KUNR Public Radio: Local News Feed

Among the people hit hardest by Reno's affordable housing crunch are the city's lowest income residents. Rising rents are often pushing people out of apartments or motels and onto to the street. But now, in downtown Reno, there's a project to create a new safety net.

Grizzly Creek Ranch in Portola, California is a common destination for 5th and 6th graders from Washoe County. They study STEAM education and team building with Sierra Nevada Journeys, which owns the camp. But come June, the ranch is summer camp central, hosting groups like the Muscular Dystrophy Association, which recently brought 51 campers.

The housing crunch is being felt across Northern Nevada, but up in Tahoe, the community faces a unique set of challenges. Seventy-eight percent of the homes in the Tahoe area are either vacation rentals or second homes. Meanwhile, many of the people who work in Tahoe can’t afford to live there. Heidi Hill Drum is the CEO of the Tahoe Prosperity Center ; she spoke with our reporter Tim Lenard.

Nearly a third of the households in the Truckee Meadows are considered either very low or extremely low income. That’s according to a report created by the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency in 2016. With housing prices continuing to climb, many of those residents are being pushed out of the area. Part of the problem is the lack of publicly subsidized, affordable housing. Reno Public Radio's Paul Boger reports.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke Monday at the Peppermill Resort Spa Casino in Reno to over 1,000 school resource officers at a national school safety conference. As KUNR's Bree Zender reports, Sessions briefly focused on school safety, but spent much of his speech on issues surrounding undocumented immigrants.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited Reno Monday morning to speak at a conference for the National Association of School Resource Officers at the Peppermill Resort. Roughly 200 people gathered outside to protest Sessions and President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Reno Public Radio’s Karina Gonzalez has the story.

On the same day President Donald Trump visited Las Vegas for the state Republican convention, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren headlined the Democratic event in Reno. Her appearance comes at a crucial time for state Democrats who have to decide just how progressive they want to be in the run-up to this November's general election.

Nevada has a shortage of healthcare workers. To combat this problem, the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine is starting a physician assistant studies program.

The University of Nevada, Reno’s esports club, Nevada Esports , is one of the largest organizations on campus, and while it isn’t considered a sport at the university, many other schools are adding esports to their rosters.

Over the past several weeks, KUNR has been reporting on the affordable housing crunch in Northern Nevada and the Eastern Sierra. Today, we speak to a man whose beloved cats essentially priced him out of the Reno rental market. Reno Public Radio’s Bree Zender spoke with him about his extended search for a home for himself, his cats, and his wife.