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Millennial activists fighting for affordable housing in Seattle
Politico has a long feature by Paul Roberts about young YIMBY activists fighting to re-zone Seattle in order to build more housing and address the city’s affordability crisis. One strategy the city is considering: a per-employee business “head tax” that could generate $75 in subsidized housing, KUOW reports. The Tyee profiles a man from Mexico who’s selling an $800,000 second home in Vancouver because of the speculation tax intended to increase the supply of affordable homes. Meanwhile, Investigate West finds that areas of Seattle with higher populations of people of color (such as Chinatown/ID) have much less tree canopy than other areas of the city.
BC introduces proposed regs for legal cannabis
The Georgia Straight reports on the British Columbia government’s proposed regulations for legal pot, including rules for private and publicly owned stores, online purchasing, and purchase limits (30 grams). Meanwhile, OPB reports on how the regulatory agency for pot in Oregon requires a ton of data from businesses, but has almost no staff to analyze the data.
Congress passes law favoring dams over salmon
High Country News reports that the US House of Representatives passed a bill exempting dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers from having to increase water flow to help preserve salmon runs. The law would overrule a recent court decision, and passage in the Senate is far from assured.
Will grizzlies return to WA’s North Cascades?
Crosscut examines the surprising news that the Trump administration will support ongoing plans to reintroduce grizzly bears to Washington’s North Cascades. In British Columbia, the new ban on hunting of grizzlies by non-First Nations hunters will include a new rule requiring taxidermy businesses to report any part of grizzlies brought into their shops.
Portland’s 100-year vegan history
With the popularity of veganism jumping 500 percent in the US in the past three years, and Portland at its epicenter (it was named the most vegan-friendly city America by PETA), John Rosman at OPB documents the intriguing history of vegetarian Portland. It’s the story of Seventh Day Adventists, hippies, granola, and the invention of the Gardenburger and Tofurky.
An interview with Seattle-based poet Shankar Narayan
The latest edition of the fantastic literary magazine Moss is on bookstore shelves and online, and in this new issue you should take time to read an interview with Seattle poet Shankar Narayan. His day job is as an attorney for the ACLU, and in this far-ranging conversation, he talks about identity, the intersection of politics and poetics, his approach to form and creation, and the pressures of being an artist and immigrant in the US. “I have always wanted to erase borders. Not just governmental borders but all kinds of borders. More recently, a lot of my work has focused on the borders between bodies—the borders we impose on ourselves in our interactions with other people. So for me, my spirit is certainly an all-places kind of spirit.”
That’s all for today from Cascadia, in a little house on land that was inhabited for centuries by the Coast Salish people. –Andrew Engelson
Photo credit: Seattle rowhouses by Wonderlane CC BY-SA 2.0