What's next for KUOW's Region of Boom team? Digging into HALA

Emily Fox speaks with KUOW's Region of Boom reporter Joshua McNichols about the team's upcoming coverage of Seattle's housing crisis.

The city's Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, known as HALA, aims to keep Seattle's neighborhoods affordable to people at all income levels. The plan has 65 different strategies; KUOW's Region of Boom team will look at four of the big ideas:

1. Build lots of housing.

2. Bring poor and middle-income people into wealthy neighborhoods.

3. Bring middle-income people into traditionally poor neighborhoods.

4. Help strengthen the communities that are already in those places.

HALA is controversial, says McNichols, and it would be easy to caricature either side of the debate.

The neighborhood of Wallingford especially can be seen as a battleground between homeowners and renters, or wealthy homeowners trying to keep out normal folks. But, according to one Wallingford homeowner McNichols interviewed, that idea is "bull----."

In the next month, the team will report from Wallingford, Yesler Terrace and the Central District, looking at the pros and cons to some of Seattle's strategies.