Some resist believing in dropping home prices

California housing is unaffordable. Yes? And inflation is bad. Yes?

Just don't suggest that home prices will deflate even though depreciation creates affordability.

And adding options for house hunters — like new housing construction — well, that's bad, too.

That's the housing inflation logic found inside my inbox. Now I don't expect everyone to agree with me. And I'll admit my hunches aren't always correct.

Still, I remain Pollyanna-ish about the problem-solving potential of spirited yet civil dialogue — even if a recent email started with “Dear moron” …

“The doomand-gloom seems to be a continuing pattern of negativity about the housing market. Are you trying to negatively influence the housing market?”

Assuming that the folks who highlight real estate risks have only sinister motivations is sadly part of the swings in homebuying psychology.

Look, falling prices are good news for house hunters who are part of my audience. And be warned: Discounting by owners and landlords may be required to jump-start this dead market.

Plus, for the record, I've been an Orange County homeowner since 1986. So a market crash would dent my net worth, too.

“Jordan Levine, the California Association of Realtors' chief economist, says the “sky is not falling” and predicts a modest, singledigit drop in prices for 2023. So as a consumer reading one article of gloom-and-doom and the other of a negligible drop in prices, who is one to believe?”

Anybody thinking about a big investment like a home should seek numerous opinions before buying.

As for a “modest single-digit drop,” we've already had that!

The Realtors' California median sales price for existing single-family homes shows that August's $839,500 was down 6.7% from the all-time high of $900,000 in May.

Only in 2008, in the heat of the last market crash, did we see a bigger May-to-August price drop in records dating to 1990.

Also, May-to-August declines are rare — only eight dips in the past 33 years. It's prime buying season with an averaged 2.6% price gain since 1990.

This summer's purchasing pace also was the slowest since

Stelter says talking with kids about mental health can be a simple extension of talking about health in general and the need to take care of their brains.

NICOLE STELTER PROFILE

Title: Director of behavioral health for Blue Shield of California Residence: South Orange County — just moved from Long Beach, where she lived for almost 30years. “So I still kind of `claim' The LBC.” Education: La Mirada High School, BA psychology, MS marriage and family counseling, Ph.D. industrial/organizational psychology

Family: 2 teenage boys, 2 stepsons, fiancé, 2 stepkitties, 1 dog

As the back-to-school excitement fades and the homework assignments start piling up, now is the time to check on your kids and their mental health. After two chaotic school years, things are somewhat back to normal this year, but kids are still transitioning, and so are parents.

We spoke with Dr. Nicole Stelter, director of behavioral health at Blue Shield California, about what to keep in mind. She shared some tips for how to talk with kids about mental health, what to look out for, and how to help.

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When and how should parents start talking to their kids about mental health?

It's not an easy conversation, but it doesn't have to be hard, either. Sometimes it is just being willing to know that you are not going to get it right the first time. You are not going to be perfect, but you just have to be a good enough parent, you don't have to be perfect.

A lot of times parents and guardians, grown-ups in general, worry we could “infect” our children with mental health issues or anxiety because we ask questions or talk to them about it, which is fortunately not true.

Part of stigma reduction is making it about health. When we start telling our kids “don't ride your skateboard without a helmet, because that's not safe,” “don't climb up a bookcase and jump off the top,” when we talk to them about taking care of their bodies, that's a great time to talk about what it means to take care of your mind and your brain.

What does that look like? Destigmatizing it, normalizing it as part of just what you do to take care of yourself and to take care of each other. Those are conversations a lot of parents are already having in different ways. So this isn't anything different, per se, it's just an addition.

This is the second year of kids going back to school since COVID-19, and we've heard a lot of discussions about how COVID-19 has challenged young people's mental health. What are the specific concerns that have arisen in the past few years?

Anything that disrupts the social fabric of what our kids and communities do is potentially a challenge for mental health and emotional well-being. There's a similar kind of disruption, right, those are the places that we find social support, that we find community. And for kids, they're working out where they fit in the world, and they're going to be