YIMBY News for 1/21

[Eric Budd]

Can America build beautiful places again?

Vox - Policy

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KEYWORD SCORE: 71.61. affordable, apartment, condo, construction, density, development, gentrification, homeowner, house, housing, housing crisis, housing price, housing stock, mixed-use, nimby, parking, parking lot, preservation, rent, renter, single-family, supply, urban, walk, yimby, zone, zoning

[image: A landscaped courtyard framed by mid-rise apartment buildings with brick and light stone facades, balconies, and rooftop terraces, with curving paths, benches, and dense greenery in the center.] Render of an apartment courtyard block generated by Alicia Pederson with the Courtyard Composer. | © Courtyard Urbanist, Treasury Spatial Data The root of America’s housing affordability crisis isn’t complicated in the abstract: We need to build more homes (4 million more, to be more or less precise). More sprawl isn’t working — our dependence on it is part of what’s gotten us into a housing cr

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The Biggest Issues to Watch in 2026

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 54.23. affordable, apartment, construction, cost of housing, development, growth, house, housing, housing cost, housing crisis, income, market-rate, project, rent, supply, transportation, urban, yimby, zoning

At the start of each year, Governing writers and editors compile a list of the biggest issues to watch in state and local government in the coming 12 months. Some of the topics show up almost every time — budgets, for example — but each year brings its own mix of crucial issues to the fore. This year, the list was largely shaped by Washington, where the Donald Trump administration and the GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill have wrought changes in areas as disparate as Medicaid, public health policy, artificial intelligence, transportation funding and emergency management. States are scrambling to me

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Bellevue Could Take State Parking Reform to the Next Level

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 43.14. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, construction, development, housing, housing cost, income, mixed-use, multimodal, parking, planning commission, project, rent, transit-oriented, urban, zone, zoning

City planners in Bellevue are set to tackle parking reform, ensuring that the Eastside’s largest city comes into compliance with a new state law lowering the ceiling on how many off-street parking stalls can be required with new developments. But in doing so, Bellevue will explore going even further than the new state-required baseline, looking at changes intended to give maximum flexibility to bring down housing costs and push the city in a more multimodal direction. Last week, the Bellevue City Council unanimously approved expanding the scope for potential changes to parking requirements the

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How to Change the Politics Blocking the Housing We Need

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 40.30. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, construction, density, development, growth, homeowner, house, housing, housing cost, land-use, planning commission, rent, renter, supply, urban, zoning

Much ink has been spilled on the housing affordability crisis. Rents are up by nearly 35 percent since the pandemic, with some metro areas seeing spikes as high as 50 percent. For too many Americans and their families, the prospect of owning a home feels like an impossible dream. We all know the solution to the shortage: just build more housing. A wealth of research documents that places that expand their affordable housing supply see significantly slower rent growth than places that restrict construction. We see this bear out time and again. San Diego took commonsense steps to streamline perm

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A New Loan Product Is Helping Power Brooklyn’s Coops

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 33.09. construction, development, growth, house, housing, housing co-op, housing cooperative, income, project, real estate, rent, urban

[image: The Bottom Line] (Photo courtesy Brooklyn Packers) When Steph Wiley and his cousin Shawn Santana founded Brooklyn Packers a decade ago, they chose to set it up as a worker-owned cooperative. That means it’s owned and controlled democratically by its workers, who share in profits, management and major business decisions. In a typical week from June to January, Brooklyn Packers moves around 30 pallets of food from farms — often farming cooperatives or community-owned producers – throughout New York State to food pantries, mutual aid groups, senior centers and direct-to-consumer clients i

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Colorado lawmakers brace for their biggest battle yet over AI data centers

Colorado Public Radio

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KEYWORD SCORE: 25.34. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, construction, development, house, housing, income, project, rent

The artificial intelligence boom has kicked off one of the biggest construction bonanzas in world history . Across the U.S., tech companies have committed billions to build data centers, the hulking facilities behind cloud-based software and newer AI tools. Most of the projects have concentrated in states like Virginia and Georgia, which offer generous tax breaks and other benefits to lure tech companies to develop the facilities within their borders. Colorado lawmakers have repeatedly shut down legislation to establish similar incentives over the last few years. The fight officially returned

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State Lawmakers Move to Regulate License Plate Readers, Fearing ICE Misuse

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 23.84. housing, housing authority, rent, urban, walk

Responding to a wave of reporting about data from automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) being shared with federal immigration and out-of-state law enforcement agencies, the Washington State Legislature is considering a bill regulating the use of this surveillance tool. Sponsored by Senator Yasmin Trudeau (D-27th Legislative District, Tacoma) and Senator Jeff Holy (R-6th LD, Spokane), Senate Bill 6002 – titled the Driver Privacy Act – would add guardrails to the use of license plate cameras, including how long data is retained and how data is shared. Should the bill pass, Washington would joi

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How Stockholm Is Sprouting Healthy Trees From Concrete

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 21.36. development, project, public space, rent, supply, urban, walk

Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo by Levi Ari Pronk / Unsplash) *This story was originally published by Reasons to be Cheerful.* When Stockholm’s Traffic Office conducted a general assessment of street traffic in the Swedish capital in 2001, it came to the shocking conclusion that two-thirds of all trees in the city center were dead or dying. City authorities agreed that an urgent response was needed to nurse these leafy urban ecosystem pillars back to health. Enter Björn Embrén, Stockholm’s first “tree officer.” Under his leadership, various technologies and materials were tested in an attempt to cre

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Legalize Cafes Everywhere!

Darrell Owens Substack

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KEYWORD SCORE: 20.19. construction, land-use, parking, real estate, rent, urban, walk, zone, zoning

*Disclaimer: This article and every article on my Substack do not represent the opinions of my employer, or any affiliated organizations and public bodies I volunteer with or serve on. These posts are my private opinions representing only myself.* — [image: How to get Brewster in ACNH] The Roost cafe in Animal Crossing: New Horizons I’ve been studying commercial real estate. That includes spending a lot of time walking around the cities of the Bay Area, looking at ground-floor retail, and trying to get a sense of commercial markets. Many communities are frustrated by the lack of essential comm

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