YIMBY News for 8/29

[Eric Budd]

How Affordable Housing Can Still Go Solar, Despite Trump Turbulence

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 43.81. affordable, affordable housing, condo, construction, development, house, housing, income, preservation, project, real estate, rent, transportation, urban

Flywheel's Rock Creek Ford solar shingle installation in Washington, D.C. (Photo courtesy Flywheel Development) *This story was originally published by Canary Media.* The Trump administration is making it harder for low-income households to access the money-saving benefits of solar — but hard doesn’t mean impossible. There’s a lot for developers of affordable solar projects to navigate at the moment. The Trump administration has clawed back billions of dollars in Inflation Reduction Act funding for projects serving low-income communities across the country, including $7 billion for the federal

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King County Restructures School Impact Fees to Comply with State Law

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 43.31. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, construction, cost of housing, development, growth, housing, housing cost, impact fee, nimby, project, rent, single family, transportation, urban

Unincorporated areas of King County have seen minimal multifamily homebuilding activity in the last decade, but that didn’t stop the King County Council from a lengthy debate of school impact fees on Tuesday. County leaders were prompted to alter the school impact fee structure by a state requirement in Senate Bill 5258, which was passed in 2023. Ultimately, the Council achieved that minimum requirement on Tuesday, but some councilmembers pushed for a broader discussion of reducing fees, rather than simply rebalancing them. Councilmembers passed a set of amendments that fully exempted affordab

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Federal Way Light Rail Extension to Open December 6

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 41.36. affordable, apartment, construction, development, downtown, growth, housing, impact fee, income, mixed-use, parking, project, rent, single family, transit-oriented, transportation, urban, walk

Light rail riders will be able to take 1 Line trains as far south as Federal Way starting December 6th, Sound Transit announced Thursday. The three-station extension will be the agency’s last expansion to the south until the Tacoma Dome extension slated for 2035. In addition to the “Federal Way Downtown” terminus, the extension adds stops at Kent Des Moines Road (near Highline College) and at Star Lake. The 7.8-mile extension will take the 1 Line to 41 miles in total length from Federal Way Downtown to Lynnwood City Center, completing the 1 Line vision funded in the Sound Transit 2 ballot meas

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A Bay Area Land Trust’s Pioneering Model Protects Artists From Displacement

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 41.14. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, development, fair housing, gentrification, growth, house, housing, income, preservation, project, rent, urban

[image: Backyard] Flee Kieselhorst, an LGBTQ professional photographer and single mother, and her child Pickle in the home they purchased through Artists Space Trust. (Photo by C. Wagner Photography) *This Q&A is part of Lessons from the Field, Next City’s new series of interviews with anti-displacement practitioners across the country.* To Meg Shiffler, every artist is an entrepreneur. The inaugural director of the San Francisco-based nonprofit Artist Space Trust knows that when artists are priced out of their communities, it’s not just a loss of cultural vibrancy; it’s the shuttering of smal

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Northwest Arkansas by the Numbers: Stability or Sugar Rush?

Strong Towns

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KEYWORD SCORE: 30.58. development, downtown, growth, housing, infill, parking, project, urban

Bentonville, Arkansas. “I was actually surprised at how well my region (Northwest Arkansas) is doing compared to the rest of the nation,” Strong Towns member Aaron Caldwell noted after running Fayetteville’s financials through the *Strong Towns Finance Decoder*. “I think we have made some good decisions but maybe [it] is still in the ‘sugar rush’ phase of development.” On paper, Fayetteville’s results look strong—and in many ways, they track with the city’s land use choices. In 2015, Fayetteville became the first city in Arkansas to eliminate parking mandates, removing a costly barrier for sma

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Sleeping Babies in the Town’s Living Room

Strong Towns

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KEYWORD SCORE: 29.94. density, development, downtown, housing, parking, project, segregate, urban, walk, zone, zoning

*Q:** Is this housing or office or retail? **A:** It shouldn't matter as long as it's allowed to be what it needs to be at any given point in time.* A colleague once asked Jeff Siegler if people should be allowed to live on the first floor of a downtown building. His answer was unequivocal: *“No, people shouldn’t live on the first floor downtown.”* In his view, the ground floor is the “face of the city.” As a gathering place and marketplace, the ground floor functions as the living room of community life. Fill it with couches, cardboard boxes, or “Shhh, baby sleeping” signs, and you kill the v

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Keeping the Story of Denver’s Forgotten Chinatown Alive

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 25.58. development, downtown, house, housing, parking, parking garage, parking lot, rent, urban

(Act One Photography) Linda Lung put the call out to her parents, cousins, aunts, uncles. It was time to finally go into their closets, basements and attics to dig out those old photos, dresses, shoes, coins, lottery tickets, restaurant menus, tea sets and other items from their family’s history of living and working in Denver’s former Chinatown, going back more than 100 years. “We’re such hoarders,” says Lung, her family’s official unofficial historian. “My dad had a lot of it. My grandfather, Charlie Lung, ran the Chinese lottery. He would take his sons out on their bikes, collect money and

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Voters in Western Cities Are Unhappy With Their Leadership

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 20.50. affordable, affordable housing, housing, nimby, rent, renter

This article is part of Governing's Inside Politics newsletter. *Sign up to subscribe.* Seattle Voters Ready to Reject Yet Another Mayor: Running for re-election, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell touts “historic investments” in affordable housing, “nation-leading climate legislation” and continuing efforts to make Seattle a welcoming city for immigrants and minority communities. In short, he sounds pretty much like a standard-issue Democrat. But because he has taken a tough stand on crime and homelessness, he sounds too much like President Donald Trump to suit the tastes of many voters in his famou

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Why are more Colorado communities trying to protect the night skies?

Colorado Sun

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KEYWORD SCORE: 18.88. development, growth, house, hud, parking, parking lot, project, rent, urban, walk

Twilight seemed to go on forever beside the mountain lake where about 20 people were patiently waiting for the stars. But clouds that had threatened rain earlier were beginning to give way to a crisp navy sky, as tiny white dots revealed themselves. “The Big Dipper has just poked out a little bit, and we’re going to have to really crane our necks,” said Joan Veillaux, one of the Forest Service rangers leading this “star party” at a campground in Twin Lakes, near Leadville. Attendees gazed up and released a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs.” Leo Pareti, another ranger and an astronomy expert, set up

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