Daily Business Report: August 14, 2026
HUD Secretary Scott Turner Puts California’s Homeless Industrial Complex on Notice
By Megan Barth | California Globe
U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner delivered a blunt message this week: the days of federal taxpayers bankrolling California’s failed and unaccountable homelessness bureaucracy are over.
In a video posted to X late Tuesday, Turner declared, “Today, HUD put the homeless industrial complex on notice.” The post accompanied footage of the secretary speaking at a press conference held at the faith-based Los Angeles Dream Center alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Today, we witnessed the heartbreaking realities of LA’s drug-fueled homelessness, and enough is enough,” Turner said. “Despite receiving billions in federal funding, homelessness in California has skyrocketed. Organizations like LAHSA that abuse taxpayer dollars to put its self-interests ahead of the vulnerable Americans it is supposed to serve will be held accountable. Under the leadership of President Trump and Vice President Vance, we are rooting out corruption and ensuring that those who need care are truly getting it. The days of funding corrupt failure are over. The Trump administration will not fund the Homeless Industrial Complex and longer.”
San Diego’s Public Restroom Problem Goes Far Beyond Our Beaches
by Megan Welsh Carroll, Anna Mewkill and Yashvi Sanam| Voice of San Diego
The city of San Diego recently closed 13 public restrooms in Mission Bay, near some of San Diego’s most beloved beach areas. Due to public outrage, the restrooms will reopen this Friday. This is great news. A day at the beach will no longer include ascavenger hunt for restrooms. Those of us with overactive bladders, enlarged prostates, or mobility restrictions will have more options to meet our basic bodily needs. But this issue is far from solved. Other parts of our city still urgently need increased public restroom access.
We are researchers with the Project for Sanitation Justice (PSJ) at San Diego State University. Our team is composed of SDSU students, faculty, and community members who believe that access to restrooms is a human right, a public health imperative, and a prerequisite to full participation in society. We maintain a map of public restrooms across San Diego County. We identify areas of our region that lack sufficient public restroom access for their population demands. We call these areas “sanitation deserts.” But in order to do this analysis, we need to have accurate information on where public restrooms exist and are open. This is a harder task than one might expect, especially in a city like San Diego that chronically refuses to take this issue seriously.
Resilient Fundamentals, Selective Expansion Ahead
by Sayantani S. | UCLA Anderson Forecast
The Summer 2026 Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast California Commercial Real Estate Survey suggests that California’s commercial real estate market continues to stabilize, although performance remains uneven across property types. Industrial continues to exhibit the strongest fundamentals, multifamily remains resilient, retail confidence has improved, and office markets are showing clearer signs of recovery despite limited new construction. Overall, respondents report a market characterized by cautious optimism, supported by improving fundamentals but tempered by persistent financing and cost challenges.
The Summer 2026 Survey collected responses from a panel that continues to be dominated by large, privately held real estate firms. More than 40% of respondents in both Northern and Southern California represent firms with over $500 million in assets, while more than 85% operate as privately held companies. Acquisition activity remains relatively subdued, with more than 70% of respondents reporting less than $50 million in acquisitions over the past year.
Statistical forecast analysis has as its basis the proposition that past statistical relationships hold into the future. A knowledge of those correlations, current data, and perhaps some assumptions about data not yet known, lead to the forecast. In addition to the summary measures of developer sentiment reported here, the Survey has a rich set of questions such that, with past trends in the Survey’s indexes, we can now infer a more nuanced turn in commercial real estate markets.
