Housing

With middle housing, transit-oriented development, and parking reform all checked off the list, the Washington legislature's 2026 session looks to be more sedate when it comes to housing. But there are still some impactful reforms on deck tackling some of the smaller issues inhibiting housing production.

Seattle City Councilmember Dionne Foster took office Tuesday, echoing Mayor Katie Wilson's call for "bread and roses" to tackle the city's affordability crisis while strengthening the social and cultural fabric.

Seattle renters are largely locked out of cost-saving and comfort-improving clean energy appliances, like heat pumps, induction stoves, and solar panels. Sightline's Emily Moore argues that newly inaugurated Mayor Katie Wilson could help change that, in part because Seattle owns its own electric utility.

Ray Delahanty of CityNerd debunks the myth that vacant homes could single-handedly solve the housing crisis, explaining with data why America doesn't have anywhere close to 15 million homes readily available to fill the national housing shortage.

In remarks after being sworn in as Seattle's 58th mayor, Katie Wilson painted a vision of improving the daily lives of residents that was explicitly urbanist: focused around livability and ensuring that no one gets pushed out of the city.

Tacoma's new impact fee regime, which goes into effect next summer, will charge developers based on expected generation of car trips. Despite work to delicately calibrate the new fees, the proposal still drew criticism when it comes to adding costs to needed housing development.

Funded inclusionary zoning unlocks the benefits of inclusionary zoning while offsetting its harms. It’s a path to more market-rate housing and more subsidized affordable housing. While funded inclusionary zoning risks creating a dangerous rift in our pro-housing coalition, amending this policy to allow for funded in-lieu fees would sidestep this issue, argues Ron Davis.

In this video, Dave Amos of City Beautiful talks about a growing national movement of faith-based organizations that are seeking to put their landholdings to work for housing, known as Yes-In-God’s-Backyard (YIGBY), and the obstacles that the movement faces.