YIMBY News for 11/25

[Eric Budd]

Sammamish Hits Pause on Town Center Planning after Backlash Election

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 60.45. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, comprehensive plan, condo, density, development, downtown, growth, house, housing, income, lower-density, mixed-use, parking, planning commission, project, rent, single-family, urban, walk, zone, zoning

The City of Sammamish has paused work on a zoning overhaul in its Town Center neighborhood, in the wake of an election that will put three new councilmembers who are growth skeptics into office in January. The victories for Debbie Treen, Michael Boyer, and Josh Amato this month were widely seen as a referendum on the current city council’s approach to growth planning. Meanwhile, incumbent Councilmember Amy Lam eked out reelection due only to a write-in campaign that split the opposition. Sammamish has been working on an update to its 2008 Town Center plan since mid-2023. The revision was in re

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Cities made a bet on millennials — but forgot one key thing

Vox - Policy

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KEYWORD SCORE: 55.05. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, construction, density, development, growth, homeowner, house, housing, housing cost, housing stock, income, parking, real estate, rent, single-family, urban, walk, zone, zoning

[image: Child-like drawings of families, furniture and flowers surround and partially cover an image of urban housing buildings] For cities to survive, they need to focus on families. | Lucy Jones for Vox Millennials moved to cities in droves during the 2000s and 2010s, drawn by the restaurants, the nightlife, and the high-paying jobs. Urban planners and local leaders celebrated, embracing what became known as the “creative class” theory — the idea that attracting educated, creative workers would drive cities’ economic growth. Real estate developers built accordingly, constructing apartment bu

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The Highway That Didn’t Exist — and Still Unmade a Baltimore Neighborhood

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 47.86. construction, development, downtown, homeowner, house, housing, housing and urban development, housing authority, project, real estate, rent, segregate, segregation, urban, zone

A portion of Baltimore's so-called "Highway to Nowhere" in Baltimore. (File photo by Julio Cortez / AP) The age of the American expressway ended in the same place it began: Mary Rosemond’s backyard. In 1926, the year she was born in Jacksonville, Florida, her parents bought a brand-new house for their growing family: a Sears foursquare with a wide front porch on Moncrief Road, not far from the city’s downtown. Moncrief was part of Sugar Hill, a booming streetcar suburb connected to downtown by the “Colored Man’s Railroad,” the Black-owned North Jacksonville Street Railway, Town and Improvement

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A Shifting Trump-Era Public Finance Landscape

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 35.64. apartment, construction, development, house, housing, income, land-use, project, rent, urban, zone, zoning

When it comes to the federal-state-local fiscal relationship, the Trump administration and its allies in Congress have driven more changes in less than one year than any other presidency since Franklin Roosevelt’s, most of them going in the opposite direction politically. A clear takeaway for state and local financial managers and their policymaking bosses is that they can no longer count on fiscal federalism — dollars from Uncle Sam — to alleviate budgetary problems. But there are also some quirky features of this new landscape that present more obscure challenges and even some economic devel

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Could Cities Partner With Guerilla Urbanists For Safer Streets?

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 26.58. bike lane, construction, project, rent, transportation, urban, vision zero, walk

People’s Vision Zero is painting crosswalks across Los Angeles to protest for safer streets. (Photo by Maylin Tu) Painting a crosswalk is cheap and easy. A group of neighbors can paint an entire intersection in one morning for $100 or less. Getting the city of Los Angeles to paint a crosswalk, on the other hand, might take 14 years and the death of a 9-year-old boy. Across L.A., neighbors are banding together to paint crosswalks to protest the city’s failure to protect people outside of cars. Jonathan Hale, a UCLA law student who goes by “Jonny,” spent four Saturday mornings painting crosswalk

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Boulder County awards $6.3M in Worthy Cause, Human Services grants

Daily Camera Boulder News

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KEYWORD SCORE: 24.00. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, construction, development, housing, housing authority, mobility, project, transportation

Longmont nonprofit HOPE has spent about six months trying to find a church that would be willing to serve as a second overnight homeless shelter. [image: Development Director Amanda Torres works in the office at Homeless Outreach Providing Encouragement, known as HOPE, in Longmont on Monday. (Matthew Jonas/Staff Photographer)]Development Director Amanda Torres works in the office at Homeless Outreach Providing Encouragement, known as HOPE, in Longmont on Monday. (Matthew Jonas/Staff Photographer) But with no luck so far, HOPE Executive Director Alice Sueltenfuss​ said, she’s identified a build

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How long can grocery prices keep rising?

Colorado Public Radio

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KEYWORD SCORE: 19.80. growth, house, housing, income, parking, parking lot, rent, walk

*This is a part of an occasional series looking at aspects of Colorado’s faltering economy.* ------------------------------ Joseph Macias stares at a folded receipt from a trip to a King Soopers grocery store. “I don’t know how I spent over a hundred bucks,” Macias sighed. He is one of many Coloradans struggling to afford groceries amid all his other bills. Ad: He’s a single parent and a cook at a brewery in Colorado Springs. He said before grocery shopping, he’ll make a short list of only the things he really needs. “I try to find the cheapest stuff of everything I can, and I still ended up s

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