Author: Tom Darby

Lacks the Guts to Take It

Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo wants more land for housing, but he won’t fight for it himself. Instead, he wrote a letter. He sent it to Nevada Democrats, asking them to push for a resolution urging the federal government to release land for development.

Like a limp biscuit, he couldn’t do it on his own.

He blamed inflation. He blamed interest rates. He blamed the cost of living. But most of all, he blamed the federal government. Nearly 87 percent of Nevada is federal land. Lombardo says that strangles developers and stifles construction, leaving rural communities unable to grow.

Projections show Washoe County could run out of developable land by 2027. Clark County might hold out until 2032. Lombardo says he has talked to Nevada’s federal delegation about the problem.

He also wrote to President Biden last July, asking for the same thing. That letter didn’t get him far. So now, he writes again.

Sierra Nevada Realtors released its January 2025 report on existing home sales in Carson City, along with Douglas, Lyon, Churchill, and Washoe counties, excluding Incline Village. The report details the median sales price and number of home sales across the region, sourced from the Northern Nevada Regional Multiple Listing Service.

The median sales price for single-family homes, condominiums, and townhomes across all five counties is $504,000. Since December 2024, prices have risen by 0.9 percent, but total sales have dropped sharply by 19.9 percent.

Carson City recorded 49 sales in January, a significant 33.8 percent drop from the previous month but a 25.6 percent increase from the prior year. The median sales price was $550,000, a slight 0.7 percent decrease from last month but a solid 10 percent increase from a year ago. Inventory stood at 127, down 2.3 percent from last month and 17 percent lower than last year.

Churchill County saw 14 sales, up 7.7 percent from the previous month but down 30 percent from a year ago. The median sales price fell six percent from last month to $376,000, though it remained 1.4 percent higher than last year.

Douglas County reported 29 sales, marking a 27.5 percent drop from December and a steep 39.6 percent decline from last year. The median price for an existing single-family home climbed 9.2 percent to $715,000 but was still down 10.7 percent from last year’s figure.

Lyon County had 73 sales, down 21.5 percent from last month and 2.7 percent from a year ago. The median sales price for single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums, and manufactured properties was $375,000, down 2.6 percent from December but unchanged from last year.

Washoe County, excluding Incline Village, saw 516 new listings and 364 closed sales. The median sales price was $525,000, a 3.7 percent drop from December but a 2.9 percent increase year-over-year. Inventory stood at 991, down 9.6 percent from last month but 24.2 percent higher than last year.

The numbers tell the story. Prices hold steady or rise in some areas while sales drop nearly across the board.

Fewer buyers, more inventory in some places, and less in others. The market shifts, but where it goes next, no one knows.

He swung himself into the saddle with the ease of a man born to the range, the leather creaking beneath him as if greeting an old friend. The sun hung low over the mesa, painting the sky in streaks of orange and red, but he paid it no mind. His gaze fixed on the horizon, where the land stretched wide and wild, promising freedom and danger.

He reined the horse lightly, and with a nudge of his heels, it moved forward, hooves striking a steady rhythm against the hard-packed earth. The wind caught at the brim of his hat, tugging it back, but he leaned into it, his shoulders squared against the coming night.

There was a job to do, a trail to follow, and he had miles to go before the stars would see him rest. Without a backward glance, he rode away, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust and the weight of things left unsaid.

CARSON CITY, Nev. – In a move as wild-eyed and desperate as a coked-up blackjack player doubling down on a busted hand, Governor Joe Lombardo has thrown his chips onto the table, demanding that Uncle Sam fork over chunks of Nevada’s vast federal wasteland to stave off a looming housing catastrophe.

With nearly 87 percent of the state locked away in the bureaucratic grip of Washington, Lombardo is howling at the moon for a resolution that would pry loose enough dirt to keep developers happy and the housing market from plunging into full-blown hysteria. “Growth is strangled,” he warns, like some old prospector clutching his throat in a desert fever dream.

The numbers are grim: Washoe County is staring down the barrel of a land shortage by 2027, with Clark County trailing close behind, set to hit the same wall by 2032. The Governor insists he’s been hammering on the doors of D.C., pleading with the feds and the President himself to release Nevada’s land from its bureaucratic purgatory.

The question now: Will the Beltway overlords crack open the vault, or will Nevada’s housing market be left gasping in the dust? Either way, the dice have been rolled—now we wait for the house to play its hand.

SILVER SPRINGS, Nev.—(UPDATE) The deputies knocked. They called her name. They told her to come out, bring the child, make this easy, please. There was no answer.

The man outside the door had told them what was happening. He said her name was Haylie Baggett, thirty-eight, locked in the bedroom with her three-year-old son.

Domestic violence call. It was never good when a call like that turned into a door that wouldn’t open.

Minutes passed. No answer. The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office made the call to force entry.

Gunfire. The child is down.

The mother is down, dead, suicide-murder.

Deputies dropped to the floor, trying to save the child. Central Lyon County Firefighters arrived, working fast, but the wound was too much. Careflight took the little one to Reno. No use. The child died at the hospital.

The house on Spring Circle in Silver Springs went quiet after that. The deputies stood in the wreckage.

Investigators arrived. The man who made the report was still there.

Story written in the spent shell casings and the blood on the floor.

They said the case is still under investigation.

But no one is talking about the husband, Christopher. No one is saying where he was when his wife barricaded herself in that room.

Everyone is asking why.

A mother, her child, the closed door, a gun. The rest is silence.

RENO, Nev.–The wind cut through Reno City Plaza like a dull knife, making the candle flames shiver. They stood there anyway—priests, imams, rabbis, monks—murmuring prayers over names that most of the city never knew. Seventy-seven dead. Not in some far-off war, not a catastrophe—just in the slow, grinding death of being poor in a town that doesn’t see them.

Father Chuck Durante, voice steady but eyes tired, said, “This is the first year we are going in the right direction.”

A win, if you wanted to call it that. Last year, it was 135. This year, only 77. Progress, like a half-smoked cigarette in a puddle.

They read the names. They read the ages. Sixty-three men and fourteen women. Most went down hard—fentanyl, meth, the kind of things that happen when no one gives a damn.

Fourteen made it to natural causes, six got murdered, and four took themselves out. Two are mysteries, while nine are still waiting on an answer they’ll never hear.

The plaza isn’t for the dead, but for one night, it held them. Their names, at least.

Then, the candles burned out, and the city moved on.

Daniel Tovar came to Stateline on a bus. He was thirty-one and from Pomona, Calif. He arrived on February 8, stepping off an Amtrak bus from Los Angeles—same state.

On Saturday afternoon, he fell from the roof of Harvey’s Lake Tahoe. The valet saw him hit the ground.

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office got the call at 2:46 p.m. By 2:50, Tovar was dead.

The fall broke him.

There was no more to say. The wind kept moving through the pines.

The cars rolled in and out of the valet. The hotel stood as it always had, tall and indifferent.

SPANISH SPRINGS, Nev.–The morning air was crisp, the sun barely clawing its way over the horizon when chaos erupted at an intersection in Spanish Springs. A blue truck, driven either by a fool or a man with a death wish, barreled through a red light at Calle De La Plata, smashing into a gray truck whose driver, perhaps equally oblivious, was making a right turn.

The two vehicles tangled in a mechanical embrace of twisted metal and bad decisions—before careening straight into a Washoe County school bus. Emergency crews arrived to find the aftermath–an unholy trinity of American steel left in a heap of regret and insurance claims.

By some cosmic miracle—or sheer dumb luck—no one was hurt. The children aboard the bus, wide-eyed but unharmed, were herded onto another bus and whisked away to school, where they would no doubt recount their brush with doom to disinterested teachers and classmates more concerned with TikTok and cafeteria pizza.

Washoe County deputies surveyed the wreckage, likely shaking their heads at yet another early morning display of Nevada’s signature blend of recklessness and incompetence. The road cleared, citations were probably issued, and the absurdist play that’s the daily commute rolled on.

Bovines Blissfully Unawait of Their Role

CHURCHILL COUNTY, Nev.—The sagebrush state has added another dubious distinction to its résumé, as a local farmhand has earned the honor of being Nevada’s first human case of bird flu. According to the Central Nevada Health District, the unlucky fellow had the misfortune of mingling with dairy cattle of a particularly unsociable sort—ones harboring a strain of avian influenza, which is a mighty peculiar thing for a cow to do, but then, Nevada’s never done things by the book.

This latest affliction is just another feather—plucked clean, one might add—in the growing outbreak that has troubled nearly 70 folks across the country, mostly farm hands, since April. The H5N1 virus, in its relentless crusade against prosperity, has taken a swipe at America’s breakfast table, reducing milk yields and sending egg prices into the orbit usually reserved for gold and real estate speculation.

As for our Nevada victim, he appears to be on the mend, though he did suffer a bout of conjunctivitis, which is just a fancy doctor’s way of saying he got a case of pink eye—a condition as irritating as a telegraph operator who won’t take a hint. The health authorities assure the public there was no sign of person-to-person spread, meaning you may still tip your hat to strangers without fear of contagion. The CDC, ever the voice of alarm, has declared bird flu a “low risk” to the public, which is much like saying a rattlesnake in the bed is no trouble so long as it remains asleep.

In an unsettling twist fit for a frontier melodrama, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last week that yet another strain of this unwelcome pestilence—going by the alias of D1.1—has been discovered skulking about Nevada’s dairy herds. This particular miscreant was a favorite among wild birds last fall and winter and spotted loitering in poultry, where it has undoubtedly been up to no good.

Tragically, the state of Louisiana has already mourned a casualty linked to this D1.1 strain, proving that what starts with a ‘C,’ as in cow, can end in a coffin, with a ‘C.’ As Nevada joins this peculiar epidemic, one can only hope that its citizens will outwit the flu, the cattle will return to their traditional occupation of standing around looking contemplative, and the birds—the traitorous lot they are—will mind their own business.

The trouble started before the call came in. It always does.

At 5:00 p.m. on Monday, February 10, deputies from the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office arrived at a house on Spring Circle. Someone had called in a domestic violence report.

Inside, two people had locked themselves in a bedroom. The door closed, and the world shut out.

Minutes passed. Then came the shots.

The deputies forced their way in. One was already gone, dead on the bedroom floor.

The other still had a pulse. A Careflight helicopter carried them to Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno.

By nightfall, they were dead, too. Now, the investigation begins.

The sheriff’s office says there’s no danger to the public. But that doesn’t matter much to the dead.