US tent cities highlight new realities

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/26/tent-city-california-recession-economy

US tent cities highlight new realities as recession wears on
Oliver Burkeman in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 March 2009

For years, Joan Burke has had to battle the fact that homelessness, for most Americans, is an invisible scourge. Recently, however, invisibility hasn't exactly been the problem.

Ten minutes' walk from where she works, at the homelessness charity Loaves and Fishes, in Sacramento, California, lies an all-too-visible "tent city" - a shanty town, built on wasteground beside railway tracks, that has become one of the most prominent symbols of the recession.

Tent cities reminiscent of the "Hoovervilles" of the Great Depression have been springing up in cities across the United States - from Reno in Nevada to Tampa in Florida - as foreclosures and redundancies force middle-class families from their homes.

"Where the tent city is now is literally a toxic waste dump, it's unsafe, but these people are very resourceful," Burke said. "Some people are living in squalor, with just a tarp tied to a chainlink fence. But then you'll see someone with several tents: The tent they live in, plus some outbuilding tents. And they couldn't be more neat and more tidy. They're working hard to create a sense of home."

Many of the 200 residents of Sacramento's Tent City, as with those around the country, are not recent victims of the downturn: They are the chronically homeless, some of them mentally ill. But the encampment seized national attention after Oprah Winfrey featured it on her daytime television show, part of a series of reports she has been running on the "new faces" of homelessness.

Embarrassed by an influx of television crews, Arnold Schwarzenegger this week announced plans to house the tent-dwellers in a nearby convention centre until a $1m (£690,000) plan for more permanent shelter can be implemented.

The California governor told reporters he had "personally delivered a letter to President Barack Obama last week, to request that economic stimulus funds for the homeless be fast-tracked".

Obama grappled with the phenomenon on Tuesday, when a reporter at his primetime news conference asked him about the "tent cities sprouting up across the country". The president said he was "heartbroken that any child in America is homeless", adding: "The most important thing I can do on their behalf is to make sure their parents have a job."

In both the number and types of inhabitants, the new tent cities do not equate to the homelessness of the 1930s. But the symbolism is powerful, and may have significant political consequences. It was not all that far from Sacramento, or from Fresno - home to another Californian tent city - that the celebrated Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange took her haunting photos of families living in makeshift camps, forced west by the collapsed economy and the Dust Bowl further east.

"We all take care of each other," Michelle Holbrook, a 34-year-old resident of the Sacramento camp who lost her job as a carer, told the San Jose Mercury News. "I've become the camp mother: I do most of the cooking, and make hot water for coffee." A resident of Reno's tent city, Tammy, said: "We eat things that other people throw out, or whatever ... It's really embarrassing to say, but that's the way it sometimes is out here." Another Reno tent-dweller, Jim, told one of Oprah's reporters it was "like learning how to live all over again".

Obama's stimulus package includes $1.5bn for emergency shelters, and, if passed, his budget should significantly expand funding for affordable housing. Philip Mangano, director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, has called the stimulus funds "manna from heaven", saying they would boost his two-pronged strategy of preventing homelessness while rapidly re-housing those who fall victim to it. Last year, the US government reported that homelessness in America had declined by 30% between 2005 and 2007.

Burke, whose organisation provides food and shower facilities for Sacramento's Tent City residents, has mixed feelings about the national media exposure. It may help build support for addressing the problem, she said, but also threatens to reinforce a distinction between the "deserving" victims of the recession and those who have been homeless for longer, and for other reasons.

"It's an oddity of human nature that we are more about people who have suffered for a short time, rather than people who have suffered for a long time," she said. "When we can identify with somebody's situation, obviously, our empathy is engaged quickly: You can look at someone and say, 'You know, goodness, they owned their own home, they look like I do.' But if someone's been homeless for a while, they no longer look like we think we look. If you're living in a tent, it doesn't take long before you're somewhat unkempt and dirty, because you're living in the dirt."

The changing economy has, accordingly, thrown very different kinds of people into close quarters with one another. In Fresno, freelance electricians and truck drivers, employed until months ago, rub shoulders with crack addicts and those with serious psychological problems. There have been reports of violence in one part of Fresno's encampment, known as New Jack City, but Burke said what really impressed her in Sacramento was the degree of cooperation.

"There is a sort of very pure democracy and self-governance at play. People are making up the rules of their cluster of tents, deciding what's permitted, just as in any sort of community," she said. "You don't want to romanticise this - it isn't camping - but there is a community, and there is a sense of helping others. We've had a series of storms here recently, and if there's somebody new who doesn't have a tent, people will take them in. It's that understanding that, you know, there's somebody worse off than I am."

California unemployment hits 10.5% in February

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-caljobs21-2009mar21,1,7712508.story

California unemployment hits 10.5% in February
After 116,000 jobs are lost for the month, the state's unemployment rate is the highest since April 1983.
By Marc Lifsher
March 21, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento -- California employers led the nation in mass layoffs in February as the state's unemployment rate hit 10.5%, the highest level since April 1983, state and federal labor agencies reported Friday.

The reductions cascaded across all areas of the Golden State's economy, hitting major corporations that included Circuit City Stores Inc., Yahoo Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. bank, Ralphs Grocery Co. and the Los Angeles law firm of Latham & Watkins, among others.

Big companies, which must file mandatory government reports every time they lay off at least 50 employees, gave pink slips to 45,557 Californians last month.

Nationally, mass layoff events reached a record high in February, affecting 295,477 jobs in all industries tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The biggest portion, about a third, were in manufacturing, followed by retail trade and transportation and warehousing.

California jobless rate

California's losses were far higher than Illinois', with 19,469 jobs lost. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were third and fourth.

But the mass layoffs were only a modest portion of the damage done to the Golden State's economy because the bulk of jobs are at small and medium-size businesses.

In all, California lost 116,000 jobs in February, bringing the 12-month total to 605,900.

Layoffs began 18 months ago in residential construction and moved to finance and wholesale and retail trade. Now, the state numbers show that cutbacks are hitting the once-secure bastions of healthcare, education and government services, sending new waves of unemployed workers to job-hunting centers.

"The job losses are intensifying and becoming more broad-based," said Esmael Adibi, an economist at Chapman University in Orange.

Construction, which continues to weaken, suffered the most in February, shedding 30,900 jobs. All other industries reported declines, with the exception of information, which includes television and movie production.

"Even the sectors that were considered recession-proof are losing steam," Adibi said.

California's jobless rate rose four-tenths of a percentage point in February, from 10.1% in January. A year earlier the rate was 6.2%. Unemployment in Los Angeles County increased by a slightly larger margin, to 10.9% in February from a revised 10.4% in January and 6.1% a year earlier.

Last month's national rate was 8.1%.

Both federal and California laws require employers to report large layoffs, though details of the mandates differ.

The tempo of layoffs is speeding up, state government officials warn.

"Since October, we've been getting these increasingly larger losses of jobs," said Howard Roth, chief economist for the California Department of Finance. He noted that February job losses were the heaviest in a single month since at least 1990.

What's more, the pace of disappearing jobs is hitting California disproportionately hard, compared with the other 49 states. California, which accounts for 11% of the national workforce, has suffered 18% of U.S. job losses.

California in recent years has been plagued by average job growth, a reversal from the superheated dot-com boom of the late 1990s, said Stephen Levy, director and senior economist at the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.

Levy attributes the state's high unemployment rate to a combination of sharp job losses and a workforce that's ballooned by 350,000 people.

Growth, he said, "obviously depends on the success of national policies to boost employment and stabilize the housing and banking sectors."

That's what California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who met with President Obama on Friday at the White House, is counting on.

"My administration is working tirelessly with the federal government to pump federal economic stimulus funding into our economy to create jobs as quickly as possible," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. But, he cautioned, "the road to economic recovery will not be short."

The good economic news, meager as it might seem, is the assurance of federal aid from the Obama stimulus package and the Federal Reserve's move this week to ease credit, said Sung Won Sohn, an economist and Asian trade expert at Cal State Channel Islands.

"The federal help will not turn the economy around," he said, "but it will prevent the economy from getting worse."

marc.lifsher@latimes.com

Governor's rift with GOP grows wider

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-arnold-taxes21-2009feb21,0,3998908.story

Governor's rift with GOP grows wider
After his turnaround on taxes in the budget battle, he won't be attending a state party convention -- and many won't miss him.
By Michael Finnegan
February 21, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento -- After five years as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger came full circle on Friday: The film star who promised to rescue California from its fiscal wreckage without raising taxes signed into law $12.5 billion in tax hikes.

With that, the Republican governor broke one of the few bonds left between his shrunken party and California's mainstream voters, marring its hard-won image as a guardian against higher taxes.

"Their last gasp has been taken from them," said Larry N. Gerston, a political scientist at San Jose State, citing the unpopularity among most California voters of the party's conservative stands on abortion, illegal immigration and other touchstone issues. "It puts them in a very precarious position."

By repudiating the thrust of his candidacy in the 2003 recall -- "I will not raise taxes," Schwarzenegger stated flatly the day after he won -- the governor has also enraged the conservatives who dominate the party.

For Republicans convening at a state party convention this weekend in Sacramento, it is a wrenching moment. Schwarzenegger is skipping the event to attend a governors' conference in Washington. But his turnaround on taxes has darkened the mood of the hundreds of party loyalists venting their frustration in a hotel where the governor often stays in a penthouse suite.

To be sure, none of the GOP lawmakers who demanded that the state close its $42-billion shortfall without raising taxes detailed the doomsday cuts that approach would entail, nor did the activists who lobbied against the tax increases. If the state had laid off its entire workforce of 238,000 -- every prison guard, firefighter and clerk -- it still would have fallen billions shy of a balanced budget.

Still, in a nod to the GOP's internal realities, two of the party's top contenders for Schwarzenegger's job in the June 2010 primary have split with the governor over the tax hikes.

One, former EBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman, said they will "kill jobs, hurt families and make future deficits even worse." The other, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, called the budget a "fiasco." The heavier tax burden, he warned, will increase unemployment.

The party's lone gubernatorial contender defending the tax hikes is Tom Campbell. A former Silicon Valley congressman and state finance director under Schwarzenegger, he all but guaranteed himself pariah status among the party's rank and file by saying the governor and Legislature did the right thing.

"It was essential, because otherwise you would have no public works in the middle of a recession, and that's suicidal for the state," said Campbell, whose fortuitously timed move to Orange County this weekend will spare him the face-to-face hostility of convention delegates.

Like the governor, the six Republican lawmakers who joined Democrats in approving the tax increases are also facing vitriol within the party. Chief targets include Sens. Dave Cogdill of Modesto, whose support of the budget led to his overthrow as Senate Republican leader, and Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria, who cast the deciding vote.

Conservative blogger Matthew Cunningham has started a Facebook group, "Never Elect Abel Maldonado to Anything, Ever Again." More threatening, Ernie Konnyu, a former Bay Area congressman, has launched a campaign to recall Maldonado.

Efforts to recall other GOP lawmakers for their break with the party on taxes have sprouted. Conservative purists are pushing the state party to censure them Sunday.

The party's turmoil over taxes comes as Republicans nationwide are still reeling from their 2008 defeat. Their White House nominee, John McCain, lost California by more than 3 million votes in the party's worst presidential rout in the state since the 1930s.

Their ranks diminished, Republicans in Congress are trying to restore the party's reputation for fiscal restraint. They demanded less spending and more tax cuts as they fought President Obama's $787-billion plan to stimulate the economy.

With his pledge to hold the line on taxes, Schwarzenegger took a similar approach in his run for governor during the budget crisis that fostered the recall of Gov. Gray Davis.

Now, Schwarzenegger allies say he had no choice but to break his promise.

"In 2003, nobody was saying that in 2009 this country would go through the worst economic crisis since the Depression," said Adam Mendelsohn, a Schwarzenegger advisor.

"There's nothing Gov. Schwarzenegger hates more than raising taxes. If there was a way to realistically do this budget with $42 billion in cuts and not raising taxes, Gov. Schwarzenegger would be the first one to go and fight for that. But it's totally unrealistic."

Critics, however, say Schwarzenegger long ago abandoned any serious commitment to fiscal restraint. Among other things, they say, twin ballot measures that Schwarzenegger and his Democratic allies marketed to voters in 2004 as an economic recovery package worsened the state's long-term troubles.

Tucked into Proposition 57 were billions in new debt obligations. And the $5 billion in lottery borrowing that Schwarzenegger approved Friday belied his characterization of the 2004 companion measure, Proposition 58, as a move to slice up the credit cards of Sacramento politicians.

To Ted Costa, an anti-tax advocate and leader of the drive to recall Davis, the historic ouster of a California governor has proved to be a waste.

"There's a village back there in Austria right now that could sure have their idiot back any time they want," he said.

Others are less caustic but nonetheless point to the identity crisis that Schwarzenegger's advocacy of tax hikes has visited on the party. If the de facto leader of California Republicans is a socially liberal governor who raises taxes, many wonder, what exactly does the party stand for?

"He's not comfortable being a Republican, and Republicans aren't comfortable with him being a Republican or being governor," said Shawn Steel, the California committeeman for the Republican National Committee.

Some Republican leaders, like Steel, are somewhat forgiving toward Schwarzenegger but livid at the legislators who broke with their party on taxes in return for election reform measures and other pet causes.

"I'm far more disappointed with Republicans who actually voted for this monstrosity," said Steel, a former state party chairman. "Sadly, for the 30 pieces of silver, if that, we had some otherwise pretty good guys collapse. Their entire political careers are now threatened."

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Meg Whitman off and running

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=35596

Meg Whitman off and running
Carla Marinucci
February 09 2009

We told you more than a year ago that former eBay CEO Meg Whitman was eyeing a 2010 run at the GOP nomination for governor. Now she's made it official, announcing she has formed an exploratory committee. Now look for the battle royale to begin between her and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who has been working this turf for more than a year.

Here's her press release this morning:

SACRAMENTO -- Republican Meg Whitman, former President and CEO of eBay, today announced the formation of an Exploratory Committee to seek the nomination for Governor in 2010. Former California Governor Pete Wilson will serve as Campaign Chairman, joining Exploratory Committee Co-Chairs House Chief Deputy Republican Whip Congressman Kevin McCarthy, Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack, State Senator Tony Strickland, Assembly Republican Whip Nathan Fletcher and former State Assemblywoman Sharon Runner. In the coming weeks, through speeches in Silicon Valley, Orange County and at the California Republican Party Convention in Sacramento, Whitman will offer a vision for the Golden State.

''After careful consideration and with tremendous loyalty to our Golden State, I have formed an Exploratory Committee, the first step in the process of running for Governor in 2010,'' Whitman said. ''California faces challenges unlike any other time in its history -- a weak and faltering economy, massive job losses, and an exploding state budget deficit. California is better than this, and I refuse to stand by and watch it fail. Now is the time for people across the state to join in a cause for change, excellence and a new California.''

Whitman, 52, retired from eBay in March 2008 following a decade with the company. Under her leadership, eBay grew from a startup with 30 employees, $4.7 million in revenues, and 300,000 users to a global e-commerce leader with operations in 38 countries, more than 15,000 employees, almost $8 billion in revenues, and more than 300 million registered users. There are more than 12 million eBay users in California alone.

Jeff Randle, president and CEO of Randle Communications, is Whitman's senior adviser and has worked with her since 2007. Randle joins Henry Gomez, one of Whitman's closest advisers during her tenure at eBay. Together, Randle and Gomez are developing a campaign organization that includes some of America's most respected campaign professionals.

''Meg Whitman is a tremendous leader and team-builder,'' Randle said. ''California today has serious problems, but Meg is committed to working to restore the state's greatness. With new leadership and a new direction, Meg will forge a new California, which will once again be the number one state in economic growth, job creation and quality of life.''

Stay tuned.

Most Expensive Places to Buy Gas in the U.S.

http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/article/103987/Most-Expensive-Places-to-Buy-Gas-in-the-U.S.

Monday, December 10, 2007
Most Expensive Places to Buy Gas in the U.S.
by Matt Woolsey
Saturday, December 1, 2007

Drivers in San Francisco enjoy views of the Golden Gate Bridge, with scenic stretches of the Pacific Coast Highway to the south and the rural shoreline to the north.

And they pay for it at the pump.

There, the average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline reached $3.546 Wednesday, up from $2.524 a year ago.

San Francisco, Calif.

Things don't look much better in other parts of the state. San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento and Los Angeles posted the country's next-highest per-gallon prices, respectively, according to Gasbuddy.com, a Web site that tracks gas prices nationwide.

Such high prices are not confined to California. Among the country's 40 largest metros, New York City, Buffalo, Seattle, Miami and Chicago rounded out the top 10 priciest places to buy gas.

The surge at the pump is the result of rising crude oil prices, which have grown significantly since 2004, when a barrel sold for $26. On Wednesday, a barrel went for $93.

Golden State Guzzlers

Still, west coast drivers are hit hardest. Those in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles pay more at the pump than those in Houston or Dallas, where the average price per gallon Wednesday was $2.90 and $2.923, respectively, due to such factors as fuel taxes, environmental standards and costs of business like regulatory burdens and taxes.

Ten Most Expensive Places to Buy Gas
Rank City
1 San Francisco
2 San Jose
3 San Diego
4 Sacramento
5 Los Angeles
6 New York City
7 Buffalo
8 Seattle
9 Miami
10 Chicago

What's more, the difference between, say, San Francisco and Houston is more pronounced this time of year since California requires cleaner fuel year round. Texas, like many Southern and Midwestern states, eases up on such requirements during the winter months when consumption slows. California's higher environmental standard increases refining costs, which get passed along to the consumer.

Why So Steep?

Crude oil's output is heavily influenced by the 12-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, each of whose yield makes oil such a volatile commodity. For example, earlier this month crude oil approached $100 per barrel due in large part to Mexico cutting a fifth of its crude-oil production. Also affecting prices? The weak U.S. dollar. Because oil is traded internationally in dollars, much of the per barrel price increase over the last few years also has to do with the slipping greenback.

Last week crude hovered around $93 a barrel, and crude futures are starting to dip below $90, as OPEC is expected to increase output, which in turn will lower prices. OPEC restricts output to keep prices high, but it isn't in its interest for prices to skyrocket because this would dent consumption.

Some hope rising oil prices might increase acceptance of corn-based ethanol as an alternative, green energy source, but the ethanol market has its own problems.

This year, $7 billion was spend in federal biofuel subsidies, resulting in a 20% increase in acres of corn planted. Investors, looking for a fast buck, have in turn produced far more corn for ethanol production than there is blending capacity or consumer demand.

A flooded market has made it more cost effective for ethanol producers to hold on to their supply than to sell it. Some factories in North America and Australia have shut down completely as a result. It's a market in disarray.

"Initially, [the subsidies] looked like a pure handout, but now it looks like its suckered investors into losing a lot of money," says Michael Liebreich, CEO of New Energy Finance, a London-based analyst firm. "Right now oil could be at $120 [per barrel] and it wouldn't make any difference...the speed that the private equity industry poured money into the industry is beyond its profitability."

The national price average for for E-85 -- an ethanol gasoline mix -- is $2.478 a gallon, according to the American Automotive Association, but when that figure is adjusted for energy generated by volume, E-85 costs $3.261 per gallon. Based on figures from the Energy Information Administration, E-85 generates about 25% fewer BTUs (energy unit) than does gasoline and, at its adjusted price, costs about 16 cents more per gallon.

There are, at present, about 4.4 million flex-fuel cars on American roadways and less than 1% of American service stations offer E-85.

A Better Bet

Unless huge oil fields are discovered in America, the solution to lower gas costs, experts say, lies in efficiency of consumption. From a city planning perspective, step one is reducing congestion. In its 2007 "Urban Mobility Study," the Texas Transportation Institute estimates that drivers in the nation's 437 urban areas wasted 2.9 billion gallons of fuel last year due to traffic delays.

Expanding roadways and building better transit systems relieves congestion, but both are costly. Some say improving traffic efficiency can be a much cheaper way to lessen congestion. Two ways to do this: systems such as service patrols, which comb heavily trafficked areas and help stranded motorists and ramp monitoring systems, which involves the installation of traffic lights on entrance ramps that regulate the frequency with which cars enter a freeway or highway.

"There's room for us to expand upon our management of the system," says David Schrank, co-author of the TTI study. "We can make our operations much more efficient through things like service patrols or ramp metering...very few areas that are managing 100% of their system, and there's room to improve on their management by going beyond the freeway to the arterial streets."

Sheehan considers challenge to Pelosi

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070709/ap_on_el_ho/cindy_sheehan_pelosi

Sheehan considers challenge to Pelosi
By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer
7-8-7

Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized the anti-war movement, said Sunday that she plans to seek House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat unless she introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks.

Sheehan said she will run against the San Francisco Democrat in 2008 as an independent if Pelosi does not seek by July 23 to impeach Bush. That's when Sheehan and her supporters are to arrive in Washington, D.C., after a 13-day caravan and walking tour starting next week from the group's war protest site near Bush's Crawford ranch.

"Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership," Sheehan told The Associated Press. "We hired them to bring an end to the war. I'm not too far from San Francisco, so it wouldn't be too big of a move for me. I would give her a run for her money."

Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the congresswoman has said repeatedly that her focus is on ending the war in Iraq.

"She believes that the best way to support our troops in Iraq is to bring them home safely and soon," Daly said in an e-mail to the AP. "July will be a month of action in Congress to end the war, including a vote to redeploy our troops by next spring."

The White House declined to comment on Sheehan's plans.

She plans her official candidacy announcement Tuesday. Sunday wrapped up what is expected to be her final weekend at the 5-acre Crawford lot that she sold to California radio talk show host Bree Walker, who plans to keep it open to protesters.

"The land itself has historical value," Walker said. "It is the first people's movement of the 21st century, and it needs to be kept as the hallowed ground that it is."

Sheehan announced in late May that she was leaving the anti-war movement. She said that she felt her efforts had been in vain and that she had endured smear tactics and hatred from the left, as well as the right. She said she wanted to change course.

She first came to Crawford in August 2005 during a Bush vacation, demanding to talk to him about the war that killed her son Casey in 2004. She became the face of the anti-war movement during her 26-day roadside vigil, which was joined by thousands. But it also drew counter-protests by Bush supporters, many who said she was hurting troop morale.

Sheehan, who has never held political office, recently said that she was leaving the Democratic Party because it "caved" in to the president. Last week, she announced her caravan to Washington, an undertaking she calls the "people's accountability movement."

"I didn't expect to be back so soon, but the focus is different than it was before," Sheehan said Sunday. "Instead of talking and making accusations, we're going into communities and talking to the people who've been hurt by the Bush regime. We're finding out how we can help people."

Sheehan, who will turn 50 on Tuesday, said Bush should be impeached because she believes he misled the public about the reasons for going to war, violated the Geneva Convention by torturing detainees, and crossed the line by commuting the prison sentence of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. She said other grounds for impeachment are the domestic spying program and the "inadequate and tragic" response to Hurricane Katrina.

Libby was convicted of lying and obstructing justice in an investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity.

Sheehan said she hopes Pelosi files the articles of impeachment so Sheehan can move onto her next projects, including overseas trips for humanitarian work. But if not, Sheehan said she is ready to run for office.

"I'm doing it to encourage other people to run against Congress members who aren't doing their jobs, who are beholden to special interests," Sheehan said. "She (Pelosi) let the people down who worked hard to put Democrats back in power, who we thought were our hope for change."

Pelosi was elected to the House in 1987 and became the first female speaker in January.

Sheehan said she lives in a Sacramento suburb but declined to disclose which city, citing safety reasons. The area is outside Pelosi's district, but there are no residency requirements for congressional members, according to the California secretary of state's office.