Servants Welcome, Roommates Barred
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 impose on everyone else. For example, in the region’s fifth largest city, Burnaby, BC, a house may hold only five unrelated people. As everywhere in the region, families may pack as many members as they like into their residences, but for unrelated people, Burnaby allows no more dwellers in its tens of thousands of single-family homes, condos, and apartments than five. Regardless of the size of the home, no extras may move in: no friends in need, no additional roommates to help cover the rent, not even a parent or child. But if you can afford servants? Well, by all means, invite them! All the butlers, housekeepers, gardeners, cooks, chauffeurs, and nannies you can afford are welcome to share your roof in Burnaby...
Author: SwatchJunkies
Weekend Reading 1/11/13
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 refs (29-56), head lice (19-67), the rock band Nickelback (32-39), colonoscopies (31-58), Washington DC political pundits (34- 37), carnies (31-39), traffic jams (34-56), cockroaches (43-45), Donald Trump (42-44), France (37-46), Genghis Khan (37-41), used-car salesmen (32-57), and Brussels sprouts (23-69) than Congress. Congress did manage to beat out telemarketers (45-35), John Edwards (45-29), the Kardashians (49-36), lobbyists (48-30), North Korea (61-26), the ebola virus (53-25), Lindsay Lohan (45-41), Fidel Castro (54-32), playground bullies (43-38), meth labs (60- 21), communism (57-23), and gonorrhea (53-28).More importantly, statistics guru Nate Silver predicts that the Seahawks will not only beat Atlanta at home this weekend, but that they'll go on to win the NFC championship and meet the Patriots in the Super Bowl. You can't argue with Silver. He's a genius.
Author: SwatchJunkies
The Roommate Gap: Your City’s Occupancy Limit
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 TRW could have filmed without breaking local laws on roommates. TRW did film its 1998 season in Seattle. Everywhere else, The Real World would break the law, as it did when it filmed in New York (occupancy limit for unrelated roommates: three).
Author: SwatchJunkies
Innovative Green Building at Seattle’s Via6
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 its devotion to bicycling: the building features hundreds of bike parking stalls for residents and non-residents alike, plus an adjacent bike shop and locker room (with towel service), and a bakery to boot.
Author: SwatchJunkies
Emancipating the Rooming House
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 at this confounding pass, where the law has vacated the lower rungs of the historic housing ladder. This article describes nascent efforts to repopulate those rungs, by building neo-rooming houses and micro-apartments...
Author: SwatchJunkies
Rooming Houses: History’s Affordable Quarters
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 ...
Author: SwatchJunkies
Belly-Up Fish and Other Stormwater Mayhem
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 ...
Author: SwatchJunkies
Legalizing Inexpensive Housing
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 ...
Author: SwatchJunkies
Proof That Car-Sharing is Cheaper Than Free
When you say “greenhouse gas marginal abatement cost curve” I say “where do I sign up?” I guess that’s why I was interested in Oregon’s look at the cost-effectiveness of various ...
Author: SwatchJunkies
Farm Workers, Arctic Tribes, and Pesticides on Northwest Crops
Fifty years ago this last month, Silent Spring hit the shelves. The book that is sometimes credited with sparking the environmental movement in the United States pitted author Rachel Carson ...
