.Monday’s Briefing: At Least 58 Dead in Vegas Mass Shooting; California Has Highest Poverty Rate Due to Housing

Plus, Emeryville may be only East Bay city to allow legal weed sales on Jan. 1.

Stories you shouldn’t miss for Oct. 2, 2017:

1. A sniper killed at least 58 people in Las Vegas last night in what was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the Associated Press reports. The gunman, Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev., stationed himself on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel and opened fire on a country music concert using semiautomatic rifles. He also injured at least 515 people. The FBI believes Paddock acted alone and was not part of a terrorist group. ISIS claimed credit for the mass shooting, but authorities think the claim is false.

2. California has the highest poverty rate in the nation when taking into account the cost of housing, reports Matt Levin of CALMatters.org (via the San Francisco Chronicle$). California’s sky-high housing costs have resulted in more than 20 percent of state residents — or about 8 million people — struggling to make ends meet. Florida is the second poorest state with about 18.7 percent of its residents in poverty when taking the cost of housing into account.

3. Emeryville might be the only East Bay city to permit legal cannabis sales by Jan. 1, when marijuana for adult recreational use becomes lawful, the Bay Area News Group$ reports. Other cities like Oakland and Berkeley have been slow to implement their legal permitting processes for allowing cannabis sales.

4. The growth of Oakland’s tech sector slowed in the third quarter of 2016 — likely because of the East Bay housing shortage, reports Alisha Green of the San Francisco Business Times$, citing a new report by Beacon Economics. “The region’s tech sector will have slower growth ‘until more units are built, and rents and home prices are tamed,’ according to the report.”

5. And Gov. Jerry Brown signed a package of 15 bills on Friday designed to speed up housing construction in California, reports Angela Hart of the Sacramento Bee$. The legislation includes a $4 billion affordable housing bond measure and an increase in the real estate transfer tax to finance affordable housing.

$ = news stories that may require payment to read.

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