Search Results
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FAQ About I-5 Rose Quarter Expansion and Congestion Pricing in Portland
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Should Portland Try Congestion Pricing?
What if you had back pain and your doctor told you: “Physical therapy could relieve your pain, and it offers other health benefits. Or you could do a very expensive surgery which comes with additional health risks and, I’m sorry to say, probably won’t help.” Would you: Shell out the money to do the surgery first. If it doesn’t work you can always try physical therapy later. Try the less...Read more » -
Granny Flats and the Great Affordability Debate
Does adding more new homes to a prospering city help or hurt affordability? Few housing policy debates are as tangled or enduring. Good people with aligned affordability goals disagree. There are those who think the answer is obvious because most new homes are fancy and expensive. And those who think the answer is obvious because prices always go up when there aren’t enough homes for everyone who wants one. Evidence...Read more » -
A Year’s Worth of Progress
Last year at this time, the mood amongst our staff and our community was bleak to say the least. Like you I’m sure, the post-election haze at times seemed too dense to stand upright. In addition to unexpected (an understatement!) political shifts, the weather in Cascadia was no friend of the weary. We were about to enter what turned out to be the sixth wettest winter on record. But at...Read more » -
Impact Fees On Urban Housing Punish Renters And First-Time Buyers
When people make a mess we expect them to clean it up. If a private business harms others, we demand it pay the damages. These norms stoke the allure of impact fees—charges levied on homebuilders to compensate for the presumed burden on public services caused by the homes they construct. But in the case of cities, there are two big problems with that impulse. First, adding new homes to urban...Read more » -
What Really Happened With Instant Runoff Voting in Pierce County, Washington?
Those few members of the public in Washington, and even Oregon, who know anything about ranked-choice voting (RCV) have often heard, vaguely, that it didn’t work in Pierce County a decade ago. But they aren’t really sure what happened, and may draw the wrong lessons. This article sets the story straight about what really happened and what lessons electoral reformers can learn. In 2006, voters in Pierce County, which surrounds...Read more » -
Yes, Red Tape and Fees Do Raise the Price of Housing
Few public policy issues can match urban housing politics for its incendiary combination of passion and misconception. To wit: the confounding idea that relaxing regulations and fees to decrease the cost of homebuilding won’t make homes more affordable. Why? Because, goes the refrain, developers charge as much as the “market will bear” anyway. Any savings from streamlined regulations or reduced fees just yield more profit for the developer, not lower...Read more » -
Stop Blaming Foreign Home Buyers
Cascadia’s northernmost major city, Vancouver, BC, has emerged as an international poster child for home prices driven sky-high by affluent foreign buyers. Today in Seattle many fear the same scenario. Yet a review of the evidence reveals the poster version of Vancouver’s housing story is too simple, and it hardly applies at all to Seattle. And unfortunately, hyping the myth of foreign speculators distracts public debate from the more fundamental...Read more » -
Photo Series: We Are Seattle Neighbors
Find Seattle Neighbors on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. A woman moves into a van to be able to help pay her daughter’s college tuition. A man converts a convenience store to an Ethiopian-style coffee shop and community hub in Rainier Vista. A single mom makes a new home out of her parents’ garage. And a family of five finds friends and support in a subsidized First Hill apartment complex. These...Read more » -
Anchors Against Displacement
The patch of ground at the southwest corner of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way South and South Othello Street, kitty-corner from the Othello light rail station in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, may not look like much now—an overgrown sidewalk, a few incongruously jaunty “O!hello!” signs, and a whole lot of weeds. But in the next few years, it could be Ground Zero for a new type of real-estate development—one championed by...Read more »