YIMBY News for 1/22

[Eric Budd]

This Kansas City Neighborhood Is Transforming Neglected Housing and Keeping Control Local

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 55.36. affordable, affordable housing, average house, construction, development, gentrification, homeowner, house, housing, housing price, housing stock, income, market-rate, project, real estate, rent, renter, supply, transportation, urban

A home in the Lykins neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri, the result of the the Lykins Neighborhood Association's revitalization efforts. (Photo courtesy Raul Aguirre / Keller Williams Realty Partners Inc.) In Northeast Kansas City, Missouri, one working-class neighborhood is using a multi-pronged approach to take control of its housing supply. Since 2018, the Lykins Neighborhood Association has been taking on ambitious projects including using a state law to take control of abandoned homes, establishing a mixed-income neighborhood trust and partnering with Habitat for Humanity to construct

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Colorado Springs saw an apartment-building spree in 2025

Colorado Public Radio

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KEYWORD SCORE: 28.91. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, condo, construction, downtown, house, housing, income, rent, renter, single-family

Colorado Springs has not been able to build enough housing to sustain its population. A recent housing report from the city and El Paso County estimates the region is nearly 30,000 units behind local governments’ goals. “El Paso County is one of the few counties that’s still seeing a population increase across the state,” said Katie Sunderlin, the city’s housing solutions manager. “Most years we haven’t met the target number of (building) permits that we need to even start to really close this gap.” That was the case in 2025 as well. However, last year did show a bright spot in the permitting

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Apartments in metro Denver reach highest vacancy rate in 16 years, pushing down rents again

Colorado Sun

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KEYWORD SCORE: 26.30. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, construction, development, housing, market-rate, project, rent, renter, supply, urban

[image: A blue and white sign reading "COME IN FOR GREAT VALUES" is partially obscured by green bushes in front of a brick building.] With more than 34,000 apartments sitting empty at the end of 2025, the Denver-area apartment market reached a vacancy rate of 7.6%, the highest in 16 years, officials with the Apartment Association of Metro Denver said Wednesday. It’s not that apartments weren’t getting rented — newly built complexes filled up faster last year than any other year other than 2021. There were just so many new units built in the past two years that the excess supply created a large

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Sound Transit Seeks Hail Mary Financial Tool to Complete ST3 Buildout

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 25.47. bus rapid transit, construction, downtown, house, mobility, project, rent, transportation, urban, walk

Sound Transit leaders were in Olympia this week, pushing for a tweak to state law that could allow the agency to restructure its financial plan in a way that keeps more light rail projects on track. Senate Bill 6148, sponsored by Marko Liias (D-41st, Mukilteo), would allow Sound Transit to issue bonds with a 75-year lifespan — much longer than the 30-year bonds that it has traditionally relied on. Allowing Sound Transit to extend some of its biggest debt payments over a much longer timeframe could be one move that allows the agency to get its long-range financial plan — facing an approximately

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What a Public Transit ‘Moonshot’ Would Cost the U.S.

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 19.36. house, mobility, project, rent, transit-oriented, transportation, urban

In Brief: U.S. cities lag far behind global leaders in public transit. Building world-class transit in the U.S. would cost an extra $2.4 trillion in investment from all levels of government over the next 20 years, according to a report from Transportation for America. That’s 2.5 times more than currently projected, but less than what the U.S. will spend on highways in the same period. What would it take for the United States’ urbanized areas to have world-class public transit on par with cities like London, Paris and Madrid? A lot more spending by every level of government, for one thing. And

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