Wednesday, February 2, 2022
Rents in the Phoenix area kept climbing last year, making it one of the U.S. cities with the steepest annual increases, the Washington Post reports.
But if you rent in Phoenix, you already knew that. Still, the Post helpfully quantifies Phoenix’s annual average rent increase at an eye-popping 26%. Other lists put several Arizona cities into the top 10 for rent increases. Economists suspect these rising rents will further drive inflation, too, so this affects you even if you don’t rent.
Guess what didn’t increase by 26% last year: Most people’s salaries.
The Phoenix metro area is in the top 15 for rent increases https://t.co/cFHje0nw0W pic.twitter.com/moSJ8A9MDK
— Rebekah Sanders 🌵 (@RebekahLSanders) February 1, 2022
Cities and towns around the state know they have an affordable housing problem, and some are working to address it. In Tempe, for instance, the city started collecting money the past two years for a program that “puts the onus on the city to create affordable housing rather than relying on developers to bring affordable projects to the city,” the Republic’s Paulina Pineda reports.
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
The two sites, at Pima Community College West Campus and at Kino Event Center in Tucson, are drive-thru PCR testing sites that can conduct and process up to 2,000 free-of-charge self-swab tests a day for appointments or walk-ups. Results usually are available within 48 hours.
“(FEMA) wants to place testing in places where they could remove barriers to access,” Pima County Community Services spokesperson Anthony Gimino said. “They were here in the spring doing vaccinations for two months, and it was a great success.”
The West Campus site will offer tests until Feb. 12, and the Kino site will “remain open a couple of months,” Gimino said in an email.
The Arizona Department of Health Services reported that as of Monday, there have been more than 1.8 million COVID-19 cases in Arizona, with 26,205 deaths. Pima County has reported 228,223 cases and 3,410 deaths, according to its COVID-19 dashboard.
Dr. Francisco García, chief medical officer of Pima County Health and Community Services, said the county has hit what he calls a “high-water mark” in terms of the number of positive cases but has not reached the high mark for hospitalizations or ICU cases.
“We are intermittently at points where we have very low (test) supply to share,” García said at a news conference Thursday. “But that’s also part of the reason why it made sense to expand our testing capacity within the county … that we’re paying for ourselves directly.”
It's easy to run for office when you're already in office … We're getting the legislative band back together … And he's attempting a Hulk Hogan impression
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich seems to grab daily headlines lately. We’re sure it’s just a coincidence for the AG who’s running for U.S. Senate.
On Monday, he threw himself into another federal fight against the Biden administration. This time, Brnovich requested the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services adopt a rule prohibiting the use of race and ethnicity as factors when issuing guidelines for therapies like monoclonal antibodies.
The antibodies issue sprung up recently after the Food and Drug Administration said race and ethnicity could be considered when assessing risk factors for severe COVID-19 and allocating treatment options. Other Republicans, like Marco Rubio, have put out similar press releases calling the rules “racist and un-American.”
But that wasn’t the only federal issue the state attorney general took to task in the past week. He also appeared on Fox News, his regular stomping ground, to talk about the border. He called U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly “Cartel Kelly” and said everyone is “less safe” because of the Biden administration and Kelly.
