Stories you shouldn’t miss:
1. Rents have jumped sharply in Berkeley as people are outbidding each other for access to a limited supply of housing, the Trib reports. The median rent for a two-bedroom in the city was $1,850 in the final quarter of 2012, up 8.8 percent from the year before. The median rent for a one-bedroom was $1,325, an increase of 6 percent from 2011. As we noted in this week’s cover story, some anti-growth activists in Berkeley have been using the state’s primary environmental law to block the construction of new housing in the city.
