YIMBY News for 5/15

[Eric Budd]

Seattle's Winding Path 20 Years into Its Global Climate Commitment

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 49.14. bike lane, construction, development, downtown, growth, house, housing, housing stock, income, mobility, project, real estate, rent, single family, supply, transit-oriented, transportation, urban, walk, zone

Seattle has been committed to climate action for 20 years, but remains far behind targets.[image: Seattle's Winding Path 20 Years into Its Global Climate Commitment] Seattle’s history of ambitious statements on climate change have long existed in response to the same kind of national abandonment of climate action that we’re seeing today. In fact, Donald Trump’s decision to force America to about-face and renege on the international targets it signed onto in the 2015 Paris Agreement — and the response of *cities* and *states* in the U.S. reaffirming their commitment to those goals — mirrors a m

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101 bills that passed and failed in Colorado’s legislature this year that you need to know about

Colorado Sun

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KEYWORD SCORE: 45.47. affordable, affordable housing, construction, development, growth, homeowner, house, housing, housing cost, income, project, public hearing, real estate, regional transportation district, rent, single-family, transportation, urban, zone, zoning

[image: The Unaffiliated — All politics, no agenda.] ------------------------------ Colorado’s 2026 legislative session ended Wednesday, capping 120 days of debate and negotiation over hundreds of bills. [image: Colorado Capitol News Alliance] This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. The Colorado Sun and the Colorado Capitol News Alliance parsed through the roughly 650 measures considered by the legislature this year to find the ones that will most directly impact people’s lives — or would have had they passed. Here’s our annual list of 101 bills that passed and f

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Zoning Procedures Are the New Frontier of Equity

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 38.70. affordable, apartment, comprehensive plan, construction, development, downtown, housing, income, project, public hearing, rent, renter, segregation, urban, zone, zoning

Construction workers finish the exterior of an apartment building downtown Los Angeles. California, on June 18, 2021. (Photo by Damian Dovarganes / AP) Zoning is having a moment. Americans are increasingly aware that zoning helps create and perpetuate disparities in wealth, income, and opportunity, and segregation of neighborhoods by race and class. Whether this is or was the intent of those who operate zoning systems, the results are clear: Zoning is a very effective tool to exclude what we do not want in a particular location, and we have overused that tool in damaging ways. Many analyses ha

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Will a New Generation Break Through in L.A.?

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 32.08. development, homeowner, house, housing, housing cost, income, real estate, rent, renter, urban, yimby

This article is part of Governing’s Inside Politics newsletter. Sign up to subscribe. It’s been a tough few years for big-city incumbents. The last mayors of Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and New York City all lost their bids for re-election amid voter dissatisfaction about affordability, public safety, quality of life, homelessness, and the provision of government services. Now things aren’t looking so good for the mayor of Los Angeles. And the politics of America’s second-biggest city may be undergoing a generational shift. According to some recent polls, a majority of Los Angeles resident

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A Denver Nonprofit Is Moving Homeless Youth to Permanent Housing Three Times Faster

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 25.50. affordable, development, housing, housing and urban development, real estate, rent, urban

[image: Backyard] (Photo courtesy Urban Peak) When 19-year-old C.J. Kesner moved into The Mothership six months ago, he had already cycled through multiple relatives’ homes across three states. Disagreements and broken trust had left him without a stable place to live. Now living at The Mothership, a youth homelessness shelter model that opened two years ago in Denver, Kesner has a bed to sleep in. He also sees a therapist, joins group activities with other residents, can access medical care, and has a case manager who placed him on a waitlist for housing serving people with autism. “It’s a wa

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BRT is planned for another Denver road. This is what we’re hearing about Colorado Boulevard

Denverite

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KEYWORD SCORE: 23.34. bus rapid transit, bus route, construction, project, regional transportation district, rent, transportation, urban, walk

Plans to build bus rapid transit on Colorado Boulevard are slowly moving forward, and the public got an early glimpse of it this week. Hundreds of people packed into a room Wednesday afternoon at the Clayton Early Learning Campus as the Colorado Department of Transportation presented several visions for the BRT system, which is meant to allow fast, frequent bus service on one of the city’s busiest boulevards. The debate about Colorado Boulevard BRT is as heated as the room was — several attendees stepped out of the room drenched in sweat. A pile of 8-ounce plastic water bottles slowly dwindled

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The Three Pillars of Civil Resistance: Lessons From the Twin Cities

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 19.13. house, public space, rent, supply, urban, walk

People gather during a protest on Jan. 30, 2026, in Minneapolis. (Photo by Alex Brandon / AP) On a cold morning in Minneapolis last winter, one of us stood outside a local school to ensure that all children and families could move safely to and from school without fear. Bill was there not as an official or community organizer, but as a concerned neighbor alongside other parents, volunteers, and community members. ICE’s brutalization of our people in the Twin Cities drew plenty of attention in the media and elsewhere. But what mattered most that cold day, and so many other days this winter, was

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