A view of downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood by Anthony Kernich licensed under Creative Commons.

LA’s stormwater runoff systems show promising results amid torrential downpours. Developers offer smaller homes for more affordable prices as homeownership becomes increasingly unattainable. Could tying housing policy changes to federal highway funding help address the housing shortage?

Los Angeles is pretty spongy: Over the last several years, Los Angeles has been trying to create more opportunities to collect rainwater to replace declining snowpack numbers. A recent 3-day storm from an atmospheric river brought 9 inches of rain to Los Angeles, and water managers were excited to hear that they were able to collect 8.6 billion gallons of water, enough to supply water to 100,000 households for a year. (This article may be behind a paywall). (Matt Simon | Wired Magazine)

The great home compression: As housing gets more expensive and people are looking for new ways to make homeownership a reality, developers are offering smaller houses at much lower prices than traditional detached houses. In suburbs outside of cities like Bend, Oregon, and San Antonio, Texas, new homes under 600 square feet are being sold, in some instances, for prices under $200,000. (This article is behind a paywall). (Conor Dougherty | The New York Times)

Exclusionary zoning or highway funding: The Federation of American Scientists created the Housing Ideas Challenge to tackle the housing crisis. One suggestion born out of this challenge is that federal highway funding could be conditioned on the adoption of zoning reform, similar to how the federal government conditioned highway funding on states raising the legal drinking age to 21. The idea is that withholding of highway funds could occur in Metropolitan Statistical Areas with median incomes above the national average where more than 30% of the population are rent burdened. (Sam Maloney & Rohit Swain | Federation of American Scientists)

Canada to stop building new roads?: Canada’s Environment Minister, Steven Guilbeault, said this week that no more transportation money would go to expanding roads across the country, saying that the money would be better spent on active transportation and fighting climate change. The comments sparked a debate over road funding from opposition parties and led Guilbeault to revise his comments, saying the federal government wouldn’t put up money for “large” road projects. (John Paul Tasker | CBC News)

US unions target the housing crisis: Organized labor in the United States sees housing costs as one of the biggest issues its members face as many workers are dealing with the shortage of affordable housing. But the problem isn’t just housing, it’s the long-distance commuting union members endure as housing near their workplaces becomes unattainable. In several union actions around the country, striking workers are demanding housing solutions in addition to specific labor-related wage and benefits requests. (Steven Greenhouse | The Guardian)

Quote of the Week

“The young people said they had never seen this before. When it started, they were so grateful and as word spread, more people would move to Nagareyama because we had these pick-up and drop-off stations. It’s not just the parents, but the grandparents who often take care of the children also felt it was a great system. The location at Otakanomori station is convenient if the daycare is far away, and it makes such a big difference for those coming back from Tokyo or for parents with multiple children.”

Yoshiharu Izaki, the mayor of Nagareyama, a Tokyo suburb discussing in Bloomberg CityLab a childcare focus that has led to one of the highest birth rates in the country.

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by Elaine Clegg, CEO of Valley Regional Transit in Boise, Idaho. We chat about how the Boise bus system is changing, the impact of fast regional growth, energy infrastructure, and favorite transportation board games.