News you don’t want to miss for Jan. 20:
1. An unpermitted tiny house encampment popped up at a median on East 12th Street near Burger King, the East Bay Times reports. The 11 tiny homes were built on Sunday by a group calling itself the “Right to Exist Curbside Community.” $$
2. Median housing prices in the Bay Area dropped by 2.3 percent in 2019 to $928,000, the first decline in eight years, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Although median housing prices in Oakland and Berkeley are still robust, overall, they also dropped in Alameda County last year. $$
3. “A state appeals court says a woman who was robbed at a BART station in Oakland can’t hold the transit agency legally responsible because she was on the platform, not the train,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The lawsuit stemmed from a theft that occurred at the Coliseum BART station in Oakland.
4. Last month, the developer behind a 300-unit housing project on Harold Way in Berkeley said their proposal would no longer “pencil out.” Last week, Berkeley leaders told the developer it would not give them more time to make it work, Berkeleyside reports.
5. A Berkeley man filed a complaint with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration alleging Tesla cars can accelerate on their own, the Associated Press reports. Tesla denies the claim.
6. Those Tesla and hybrid car drivers may be saving the planet, but they’re hurting the state’s bottom line, the Los Angeles Times reports. Highways, roads, and bridges in California are in bad shape, and additional funding through gasoline taxes is increasingly being stymied by the rise of electric cars, which avoid the tax at the pump. $$
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