Housing + Urbanism

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 blocks on this voluntarily sustainable decision – the innately human choice to be closer to one other – deep into our laws. Sometimes this has happened with the best intentions, and other times we’ve been driven by our human tendencies to hoard and to exclude. Sightline’s Housing & Urbanism team identifies agreements across ideological lines that give Cascadians the freedom to make the sustainable choices so many of us want.

Meet the team

Washington State’s Abundant, Affordable Housing Coalition: Homes4WA!

We’re banding together with a network of advocates, policy makers, and neighbors across Washington State to support solutions for housing stability and abundant home choices in all our communities. Join us! Together we can rein in rents and home prices, reverse decades of residential segregation and exclusionary downzoning, and curb sprawl and climate pollution.

The Costs of Parking Mandates 

Within our Housing & Urbanism program is our transportation squad, which finds and promotes ways to make Cascadians’ mobility cleaner, fairer, and more efficient. Right now, it’s focused on catalyzing and accelerating a wave of policy change: Places across the Northwest are once again allowing their residents to create homes, shops, and jobs without specifying a certain number of parking spaces they must create first. Our series shows why. 

Upzoning Video: Invisible Walls Shutting You Out?

Here’s our 90-second explainer video on the problem of exclusionary zoning and how upzoning can be a key part of the solution. Want to learn more about how zoning keeps prices high and builds invisible walls around our cities and how upzoning for more homes, all shapes and sizes, protects mixed-income communities and stabilizes prices? Find more on upzoning and exclusionary zoning here.

Sightline’s Free Missing Middle Housing Photo Library

Missing middle homes, like ADUs, backyard cottages, mother-in-law suites, duplexes, triplexes, or low-rise apartments, have long fit into urban neighborhoods, often providing more affordable rental and purchase options than single, detached houses. Find hundreds of free, Creative Commons license photos in our Flickr library that help showcase how homes of all shapes and sizes fit into neighborhoods across Cascadia and the United States.