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Serena I’m a sucker for slick, solidly messaged environmental ads. (Surprised? Me neither.) That’s why Waterkeeper Alliance’s new ads, short and long versions, had me hooked. And if the message alone isn’t enough to get you, perhaps you’d geek out for the messenger? It’s Edward James Olmos, of “Battlestar Galactica.” Speaking of water, I’m joining the Taking on Water Challenge for the month of February. Each week features a postcard...

If you’re concerned about water pollution, you’ve likely heard this message: The water that gushes off our roofs, driveways, streets, and landscaped yards is to blame for the bulk of the pollution that dirties Puget Sound and other Northwest waterbodies. You probably also know about the most popular stormwater solutions, including rain gardens and other green infrastructure that soak up the filthy water, cleaning it before it reaches sensitive waterways...

Scraped clean of rationalizations, roommate caps are simple. They are tools that privileged people use to exclude from their neighborhoods people without much money, such as immigrants and students. To reveal this elitist reality fully will require this full article, but one example shines a bright light on part of it: how land-use codes treat servants. At least six Cascadian cities specifically exempt live-in servants from the residential caps they...

Eric: In the wake of the fiscal cliff debate, Public Policy Polling released (apparently serious?) survey results that are, hands down, the funniest opinion research I’ve ever seen. To wit: When asked if they have a higher opinion of either Congress or a series of unpleasant or disliked things, voters said they had a higher opinion of root canals (32 for Congress and 56 for the dental procedure), NFL replacement...

When The Real World filmed its 2013 season near downtown Portland recently, it did so in apparent violation of city law, which forbids more than six unrelated people from sharing a dwelling. The Real World puts seven young adults with outsized personalities together in a house and films the resulting train wrecks for television. It’s not just Portland. In fact, Seattle and Spokane are the only big Cascadian cities where...

Working on long term policy change doesn’t always yield immediate results. So here at Sightline we find it especially satisfying when our ideas take physical form, as they are in a new building in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. Longtime Sightline supporter Matt Griffin’s Pine Street Group is finishing up work on Via6, a 654-unit apartment building that includes features directly inspired by Sightline. The project has already gotten well-deserved press for...

They may not be for you, but rooming houses and other small, basic dwellings should not be against the law. Some people want them — need them, in fact — and they provide housing affordably, with a tiny ecological footprint, and in walkable neighborhoods. Yet across most of the metropolitan Northwest, these basic homes are currently forbidden or rendered unprofitable by local codes. My last article recounted how we arrived...

Nowadays, in the Northwest as across North America, most people live in houses or apartments that they own or rent. But not so long ago, other, less-expensive choices were just as common: renting space in a family’s home, for example, or living in a residential hotel. Rooming houses, with small private bedrooms and shared bathrooms down the hall, were particularly numerous. This affordable, efficient form of basic housing is overdue...

It’s a challenge to drive home the importance of controlling polluted runoff. After all, what is stormwater but rain that’s hit the ground? The trouble is, the ground isn’t always such a clean place, particularly in urban areas with lots of roads, rooftops, and parking lots that repel the rain and send it gushing through gutters, picking up pollutants and trash along the way. Still, it’s tough to imagine how...

A month ago, the Seattle City Council passed the latest in more than a century of laws across the Northwest and beyond to improve the safety and health conditions of rental housing. Without a single “no” vote, council members required all landlords to register their units and submit to periodic inspections. A bold victory for sustainable communities? I’m not sure. I do not know enough about the particulars of this...