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Boise Using Adaptive Reuse to Convert Offices to Affordable Housing

Boise Using Adaptive Reuse to Convert Offices to Affordable Housing
Under the city's Grow Our Housing program, vacant offices could see a new life as below-market rentals.
February 19, 2021, 6am PST | Diana Ionescu |
Boise officials are considering buying a downtown office building and converting it into affordable housing. Jared Brey reports on the city's plan to create below-market rental housing by employing adaptive reuse to convert former office and commercial buildings to apartments.
Leon Letson, manager for the city's Grow Our Housing program, emphasized that the city is still working on the first acquisition and considering a variety of options for the future, including vacant land and existing buildings, to create more housing at less cost than new construction. The city would purchase the building for its affordable housing land trust and partner with a developer for the conversion. According to Letson, Boise's vacant offices are often ideally situated and provide a unique opportunity. "Oftentimes these office buildings are located in areas that we would encourage housing — neighborhood centers in close proximity to transit."

Washington , United-states , Boise , Jared-brey , Housing-task , Grow-our-housing , Affordable-housing-task-force , Architecture , Community-economic-development , Government-politics , Housing , Land-use

Haves and Have Nots: Planning and the Deep Divides of the Pandemic

Haves and Have Nots: Planning and the Deep Divides of the Pandemic
The latest in a series of compendia gathering news and analysis about the effects of the COVID-19 on the built and natural environments—now and long into the future.
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So much has happened since the last time Planetizen published a pandemic compendium. There's a new president, for one. The vaccine rollout has kicked into a higher gear, but supplies still fall short of the need and are tending to inoculate affluent Americans. And as of this writing, the state of Texas is facing a fatal weather emergency that has people all over the country, including some in Texas, pointing fingers. Texas Governor Greg Abbott teamed up with Fox News to leverage the crisis facing millions of Texans to blame renewable energy and score political points against the Green New Deal (the latter is still mostly a hypothetical)—despite the distinctly and uniquely Texan nature of the state's power grid and plenty of evidence to the contrary. In a scenario that has been repeated time and time again all over the country, affluent Texans have several layers of protections from this crisis that the state's more vulnerable residents lack.

New-york , United-states , California , Los-angeles , Texas , Texans , Californians , Americans , Texan , Donald-trump , Greg-abbott , Los-angeles-times

Civil Rights Complaint for Providence's Kennedy Plaza Redesign

Civil Rights Complaint for Providence's Kennedy Plaza Redesign
The state's plan to dismantle and reorganize its busiest bus plaza faces allegations of civil rights violations.
February 17, 2021, 6am PST | Diana Ionescu |
A group of transit and environmental justice activists has filed a Title VI Civil Rights Act complaint against Rhode Island's Department of Transportation, reports Christian MilNeil. The plaintiffs argue that the Department's plans to dismantle downtown Providence's Kennedy Plaza, Rhode Island's biggest transit hub, would take valuable resources away from communities of color and amount to a violation of civil rights.
The suing organizations, Grow Smart Rhode Island and the South Providence Neighborhood Association, claim that the "deeply flawed and harmful plan by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT)" would "virtually eliminate the central bus hub in downtown Providence," harming Providence transit riders who are majority (53%) people of color. Although publicly available plans are vague, some documents mention a smaller, relocated bus transfer hub, new mini-hubs a quarter-mile away from the current location, and a major reorganization of RIPTA's bus routes.

Rhode-island , United-states , Kennedy-plaza , Christian-milneil , Providence-kennedy-plaza , Rhode-island-department-of-transportation , Providence-neighborhood-association-dwayne-keys , Providence-neighborhood-association , Rights-act , Grow-smart-rhode-island , South-providence-neighborhood-association , Rhode-island-department

Are We 'Rounding the Corner' in the Pandemic?

All the coronavirus data is moving in the right direction in most of the U.S., yet 130,000 additional Americans are projected to die from COVID-19 by June according to one widely used model.

United-states , Washington , Americans , America , Christina-maxouris , Rebecca-morin , Johns-hopkins-university , Washington-post , University-of-washington-institute-for-health-metrics , Cnn , President-trump , President-biden

Will Israel Show Us the Way Out of the Pandemic?

Will Israel Show Us the Way Out of the Pandemic?
If vaccinations are key to ending the pandemic, Israel may get there first as it has the highest rate by far of any nation. Paradoxically, it also has the world's second-highest rate of daily new COVID-19 cases.
February 14, 2021, 5am PST | Irvin Dawid
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"Israel, which has seen several waves of the virus, had raced ahead of other nations and given the first doses of Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine to more than a third of its population [of 9 million] by the end of January," according to the description accompanying The Washington Post's global coronavirus tracker on Feb. 12 (found just below the seventh chart titled, "

New-york , United-states , Jerusalem , Israel-general , Israel , Ministry-of-health , West-bank-general , West-bank , United-kingdom , Seychelles , Washington , Tel-aviv

Opinion: To Reduce Emissions, Listen to Those Who Don't Drive

Opinion: To Reduce Emissions, Listen to Those Who Don't Drive
An initiative to promote pedestrian-oriented infrastructure investments in Washington state highlights the lessons that policymakers can learn from people who rely on walking and public transit.
February 12, 2021, 6am PST | Diana Ionescu |
With transportation emissions accounting for almost half of Washington state's greenhouse gas emissions, making a meaningful impact calls for a reduction in reliance on personal vehicles. What better source for learning about a car-free lifestyle, asks Anna Zivarts, than those who already don't drive? A quarter of Washingtonians don't have driver's licenses, and many more don't own cars due to high maintenance costs, health issues, or personal choice. Yet policymakers consistently fail to design public infrastructure that effectively serves pedestrians and transit-dependent people.

Washington , United-states , Anna-zivarts , Disability-mobility-initiative , Community-economic-development , Infrastructure , Land-use , Social-demographics , Transportation , Urban-development , Pedestrian-infrastructure , Accessibility

Biden Administration Recognizes the Legacy of Housing Discrimination

Biden Administration Recognizes the Legacy of Housing Discrimination
In a memorandum, the President acknowledged the federal government's role in patterns of segregation and disinvestment that continue to affect communities of color across the country.
February 10, 2021, 6am PST | Diana Ionescu |
President Biden's acknowledgement of the federal government's central role in "creating and perpetuating today’s patterns of racial segregation, neighborhood disinvestment, housing insecurity, and racial wealth gaps" takes an important step toward advancing racial equality in housing. Biden's recent actions recognize that "facing the facts about our history is a necessary step toward long-overdue healing and provides the foundation for urgently needed policy changes," write Margery Austin Turner, Solomon Greene, and Martha M. Galvez, for the Urban Institute.

Martham-galvez , Margery-austin-turner , President-biden , Solomon-greene , Community-economic-development , Government-politics , Housing , Social-demographics , Urban-development , United-states , Housing-discrimination

Private Sector Coalition Urges California to Invest in Affordable Housing

A new plan calls for increased funding for housing and supportive services to relieve the state's housing crisis and end homelessness.

California , United-states , Sacramento , San-francisco , Californians , Scott-wiener , Louis-hansen , Assemblymember-david-chiu , California-housing-partnership , Mercury-news , Roadmap-home , San-francisco-democrats

California's Stringent Coronavirus Restrictions Worked

California's Stringent Coronavirus Restrictions Worked
Public health experts credit the controversial L.A. County public health order and the state's regional order, both of which banned outdoor dining, with reducing the viral spread that overwhelmed hospitals with COVID patients last month.
February 8, 2021, 10am PST | Irvin Dawid
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The Golden State no longer leads the nation in the seven-day average of new cases of COVID-19; that title goes to Texas, though California is a close second on Feb. 6. In per capita cases, the Golden State plummeted to #19 with 35 cases per 100,000 people, according to Covid Act Now on Feb. 7. South Carolina leads with 64 cases per 100k. The national average is 36 cases per 100k.

New-york , United-states , California , San-joaquin-valley , Los-angeles , South-carolina , Texas , Vermont , Californians , Gavin-newsom , Ali-mokdad , Soumya-karlamangla

Pop Quiz: What Kind of Post-2020 City-Maker Are You?

The State of Place blog is offering a pop quiz designed to help you diagnose the kind of post-2020 city-maker you are.

Community-economic-development , Social-demographics , Technology , Urban-development , United-states , Planning , Place-making , Pop-quiz , 2020 , Coronavirus-and-urbanism , சமூக-பொருளாதார-வளர்ச்சி