If good things come in threes, we can't wait to see what's in store next for Capitol Hill Housing. They've just been awarded $2 million from the Washington State Housing Trust Fund, and now they've got a nearly $8 million dollar commitmment from Mayor McGinn's Office of Housing. more ›

It's a City of Seattle Cinderella story: where once there stood a sketchy motel, offering hourly rates along one of the city's main drags for johns, shall now, the Mayor has decreed, stand a vivacious low-income housing project, with 70 units and on-site assistance from Catholic Housing Services. more ›

Recently, while reading the current issue of The New Republic, we came across an interesting article on the current Boston mayoral race, pitting the four-term incumbent, malapropism-prone, Democratic machine stalwart Tom "Mayor Mumbles" Menino against upstart candidate-of-change and current city councilor-at-large Sam Yoon. This would be of little local interest if it weren't for the following tidbit: more ›

Our first thought on reading that the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation had granted $1 million to Seattle and Washington to preserve affordable house was of the first movie, where Dr. Evil tries to hold the world for ransom for the same amount of money. A million dollars, huh? Talk about a drop in the pond. more ›

Last Friday we got a chance to poke our noses into the Northwest African American Museum before it opened, as part of a test lunch group for the St Clouds Museum Cafe. The Museum is in the historic Colman School, at 23rd and Massachusetts. It's historic now, that is -- back when we lived across the street, on 25th, it was condemned, boarded up, and left a home for pigeons, until a group of black activists arm-wrestled the city into letting them do something with it. Upstairs there are two floors of "affordable" rental units (studios are $620) for artists, historians, teachers, and anyone else with a good reason to make their home above the Museum. more ›

Real Change is setting up camp at City Hall, to protest the city's handling of homelessness and new policies regarding homeless encampments. The planned protest is scheduled for March 13th, with Real Change encouraging supporters to "bring a tent and a friend" down to City Hall. more ›

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels either loves condos or he hates renters. The Mayor's Office has indefinitely frozen a $350,000 fund created to compensate Seattle area renters who'd been forced out of housing due to condo-conversions. Mayor Nickels wants to wait and see if the legislature passes a statewide bail-out funded by developers this winter. Because it makes perfect sense to rely on the people who are profiting most off of Seattle renter's misery. more ›

One of the oldest jokes in the book is at the expense of the Sixth Amendment: how can twelve people who couldn't get out of jury duty be counted as your peers? Juries, after all, are populated by the unemployed and retirees--people who don't have to actually for a living. more ›

Around the Seattlest newsroom, this contributor's distrust of : more ›

Rich vs. Poor, Renters vs. Homeowners, developers vs. locals, Kenny G. vs. Afropop: this blog from High Point has got every one of Seattle's little conflicts all crammed into one tiny teacup. High Point in West Seattle was redeveloped recently to include some moderately priced homes along with a bunch of rent-control-type lower-income housing. We all get along when we live on the same street, right? Well, not quite, of course. Danny Westneat gave it a go in this weekend's paper, but nobody's going to lay it out for you like the blog itself does. Click through to the source for this one. more ›

The past two days, contributors Jeremy "The Seattle Samurai" Barker and Katie "The Kalama Quickdraw" Tiehen debated the age-old question of whether Seattle or Portland is better. more ›

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt, who has completely covered her house in mosaic tiles. more ›

End of May, we posted about how the city sold the Alaska Building to a developer, with the understanding that it would be turned into affordable "workforce" housing. The city took a loss of somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million because of that stipulation, Mayor Nickels was able to gesture grandly at his affordable housing gesture, and then Kauri Investments Ltd. and Ariel Development got to thinking and they were all, "Hey, you know what would be better than affordable housing is a 250-unit Marriott hotel! People who work stay in hotels a lot, so it's not even a big difference when you look at it." more ›

Saturday we ran into Philip Dawdy sitting in front of Liberty. We were all blah blah affordable housing, blah blah CHHIP, but Dawdy was unimpressed. "What is that, 40 units?" he asked. "Why aren't you talking about what's happening with the Alaska Building?" more ›

Over at newbie blog Crosscut, Knute "Mossback" Berger has slipped right back into his prickly, contrarian stream of things with a post about "density (the horror, the horror)." In it he calls out Sightline, Mayor Nickels, greens and progressives, and San Francisco as skipping merrily toward a density Rapture. We're a little freaked out to admit this, but he's got a point when he asks what's the rush. (Some statements, like "We know that these green-backed policies are making the city more unaffordable," must be based on restricted intel, since there's no data offered.) more ›

Let's take a look back at a week that raised this Zen koan: if Kevin Federline got into a wrestling ring with a wrestler, who would you root for? more ›

A few weeks ago, Capitol Hill Housing had its Annual Meeting, which may surprise you if, like Seattlest, you were unaware that CCHIP existed at all. The community-based non-profit housing development and management corporation is dedicated to the twin goals of affordable housing and the preservation of neighborhood character. more ›

Yesterday our fearless City Council voted unanimously to make downtown taller. Under the new zoning developers will be able to build up to 30% higher which will increase the density the city. Density, of course, means that there will be more people creating more jobs, more art, more music, more everything and since people will be flocking to the city the areas surrounding us will become empty nature preserves as far as the eye can see. Financing for affordable housing that's built into the plan ensures that you'll actually be able to afford a place to live in this new metropolis. And the people were happy. more ›

Mayor Greg Nickels delivered a State of the City speech on Monday that hit on a bunch of Seattlest's favorite talking points, but failed to mention the growing divide between the mayor's office and the parks department and various neighborhood groups in the city. That's gotta be a tough one to swallow for neighborhoods whose primary complaint seems to be the lack of acknowledgement of their complaints. more ›

Seattlest isn't going to stand here in front of you and pretend we know anything about architecture or urban planning or design or anything like that, because we don't. It just doesn't seem intuitive to us that the results of a City Council commisioned study suggest that the way to encourage high-rise structures downtown is to make them more expensive to build. High-rise buildings (or higher-rise buildings) are a part of Mayor Density's plan to Vancouverize Seattle and so we understand that he wants taller buildings and probably more of 'em and that's great. We think giant buildings are a good idea particularly if there's some affordable residential pieces there. What they're going to do to traffic is a whole other rant, but we like the concept. Urban, right? more ›

The quest for affordable housing in Seattle can be an endless process. If you're looking, we suggest checking out Redfin, which we've mentioned before. And if you're not looking, but you're just in the mood to have your brain scrambled a bit, check out Seattle Dream Homes. more ›