YIMBY News for 12/15

[Eric Budd]

Next City’s Most Popular Stories of 2025

Next City

---

KEYWORD SCORE: 51.33. affordable, affordable housing, construction, density, development, fair housing, housing, housing discrimination, hud, impact fee, income, mixed-use, nimby, project, real estate, rent, urban, yimby

One of Next City's top stories of the year looked at the legacy of community development giant Hester Street. (Photo via @hesterstreet) If this year proved anything, it’s that cities are still where the biggest policy fights are happening – and where the most innovative solutions are emerging. As federal retrenchment cuts into local efforts to improve housing affordability, public health, small business stability and inclusive finance, our most-read coverage of 2025 follows those battles up close. Revisit the reporting that drew the biggest audience — and captured the challenges and possibilit

Share via:

Steamboat Springs billionaire buys new apartment complex and slashes rent to help curb housing shortage

Colorado Sun

---

KEYWORD SCORE: 46.47. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, condo, construction, density, development, downtown, house, housing, housing authority, housing crisis, income, market-rate, parking, project, rent, single-family, urban

[image: The Outsider logo] ------------------------------ Landin Hutchison was ready. The minute the office at the Riverview apartment complex opened, he was there with money in hand. A month later, he and his partner, Piper Rillos, who works with special needs students at Sleeping Giant School, and their 2-year-old son were moving into a new two-bedroom apartment in downtown Steamboat Springs, paying a little over $2,100 a month . “We are pretty much saving a grand a month and living in town now,” said Hutchinson, a construction worker who moved his family from a home near Oak Creek a half-ho

Share via:

Op-Ed: It’s Time to Imagine a Safer, More Connected Rainier Avenue

The Urbanist

---

KEYWORD SCORE: 37.33. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, complete street, comprehensive plan, growth, housing, multimodal, parking, project, rent, transportation, urban, walk

Conventional planning practices favor cars over pedestrians, precluding a future where Rainier Avenue thrives. It’s a misty Friday night in December, and even though it’s only 6pm, the sun has been long gone. Everything is damp and dark. My nine-year-old son skips ahead of me on the sidewalk. I fight the urge to call him back and grab his hand. The sidewalk is narrow and there’s no parking strip protecting him from six lanes of high-speed traffic coming off I-90. I tell myself if a driver leaves the road, it won’t make much of a difference if he’s standing on the far side of me or not — we’ll

Share via:

The only number that really matters

Vox - Policy

---

KEYWORD SCORE: 22.64. development, growth, housing, income, rent

In 1972, the King of Bhutan announced that “gross national happiness is more important than gross domestic product.” It was a charming sound bite that captured imaginations worldwide. Finally, someone was brave enough to say it: Happiness matters more than money. At the time, Bhutan was poor. More than 50 years later, Bhutan still ranks near the bottom of countries globally in per capita gross domestic product (GDP), a metric that captures the dollar value, per person, of the goods and services that a country produces. In Bhutan today, life expectancy is 73 years — higher than the 51 years in

Share via: