Crime and Public Safety

OAKLAND — A Berkeley native who allegedly bought guns in Arizona and Texas and illegally sold them to Californians has been sentenced to 14 months in federal prison, court records show.Kamar Ferguson, 28, reported to prison to begin his sentence on July 17, according to court records. Ferguson pleaded guilty to dealing firearms without a…

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Will Arizona’s new water limits halt Phoenix-area home building? No, and here’s why

Home building in metro Phoenix hasn’t come to a grinding halt and isn’t expected to, despite new water restrictions for subdivisions on the area’s edges.And while the Valley’s water woes won’t help the area’s housing shortage, they aren’t going to make it substantially worse either, according to water and housing experts.Arizona’s water agency said last…

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Lawmakers are banning single-family zoning. But are apartment buildings the ‘silver bullet’ for America’s housing shortage?

Over the last five years, a number of cities and states in the U.S. — from Minneapolis to Maine, Oregon and California — have overturned rules that previously only allowed developers to build single-family homes in certain neighborhoods.  The push to eliminate single-family housing is premised on the desire to to create more housing units,…

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Your Home Sale Fell Through. Now What?

Lew Sichelman A few years ago, Nicole Doty of Zion Realty in Gilbert, Arizona, thought she had a client’s house rented at full price. The tenant had sent in his deposit, enrolled his kids in the neighborhood school, paid the movers and had his old place in New York halfway packed.  Then the deal went…

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