Oakland

Oakland voters could approve the state’s first tax on privately owned vacant properties in November.

A few months back, we created an explainer to answer two questions: How bad is California's housing crisis, and how did it get so bad? We tried to cover as much ground as possible—from affordable housing funding to Proposition 13 to why no one else in your apartment building cleans out the lint filter after using the communal dryer. But we knew we couldn’t get to everything. So we asked readers “What did we miss? What questions do you still have about California’s certifiably insane housing market that we didn’t answer?”

California cities and counties are discovering a hard truth as they angle for a cut of the state’s newly legalized marijuana proceeds: Tax collecting in cannabis country comes with its share of obstacles. And there’s no “how to” guide.