Northwest Reports

The Suquamish Tribe is using federal dollars to create more affordable housing. Crosscut reporter Luna Reyna discusses the roots of the problem and the solution. For many years the Suquamish Tribe and its citizens owned less than half of the land on their reservation in Washington, and many of those citizens have long struggled to afford housing there. This reality is based in large part on the fo...

Reporter Josh Cohen discusses the city's plans — and readers' moonshot dreams — to improve the central business core. Just as technology was making working-from-home more convenient, the pandemic, and the social-distancing requirements that came with it, accelerated the process. Remote work is probably here to stay, so it’s unlikely offices in Downtown Seattle will ever be filled to capacity again...

Director Thanh Tan explains how her experience as a child of refugees led her to help those displaced after the fall of Kabul and make a Crosscut docu-series about their plight.  When Thanh Tan learned that the United States military had withdrawn from Afghanistan and left the capital, Kabul, in the hands of the Taliban, she felt she needed to do something.   She saw striking similarities between...

Reporter Maleeha Syed talks about revisiting Washington's worst mass shooting without reopening wounds. It has been 40 years since the Wah Mee massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in Washington history and one that had a devastating impact on many of the residents of Seattle’s Chinatown International District.  For some, it wasn’t just the shooting that caused the pain, but the media’s coverage o...

Ten years after his death, the Seattle painter is having a moment. Reporter Margo Vansynghel discusses the increased interest in his work. When Alden Mason was in the prime of his career, he was well-known among those who followed art in Seattle and those who collected it. Yet the artist from Skagit Valley never saw the success of other 20th-century Northwest painters like Morris Graves and Mark T...

Reporter Lizz Giordano discusses the recent labor organizing push in Washington and the struggles between Starbucks and its workers. When employees at a Starbucks coffee shop in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize in December 2021, it was big news. The result was a first for the Seattle-based corporation. Since then, workers at hundreds of locations across the country have followed suit.  But in...

Places like Walla Walla, Yakima and Spokane are not the affordable alternatives they once were, but solutions could be coming. It's no secret that the cost of living in the Seattle area is very high. Lesser known is the impact that rising housing costs have had on people throughout the state of Washington.  While the overall numbers are highest in Seattle, rent increases have created an even great...

Reporter Joseph O’Sullivan visited one of Washington state's penitentiaries that is trying to change the relationship between guards and prisoners. A new effort being piloted in Washington state prisons seeks to improve culture behind bars. The program, called AMEND, is modeled on the prison system in Norway, where a stated goal of incarceration is to create better neighbors. The Washington State...

Western and European forms have long dominated dance education in the United States. Journalist Marcie Sillman tells us how the University of Washington is changing that, and what questions that shift poses to higher education.  The University of Washington dance department has placed itself in the vanguard of a movement to open, or maybe knock down, academia's ivory towers. Starting this past fal...

Reporter Hannah Weinberger tells us how a monumental levee project could ease economic turbulence in two Grays Harbor County towns. For coastal communities like those in Washington’s Grays Harbor County, flooding has long been a part of life. But as floods have become more frequent and severe, this aspect of life at (or below) sea level has become an existential threaten to the livelihoods of thos...

Without federal protection for abortion, the state has become a refuge for those seeking care and a target for political opposition. The past year has been a seismic one for reproductive rights in the United States. And the aftershocks appear far from over.  When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade , the stage was set for abortion bans or restrictions in many states, as well as for a politica...

What reporter Margo Vansynghel learned from talking to the mayor, the artists and the people who cover up spray paint over and over and over again. Graffiti is a part of everyday life in Seattle, from the smallest tag on a street sign to the giant letters greeting commuters along the interstate. But it is a part of city life that Mayor Bruce Harrell believes should be brought under control.  That...

The party has used its legislative majorities year after year to check off a lot of its wish list. What now? When the Washington state legislative session started on Monday, January 9, Democrats were in the driver’s seat. The party currently controls both houses and the governorship, making it one of 16 states where Democrats have achieved a so-called state government trifecta. It’s a familiar pos...

Pundits and politicians were hyper-focused on this electorate leading up to the midterms. Now that the dust has settled, we explore what actually happened. By the time the polls closed in Washington state on the evening of Nov. 8, the narrative was set. The “Red Wave” predicted by many pundits and politicians did not materialize. And, as often happens in a democracy, the storylines that came befor...

Jordan Chavez, an 18-year-old from Yakima, considers the influence of family, culture and party politics as he votes for the first time. In the months leading up to the midterm elections, one group of voters has received an inordinate amount of attention across the country and in Washington state: Latino Americans.  This group of voters has seen its influence grow in local and national elections i...

New first-hand documents show how architect Victor Steinbrueck helped secure the future of the Pike Place Market while ushering in a new era of civic governance for Seattle. From the very beginning, the Pike Place Market was a hit. Opened in August 1907, it had been designed to efficiently deliver local products directly from farms to a growing city at reasonable prices. Within a couple years, hun...

In the ’60s, Seattle’s oldest neighbor was facing demolition. Newly discovered files show how Victor Steinbrueck helped stop the wrecking ball. In the mid-1960s, Seattle wasn’t known for historic preservation. Many believed that in a city so young and so forward-looking — that had progressed from log cabins to the Space Age in its 100 years — there was nothing historic worth saving. Indigenous his...

Newly discovered files shed light on the creation of the Seattle icon and the fight over who deserves the credit for its distinctive look. When the Space Needle rose quickly on the Seattle city skyline, the response was varied. Some loved it, some hated it. Some likened it to a flower blossoming, others said it resembled a mushroom cloud. The Cold War was on everyone’s mind. So was the future. The...