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Maps: Portland’s 1924 Rezone Legacy Is ‘A Century of Exclusion’
Many Pacific Northwesterners know that duplexes, triplexes and other “gentle density” housing remain common in older parts of our cities even though they’re usually illegal to build today. Less discussed is the fact that even in cities where building small detached homes used to be common, some of our older neighborhoods have few such housing options. A new set of maps created by Portland housing-options advocate Neil Heller reveal some...Read more » -
Four Ways To Get A Housing Reform That’s More Than Window Dressing
Editor’s note: This post was originally published by Portland for Everyone. True with housing policy as with jam labels: Always read the fine print. Through two years of deliberation, Portland, Oregon’s anti-McMansion residential infill project has been built on a simple compromise for the city’s lower-density residential areas: cap the size of new buildings, but also increase the total number of homes by re-legalizing duplexes and corner triplexes. But as the project nears completion — the city planning commission...Read more » -
BIG Thanks!
Not only do Sightline community members think BIG, you give BIG! We are humbled by the generous support that came to us during yesterday’s 24-hour GiveBIG event. THANK YOU! Sightline supporters understand that we are all in this together, working to find solutions that benefit all our communities, no matter the challenges. Thanks to you, Sightline is able to keep our thinking caps on, delivering the analysis Northwest leaders need to make...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 3/30/2018
Kristin This was in Sightline’s daily news round-up, but worth reading over and over: America’s two-party system is the problem. Support for democracy is declining in two-party countries like the US (also called majoritarian countries, they are almost exclusively former British colonies), which are caught in bitter partisan battles and unable to address the pressing problems of inequality, lack of opportunity, social justice, and social safety nets. In contrast, parliamentary...Read more » -
What Is the Necessity Defense, and What Are Its Limits?
Editor’s note: Late last month, the necessity defense appeared to have reached a milestone when a judge in Massachusetts found 13 pipeline protesters not guilty after they testified that civil disobedience was the only reasonable alternative to prevent imminent harm, locally and globally. The 13 activists were arrested, along with close to 200 other participants, in response to a year-long campaign that began in 2015 to halt a pipeline extension that...Read more » -
Are Robo-Taxis the Only Way to Get Transportation Off Oil Fast?
Climate hawks know the best way to decarbonize our economy is to electrify everything, fast. But we’ve made little progress electrifying transportation, the source of over half of the carbon emissions in Oregon and Washington. Shared fleets of autonomous electric vehicles—robo-taxis—could drive us to a low-carbon future much faster than the current plodding accretion of electric vehicles among individual owners. How slow is it? Despite all the buzz about Tesla,...Read more » -
Washington Legislators’ Chance to Act on Climate
Washington’s foresters, fishers, farmers, and farmworkers have become painfully familiar with the impacts of climate chaos while American politicians have spent the decade kicking the climate change can down the road. Last summer, both sides of the state lived and breathed under a blanket of smoke as wildfires forced those effects right into the state’s homes. Washington schools closed, the government entered a state of emergency, and no one was left...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 1/5/2018
Kristin I just read Naomi Klein’s No is Not Enough, which references the “Leap Manifesto” she and other leaders in Canada put together. It calls for 100% clean energy, a universal basic income to help pay for the important work of caretaking that is currently often unpaid or underpaid, paid for by a carbon tax, financial transaction tax, and cuts to military spending. Good stuff. Do men look for a...Read more » -
When Historic Preservation Clashes with Housing Affordability
Every city wrestles with the tension between preservation and evolution, the tricky balance between saving great old buildings and not freezing neighborhoods in amber. The tension is especially acute in any metro area that lacks enough homes for all the people who want to live there. Historic preservation, when it interferes with homebuilding, can worsen a city’s shortage of homes, driving up rents and pushing out low-income residents. Case in...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 12/01/17
Kristin How can we combat growing wealth and income inequality: With a social wealth fund, a pool of investment assets that pays out dividends to everyone. Lessig’s latest, touting candidates who are making their platform more about fixing broken democracy than about toeing the two-party line: We see our tribes first, and truth a distant second. We have to find a way out of this rut. We have to build a...Read more »