YIMBY News for 6/8

[Eric Budd]

Op-Ed: The Case for Shifting to a Land Value Tax

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 60.34. apartment, comprehensive plan, condo, density, development, downtown, growth, homeowner, house, housing, housing crisis, income, occupancy, parking, parking lot, project, real estate, rent, renter, single family, urban, zoning

Seattle's property tax system has serious shortcomings, but adopting a land value tax could address them.[image: Op-Ed: The Case for Shifting to a Land Value Tax] Property tax plays a critical role in how Seattle functions. In 2025, property tax represented over 22% of Seattle’s entire revenue stream, making it the City’s largest income category. Property tax brings in more than Seattle’s other significant income sources of sales tax, business and occupation (B&O) tax, and utility tax. This accounts for only about 30% of the property tax we pay, with the rest going to the County, Schools and o

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Op-Ed: Bellevue’s Wilburton Housing Policy Actually Builds Housing

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 55.67. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, construction, cost of housing, development, downtown, growth, homeowner, house, housing, income, market-rate, project, rent, renter, transit-oriented, urban, zone, zoning

One year in, the Wilburton rezone is becoming a model others should follow.[image: Op-Ed: Bellevue’s Wilburton Housing Policy Actually Builds Housing] For decades, cities across Western Washington have repeated the same mantra: “G*rowth pays for growth*.” It sounded fair and was easy politically, but no other philosophy is more at fault for the unattainable cost of housing in our region. Requiring a new homeowner or apartment complex to pay the price for creating subsidized housing is quietly strangling the very thing it was supposed to deliver — housing — while at the same time asking renters

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When Federal Resilience Grants Disappear

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 32.20. construction, development, downtown, house, housing, housing and urban development, hud, project, transportation, urban

Editor's Note: This article appears in Governing's Q2 2026 Magazine. You can subscribe here. Heavy rains overwhelm the poorly drained hillside developments above the borough and send water rushing downtown, sometimes with such force that it comes spraying out of the inlets onto downtown streets like so many fountains. State Route 36, the primary arterial in Highlands, N.J., is sometimes impassable. During Superstorm Sandy in 2012, eight feet of water covered Bay Avenue, the main downtown drag. Today many of the homes have been or are in the process of being raised onto stilts, supporting a liv

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The Power of ‘Translocal’ Learning

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 28.08. affordable, affordable housing, housing, project, purchase land, urban, walk

(Photo Courtesy of Asian Arts Initiative / C&CPF) Sponsored content from The Culture & Community Power Fund. Sponsored content policy *This sponsored series is created in partnership with The Culture & Community Power Fund (C&CPF), a national funders’ collaborative advancing the role of culture in building identity, agency, and collective power. This series explores the cultural ecosystem—the traditions, stories, rituals, and spaces that sustain frontline communities—and what it takes to support and strengthen it. Read the complete series.* The Assembly of Black Possibilities gathered practiti

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