Search Results
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A Guide to Portland’s Charter Change
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A Guide to Alaska’s November 2022 Election
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When Cities Switch To One-Winner Council Districts, Housing Growth Plummets
A new 11th-hour idea for rewriting the rules of Portland’s city government has several possible flaws, but here’s one: statistically speaking, it’d be likely to worsen the city’s housing shortage. The proposal was publicly floated in a media interview three weeks ago by its loudest advocate, city Commissioner Mingus Mapps. Mapps’s idea, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive: to scrap the concept hammered out by a city-appointed citizen commission over the last...Read more » -
Can Anchorage Bring Back the Triplex?
There’s not much consumer choice in the Anchorage housing market. Single-detached homes, or “one-plexes,” are the norm, even though residents want more options to accommodate their different life stages and budgets. So, some of Alaska’s top architects and builders teamed up with Fairview residents in a neighborhood design contest to imagine a future inspired by historic housing norms, when cities allowed a wider array of homes in American neighborhoods. In...Read more » -
A Guide to Alaska’s August 16 Election
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The Pipeline Giant Behind Keystone XL Wants to Expand a Major Fracked Gas Pipeline in Cascadia
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18 Reasons Why Washington Should Legalize Middle Housing
UPDATE: Washington’s middle housing bill didn’t pass in 2022, but we anticipate a follow up in 2023, sign up here for updates. New polling finds finds 61% of voters across Washington state support legalizing middle housing, with 41% strongly supporting. Download a condensed version of this article here. Washington’s worsening housing crisis calls for an all-hands-on-deck response from the state. The core reason more and more Washingtonians cannot find...Read more » -
Nine Reasons to End Exclusionary Zoning
Most North American cities have outlawed everything except stand-alone houses on large lots on three-quarters or more of their residential land. These zoning rules shut out all but the wealthy in two ways: they quash the number of homes allowed, and they mandate that the few homes which can be built are expensive. Efforts to revoke exclusionary zoning laws have been gaining momentum at the local, state, and federal levels....Read more » -
The Case for Retiring Northwest Oil Refineries
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Five Lessons from California’s Big Zoning Reform
Update 9/16: Senate Bill 9 is now law. Urban housing shortages aren’t just a cause of climate change. They’re a lot like climate change—it’s very hard to fix them unless you can get many different governments to act. That’s what we told the New York Times this week when they asked for Sightline’s take on California’s proposed state-level legalization of duplexes and lot splits on most low-density residential lots. Cities...Read more »