News items for December 6, 2023

Parking by tOrange used under CC BY 4.0

• 1. How parking ratios kill homes

  A string of mistakes in one city shows how easily local rules can turn arbitrary and destructive.

  Sightline Institute Parking

• 2. Coastal OR county tackles ‘urban scale’ housing issues

  Tourist-dependent Clatsop County, population 41,000, has the highest rate of homelessness in Oregon. A project to convert a hotel into housing units for healthcare workers and the unhoused is a step in the right direction, leaders say.

  The Daily Yonder Homelessness, Housing

• 3. Modular housing stands empty during Vancouver’s homelessness crisis

  After pioneering the temporary modular housing model to build supportive housing, Vancouver, BC, is backing away from the strategy. Rebecca Bligh, a Vancouver city councillor, says it makes better financial sense to focus on permanent housing, including modular construction, and to maximize city land sites with much denser, taller buildings.

  The Tyee Housing, Modular construction

• 4. WA’s model code missing the point on middle housing

  The model code destroys the housing bill’s flexibility by limiting building area and micromanaging the building’s look. This bill was a remedy to solve the supply of housing, not the look of housing.

  The Urbanist Middle Housing

• 5. $106m available for Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund

  The Department of Commerce and NOAA are announcing the availability of up to $106 million in funding through the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF) for Pacific salmon and steelhead recovery and conservation projects.

  NOAA Salmon

• 6. Long-range vision for WA’s Lower White Salmon River

  The Lower White Salmon Coalition includes local business owners, residents, conservation groups and white-water guides. Fittingly, the group’s 157-page package touches on and provides supporting documents for conservation, landownership and recreation strategies. A chief priority in the road map is protecting ecological health.

  The Columbian River, Salmon

• 7. OR’s climate benefit for low-income residents is shrinking

  Four weeks before the Oregon Health Authority was set to roll out a highly touted new climate benefit for low-income Oregon Health Plan members, it is having to change course to offer a much narrower benefit that won’t help as many people or help them in as timely a way.

  OPB Climate Change

• 8. Hanford’s waste treatment plant finds new solution

  A new 7-ton canister of test glass could help bind 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in hundreds of nearby leaking underground tanks at Hanford not far from the Columbia River, helping to clean up a toxic site.

  NW News Network Hanford, Nuclear Waste

• 9. Coastal First Nations get funding to protect Great Bear Sea

  A $60-million surge in provincial funding will protect the “extraordinary beauty” of BC’s Great Bear Sea, said Premier David Eby on Tuesday.

  Canada's National Observer Coastal Management, First Nations

• 10. An opportunity to make home retrofits more affordable

  State energy offices can stack Inflation Reduction Act incentives to maximize home energy upgrades and savings.

  RMI Efficiency, Energy Retrofits

More News from December 6, 2023

• How BC is tackling a ‘paradigm shift’ in its forests

  Three years after the Old Growth Strategic Review, the province has made three big recent announcements.

  The Tyee Forests

• Renewable energy could be a casualty in the war on inflation

  High interest rates make green start-up costs soar. Officials at the UN climate summit fear the world could miss an opportunity to avert future greenhouse gas emissions.

  The New York Times Inflation, Renewable Energy

• Podcast: Will carbon capture save the climate, or just let us keep burning fuel?

  In theory, carbon capture helps minimize emissions, but in practice, most carbon capture projects are used to allow us to keep harvesting fossil fuels, which will then be burned somewhere else, adding to emissions in Canada and beyond.

  City News Carbon capture

• Can carbon capture live up to the hype?

  The technology to capture and bury carbon dioxide has struggled to ramp up and has real limits. But experts say it could play a valuable role.

  The New York Times Carbon capture

• Car noise pollution is worse in redlined neighborhoods

  Low-income communities of color are still experiencing dangerous levels of transportation noise generations after their neighborhoods were first targeted for disinvestment and demolition to make way for highways, and that includes their human and animal residents, a new study finds.

  Streetsblog Noise Poll

• Women are falling behind in the green economy

  Only 1 in 10 women have a single green skill as defined in part by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to 1 in 6 men.

  Fast Company Green Jobs