Planetizen Newswire
Keep up with essential planning news and commentary, delivered to your inbox every Monday and Thursday.
Housing Supply
The ambitious "Homes for All" plan would include upzoning as only one tool for addressing the acute housing affordability crisis in the state of Maryland.
CityLab
Much of the debate about housing shortages and rising housing costs focuses on single-family housing as the main culprit. But could it also be part of the solution?
Curbed
The Commonwealth of Virginia will consider a bill that would legalize duplexes in single-family zones throughout the state.
CityLab
Raising density around transit stations to a level already existing in some parts of the city would enable hundreds of thousands of new housing units in and around Boston, according to a thought experiment by the Massachusetts Housing Partnership.
The Boston Globe
As a response to rising rental prices and low vacancy rates, Vancouver planners have created a package of zoning and process changes to provide incentives for new multi-family developments.
The Vancouver Sun
Aging in place means fewer homes for young homebuyers, according to a new report by Redfin.
Redfin
Facing a severe housing shortage, Washington, D.C. grapples with how to approach the challenges presented by local stakeholders who oppose any and all development.
WAMU
Call it a role reversal: Oakland is building far more apartments and housing units than San Francisco—a reversal of the history of development in the Bay Area.
San Francisco Chronicle
Development impact fees in California triple the national average. A bill in the State Legislature would reform the state's development fees, as one measure in an effort to build more housing in the state.
The Mercury News
Details of the "Sue the Suburbs" movement wielding a new legal tool to counteract the traditionally obstructionist methods of land use regulation in California.
The Mercury News
An editorial by the Los Angeles Times calls for the state to remove barriers to housing shortage after a report finds declining numbers of residential permits around the state.
Los Angeles Times
The Boston region has achieved a jobs-housing imbalance only bested by the San Francisco Bay Area since the Great Recession.
The Boston Globe
Blog post
Contrary to popular myth, New York is not drowning in new housing.
Transportation and land use are being considered together at a new scale in the Bay Area, as transit oriented development pops up next to BART stations all over the region.
San Francisco Chronicle
Sydney built more than 30,000 multi-unit homes last year. That new supply has meant falling rents in most of the city.
The Sydney Morning Herald
A quarter of all Massachusetts renters spend more than half their income on rent. A report from the Smart Growth Alliance argues NIMBYism is partly to blame.
CityLab
The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University released its annual "The State of the Nation's Housing" report this morning. There are some signs of post-recession normalcy in the housing market for high-income earners.
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University
Applied to roads, the theory of induced demand says new construction only brings out more users. But can something similar be said of housing? According to this research, the likely answer is no.
City Observatory
Blog post
Inclusivity requirements should be used with caution. Increasing the portion of below-market housing units tends to reduce total housing production, particularly moderate-priced homes.
Demand for housing in and around Seattle is way up—so much so that the region led the entire country in the number of apartments it has filled so far this year.
The Seattle Times
