YIMBY News for 4/2

[Eric Budd]

Washington Just Passed First-in-the-Country Flexibility for Ground-Floor Retail

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 65.45. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, bus rapid transit, construction, development, downtown, house, housing, housing crisis, income, market-rate, mixed-use, parking, parking lot, project, public hearing, real estate, rent, renter, urban, walk, zone, zoning

Empty ground-floor retail space at Pike and Harvard, in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, where the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment is over $2,700. Seattle’s ground-floor retail mandates have produced a glut even in the most densely populated neighborhood in Washington state. (Photo by Dan Bertolet / Sightline) *This article was originally published by Sightline Institute.* If you travel through pretty much any city in the United States, it’s hard not to notice abandoned strip malls, vacant big box stores, and empty storefronts on downtown streets. It’s the result of massiv

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A divisive special election in Lakewood is quickly approaching. Here’s what that means 

Denverite

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KEYWORD SCORE: 53.98. affordable, affordable housing, condo, construction, density, development, growth, house, housing, housing cost, market-rate, mixed-use, parking, preservation, single-family, supply, urban, walk, zone, zoning

Lakewood voters are about to make a monumental decision on how the city could grow in the future. The suburb’s voters will decide April 7 whether to revert the city to its old development rules, making it harder to build townhomes, condos and duplexes across the city. City officials last year approved new zoning rules, allowing somewhat denser residential development across much of the city. But residents gathered over 3,000 signatures to challenge the change. In the upcoming special election, a “yes” vote repeals the ordinances approved by city council. A “no” vote keeps the new growth-friend

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New Yorkers Voted To Fast-Track Housing By Restricting Council Power. What Happens Next?

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 53.89. affordable, affordable housing, comprehensive plan, construction, density, development, house, housing, income, parking, planning commission, preservation, project, rent, supply, urban, zoning

Council member Elsie Encarnacion speaks at the press conference announcing that the 351 Powers Ave project in the Bronx’s Mott Haven neighborhood would be the first proposal to use the city's new streamlined land use review process. To her left is newly-appointed Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg. (Photo courtesy New York City Department of City Planning) *This story was published in collaboration with *Shelterforce*, the only independent, non-academic publication covering the worlds of affordable housing, community development and housing justice.* Three ballot measures approved by New York City vote

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Zahilay Touts Idea of King County Housing Levy

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 44.02. affordable, affordable housing, construction, development, homeowner, house, housing, housing crisis, housing discrimination, income, preservation, project, rent, urban

[image: Zahilay Touts Idea of King County Housing Levy] On Tuesday, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay unveiled a "Breaking the Cycle" initiative that aims to tackle the housing and homelessness crises, potentially including a countywide affordable housing levy that could go before voters as early as 2027. The levy is only a vague sketch at this point, and the first tangible step is setting up an exploratory committee, dubbed the Breaking the Cycle Work Group, to begin hashing out the package, but the announcement could signal a big shift in policy down the road. Traditionally, the City of S

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How Exclusionary Zoning Makes Poor Communities Poorer

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 36.44. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, condo, housing, housing price, real estate, rent, renter, segregate, segregation, single-family, urban, zoning

In the north Phoenix neighborhood of Alhambra, where roughly 20 percent of families live in poverty, one condo demonstrates how significantly housing prices have increased. In 2010, at the peak of the subprime mortgage crisis, it was sold for $40,000. A decade later, a real estate investment firm bought it for seven times that value. With examples like this, it is easy to understand why housing affordability has rocketed to the top of the political agenda. Yet policy proposals from the Trump administration, like 50-year mortgages and banning investors from purchasing single-family homes, miss

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This Colorado neighborhood is saving bees through sustainable development. Here’s how.

Colorado Sun

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KEYWORD SCORE: 32.00. bike path, condo, construction, density, development, homeowner, housing, housing crisis, mixed-use, real estate, urban, walk

In 2019, the big minds at the Butterfly Pavilion knew habitat destruction, chemical pollution, parasites and pathogens were crushing populations of bees, butterflies, moths and beetles, and that without these critical species one out of every three bites of food we eat could be at severe risk. However, pollinators aren’t just critical to keeping three-quarters of the world’s flowering plants alive and around 35% of food crops producing, according to the USDA. “They keep wetlands going. They keep our grasslands going. They make sure forests are diverse. And if they can keep those plant communit

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Op-Ed: 2 Line Launch Should Have Us Dreaming Bigger for the South End

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 22.30. development, downtown, project, rent, transit-oriented, urban, vision zero, walk, zoning

The opening of Judkins Park Station is a big step forward, but Seattle's South End must not be left behind in the next round of expansion.[image: Op-Ed: 2 Line Launch Should Have Us Dreaming Bigger for the South End] The historic *grand opening* of the Judkins Park light rail station marked a significant moment of progress for Central and South Seattle. It sits at the edge of the Central District and the gateway to the city’s South End, connecting communities who share a legacy of diversity and belonging, as well as one of separation and exclusion. Now, one of the region’s most important trans

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Study: What If We Capped Vehicle Sizes?

Streetsblog Net

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KEYWORD SCORE: 20.64. development, parking, parking lot, supply, transportation, urban, walk

The rising popularity of massive SUVs and trucks has made it impossible for the world to achieve its transportation goals, a new study argues – and until global nations take action to control vehicle bloat, we’ll *all *struggle to curb fuel demand, emissions, road deaths and more. Capping the maximum size of any new passenger vehicles sold at 2020 levels could save global consumers up to 22 percent, reduce liquid fuel consumption as much as 12 percent, and reduce traffic deaths up to 9 percent — and simultaneously slash transportation sector emissions as much as 10 percent, a new report from t

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Railfans Flock to NW Indiana for New Train Line’s Maiden Voyage

Streetsblog Net

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KEYWORD SCORE: 20.28. downtown, growth, house, parking, parking lot, project, rent, transportation, walk

[image: This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Boulevard-Bikes.png]*This post is sponsored by Boulevard Bikes.* *All photos are by John Greenfield*. In the last few days there’s been some good news about Chicagoland rail expansion! As we discussed yesterday, a judge’s decision recently unfroze the federal funding for the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line Extension project to extend ‘L’ service into the city’s Far South Side. And today there were glad tidings on the other side of the “Hoosier Curtain” (the north-south demarcation that separates Illinois and Indiana). The Sou

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