Buy a house before it’s too late. Do it now. Quick! Before the prices jump!

This mantra sounds awfully familiar. And now it’s back amid suspicions that housing prices have nowhere to go but up.

But the experts aren’t so sure: “In short, it’d be hard to say the bottom has come and gone …despite what homebuyers might sense.”

Several factors indicate that things are looking up, but we explain how several others could delay the long awaited recovery.

At San Diego schools, some teachers get paychecks for doing nothing.

Good gig! But getting it requires teachers to all but get sacked in some cases.

We uncover how much this practice costs and explain why the district prefers to pay non-working teachers rather than stop sending them paychecks.

Last week, we reported on the Little Italy apartment/hotel project that apparently forgot to include the apartments. The city expected the apartments to provide some badly needed affordable housing.

In a follow-up, we check into what these seeming shenanigans could mean for city coffers.

Our story this week about the struggles facing the Golden Hill neighborhood says infighting stalled progress. We take a closer look in a follow-up piece and reveal why getting the sidewalk fixed isn’t a simple matter.

In education, a battle continues to brew over the fate of construction on the Gompers campus that’s home to both a middle school and a charter school. One school board member is pointing fingers at another, whose reaction is along the lines of “Who, me?”

An old saw says the press is supposed to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. 

Somebody’s certainly feeling a bit afflicted by the press these days: mayoral spokesman Darren Pudgil.

We’ve been trying for months to get him to release hundreds of internal emails that we think are public record, and now push has come to … a possible lawsuit

Pudgil continues to ignore our calls, he’s been busy launching a blistering attack (link is to a PDF) against the U-T over its three-day series on the city payroll.

There’s more to the story. As San Diego CityBeat reports, the U-T apparently decided to remove major accusations from a letter to the editor written by the mayor.

It’s not unusual for newspapers to trim letters because of space limitations or for the sake of clarity. But as CityBeat points out, taking a hatchet to a missive from the mayor is out of the ordinary.

The mayor’s office was unusually blunt in its excoriation of the U-T, accusing it not only inaccurate but deceptive journalism. Those are fighting words, and U-T brass may believe they’re not proven enough to appear in print.

For its part, the U-T has not corrected any part of its series, an indication that it stands by its work. The paper’s government editor, meanwhile, has responded to some complaints posted on a blog.

— RANDY DOTINGA

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