YIMBY News for 3/18

[Eric Budd]

The “populist” crusade to make the suburbs more segregated and expensive

Vox - Policy

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KEYWORD SCORE: 50.89. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, construction, development, homeowner, house, housing, housing crisis, housing price, housing stock, income, project, rent, renter, segregate, segregation, single family, single-family, supply, urban, zone

[image: Elizabeth Warren at a Senate hearing.] Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questions Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a hearing on February 5, 2026. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images To its fiercest critics, “populism” is a politics of mindless resentment: The populist’s animating ambition is not to help people in general — or the downtrodden in particular — so much as to hurt some vilified elite. If afflicting the comfortable also requires discomforting the afflicted, so be it. Personally, I think this is wildly unfair. But some of the Senate’s populists would seem to disagree with me. Or

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Opinion: The Hidden Costs of Free Transportation

Streetsblog Net

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KEYWORD SCORE: 32.72. affordable, construction, development, mobility, parking, project, real estate, transportation, urban, walk, zone

*Editor’s note: A version of this article originally appeared on City of Yes and is republished with permission.* Along its 12,000 miles of curb, New York City has more than three million parking spaces—and only 2.5 percent of them metered. In a city where land routinely sells for thousands of dollars per square foot, that means millions of square feet of some of the world’s most valuable real estate are effectively given away for free. The idea of charging for some of that space is now under discussion at City Hall, and it makes a lot of fiscal sense: a recent report estimates that metering o

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Urbanist Election Committee Endorses Claudia Balducci for King County Council

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 29.44. affordable, affordable housing, construction, homeowner, housing, income, project, urban

[image: Urbanist Election Committee Endorses Claudia Balducci for King County Council] For our first endorsement of the 2026 cycle, The Urbanist Elections Committee endorses Claudia Balducci for King County Council. A seasoned and hard-working policymaker, Claudia Balducci leads with strong urbanist values, and we heartily recommend retaining her. First elected to the county council in 2015, Balducci is seeking her fourth term representing District 6. The reason her most recent term was only three years, rather than the usual four, was because of a reform to even-year elections for county offi

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Ferguson, Kotek Pivot to Phasing Plans to Expand I-5 Over Columbia River

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 22.92. affordable, construction, downtown, multimodal, project, transportation, urban, walk

[image: Ferguson, Kotek Pivot to Phasing Plans to Expand I-5 Over Columbia River] Washington and Oregon are officially taking a new approach to tackling a pair of aging bridges that carry Interstate 5 over the Columbia River, putting off plans for highway widening and interchange upgrades that have been moving forward for years. After a new $13.5 billion to $15.2 billion cost estimate for the full Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) was made official by project leaders Tuesday, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson announced that a "core set of projects" will become the new priority. Five miles of

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Sound Transit Advances Design on Federal Way Train Base

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 20.31. bus rapid transit, construction, downtown, project, rent, urban

[image: Sound Transit Advances Design on Federal Way Train Base] The Sound Transit board is poised to award a $350 million contract to advance the agency's next train maintenance base in Federal Way, a major component of future system expansion plans, to full design and pre-construction. Planned on a 70-acre site to the south of the 1 Line's current terminus in Downtown Federal Way, the new base is set to open by 2031 or 2032. The base will be specifically designed to handle the next generation of light rail vehicles, which will add capacity to the growing network. Being designed by Siemens, t

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Oregon Braces for Fallout From Federal SNAP Changes

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 18.38. house, housing, income

In Brief: Many residents in Oregon have historically been exempted from SNAP work requirements, thanks to weak job markets in the state. The One Big Beautiful Bill has changed that. The new rules are likely to affect how many Oregon residents are eligible for SNAP, experts say. Officials are now busy trying to help residents understand the change and find new work training where possible. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) has wrought sweeping changes to a major benefits program in Oregon, and state officials are now grappling with administering the major shift. The OBBBA instituted new wo

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