Housing + Cities
More homes, in all shapes and sizes, for all our neighbors.
Imagine neighborhoods where everyone who serves the community, from teachers to healthcare aides to baristas, can afford to live near their jobs. Where kids can safely walk to school. Where local entrepreneurs can open up shop. Where downsizing grandparents and young people starting out can find options right for them. This isn’t utopian thinking; it’s housing abundance, and it’s within reach.
Sightline Institute is rewriting the costly, outdated rules that limit the kinds of communities we can create across Cascadia. Because when people can afford to live near family and friends, local schools, transit options, and good jobs, they cut their energy use and climate impacts. We’re helping the region—one backyard cottage or small apartment building at a time—grow in ways that give people more options to do so.
Because Cascadians deserve more affordable, convenient choices in the places they love to call home.
Featured priorities
⤴️ Elevate state-level solutions to address statewide housing shortages, as Montana, Oregon, and Washington have done in recent years
🅿️ Free communities from costly parking mandates, returning flexibility to small local homebuilders and entrepreneurs (example: Washington state)
✂️ Cut red tape that drags out build times, bloats costs, and outlaws lower-cost housing types, like co-living homes and tiny homes on wheels
🌇 Legalize apartments in more places, making the most of public transit investments and leveraging the power of funded inclusionary zoning
🛗 Advance accessibility for older adults and people with disabilities, including by allowing for smaller, lower-cost elevators in smaller apartment buildings
📣 Deploy research-backed and road-tested messaging to move the needle in public conversations about housing and parking
🥇 NOTE: This video takes the gold! We tested the messages in this video, via Sightline polling and focus groups. Then, academic researchers at UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, and Tulane University empirically measured the impact of the video against other pro-housing messages. They found that the effect of this video on land-use preferences was greater than three times larger than typical effect of a persuasive political communication.
Get the latest
Hear directly from our Housing and Cities experts, including behind-the-scenes context and analysis (delivered approx. monthly).
Latest research + analysis
To Build Fast, Think Small
How re-legalizing small apartment buildings would spur the homes city dwellers need now.
Latest articles
To Build Fast, Think Small
Homes on Wheels Are Filling a Big Gap in Portland
Oregon Decides It Was a Mistake to Let Cities Ban Homes
Oregon’s Zoning Reforms Are Working—But They Need Some Upgrades
Meet the Team
Dan Bertolet
Senior Director of Housing + Cities
Dan is passionate about creating cities that welcome people of all incomes and tread lightly on the planet.
Michael Andersen
Director, Cities + Towns
Michael writes about ways better municipal policy can help break poverty cycles, with a focus on housing and transportation.
Catie Gould
Senior Researcher
Catie is the Senior Transportation Researcher for Sightline Institute, specializing in parking policy.
Anna Fahey
Principal Director of Strategy
Anna leads Sightline Institute’s communications, marketing, and messaging strategies, and coordinates legislative campaigns.
Julia Metz
Fellow
Julia is a Fellow with Sightline bringing nearly a decade of experience in the housing field.
Daniel Oleksiuk
Fellow
Daniel is a Fellow for Sightline Institute and a lawyer, writer, and organizer.
Hollie Conde
Contributor
Hollie is a longtime advocate for common-sense causes and strong civic engagement.
Danny Tenenbaum
Contributor
Danny is a Contributor with Sightline Institute working on housing and land use policy in his home state of Montana.
Our research in the news
Resources for Journalists
Our researchers can provide commentary, interviews, story ideas, background information, or serve as expert sources across our program areas. If we can’t comment on an issue ourselves, chances are we know someone who can.
The math is simple. When people choose to live closer to each other, they voluntarily cut their energy use in half. When people are able to make that choice, it makes our planet healthier, our communities more prosperous, and our society more fair. Literally everybody wins.
But over the years, we’ve buried deep in our laws a variety of blocks to this voluntary sustainable decision: the innately human choice to be closer to one other. Sometimes this has happened with the best intentions, and other times our human tendencies have driven us to hoard and to exclude. Sightline’s Housing and Cities team identifies agreements across ideological lines that give Cascadians the freedom to make the sustainable choices so many of us want.
Learn more about our Housing + Cities research projects below.
Resource: Middle Housing Photos
Our Modest Middle Homes Library is a resource for abundant housing advocates, urbanists, planners, and journalists.
Author Q&A: Housing and homelessness
Research and policy recommendations to prune the gas system, scale electrification, and protect ratepayers.
50%
Reduction in energy use by people living in cities (needs more context)
$30-50,000
Cost of a structured parking space
Latest research + analysis
To Build Fast, Think Small
How re-legalizing small apartment buildings would spur the homes city dwellers need now.