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Could State-Led Upzones Happen Here? 7 Lessons from Modern Cascadia
For housing advocates, could there be a better way? As urban housing shortages drive poor people out of job-rich cities, as middle-class families risk their life savings on exurban tract housing because it’s what they can afford, and as the planet keeps ticking toward deeper climate-driven disasters, is there some path to fair, abundant, transit-friendly housing that doesn’t require battling the forces of stasis up an endless staircase of 2...Read more » -
How Cascadian Cities Can Be Smarter about Their Surplus Land
As cities across Cascadia look to technological solutions, such as modular construction, to help address the region-wide shortage of affordable housing, one of the biggest factors currently driving up costs is also one of the most resistant to intervention: Land prices, which can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of producing a single subsidized apartment. Cities don’t have a lot of tools for lowering land costs, but...Read more » -
Where Seattle’s Environmental Impact Statement Has Landed for Backyard Cottages
On Thursday, Seattle published its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on loosening regulations on mother-in-law apartments and backyard cottages—accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in wonkspeak. The endorsed set of rule changes gets most things right, but also comes up short in a few ways. If you haven’t been following the drama, this is the latest chapter of Seattle’s effort to make it easier to build ADUs and help address the city’s...Read more » -
Housing Advocates in Portland Just Did the Nearly Impossible
The most provocative housing policy event of this week in the Pacific Northwest started happening four months ago. That’s because, in May, Portlanders did something almost unheard of in the world of housing policy. They showed up to say that in order to better-integrate neighborhoods and prevent future housing shortages, the city should allow more housing. The place: Two public hearings of the Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission to discuss...Read more » -
No, Seattle’s Growth Boom Is Not a Tree Apocalypse
Since the end of the last recession, Seattle has consistently ranked among the fastest growing major US cities. Is all that growth leaving the Emerald City less emerald? Not really. Seattle’s best new data on the change in tree canopy over time does show a 6 percent decline between 2007 and 2015. Here’s the catch, though: most of the confirmed tree loss happened on land reserved for detached houses, the...Read more » -
Washington Voters Could Make History in 2018–and Keep Billions in Revenue in-State
People in Washington spend billions of dollars each year on dirty fuels. A big chunk of that money goes to out-of-state oil companies instead of staying in Washington to help create local jobs or improve quality of life. Initiative 1631, a citizen-backed measure to pass a Washington carbon fee, could change that by shifting the transportation sector away from fossil fuels and toward walking, biking, transit, cleaner fuels, and electric...Read more » -
What Makes Portland’s New Apartments So Expensive?
An earlier version of this project was published in March by the Portland Tribune and KGW as part of the Open:Housing journalism collaborative. Everybody in the real estate business wants a piece of Robert Cheney. The recent Portland State University master’s grad and his girlfriend are fairly typical of the Pacific Northwest’s 2.2 million tenant households, looking for a fair deal in their price range. But Cheney and his girlfriend...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 8/17/2018
Alyse Highlighting 5 Dutch cities, and numerous North American cities following their example, Melissa and Chris Bruntlett’s Building the Cycling City (coming out August 28) is an informative and enjoyable read that will inspire anyone interested in learning more about Dutch transportation planning and policies. What I found most compelling was how the stories in each city are a reminder cycling hasn’t always been a “given” in the Netherlands. The...Read more » -
How Backyard Cottages Could Help Close the Affordable Housing Gap
Kay is a mom and fifth-grade teacher, raising her family in a home she owns on a quiet Seattle street. In her backyard she’s built a small cottage for her brother Doug, who is not able to live independently. Kay can check on her brother when the need arises, but he also has some independence. Kay’s cottage lets Doug enjoy his own space with a mix of autonomy and support from those who know and love him best---his family. Photo by Seattle Neighbors, available under our free use policy.
In Cascadia, a typical accessory dwelling unit (ADU) rents for about $1,300, affordable to a low- or middle-income household earning between 60 and 80 percent of the area median income (AMI). That makes ADUs, including granny flats, mother-in-law apartments, backyard cottages, and carriage houses, a form of low-cost market-rate housing. What’s more, over 10 percent of ADUs provide free housing to friends and family members of the ADU owner; many...Read more » -
Vancouver’s New Plan to Allow More Homes of All Shapes and Sizes
Cascadia’s three biggest cities—Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC—have all flirted in recent years with loosening the stranglehold of single-family zoning, rules that ban anything but detached houses on large lots from vast swaths of city land, creating virtual walls that exclude anyone who can’t afford inherently pricey homes. As the lack of affordable housing reaches crisis levels in all three cities, officials recognize the need to allow more options in...Read more »