it,” Koolaee said. “Everything is not supporting any asphyxial or suffocating. This is a drug death.”
“If other medical examiners disagreed, would you still stick to your finding?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
Four other medical examiners in the Santa Clara County Coroner’s Office agreed with his determination, he said.
San Jose Police Det. Mike Harrington also testified Wednesday, and explained his conversation with Castro when he arrived that May morning. Castro told him that he had fallen asleep the night before watching a movie. He woke up the next morning, smoked a cigarette, had some breakfast and made a bottle of formula for the baby. It wasn’t until he began to change her diaper the next morning that “he realized something was not right with Phoenix,” Harrington testified. “She wasn’t warm like she normally is.”
Castro told him that “he wasn’t really sure what to do,” and about 20 minutes passed until a friend showed up unannounced and told him to call 911, which he did. The baby’s mother and maternal grandmother coincidentally showed up a few minutes after that.
Castro said he was living alone with his daughter while the baby’s mother was in a drug and mental health treatment center.
Castro told the detective that he had stopped using drugs about two months before Phoenix was born.
Earlier Wednesday, San Jose Police crime scene investigator Ian Carabarin testified that he found drug paraphernalia, including glass pipes and burned tinfoil, in a box on top of the refrigerator, drugs in a black bag in a kitchen cabinet and a tar-like substance that looked like heroin in a yellow Lego box in the dining room.
“You didn’t find drugs laying out in plain view?” Singh asked.
“Correct,” he said.
Carabarin also acknowledged that he couldn’t say whose drugs they were for certain or the last time they had been used.
BERKELEY — After being released from a psychiatric evaluation, a 59-year-old man suspected of firing a gun repeatedly on the UC Berkeley campus earlier this month has been arrested, authorities said.
The man was booked Thursday at Santa Rita Jail on suspicion of negligent discharge of a firearm, possession of a loaded firearm on a university campus and possession of a concealed firearm in a vehicle, according to jail records. He was being held in lieu of $565,000 bail and was scheduled for arraignment Friday.
The shots were fired about 8:40 p.m. Feb. 9 at Sproul Plaza after the suspect confronted some students, authorities said.
No one was hit by the gunfire, but a window was shattered by a bullet.
The suspect was arrested within two minutes of the shooting and was taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. He was placed under arrest at the hospital Thursday and booked at Santa Rita Jail.
The shooting prompted the university to issue a shelter-in-place order while police searched and cleared the areas. Affected buildings included Zellerbach Hall, where opera singer Renee Fleming was performing. The order was lifted just over an hour later.
ASHLAND — The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office on Monday was continuing to investigate two fatal shootings on Thursday and Friday that claimed the lives of a young boy and a 40-year-old woman in the small unincorporated area of Ashland.
The names of the two killed have not yet been released and authorities have not said where they lived.
The sheriff’s office did say the two killings — which happened more than 24 hours apart — are not related.
Motives for the killings have not yet been released and no arrests have been announced in either case. Ashland is an unincorporated part of the county between San Leandro and Hayward.
The boy, whose age has not been released, was found fatally shot in the head about 5:30 p.m. Thursday on 170th Avenue near Clinton Avenue.
The sheriff’s office said in a news release it believes the shooting was an isolated incident and there was no threat to public safety.
The woman was killed and a 47-year-old man wounded in a shooting that happened about 9:47 p.m. Friday on East 14th Street near 151st Avenue.
Both were taken to a hospital where the woman later died. Investigators have not yet said if they knew each other.
The sheriff’s office has said the killing was a result of a dispute between a suspect and the victims. No suspect information has been released.
Anyone with information about the killings is asked to call sheriff’s investigators at 510-667-3636 or the anonymous tip line at 510-667-3622.
DUBLIN — An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death of a 53-year-old Oakland man who died in a Santa Rita Jail cell Thursday morning just over a day after he had been booked, authorities said.
He was identified by the sheriff’s office as Eric Johnson.
According to sheriff’s Capt. Tya Modeste, Johnson was initially booked at the jail about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday after he was arrested by San Leandro police on suspicion of vehicle theft.
He was assigned to a minimum security setting in the custodial reception center, where he was the only occupant of his cell, Modeste said.
A deputy found him unresponsive in his cell about 5:15 a.m. Thursday, she said.
Deputies and custodial staff immediately performed life-saving measures, but he was pronounced dead at 5:30 a.m.
Modeste said the sheriff’s office investigation into the death is ongoing. She said the district attorney’s office has been notified of the death and a report will also be submitted to the state attorney general’s office.
It is the first in-custody death at the jail this year and the 69th since 2014.
Investors ‘Once Again Bracing for Turmoil Among Regional Lenders’
The New York Community Bank, as just one example, has been given its third credit downgrade in just a week.
Commercial real estate is getting hit with a triple-edged sword.
First, high interest rates make already-expensive units that much more costly. Second, and maybe worse, too many office buildings and commercial buildings are empty – thanks to remote work. And remote work is also on the rise in places like Oakland because it’s just simply too dangerous to go to work.
Yahoo Finance reports, “Almost a year after the failure of three midsized U.S. banks sparked an industry crisis, investors and regulators are once again bracing for turmoil among regional lenders, this time due to rising defaults in commercial mortgages.”
The story continues:
NYCB was initially a benefactor of those failures, scooping up Signature Bank last year after it was shut down by regulators following a run on deposits.
The culprit now is commercial real-estate debt, which is souring quickly as landlords face higher interest rates than they can afford and tenants, after nearly four years of half-full offices, are cutting their leases.
And while the U.S. banking system is increasingly dominated by a handful of national giants, commercial mortgages are still the province of regional lenders.”
“Commercial mortgages account for, on average, 3% of the assets at the 10 biggest banks in the country. At the next 150 banks, it’s almost 20%. Local banks routinely have half of their customers’ deposits tied up in mortgages for office buildings, hotels, and malls,” Yahoo notes.
How this plays out is anyone’s guess but analysts are right to be concerned. It wasn’t too long ago that regional banks in California collapsed completely, which sparked similar concerns.
As if inflation isn’t bad enough, is another mortgage crisis on the horizon too?
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Central Wellington’s ageing parking meter system is being updated with new technology, with the new meters installed and going live next week.
There are 400 new Pay by Plate machines in central Wellington, Kelburn and by the Botanic Gardens ki Paekākā; 260 are card-only and 140 are cash and card machines. The new parking system will be live from Wednesday 3 January.
Pay by Plate is a paperless system that uses the vehicle plate number, rather than a numbered car park, to record the parking time and payment.
Parking prices will stay the same, from $3 – $5 per hour on weekdays depending on the location, and $3 per hour on weekends.
So what do you need to know to be ready for the switch?
Tips for smooth parking with Pay by Plate:
· There are two types of new meter – all meters accept PayWave and a third of them also take coins.
· Coin/card meters are the black and yellow rectangular meters that sit on the ground, the card-only meters are on a pole.
· Take a note of your Parking Area, which is on the side of the meter, eg W01. You can ignore the old kerbside numbers – these will be removed in the new year.
· Your active parking session can be used in any parking space until it expires, so long as the vehicle plate number and parking area are the same. If you park in another parking area which has a different ‘W’ (Wellington) number, you’ll need…
Pinole police arrested a person in possession of a loaded semi-automatic pistol on Saturday afternoon after a traffic stop on Interstate 80. The individual had the gun, a fully loaded extended magazine, and marijuana and cash that was later determined to be for and from drug sales.
The person was booked into jail and the vehicle was towed, Pinole police reported.
Many hybrids sell quickly. “People are so into hybrids right now,” said AutoNation Honda Fremont salesman Jesus Silva. Drivers for DoorDash and other gig-work firms buy them to save money on fuel, and middle-aged consumers wary of electric vehicles find them a good “stepping stone,” Silva said.
