Contaminated water six months after deadly California wildfire

The Camp Fire in Paradise California killed more than 80 residents, destroyed 19,000 buildings, and six months afterward, the rural community is struggling to rebuild—only to learn more recently that its water pipes contain cancer-causing benzene.

Affordable housing in northern California after wildfire last year still elusive for many families

By some estimates, more than 1,000 families are still homeless around Paradise in rural Butte County after losing their homes in the Camp Fire wildfires, contributing to a growing homelessness crisis.

California’s dearth of affordable housing is very acute in the Central Valley

California’s housing shortage is, by some estimates, the worst it’s ever been. But according to an editorial in the Fresno Bee, the crisis is most acute in the state’s Central Valley …

California’s groundwater depletion causes ground to sink in Central Valley

California’s Central Valley, according to researchers, is in a “perfect storm,” whereby drought years, rising temperatures and subsiding clay are causing the ground to collapse. The region’s groundwater has been largely depleted after the state’s $50 billion agricultural industry resorted to pumping during the drought.

Affordable housing in California remains elusive

Although California lawmakers in 2017 passed several bills to ease housing construction across the state, affordable rental units remain out of reach for many low-income residents. In a new report by the California Housing Partnership, about two-thirds of the more than two million very low-income renters in the state spend more than half their income on rent.