Examine tenant-led movements and legal strategies to preserve affordability and resist displacement. It could highlight lawsuits like the one in Missouri where tenants fought to keep their homes within the LIHTC program, connecting to broader tenant unionization efforts nationwide.

On a daily basis, thousands of Americans are faced with the choice of whether to seek needed medical care, or stay home untreated to avoid sliding further into debt. But one city in Kentucky has found a way to alleviate the dangerous pressures of medical debt for its residents.

If we want to imagine a better world, artists might be better than anyone for the job.  Today, we are looking at artists-in-residence programs in government.

One new reality many community leaders are dealing with: Federal funding is rocky, to say the least. So today, we're looking at affordable housing solutions that have located sources of funding outside of the federal goverment. We'll visit Pittsburgh, Atlanta, South Texas, and Seattle to learn about four locally-driven funding models for affordable housing.

Across the country, low-income communities face threats of displacement, predatory investment activity and limited wealth-building opportunities. One often-overlooked contributor to these dynamics: a lack of formal estate planning. When a homeowner passes away without an estate plan, their home often becomes an “heirs’ property,” a property with no clear title. Without a clear title, homeowners face immense barriers–they cannot access the equity in the home, sell the home for a fair market price, obtain loans for repairs or purchase insurance, among other challenges. For low-income families, this situation can lead to significant home value depreciation, forced sales and even homelessness. Unfortunately, heirs’ properties are widespread, particularly among low-income communities. A conservative analysis estimates that heirs’ properties nationwide have an assessed value of over $32 billion. If communities nationwide could identify households at risk, help address’ estate planning issues and ensure clear transfers of property title, they could stabilize neighborhoods, reduce home loss and protect immense amounts of wealth for low-income residents. Fortunately, a program in Jacksonville, Florida, is showing the way. Heirs’ properties are widespread in Jacksonville and the surrounding area in Duval County, with an estimated 10,000 heirs’ properties in the region. Emerging from a process of deep community engagement, LISC Jacksonville launched its Heirs’ Property Program in 2020 and has since engaged hundreds of households with estate planning services. In this sponsored episode produced in partnership with Results for America, learn more about the immense impact of addressing heirs’ properties and how the model developed in Jacksonville might inspire your community. Download the complete Results for America toolkit on replicating this model by visiting https://results4america.co/heirs-property

Highlighting our recent coverage on nonprofit and alternative grocery models in Kentucky, this event would look at how communities—from urban Lexington to rural areas—are addressing food insecurity through creative, equitable approaches to food access.

Explore how communities in Altadena are rebuilding after devastating wildfires, with a focus on inclusive, community-led design and architecture. It would spotlight the role of Black architects and collaborations like AfroLA, emphasizing environmental justice and equitable recovery.

Even though housing is a crisis in every American city, we hear over and over that telling the story effectively is a big challenge. Today, we’re taking lessons on how to tell the story from the filmmakers of four different documentaries.

New models of collective power are emerging in neighborhoods where residents have always found ways to support one another, even as economic systems excluded and extracted.  In this sponsored episode with the Center for Cultural Innovation and its AmbitioUS initiative, which commissioned a report by the Urban Institute, local leaders share models from Atlanta and New Orleans that bring financial freedom and self-determination to artists and their communities.  “This work is to provide proof of concept that new worlds are possible, that new economic systems are possible, and that they already exist,” said Christopher Audain, Program Officer at AmbitioUS.  In an example from Atlanta, The Guild founder Nikishka Iyengar describes a hybrid land-trust and community-stewardship model that’s keeping housing and commercial space affordable while allowing residents to invest collectively.  “This is not a stepping stone to become an extractive investor,” said Iyengar. “This is a stepping stone to reorient our relationship to land, to each other, to finance, to all of that.” Meanwhile, Cooperation New Orleans organizers Toya Ex and Tamah Yisrael are part of a network of worker cooperatives formalizing long-standing traditions of mutual aid into a solidarity economy.  “There is a large idea that the capitalist economy is the only way, and time after time history has proven to us that it is not,” said Yisrael, who helped establish Cooperation New Orleans’ loan fund to support small businesses. “People often do a lot of different things to make a way, even when the capitalist system don’t allow us to make a way,” says Ex, who is also the founder of Project Hustle. The report on community ownership and self-determination strategies also includes lessons on democratic investment from Boston Ujima Project and on land stewardship from the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust in Lisjan Territory, showing why shared values and ownership are powerful counters to a disempowering economic system.

After a year marked by the undermining of public resources, community development is adapting by finding ways to make progress more resilient.In this episode, Next City Senior Economic Justice Correspondent Oscar Perry Abello looks back at some of the biggest stories from a turbulent year on his beat and draws on what he heard during a national book tour for “The Banks We Deserve.”It’s not all bad news, as Abello looks for signs of a response to the disruptions.“I think maybe just maybe we are entering an uptick in the wave—the up and down waves of community power in community and economic development,” said Abello.Abello highlights the examples of Philadelphia’s Kensington Corridor Trust, the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, and Denver’s Tierra Colectiva, showing how each model for community-led ownership is evolving the sector. Plus, Abello outlines where community development leaders are exploring new sources of funding beyond Washington. nextcity.org Next City’s Top Stories on Economic Justice in 2025 Catch up on this year’s most-read reporting on inclusive finance, community development and economic empowerment. https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/next-citys-top-stories-on-economic-justice-in-2025 nextcity.org The Banks We Deserve Oscar Perry Abello’s new book shows how banks’ money-creation power can be democratized. Helping communities tap into that power could address our climate, housing and economic crises.

As federal investment withdraws from communities already disadvantaged, city-builders are searching for ways to make progress, which may first require Americans to find common ground and reclaim a shared sense of the public good.In this episode, recorded live at the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network’s annual conference, Dr. Lauren Smith, Vice President of Strategic Portfolios at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, discusses the role philanthropy can realistically play as federal disinvestment threatens communities. (Next City is funded in part by RWJF.)Drawing on her background as a pediatrician and public health leader, Smith pushes back on narratives that frame well-being as an individual rather than a collective responsibility.“There’s a strong tradition in the United States of individualism, in the idea that you alone are responsible for your health and well-being, and if you just make better choices, you can obtain health on your own,” said Smith. “As a public health person and as a clinician, I can tell you that that’s not accurate, both just logically and philosophically.”Smith calls for greater acknowledgment of policies and programs that advance the “public good” and cites a RWJF-commissioned survey that identifies common ground across political and geographic divides.“There were key aspects that people really did agree on, especially around as it relates to their community,” said Smith. “People are incredibly concerned about affordability, and that cuts across all sorts of groups—affordability of housing, affordability for their neighbors.” “They didn't call it displacement, but essentially they were saying, we are concerned that affordability is going to lead to displacement,” she said.

Live recording in November in partnership with the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network. Lucas interviews in fireside chat with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Sponsored Episode with the Culture & Community Power Fund and Kresge Foundation

Sponsored Episode with the Culture & Community Power Fund and Kresge Foundation

Residents teamed up with university students to slow the demolition of an affordable housing community and reshape redevelopment in West Philadelphia.

Residents teamed up with university students to slow the demolition of an affordable housing community and reshape redevelopment in West Philadelphia.

Philadelphians have a history of banding together and organizing when faced by powerful and monied development that has threatened their displacement. From professional sports venues to ever-expanding “eds and meds,” all across Philadelphia, working-class communities of color have pushed back, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, sometimes ending up somewhere in between. In this panel discussion, we’ll hear from neighborhood leaders who share their stories and lessons learned for others when these projects arise.

Philadelphians have a history of banding together and organizing when faced by powerful and monied development that has threatened their displacement. From professional sports venues to ever-expanding “eds and meds,” all across Philadelphia, working-class communities of color have pushed back, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, sometimes ending up somewhere in between. In this panel discussion, we’ll hear from neighborhood leaders who share their stories and lessons learned for others when these projects arise.

This is Lucas Grindley from Next City, a show about changemakers and their stories. We’re off this week for Thanksgiving, but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity. If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at info@nextcity.org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods or anywhere you listen to your podcasts. We’ll see you next week.

As rapid development reshapes neighborhoods like Kensington, residents and business owners face displacement and loss of local control. The Kensington Corridor Trust and Women’s Community Revitalization Project offer models of community ownership—using neighborhood and land trusts to preserve affordability, reinvest profits locally, and align development with community priorities. This episode explores how these approaches center equity and empower residents to shape their own futures.

As rapid development reshapes neighborhoods like Kensington, residents and business owners face displacement and loss of local control. The Kensington Corridor Trust and Women’s Community Revitalization Project offer models of community ownership—using neighborhood and land trusts to preserve affordability, reinvest profits locally, and align development with community priorities. This episode explores how these approaches center equity and empower residents to shape their own futures.

This is Lucas Grindley from Next City, a show about changemakers and their stories. We’re off this week for Veterans Day, but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity. If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at info@nextcity.org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods or anywhere you listen to your podcasts. We’ll see you next week.

This is Lucas Grindley from Next City, a show about changemakers and their stories. We’re off this week for Veterans Day, but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity. If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at info@nextcity.org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods or anywhere you listen to your podcasts. We’ll see you next week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're revisiting a favorite episode from the archive to celebrate Next City's Winter Film Festival, this year's series: "Power and Place."What happens when a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on deep-pocketed developers? In this episode, we talk to the directors of "Emergent City" and the organizers who fought to preserve Sunset Park’s future.“Emergent City” (emergentcitydoc.com) documents the 10-year saga of how Brooklyn's Sunset Park community came together to fight a rezoning wanted by deep-pocketed developers. Against all odds, residents won. Filmmakers were there from the very beginning, when developers proposed transforming Industry City, a sprawling industrial site on the Brooklyn waterfront, into a high-end retail and office complex – or, as some residents put it, a “mall.” They were there when Sunset Park residents protested that the Industry City complex, if it won rezoning, would accelerate gentrification and displacement in a neighborhood where about 70% of households are renters. They were there for some 200 days of public meetings.

Join Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta and artist Shawn Theodore for PYRAMID CLUB: 1937—2035, a reimagining of the legendary North Philadelphia social club as a blueprint for today’s North Broad renaissance. Together, they’ll explore how Afrofuturist and arts-driven approaches can turn scarcity into abundance while centering Black joy and cultural heritage.

So much depends on your ZIP code, even children’s access to play. But an effort is growing to ensure the playground is where all kids can have fun, learn and heal.“It's where they learn, it's where they build connection, it's where they really establish their identity as a human being in this world,” says Lysa Ratliff, CEO for KABOOM! “And yet, there's extreme disparities in our parks and our schools and our cities and who has access to what.”In this sponsored episode, Ratliff explains how KABOOM! is working in cities such as Baltimore, Oakland and Uvalde in Texas to safeguard a generation’s childhood and sense of belonging.KABOOM! is a national nonprofit known for nearly 30 years of building thousands of playgrounds where they are needed most. Today, the organization is scaling up public-private partnerships to end playspace inequity and close the “nature gap” that leaves millions of kids, especially in communities of color, without access to safe, quality green spaces.Ratliff highlights how data, partnerships and community-led design can end inequity.“We're trying to answer a very big question,” says Ratliff. “How can we make sure that every single kid in this country has a chance to grow up in a world that sees them, that values them, that gives them a sense of freedom and belonging and ultimately protects their childhood by any means?”

Culture is often treated as a niche area but is actually integral to the successful design and adoption of other areas of urban planning and policy. Hear how cities like Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Baltimore are embedding cultural approaches into planning, policy, and recovery efforts.

Nonprofits often struggle to prove their impact, but the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) is showing how a rigorous research partnership can help grassroots programs scale and win support.This sponsored episode explores examples of nonprofits and city governments collaborating with LEO researchers at the University of Notre Dame to identify what works, why it works, and how they used new evidence to make the case for growth.Like many nonprofit executive directors, Shana Berkeley already had a menu of anecdotes showing that her organization, Nashville's Corner to Corner, made a difference. By teaming up with LEO at Notre Dame, Corner to Corner is measuring the ripple effects of its program, as well as identifying what works and how to make it even more effective.“Research helps us to really understand what about those makes them not a unicorn, right?” says Berkeley. “But it's something that we can make more predictable and understand what's necessary for the foundations of entrepreneurship.”From LEO, the episode features researcher Patrick Turner, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, and Fran Gallagher, who leads project development. They share insights from working with the Goodwill Excel Center and Destination: Home, both of which expanded their fight against poverty — in workforce education and homelessness prevention, respectively — as a result of research partnerships. To learn more about how to partner, visit PartnerWithLEO.org.

Even as billions in federal clean energy funding sit trapped in legal limbo, community lenders are determined to keep the green transition alive.This episode of Next City explores how to press forward with the clean-energy transition despite a federal freeze on the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.Next City’s senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello speaks with Neda Arabshahi, executive vice president of the Inclusiv Center for Resiliency and Clean Energy; Amir Kirkwood, CEO of the Justice Climate Fund; and Beth Bafford, CEO of Climate United. Together, they explain how local institutions like credit unions and CDFIs are funding solar projects, energy-efficiency upgrades, and resilience hubs even without federal dollars. According to these leaders, the clean energy movement isn’t waiting on Washington.“The clean energy transition is happening. But who is benefiting from that transition is unequal,” says Bafford. She argues it’s now the responsibility of changemakers to ensure resources still flow to “people, places, and communities across the country that otherwise were going to be kind of in the back of the line in terms of clean energy adoption and really should be at the front.”This episode is based on a Next City webinar, a recording of which can be viewed in our library.

Communities need spaces for art; you can't support art without supporting artists. We're talking with three leaders working on alternative models for sustainability.

Charles T. Brown, author of "Arrested Mobility," discusses why mobility is not afforded in the same way to everyone – and the dire cost of this inequity.

New York was once the world’s oyster capital. The director of a new feature-length impressionist hybrid documentary, "Holding Back the Tide," traces the city’s many life cycles with the oyster as her main character. Emily Packer follows environmentalists restoring oysters to the harbor, while examining the oyster not only as entangled with nature, but also as a queer icon, with much to teach about our society’s continued survival. Packer is interviewed by fellow New Yorker, Eliana Perozo, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies.

The documentary "Razing Liberty Square” shows what happens in Miami as sea levels rise and the rich move inland, encroaching on residents of the Liberty Square public housing project. The film tells the story of a historically Black community faced with a $300-million-dollar “revitalization” of their neighborhood. In this episode, hear from a resident and climate activist, Valencia Gunder, who says she’s fighting a new form of racial injustice: climate gentrification.

Black power is more than symbolic. It’s a measurable reality tied to things like ownership, investment in neighborhoods, and—ultimately—life expectancy. In this episode with the authors of two new books—“The Black Power Scorecard” and “The Banks We Deserve”—Andre Perry and Oscar Perry Abello talk about systems that have historically failed communities of color and what it will take to build lasting institutions that truly serve them. The episode is based on a Next City webinar produced earlier this year, "Achieving Economic Justice and Power."Perry argues that Black communities already hold real power, except it’s often undervalued or ignored. His research reveals a strong link between life expectancy and factors like ownership of homes and businesses—which requires deliberate financial investment. As he puts it, “Nothing grows without investment.”Abello calls out the stark disparities in community banking. Of the roughly 4,000 community banks in the U.S., only about 120 serve communities of color, meaning most character-based lending remains inaccessible to Black and brown entrepreneurs. Listen to the episode to get examples of solutions and learn how to grow what’s working.

This week, we’re revisiting an episode we released earlier this year, all about Lexington, Kentucky — a city where collaboration and creativity are transforming challenges into opportunities. In this episode, we highlighted how Lexington’s leaders are finding ways to foster nonpartisanship, boost civic engagement, and narrow the racial wealth gap.We’re bringing this episode back now because it offers a window into the themes we explored in even greater depth during our Vanguard conference, held in Lexington just last month. Over the next couple of weeks on this podcast, we’ll be sharing special episodes that bring you along with Next City to the conference.

The Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore® Index each year ranks the 100 largest U.S. cities on factors such as park access, investment, and equity. In this sponsored episode, we explore how cities have turned their ParkScore data into action—investing in green spaces to spark civic engagement and foster a genuine sense of belonging.

Community development in America is at a pivotal moment. Long-standing federal programs that fuel homeownership, support small businesses, and promote neighborhood revitalization—especially in communities of color—are now under threat.But on today's sponsored episode, we’ll hear how the people working on the front lines of equitable development are adapting, organizing, and doubling down on their missions. Guests on this episode include Nikitra Bailey, Executive Vice President at the National Fair Housing Alliance, which supports more than 170 member organizations nationwide; Dafina Williams, Executive Vice President and Chief Public Policy Officer at Opportunity Finance Network, representing over 470 CDFIs across the country; and Selina Pagán, Executive Director of the Young Latino Network, a grassroots group that has grown into a regional force for civic engagement in Northern Ohio.This sponsored episode was produced in partnership with Third Space Action Lab. Its Anti-Racist Community Development research project was developed with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. To learn more about strategies for advancing practical, concrete change in the sector, visit The People's Practice.

This week, we’re trying something new: instead of our usual Next City episode, we’re sharing the pilot for “Not My Narrative,” an experimental mini-series that not only debunks harmful myths holding back progress but also elevates the counter-narratives driving positive momentum.In this debut episode of Not My Narrative, Host Lucas Grindley, Executive Director of Next City, takes listeners on an examination of one of America’s most pernicious myths: the “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” mantra that claims anyone who works hard enough can escape poverty. We trace its origins from 19th-century satire to Reagan, Gingrich, and Clinton, and we’ll hear from practitioners who say the “bootstrap” story is quietly determining who merits public assistance, who deserves our sympathy, and who must simply fend for themselves.To unravel its origins and expose its consequences, Luis Ortega, founder of Storytellers for Change, draws on his background in education and community organizing to explain how the bootstraps narrative is woven into our schools, our public discourse, and even our own self-perception. He challenges us to see that when achievement is framed solely as personal grit, it erases entire ecosystems of support—families, neighbors, networks—that actually make success possible.Plus, we revisit two Next City interviews that show what “it takes a village” truly means, as communities care for one another. In Jackson, Mississippi, Aisha Nyandoro, co-founder of Magnolia Mother’s Trust, shares how her guaranteed-income pilot for Black mothers demonstrates that material support and dignity go hand in hand. And we revisit a conversation out of Portland, Oregon, where Lisa Larson, vice-chair of Dignity Village, recounts her journey from sleeping on the streets to helping govern a community for the unhoused. If you believe in the power of narrative change—and want more episodes that debunk harmful myths while elevating real-world solutions—please email us at info@nextcity.org and let’s think about ways to keep this work going.

In the U.S., approximately 3.6 million households are threatened by eviction each year, and for many, the consequences last long after the eviction itself. Even if individuals avoid losing their homes, eviction records can prevent them from securing future housing. This happens because landlords use tools that screen the rental, credit, employment, income and criminal histories of tenants—often without context or accuracy.In this sponsored episode produced in partnership with Results for America, we discuss a proven solution: tenant screening protections. We explore how these safeguards can protect renters by ensuring fair access to housing, and we learn how communities can implement these protections to help more people secure stable homes.Guests on this episode include Brittany Giroux Lane, Director of the Solutions Accelerator at Results for America, Marie Claire Tran-Leung, Evictions Initiative Project Director at the National Housing Law Project, and Rasheedah Phillips, Director of Housing at PolicyLink. They dive into the importance of tenant screening protections and how these initiatives can help create more equitable access to housing.

Back in the 1980s, there were more than 200 lesbian bars across the United States. By 2022, that number had shrunk to 21. This year, a group of friends in Brooklyn joined a recent resurgence of such queer spaces—and set it up as a worker-owned coop, to boot.Boyfriend Co-op is part cocktail bar, part coffee shop, part workspace. Designed to feel like “a queer living room,” it’s all about ethical, sustainable practices—from its cooperative ownership structure to local ingredients to thrifted furniture. And it’s an example of how coops can be used to solve the problem of disappearing space for queer women.In today's episode, we hear from Hena Mustafa, one of Boyfriend’s four co-founders, about their journey working with a co-op- focused lender to turn the concept into a fully mapped-out business.

When fires swept through the wealthy L.A. enclave known as the Pacific Palisades, the images were chaotic: cars abandoned on Sunset Boulevard, people fleeing on foot. A bulldozer had to plow through the traffic just so firefighters could reach the flames.Planners and researchers recognize the dangers of evacuating thousands at a moment’s notice and argue that our streets urgently need to be redesigned.“In the event of a climate disaster, we can't always count on our cars to protect us,” notes Maylin Tu, Next City's L.A.-based Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Social Impact Design. “You kind of get a sense of safety and .. insularity in being in a car and feeling like you are not only mobile, but you're safe and you're protected. And this really kind of brought home that in a, in the case of some climate disasters, like your car is not going to save you.”Tu recently covered UCLA urban planning professor Adam Millard-Ball's recent research on street connectivity in Los Angeles. He and other transportation planning experts hope rebuilding is an opportunity to rethink how L.A.'s streets work.“If all the traffic that's coming out has to flow through one or two intersections, that's a recipe for chaos in a emergency situation,” says Adam Millard-Ball, a professor of urban planning at UCLA and director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. “This is not what the streets were built for.”

When the Eaton Fire tore through the Altadena neighborhood in January, many homes were lost. But also at risk was history, culture and community in a neighborhood known for its uniquely high Black homeownership rate. In the aftermath, as displaced residents were overwhelmed, private investors have swooped in, offering to buy up scorched lots for eye-popping amounts of cash.It's Altadena versus disaster capitalists, and residents have just taken a big step forward by creating a land bank where vulnerable homeowners who need to sell their properties can keep ownership in the community's hands.“I'm seeing lots popping up for sale…how do we, you know, how do we keep this land off the market? How do we just buy it?” says Jasmin Shupper, founder of Greenline Housing Foundation, of the moment that sparked the local organization's grant-funded effort to compete with corporate buyers. “We just need community-minded, community-centered and community-located organizations to just buy it – and then work together with the community to determine what happens next.” Guests on this episode include Shupper, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president of the Los Angeles City Council, and Eliana Perozo, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies.

In our fifth-ever episode of the Next City podcast, we spoke to Jason Foster of Destination Crenshaw, a monument to Black Los Angeles that had just broken ground. Four years later, that 1.3-mile monument to Black culture—set to be the largest Black public art project in America—has started transforming the city's Crenshaw corridor.Construction is nearly complete on Sankofa Park, the project's “crown jewel,” which will feature 40,000 square feet of green space and sculptural installations. The project launched last year with a mural by Los Angeles artist Anthony “Toons One” Martin, and, like every piece of the effort, it was an iterative process, Foster says.“It started off just doing a mural. We ended up doing awning and lighting and some dog stencils for the dog lover business on the other side,” Foster says. “It turned into what I believe is a better interpretation of what Destination Crenshaw is, which is a holistic kind of community change using art—as not only beautification, but also an advertisement for the community [and the businesses along the corridor] to be that destination. It was something that I could not have imagined before.”In this episode, we hear from Foster and L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who was pivotal to launching Destination Crenshaw.

The CDFI Fund is a proven driver of affordable housing in every state—red and blue alike. But now, this vital source of financing is at risk of federal cuts. In this episode, we highlight a project in Nashville, Tennessee, made possible by BlueHub Capital, a community development financial institution based in Massachusetts.In today's episode, we speak to Oscar Perry Abello, the author of "The Banks We Deserve," and with Karen Kelleher, president of the BlueHub Loan Fund, which recently helped finance a project in Nashville that converted two abandoned motels into affordable studio apartments. It's just one example of how community development financial institutions (or CDFIs) step in all overt the country, in red states and blue states, where big banks usually won’t.It's also the sort of project that would be harder to finance if the Trump administration gets its wish to eliminate the CDFI Fund, the federal grant program that helps fund and support more than 1,400 CDFIs around the country. (Read our analysis of Trump's executive order on the CDFI Fund and what it means.) “The market is profit-driven and, to be honest, it's expensive to build housing,” says Kelleher, whose team makes about 30 loans a year to fund innovative projects like the adaptive reuse project in Tennessee. “The kinds of deals that we support…don't often pencil out without subsidy. That might be tax credits, it might be grants, it might be state funds, it might be local funds.”Making the math work can lead to transactions that are complex, risky – and unpalatable for many market-rate lenders. That's where CDFIs come in.“We and other mission-driven lenders and CDFIs really make it our business to understand those tools, those models,” Kelleher says. “We find ways to structure our financing so we can take risks and be at the table with the community or the developer who's trying to make something happen that the market won't make happen.”

When wildfires hit Los Angeles in January, people did what they always do in a crisis: They stepped in to help. And many of them donated clothes. Lots and lots of clothes. Volunteers were quickly overwhelmed as bags of clothes began piling up at relief centers.“What happens is the help that's being offered actually clogs the ability for those cities and the community to help, because it's a mismatch of what the community and the city needs versus what's being offered,” says chief strategy officer Annie Gullingsrud at Trashie, an organization that worked to recirculate those donations and keep them from the landfill. “When these things happen, we just need to know that what we're offering is actual, informed help—not just perceived wishful thinking.”As donation centers struggled to handle tens of thousands of pounds of clothing, sustainable fashion initiatives and recyclers stepped up. Their initiatives are part of a larger effort to ensure that reusable and recyclable clothing doesn't end up in landfills.You can also read our Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow Maylin Tu's original Next City article on textile waste recycling after the L.A. wildfires here.

Five years after the start of the COVID pandemic, we revisit journals from the nurses who lived through it. The stories are part of a first draft of history being remembered by the official Manhattan Borough Historian in his new book on New York’s essential workers, “When the City Stopped: Stories from New York's Essential Workers.”

Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson is the former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, having resigned when President Trump took office. She talks about how the arts are shaping urban policy, including by “healing, bridging and thriving” in communities.

In this sponsored podcast episode with Results for America, learn how Santa Clara County helped thousands of Californians stay housed. In 2024, homelessness surged by 18% nationwide, with 23 out of every 10,000 people living on the streets or in shelters. The costs of homelessness are enormous – not just to the health and well-being of those experiencing it, but also to taxpayers, as governments spend billions on housing and services.But there’s a smarter solution: prevention.Santa Clara County, California, has proven it works. By helping at-risk residents stay housed — 93% remained in their homes two years later — the county kept families stable and saved taxpayers money. Every $1 spent on prevention returned $2.47 in public benefits.“More people are becoming homeless every single day, every single year, than we can house and we can ever think to house,” says Chad Bojorquez, Chief Program Officer at Destination: Home, who leads its homelessness prevention system. “If we don't turn off what we call inflow, if we don't turn off that spigot, we're never going to solve homelessness.”We'll also hear from Brendan Perry of Notre Dame's Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities and Ross Tilchin, director of the economic mobility catalog at Results for America.

We talk about community land trusts, or CLTs, a lot at Next City. It's about ownership: The community owns the lands and stewards the land. That means that the buildings on the land – including housing and other spaces like storefronts – can made affordable to own or to rent, in perpetuity.CLTs are also talked about a lot in New York City. That's how the city went from having just a small handful of CLTs in the early '90s to having 19. Now, the New Economy Project has launched an interactive map to track all of these land trusts.In today's episode, we speak to Deyanira Del Río, executive director of New Economy Project, and Matthew Shore, a senior community organizer with South Bronx Unite and a member of the Mott Haven-Port Morris Community Land Stewards CLT, about how the city's seen this explosion of CLT growth.This story was produced through our Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies, which is made possible with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This story has been corrected to clarify NYCCLI’s advocacy for CLT bills in city council.

Banks can be a force for good. It's an idea that's greeted with skepticism in some circles, given the endless list of inequities and disasters perpetuated by our country's leading financial institutions. But if you're a Next City reader, the idea that financial institutions can be part of the solution isn't foreign, given our senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello's in-depth coverage of community development financial institutions, credit unions, alternative lending practice and mission-driven banking.In his debut book, “The Banks We Deserve: Reclaiming Community Banking for a Just Economy,” Abello makes the case that it's time to shake up America's highly-concentrated banking system by shifting banking's power back to local institutions – thereby putting power back in the hands of local communities.“If we want to close the racial wealth gap, if we want to make these investments in clean energy and energy efficiency, if we want to make the investments in housing that people can actually afford, we cannot and should not be expecting big banks to come and do that,” he says. “They're not built to do it. We should go to the community-based model.”Listen to this episode to hear how Abello’s new book demonstrates ways banks’ money-creation power can be democratized. Helping communities tap into that power could address our climate, housing and economic crises.

The housing crisis isn’t just about supply. This episode explores innovative solutions like community land trusts, tenant protections, and expanded assistance programs that are making homes affordable — and keeping them that way.

Preserving the stories and spaces that define LGBTQ communities is an act of resilience and resistance. Hear from designers, historians, and activists about the vital work of safeguarding these cultural landmarks and ensuring their legacy endures.

Stories shape how we see the world. In this episode, we bring together philanthropic leaders to explore how funders are relying on journalism to dismantle harmful narratives, amplify underrepresented voices and create equitable communities.If you know Next City, it'll come as no surprise that we believe journalism can be a powerful vehicle for racial justice. Here in the nonprofit media world, we've seen countless examples of how philanthropy can help fund that change by funding impactful, community-driven journalism. And it's not just media funders – increasingly funders who might not traditionally focus on media are leveraging storytelling to advance their broader missions of inclusive economies, cultural preservation, health equity and more.“We think of narrative control as a precondition for long-term change,” says Inés Familiar Miller, program officer at the Kresge Foundation's Arts & Culture Program. “Seeing real people can combat some of those negative narratives where someone else is telling you the story of the immigrant community, of the Black community, of the Indigenous community. It's just not the full picture. And once you hear directly from the people … it could provide like a very different perspective.”In this conversation, we hear from several funders of Next City's funders, including Miller, Surdna Foundation's Vice President of Programs Patrice R. Green, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Director of Media Relations Jordan Reese, who describe their strategy in funding journalism and media. We also hear from Karen Rundlet, CEO of the Institute for Nonprofit News, on the need to view our country's journalism infrastructure as a public good.

What happens when a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on deep-pocketed developers? In this episode, we talk to the directors of "Emergent City" and the organizers who fought to preserve Sunset Park’s future.“Emergent City” (emergentcitydoc.com) documents the 10-year saga of how Brooklyn's Sunset Park community came together to fight a rezoning wanted by deep-pocketed developers. Against all odds, residents won. Filmmakers were there from the very beginning, when developers proposed transforming Industry City, a sprawling industrial site on the Brooklyn waterfront, into a high-end retail and office complex – or, as some residents put it, a “mall.” They were there when Sunset Park residents protested that the Industry City complex, if it won rezoning, would accelerate gentrification and displacement in a neighborhood where about 70% of households are renters. They were there for some 200 days of public meetings.By the way—this is our 100th episode! Thank you to everyone who has listened over the years. If you'd like to support and celebrate this work, please visit nextcity.org/donate to pitch in.

IDs aren’t just about identification — they’re about connection. This episode dives into the power of municipal ID programs to foster trust and open doors. We learn from successful programs in two very different cities — New York City and Greensboro, N.C. — that strive to be inclusive.For undocumented and underdocumented residents, not having an ID can mean being excluded from all kinds of basic services. You can't drive or open a bank account without an ID. You may be afraid to report crimes to law enforcement. The list goes on.But a few cities across the U.S. are experimenting with municipal ID programs — a simple form of ID that provides anyone, including undocumented residents and the unhoused, a way to access essential parts of their cities. In today's episode, we're learning about Greensboro, North Carolina's FaithAction ID initiative as well as New York City's IDNYC program. Both programs were born out of collaboration between nonprofits, police departments and local governments – and both have been replicated by other municipalities across the country.“A lot of the clients that come in, sometimes they've recently arrived to Greensboro,” says Araceli Lopez, a community nurse who works at Faith Action International House and helps people get a FaithAction ID card to be able to access medical care. “Maybe five days ago that they just arrived, and they've been having chronic health conditions. The first thing I will ask them if it is if they have an ID, and sometimes they've lost everything on their journey here.”

In the United States, medical debt isn’t just a financial burden; it’s a reflection of deeper systemic inequities that force individuals to take on “survival debt” — debt incurred just to meet basic needs like health care. Today, Mayor Carter joins us alongside Allison Sesso, the Executive Director of Undue Medical Debt, to explore how cities can lead the charge in addressing medical debt — and what it means to rethink our systems of care, equity, and economic justice.St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter joins us alongside Allison Sesso of Undue Medical Debt to explore how cities can lead the charge in addressing medical debt — and what it means to rethink our systems of care, equity, and economic justice.This week, in the final days of the Biden administration, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule to prevent medical debt from being included in credit scores. It's a reminder that in medical debt isn’t just a financial burden; it’s a reflection of deeper systemic inequities that force individuals to take on “survival debt” — debt incurred just to meet basic needs like health care – and can impact their lives for years to come.That's why more and more cities, counties and states have been pairing up with the national nonprofit Undue Medical Debt to purchase their residents' debt portfolios from collectors and healthcare providers – and then forgiving the debts en masse, paying mere pennies on the dollar to provide serious financial relief. Many have been using federal funds from the American Rescue Plan to do so.“We have folks who look at us and say, this doesn't solve health care,” says St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, who worked with Undue Medical Debt to erase $100 million in medical debt for thousands of residents. “And I go, no, that's absolutely accurate. This doesn't solve health care for the planet, for the country, for even our city. It does provide a real, clear breath of fresh air for a whole lot of people who need it right now.”

Today, we nod to the past while paving a new way forward for the future of anti-racist community development. This episode explores the layered history of American community development and the policies that have shaped — if not torn — the fabric of our communities.If we're going to achieve community development that is actually anti-racist, a baseline understanding of its history is not only a prerequisite.To build that fundamental understanding, Third Space Action Lab's Anti-Racist Community Development research project documents some of the early exclusionary government policies that shaped U.S. communities and responses of community development, from the Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932 to the Housing Act of 1949.In today's episode, we hear from Tonika Johnson, a social justice artists visualizing the arc of community development in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood (read more about her Folded Map art project) and historian Claire Dunning, an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and author of “Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State.” “The ways that federal housing policy is being designed and implemented is enabling white families to build equity, and Black families, if they're able to buy housing, are not able to build equity at the same rates or in the same kinds of ways,” says Dunning, whose research focuses on how nonprofits have used and critiqued government funding to develop alternative responses to urban problems. “It's just more expensive to occupy housing as a Black family … as a result of the ways that the government has intervened.” Plus, we'll hear from Mordecai Cargill, co-founder and Creative Director of ThirdSpace Action Lab, which is documenting the range of ways structural racism still shows up in community development via its Anti-Racist Community Development research project. "Our work was really about trying to conceptualize a working definition of what anti-racist community development might mean," he says, as a starting place.This sponsored episode was produced in partnership with Third Space Action Lab. Its Anti-Racist Community Development research project was developed with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. To learn more about strategies for advancing practical, concrete change in the sector, visit The People's Practice.

Participating in elections is just one part of civic engagement. The many other ways of influencing your community and public policy are arguably the greatest difference to rebuilding trust.Healing democracy was never going to happen with an election. In this episode, we discuss real ways to go beyond the ballot box and engaging people as we restore trust in government and in city leadership, based on our recent webinar on the same subject.“A colleague at a conference I was at earlier this year said, 'In city government, we hear so much about creating an environment that's good for business. What about creating an environment good for democracy?'” says Tom Borrup, co-editor of the new book “Democracy as Creative Practice: Weaving a Culture of Civic Life.”In this episode, we hear from Borrup; Phoebe Bachman, a Philadelphia-based artist, curator, and facilitator from The People's Budget; April De Simone, founder of The Practice of Democracy; Next City collaborator Richard Young, founder and executive director of CivicLex; and Pam Bailey, the editor of the Beyond Elections section at Proximate, a new nonprofit newsroom covering public participation and democratic innovations.

In this special episode, Next City’s editorial leaders share what they’re hearing from readers and listeners about resisting setbacks at the federal level and driving changes locally.The days following the U.S. presidential have been defined by an overwhelming sense of uncertainty, despair and even fear from urban changemakers working in local government, non-profit organizations, philanthrophy, grassroots advocacy and organizing, and beyond. While their work will be more important than ever, many are saying, it seems like it will also be more difficult than ever.In this week's episode, we're joined by Next City's editorial director, Deonna Anderson; our managing editor, Aysha Khan; and our senior economic justice correspondent, Oscar Perry Abello. They're discussing the results of a few recent ballot initiatives across the country; what concerns and responses they're hearing from readers and sources; and what gives them hope that local change is still possible regardless of the election results.“City officials, mayors, local governments, state governments – they have a lot of levers that they can be pushing that will make their residents lives better in tangible ways, where they can enshrine protections of their vulnerable communities,” Khan says. “The systemic issues at a federal level have to be addressed. But there are also systemic issues at a local level that can be addressed and literally transform people's lives.”

“There's that R-word that wants to come up that I despise – resilience,” says Tiffany Sturdivant, executive director of Appalshop, a media, arts and community economic development organization that's been operating in the Kentucky mountains for more than five decades.“People are so strong….I think that's probably a testament to mountain people, right, or people anywhere who are disenfranchised and are just working with what they have. Use what you have until you can get more.”When you think about climate issues, your mind might go first to the coasts and rising sea levels. But climate issues in the middle of the country are also urgent – and the solutions being forged offer lessons for all of us, urban and rural alike. Appalachia reminds us that no matter where we’re from, our futures are linked—and we’re better when we work together to solve shared challenges.That's a critical lesson we took away at this year’s Vanguard conference in Kentucky, where we brought together 40 emerging leaders in urban Lexington and rural Berea to learn from the region's innovators and gain fresh perspectives. Today's episode features Kelsey Cloonan of Community Farm Alliance; Chris Woolery from the Mountain Association; Sturdivant from Appalshop; Baylen Campbell with Invest Appalachia; and Jeff Fugate, Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky, who works closely with communities on urban planning and development. Together, they unpack the ways communities here are addressing the impacts of climate change, while also honoring Appalachian values and strengths.This episode is part of the series we're bringing you from this year's Vanguard conference in Lexington, Kentucky, where our theme was exploring the dynamics of urban-rural interconnection.

In today's episode, we're bringing you highlights from our conversations at this year's Vanguard conference in Lexington, Kentucky, where our theme was exploring the dynamics of urban-rural interconnection – not urban-rural divisions.We will explore how communities are stronger when we stand in solidarity, and when we learn from each other's experiences.We'll hear from Mandy Higgins, Executive Director at the Lexington History Museum; Mark Lenn Johnson, president of Art Inc. Kentucky; as well as Jim Gray, the former two-term Mayor of Lexington and Kentucky's current Secretary of Transportation, who went from living in a small town to leading the growth of one of the state's largest cities. With a population of over 320,000, Lexington is a model for how urban and rural can coexist, collaborate and thrive.

This week, we’re revisiting an episode we released earlier this year, all about Lexington, Kentucky — a city where collaboration and creativity are transforming challenges into opportunities. In this episode, we highlighted how Lexington’s leaders are finding ways to foster nonpartisanship, boost civic engagement, and narrow the racial wealth gap.We’re bringing this episode back now because it offers a window into the themes we explored in even greater depth during our Vanguard conference, held in Lexington just last month. Over the next couple of weeks on this podcast, we’ll be sharing special episodes that bring you along with Next City to the conference.

In Newark and across Essex County, New Jersey, urban farms do more than grow food — they're strengthening a community. But advocates say that convincing the state and local governments that these farms are worth investing in has not been easy.“At a local level, most urban farms, they don't own their land. It's borrowed from the city's adopt-a-lot program,” says Kimberly Izar, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Segregation, who has reported for us on urban farming in the region. “At any point, that means that the city can take away the land in favor of, let's say, like a luxury developer. Another thing is that the vast majority of New Jersey municipalities don't have zoning laws specifically for urban farms, which makes it really hard for your average urban farmer to carry out their operations.”To combat these challenges, Newark-based urban farming advocate Fallon Davis – who founded the education nonprofit STEAM Urban and its urban farming progam, and who heads the Black and Brown Indigenous Immigrant Farmers United – is working on a critical new set of policy recommendations for uplifting local urban farmers of color.“For black farmers, we don't have a right to farm in New Jersey. We're not even covered and protected” by the USDA's Right to Farm Act, which only covers farms with more than five acres, Davis argues. “And that is extremely discriminatory.”Read Izar's original reporting, published in collaboration with The Jersey Bee as part of our series on segregation in Essex County, here.

The pandemic hollowed out our cities, leaving empty downtowns and office buildings in its wake. With galleries and art venues closed and disposable income at a low, the arts sector took a major hit.What if we killed two birds with one stone by using our cities' vacant commercial space as affordable artist studios and galleries? That's the idea behind Zero Empty Spaces. Since its launch in June 2019, the Florida-based organization has placed more than 600 artists in 10 commercial buildings in 10 cities. Most are in the group's home state of Florida but they've extended as far as Little Rock, Arkansas and Boston.“We now have what we believe to be the first art studio in the world in a former Burberry store – located next to a Louis Vuitton in the Natick Mall in Massachusetts, the largest mall in New England,” Evan Snow, co-founder of Zero Empty Spaces tells Next City. “Somebody is walking out of a Louis Vuitton store, spending tens of thousands of dollars and saying, 'Oh, what's this artist in the window doing here?' And we've had people buy artwork after leaving the Louis store.”Read the original Next City article, by Cinnamon Janzer, here.

American roads are dangerous. The Department of Transportation reports that in 2021, nearly 43,000 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes. Of those, 7,388 were pedestrians. On Philadelphia's Roosevelt Boulevard, reckless driving and speeding in pedestrian zones have led the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to try a pilot program that allows speed cameras.On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Erick Guerra, associate professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, the lead researcher for a study looking into whether automated traffic enforcement has any effect on safety and on our traffic behavior. Based on the Roosevelt Boulevard pilot, the study concluded that the economic benefits of reduced crashes substantially exceed the total fines paid by violators.Not only has Philadelphia's program increased traffic safety while avoiding the disadvantages of increased police enforcement, revenue from the fines is also routed back into other traffic and pedestian safety projects; in 2021, the fines generated $22 million for such efforts.Speed cameras, like so many measures that inconvenience drivers, can be controversial in America. So the results of this pilot – and finding that speed cameras are actually making our city streets safer – is crucial to understand.“When people see things like, traffic fine violations, parking tickets, things like that, it can be frustrating – and particularly the idea that a city … is collecting revenue off of these violations, off of these fines,” Guerra says. “It's important to document that the benefits to society are much larger than those fines, in terms of the effects on collisions, injuries, fatalities.”Read the original article, by Next City reporting fellow Maylin Tu, here.

When Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida in 2022, it was the third-costliest weather disaster on record worldwide. Damages totaled over $100 billion dollars. So you can imagine what that looks like, because we've all seen the images of communities across Florida and the Carolinas left grappling with the aftermath of climate disasters like this one—damaged homes, displaced families, and an unclear road to recovery.The wait for aid can stretch on for months. And that's where predatory lenders come in, offering loan terms with sky-high interest rates that mean risking your home and property as collateral.But the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund means new federal money is incoming to help support community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, fill in that gap and help vulnerable low- and middle-income people facing climate emergencies.In this episode of the Next City podcast, part of our CDFI Futures series in collaboration with Partners for the Common Good, we hear from the Solar Energy Loan Fund's Ann Vanek-Dasovich about how the fund allowed families to start rebuilding immediately by offering them loans with zero-interest and no collateral; Beneficial State Bank's Jae Easterbrooks about how environmentally-conscious banking can help America's response to climate change; and Partners for the Common Good CEO Jeannine Jakokes about how CDFIs might be able to scale these solutions with new federal dollars on the way.This episode is based on an article that's part of our series, CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is generously supported by Partners for the Common Good. Sign up for PCG’s CapNexus newsletter at capnexus.org.

Whether a person has access to banking directly changes their life. That's why advocates for racial justice have for a long time talked about the importance of an anti-redlining statute called the Community Reinvestment Act.If you want to ensure that everyone everywhere, including in middle- and low-income neighborhoods, is on a level playing field when it comes to starting a business or owning a home, then you need to know how this 1997 law works – and what's changing in the newest regulations, the first revamp since to the law since 1995."What this act attempts to do is hold financial institutions, banks specifically, accountable for meeting the credit needs of the places where they do business," explains Next City's senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello. And it does have enforcement power, though critics say it's not used enough. "The teeth of the CRA come from the fact that it gives the regulators the ability to deny certain applications – like applications to merge with another bank or open up a new branch or close down a branch ... if they believe a bank is not meeting its obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act."This episode is based on a webinar that's part of our series, CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is generously supported by Partners for the Common Good. Sign up for PCG’s CapNexus newsletter at capnexus.org.

Once upon a time, 14% of farmers in the United States were Black. That was in 1910. But that number has dwindled. Today, Black farmers comprise less than 2% of all growers across the country. On this week’s episode, our host Lucas Grindley notes: “That's more than 14 million acres of lost land.”This loss, along with the discrimination and violence perpetrated against African-American farmers and the current movement of more Black people returning to agriculture and land stewardship, is the subject of the documentary “Farming While Black,” which was released in 2023. Mark Decena, the writer and director of the documentary, describes it as a Venn diagram of social justice, climate justice and food sovereignty.“It was very dangerous to be a landowner in the deep South post-Civil War, except for the eight years of Reconstruction where land ownership was at its peak. And Leah [Penniman, cofounder of Soul Fire Farm, who was one of the characters in the documentary] definitely points that out,” Decena says. While it might not be as dangerous to own land in this South in 2024, there are still a lot of challenges to reverse decades of land dispossession. To explore that and the solutions Black and other marginalized people are implementing as they return to the soil, listen to this episode, and subscribe to follow the show.

Property taxes are how most people pay for their local government. These taxes fund a range of local services, from our public schools to our fire departments.But those property tax systems overburden some – and undercharge others. And when mapped out, these disparities looks suspiciously like another pattern of disparities that you should be familiar with by now: redlining.It seems counterintuitive, as our senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello explains. You've seen the headlines about Black homeowners swapping out their family photos with their white friends' family photos and receiving a higher home appraisal because the appraiser assumes it's owned by a white person. But in property tax assessments, he says, we see the opposite: Local public officials often don't believe Black homeowners' should be valued at the price that it's valued by the market, so they increase amount they charge in taxes. Meanwhile, on the whiter and wealther side of town, the property tax assessor believes that white family's home is definitely not worth that much – and they shouldn't be charged as much in taxes.In today's episode, we speak with Joe Minicozzi, an urban designer and founder of Urban3, a firm with a mission to explain, visualize, and improve market dynamics created by tax and land use policies. He's working to prove these disparities in land valuation actually exist – that we are in fact subsidizing wealthier, whiter neighborhoods at the expense of historically redlined neighborhoods. Watch our recent, in-depth webinar with Minicozzi to learn more about his findings.Minicozzi mentions this article: The New York Times : "How Lower-Income Americans Get Cheated on Property Taxes"

Cognitive dissonance. That's what David Abel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who's spent a decade reporting on climate change for The Boston Globe, saw in his city.At the same time that he was covering the increasingly dire projections about sea level rise in Boston Harbor, Abel tells Next City, “we were watching this entirely new urban district being built at sea level, on landfill, hard on the coast, and in the bullseye of rising seas in a city that has more climate scientists per capita than probably any other city on the planet.”His documentary film “Inundation District” examines the impact of rising sea levels and strengthening storms on Boston's Seaport — and questions the city's decision to spend more than $20 billion building a new coastal Innovation District at sea level.On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Abel about how to cope with climate anxiety, the growing threat of rising sea levels in urban coasts around the world, and how cities can better prepare for these looming crises.

Climate change can be scary, but the documentary “How to Power City” focuses on solutions. One solution often touted for addressing climate change is switching to renewable energy. And people want to make that switch but many don’t know how to get started. The feature-length film follows people in six different U.S. cities who are leading various types of renewable energy projects, from as small as a few streetlights to innovating an entire utility.In this episode, we hear from writer and director Melanie LaRosa, who outlines what she found while working on the documentary and why she chose to focus on solutions.LaRosa wanted audiences to feel empowered and curious when watching her film. While she was working on it, LaRosa learned about the Solutions Journalism Network and decided to adopt their approach to storytelling, which includes highlighting solutions to problems and also where they fall short. (Because no solution is perfect.)“When you make a film, you have this opportunity to bring to light new aspects [of a story],” she says, noting that people are already inundated with news that features the problem of climate change. “If I’m going to spend this much time on a film like this, I want to make it something I can feel good about.”To learn more about  “How to Power City” and what LaRosa learned while working on the film, listen to this episode and subscribe.

Just over a year ago, we delved into a groundbreaking initiative by a foundation in Vancouver. Their question was: What if we gave people experiencing homelessness a lump sum of cash, no strings attached? The results were nothing short of remarkable — though they probably shouldn’t be surprising. Now, two years after that experiment ended, the idea is spreading to cities across the United States. So let’s revisit that initial episode — when we asked, what really happens when you give money to people experiencing homelessness?

In this episode, we dive deep into success stories emerging from Lexington, Kentucky, a “big town” taking on big challenges – breaking down partisanship, reinventing the ways the community engages with its leaders, creating new ways to close the racial wealth gap – by actively cultivating collaboration and experimentation.“Our politics set the tone for the city,” says Christian Motley, the Vice President of Partnerships and Community Impact at the nonprofit Results for America. “If you look at our council, our mayor, you might see a different coalition on one day than you do on the next. There's something about not having permanent enemies that I think is really important, and it flows into community. I might be upset with you about housing on Monday, but by Wednesday we might be able to connect on parks.”That's helped by the city's governance structure as a nonpartisan, unified city-county government that cuts out excess bureacracy and political tribalism. And over the past decade, local leaders explain, the city has seen a generational shift in its local power structures, breaking down “old-boy networks” while maintaining the relational proximity that characterizes many midsized cities.“We have a second-term Republican mayor in a very blue city, because people didn't vote for an R or a D, they voted for a person,” says Dan Wu, Vice Mayor of Lexington. And while the city council is largely left-leaning at the moment, he adds, “I would challenge people in Lexington to guess the party affiliation of all 15 of us. I guarantee you'll get a few of them wrong, and I love that.”The conversation is based on Next City's recent panel at Big Towns, a summit celebrating mid-sized American cities, and offers a taste of the urban solutions we'll be exploring at Vanguard, our annual experiential gathering for rising urban leaders, held in Lexington this fall.

If you're in the world of urban planning and transit systems, there's a good chance you're familiar with veteran transportation planner Jarrett Walker and his classic book 2011, “Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives.”We recently published an excerpt from the newly updated edition of the book – catch that here. And back in February, we hosted a popular webinar with Walker, in conversation with Steven Higashide, the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Clean Transportation program.In this episode of the Next City podcast, we talk to Walker and Higashide about how our individualistic culture – driven both by the elite class as well as American notions of freedom more broadly – in turns breeds a pernicious car culture, and how we can turn that on its head to achieve successful public transit systems that will enrich our communities.

In Los Angeles, there’s a transportation experiment underway. In this episode, Maylin Tu, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Social Impact Design who lives in LA describes the stress of owning a car there coupled with the difficulty of navigating the city without a car. But in a sprawling city like LA, people have to have some way to get around.Last May, the LA Department of Transportation and LA Metro launched its “mobility wallet,” the biggest Universal Basic Mobility experiment ever attempted in the U.S. Tu reported that in the first phase of the pilot, the agencies gave 1,000 South Los Angeles residents a debit card that comes with $150 per month to spend on transportation. The funds can be used to take the bus, ride the train, rent a shared e-scooter, take micro-transit, rent a car-share, take an Uber or Lyft, or purchase an e-bike. “I think the big thing that this project is transportation affordability. It’s actually something that we don’t talk about a lot. We talk about housing affordability,” says Madeline Brozen, deputy director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. “We use a lot of the tools of giving people income supports in other industries but we don’t think about it in transportation.” To learn more about lessons learned from the pilot so far and how cities and transit agencies can launch their own UBM programs, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

Gina Merritt, head of Northern Real Estate Ventures, didn’t set out to become a developer. But when she landed an interview for a job with the affordable housing development arm of a construction company, she fell in love with the field. Merritt who grew up in affordable housing showed up on her first day and knew it was where she was supposed to be. “The only thing I saw [on site] was a bulldozer and I just was in my car, crying really, and trembling and realizing then that this is what has been chasing me my whole life,” she says. Merritt is part of the 5% of real estate developers who are people of color — and an even smaller group who are women of color.After more than 27 years in the field, she’s also part of Growing Diverse Housing Developers, which has directed $40 million to several community development financial institutions across the country to deploy to minority developers. Their goal is “to increase the number of minority real estate developers in the U.S. business and spurring the development and preservation of affordable housing.”Merritt also sees providing affordable housing as a tool to build generational wealth. “What I know about affordable housing is that when most people move in, they don’t move out,” she says. “And I decided with my platform that I created, Project Community Capital, that I wanted to do better than that. I have this holistic approach to community development, which means we help people with all of the things that they need around economic development.”This episode is based on an article that's part of our series, CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is generously supported by Partners for the Common Good. Sign up for PCG’s CapNexus newsletter at capnexus.org.

Today, we will hear from multiple Chinatown organizers who are fighting to ensure their neighborhoods remain for generations to come.

Cities too often respond to a person experiencing a mental health crisis with carceral systems. Toronto’s Gerstein Crisis Centre provides an alternative and proves that when people have access to care, they’ll reach out when they need help. Increased access can lead to more opportunities for problem-solving and less crises and punishment.Next City Reporter Maylin Tu first reported this story and says that the center is doing things differently by respecting people’s autonomy and acknowledging the power dynamics at play when responding to people’s needs. Tu adds that, in some ways, the programs offered at Gerstein act as an intervention that helps to reduce people experiencing crises.In this episode, we also hear from Susan Davis, the center’s executive director, and Olivia Ensign, senior advocate and researcher for the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch, which published a case study that outlined the success of the Gerstein Centre’s work. Upon publication, HRW noted that it hopes the document “inspires action among and across mental health service providers, service users, policymakers, and human rights and mental health advocates on providing community-based and rights-respecting support to people experiencing mental health crises.”What the Gerstein Centre is doing provides a model for what’s possible. Davis says that one of the most essential cores of what they do is listen.“Unfortunately, right now, when people are reaching out for mental health care, they cannot access the services that they need, either in a timely fashion or the correct services that they need,” Davis says. “One of the things that is important about that is that people need to be trusted about what it is that’s going on for them. And when they reach out for care, they need to be believed.”To learn more about the Gerstein Crisis Centre’s non-coercive, person-centered approach to addressing mental health, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

In light of the Academy Awards ceremony, we're re-highlighting our episode featuring Arlo Washington, the Black barber-turned-visionary behind People Trust Community Federal Credit Union and the central figure of the Oscar-nominated short documentary, "The Barber of Little Rock." When neighbors started coming to his Little Rock barbershop to borrow money, Arlo Washington went a step further and chartered Arkansas’ newest credit union.

In this episode of the podcast, civil engineer and transportation researcher Veronica O. Davis talks about her new book, “Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities,” how choices made in the 1950s and '60s have left neighbors effectively cut off from public transportation, and what it means for cities to give their citizens the right to connection.Davis, a city planner based in Houston, says American have an unhealthy love affair with cars – but this dependency is destroying American urban life.It begins with advertising, she says, but there's a bigger problem.“We have set up our cities in a way that you need a car,” she says. “It's one of those self-fulfilling prophecies, as well. So even if someone wants to opt to be car-lite or car-free, we don't make it easy for them.” In part, Davis argues, that's linked to a long history of racism in city planning that is shackling our cities environmentally and economically. For more, read more in our excerpt from “Inclusive Transportation.”We're also joined by Next City's managing editor Aysha Khan, who's got some experience with car-free living in addition to covering the growing movement for pedestrianized public spaces. The problem, she says, is less with cars and car ownership and more with the “overwhelming” assumption in American urban planning that cars are and will always be the primary mode of transportation.“Anything other than car travel is less than and isn't a priority to enable, let alone support and promote,” Khan says. “We see cars prioritized in transportation spending, in maintenance, in other sorts of infrastructure investment – rather than public transportation solutions, even walking, biking, rolling by other means.”While all of these solutions are more efficient and go a long way to help cities achieve public health, economic equity and climate change mitigation goals, they are neglected in favor of entrenching car-centric development and culture, she argues. That's slowly beginning to change with the adoption of open streets, car-free streets and pedestrian-friendly public spaces, a movement accelerated by the pandemic.To learn more about how cities can develop equitable transportation systems and repair the harm done through decades of racist and car-centric planning, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

When Baltimore built a new sewer system a century ago, it tried to control nature by diverting the city’s waterways, like many other American cities in the 19th and 20th century. In many cases, cities turned these rivers into part of the underground sewer system by turning them into underground pipes and concrete culverts. Through a recently launched public art installation, “Ghost Rivers,” many residents of Baltimore Remington neighborhood are visualizing for the first time the waterways buried below their feet.But with millions of miles of streams, rivers and creeks buried in asphalt across the country, often to build highways, houses, factories, roads and real estate development, it's inevitable that these waterways are increasingly disrupting our urban ecologies.As University of Michigan professor Jacob Napieralski explains, these “ghost rivers” are disproportionately affecting formerly redlined neighborhoods, a significant but often forgotten contributor to urban flooding. “Flood risk is very intricately linked to history, and by ignoring history we may be missing some clues that help us move forward,” he explains.Now, cities around the U.S. – and, indeed, the world – are working toward “daylighting” these buried bodies of water.To learn more about the impact of waterway burial on low-income neighborhoods and how cities are now responding through “daylighting” them, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

Take a guess. Which of these banks is making more small-business loans in Brooklyn: Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America or Brooklyn Cooperative Federal Credit Union, a small financial institution that has only about $50 million in assets?That's a mere rounding error compared to the major players, or even many other community banks. But, as our economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello explored a two-part series late last year, Brooklyn Coop punches above its weight through lending to Brooklyn's Black and Brown small business owners.“This one tiny credit union has done more SBA loans in Brooklyn than Citi, Wells Fargo and Bank of America combined over the past 10 years, he says. Their strategy? While other highly-ranked Small Business Administration-guaranteed lenders are making loans that average about $120,000 in size. But Brooklyn Coop's average loans sit at around $24,000.In this episode, we chat with Brooklyn Coop CEO Samira Rajan about its human approach to lending – and why getting megabanks to fund more Black and Brown communities and small businesses isn't the answer to powering our economy.“I think banks are designed to say no,” Rajan says. But Brooklyn Coop and other community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, have another approach. “Throw open the gates. It's OK if these people get access to bank accounts. It's OK if they get credits. We'll all be better off in the long run.”To learn more about Brooklyn Coop and its alternative model for small business lending, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

Rising temperatures have ripple effects on our health, our economy and more. So to deal with the problem of extreme heat, we need to bust out of our silos and embrace collaboration.And as high as the stakes are, we know the solutions to address the problems. Nature-based solutions, solar reflective surfaces and shade, among other lessons we can glean from the communities that have long dealt with heat, are all on the table.“We have most of these tools available to us now,” says Kurt Shickman, the director of Extreme Heat Initiatives at the Adrienne Arsht Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and former executive director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance. “We're not in a challenge of innovation here. We're in a challenge of access.”On this episode of the podcast, we explore the evidence-based solutions to curbing extreme heat, the reasons why these haven't been implemented at scale, and what's at stake for our cities' most vulnerable communities.

Six years after Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico, killing almost 3,000 people and causing $139 billion worth of damages, the island is still rebuilding. To support these vital restoration and climate resilience efforts, residents turned to a local mutual aid model known as cooperativas. When Puerto Ricans were completely isolated, with no power, communications or banking system, cooperatives opened within two days and began creating workarounds to support residents.Today, these co-ops are undergoing an important transformation: Many are gaining recognition from the U.S. government as community development financial institutions, or CDFIs. And with that comes some important perks, namely access major new funding and grant opportunities.“Arising from the ashes is actually a flourishing CDFI sector, and these CDFIs are actually helping bolster the island's financial system and helping the poor people prepare for other natural disasters,” says reporter Christopher Williams, who covered this movement last year. Before Maria hit, there were eight CDFIs on the island. Now, there are close to 100 institutions, serving about a third of the population.That growth is in large part thanks to the work of Inclusiv, a New York City-based CDFI that provides access to financial tools to low-income Puerto Ricans. To support those people who had long relied on the island's cooperativas, they're helping cooperativas become certified as CDFIs with the U.S. Treasury Department.“The way that Puerto Ricans do cooperatives and do the credit union movement is a bit different from how it's done in the U.S.,” says Rene Vargas Martinez, the director of Inclusiv's Puerto Rico Network. “It really replicates us as a people. Our culture is a culture of solidarity. We help each other when there are crises.”This episode is based on an article that's part of our series, CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is generously supported by Partners for the Common Good. Sign up for PCG’s CapNexus newsletter at capnexus.org.

At Next City, we've covered a lot of community land trusts: CLTs developing disaster-resilient housing, CLTs helping recruit Black public school teachers through housing opportunities, CLTs helping house Indigenous foster youth aging out of the system. They're a potent and increasingly popular tool for creating permanently affordable housing amid – but CLTs also have some drawbacks.Yet some of those pain points can be mitigated when paired with another powerful vehicle for affordable housing development: land banks. When the Next City team visited Richmond, Virginia for our annual Vanguard gathering last year, one of the most striking solutions for urban change that we encountered was the country's first combined community land trust and land bank.The Maggie Walker Land Trust – named after a local icon who was the first woman of color to establish a bank in America, among other historic titles –  expects to make its 100th home sale soon, less than a decade after its founding.“One of MWCLT’s goals is expanding equitable access to homeownership, and we have made great strides to increase Black homeownership in our programs,” the organization's executive director, Lark Washington, told Next City earlier this year.To learn more about community land trusts, land banks, and the impact of combining these tools, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

In Richmond, Virginia access to quality food can be a challenge, particularly in marginalized communities. But mutual aid, community building, and collaboration among people working in the food justice space have made a difference in the city. Intergenerational collaboration has also been key to addressing food insecurity and promoting food sovereignty.Barry Greene Jr., Next City’s Equitable Cities Fellows for Reparations Narratives who lives in Richmond, describes the city’s food accessibility. “Depending on what side of the river you live on, your access to grocery stores or fresh food differs. And while we have community gardens, they sometimes have issues with general maintenance and upkeep,” he says, noting that the Southside has less access.  One of the people making sure people are fed in Richmond is Taylor Scott, founder of RVA Community Fridges, one of numerous community fridge efforts that have cropped up across the country (and the world) in recent years. We hear from Scott in this episode when she spoke on a panel during Next City’s Vanguard Richmond conference in September 2023. Scott shared about what it took to get started, getting connected with people already doing similar work, and the intention of doing mutual aid work — not charity work.“A big difference for us in charity and nonprofit is a lot of people when they do charity work, they never go back,” she says. “For us, a big part of the mutual aid work is the fact that you come back again and you get integrated into the community and actually start to be a part of that community.”To hear more about the importance of collaboration in food justice work and the ongoing mutual aid of community fridges, listen to the full episode and subscribe to Next City.

Next City is turning 20! And our journalists are publishing a special 20th-anniversary edition of our annual Solutions of the Year magazine in which we’re talking about the solutions we want to see expand in cities over the next 20 years.As part of the celebration, we’re re-airing some of the stories that we’ve covered here on the podcast. Today, two community organizers in Atlanta who won legal protections for themselves and other who were formerly incarcerated.

Next City is turning 20! And our journalists are publishing a special 20th-anniversary edition of our annual Solutions of the Year magazine in which we’re talking about the solutions we want to see expand in cities over the next 20 years.As part of the celebration, we’re re-airing some of the stories that we’ve covered here on the podcast. Today, how community-owned real estate in East Boston is keeping rents affordable.

Next City is turning 20! And our journalists are publishing a special 20th-anniversary edition of our annual Solutions of the Year magazine in which we’re talking about the solutions we want to see expand in cities over the next 20 years.As part of the celebration, we’re re-airing some of the stories that we’ve covered here on the podcast. Today, how a Kentucky non-profit increased participation in Lexington’s local government.

Next City is turning 20! And our journalists are publishing a special 20th-anniversary edition of our annual Solutions of the Year magazine in which we’re talking about the solutions we want to see expand in cities over the next 20 years. As part of the celebration, we’re re-airing some of the stories that we’ve covered here on the podcast. Today, the Black barber whose work inspired him to launch a credit union to help his clients and neighbors in Arkansas.

When Latinx entrepreneurs go to the bank to seek a loan to build or grow their businesses, they often leave empty-handed.Now, Greenline Access Capital, a community development financial institution (CDFI) in Philadelphia, is trying to change that – and help advance prosperity for the city's quarter-million Latinx residents. To do that, they're offering bilingual services, character-based lending, in-depth technical assistance and business consulting for small businesses. And, importanttly, they're connecting clients with ongoing resources to help these businesses flourish and succeed in the long run.“Having a conversation with a client is like peeling an onion,” Kersy Azocar, a veteran of the microlending industry who founded Greenline Access Capital in 2021. "Let me start asking you questions to better understand what you need. Sometimes somebody can say, 'Well, I need $20,000,' and by the time we finish our review, you need $150,000. Or you need $20,000, but let's work on A, B, C first...or let me connect you with one of our partners to get your business plan ready."On this episode of the Next City podcast, we look at what's needed to help Latinx small business owners and how the community finance development industry is stepping in.This episode is based on an article that's part of our series, CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is generously supported by Partners for the Common Good. Sign up for PCG’s CapNexus newsletter at capnexus.org.

More than giving back, the NFL acknowledges it makes money by depending on Black athletes, and its new investments are considering the communities where its athletes come from.In 2021, 71% of players in the NFL in 2021 were people of color, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. So when the NFL needed to borrow $78 million last year, they worked with the National Black Bank Foundation to choose 16 Minority Depository Institutions, community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and women-focused banks.“It's a way of showing that you are putting your money where your mouth is and helping to build community – and particularly the communities that the players and the talent come from,” says Brandon Comer, the co-founder of the National Black Bank Foundation. He helps small banks work together to land these bigger deals and create a seamless lending experience that can compete with traditional big banks.Comer says previous loans made to the Atlanta Hawks and Major League Soccer offered a crucial proof of concept that helped make the NFL and other large institutions comfortable on the foundation's ability to deliver both the loan as well as the community impact. And the NFL deal has put an even bigger spotlight on these banks' power.“If there is a pretty good size manufacturing company, for example, that's in the footprint of one of these banks, when they see a headline that a bank has executed a deal with the NFL, it serves as a strong validator,” Comer says. “We've seen several examples where businesses have gone into these banks and said, Hey, we'd like to open an account, or we'd like to do business with you because we saw this headline. We didn't even know you were here, or we certainly didn't think you were of the size that you could handle our business.”On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Comer and the Community Development Bankers Association's Brian Blake about the impact of the NFL's work with small Black-led banks and the ripple effects of these types of financing deals in minority communities.This episode is based on an article that's part of our series, CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is generously supported by Partners for the Common Good. Sign up for PCG’s CapNexus newsletter at capnexus.org.

Today, we’re partnering with ThirdSpace Action Lab on this sponsored episode about The Anti-Racist Community Development research project, which has documented the range of ways that structural racism still shows up in community development and the many ways that people are trying to make community development anti-racist.

The so-called Death Star law was passed in Texas. Luckily, a lawsuit was filed by the city of Houston, joined by San Antonio and El Paso, and supported by dozens of large and small municipalities in Texas - they formed an Alliance, if you will.

Through organizations like Chicago TREND and with the help of new and federally regulated fintech platforms, community members and people of color who were excluded from ownership now have an opportunity not only to own a piece of a shopping mall or other commercial space, but also to see a return on their investment.Reporting for this story was made possible with funding from the Mastercard Impact Fund in partnership with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.

A new report surveyed nonprofits and what it discovered has activists calling for a new way of funding arts and culture. Can they change the way things have always been done?

In Oakland, a nonprofit is giving entrepreneurs of color the chance to use vacant storefronts to try out their own businesses. The first step? Convert building ground floor into a public park.Reporting for this story was made possible with funding from the Mastercard Impact Fund in partnership with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.

Today we talk about a solution to the lack of housing access that is within reach for many local Public Housing Authorities.

Housing vouchers are a federally-funded payment system. They’re used by low-income people to rent a home — any home. Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. While the Fair Housing Act of 1968 offered legal protections against discrimination based on race, religion, sex, and disability, there is nothing in it that says you can’t discriminate against someone based on how the source of their income.

Whether it’s medical care, addiction treatment, counseling — or whatever the issue might be that individual case-work would reveal — many people experiencing homelessness need more than stable housing. But there’s evidence that without first offering someone a stable home, all those other issues can’t be properly addressed. That is a concept called “Housing First.”

An East Boston tenant had been fighting her eviction for eight years when the city established a new neighborhood trust and bought her building — plus, 35 others.

Today we’re learning about a solution in Lexington, Kentucky, where a non-profit called CivicLex is changing things up. We’re speaking with the founder of CivicLex about how they’re getting folks informed and involved in local decisions big and small.

The first Black-owned bank to open in the last 20 years is in Columbus, Ohio.

In this episode of Next City, Lucas Grindley explores the history of LGBTQ neighborhoods, or "Gayborhoods," and how they've been affected by skyrocketing housing prices. Developers are trying to spark the birth of a new queer neighborhood in Cleveland. But can a massive real estate development even succeed as LGBTQ-focused? This ambitious 300,000-square-foot complex called Studio West 117 will include sports, dining, entertainment and housing alongside identity-affirming businesses and social services.

A Minneapolis startup is raising awareness about all the building materials that can be salvaged instead of sent to landfills.This episode is sponsored by:• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

This episode of Next City delves into the impact of natural disasters such as hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and how they affect people even years later.In the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, two organizations provide solutions to the displacement crisis. The Florida Keys Community Land Trust was initiated by two altruistic individuals and creates housing that is far more affordable than market rate. The Houston Community Land Trust was created with $52 million of public funds and provides disaster resilient housing.

In this episode of Next City, we learn about the importance of giving back to one's community and promoting environmental sustainability. A nonprofit at the border is collecting food and redistributing it to shelters.The founder of No Lost Food shares her experience with "food rescue" and the impact it had on the children helped. Guests include reporter Christian Betancourt, who is Next City and El Paso Matters' joint Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Borderland Narratives. The fellowship is made possible with support from the Mellon Foundation.

In this episode of Next City, we explore the challenges faced by the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia — a historically disinvested area known for its struggles. The Kensington Corridor Trust is one of several community-owned or community-led commercial real estate entities across the U.S., and developments like these are starting to get more recognition.

When neighbors started coming to his Little Rock barbershop to borrow money, Arlo Washington went a step further and chartered Arkansas’ newest credit union.In this episode of Next City, host Lucas Grindley discusses the importance of community support during times of financial distress. The story focuses on Arlo Washington, a barber who opened a credit union to service those in need of financial assistance in Arkansas. The episode also explores the drop in the number of credit unions in the last decade and how a ban on payday lending created an even bigger need.

Can we combat the affordable housing crisis by building homes in our backyards? The movement to create “accessory dwelling units” comes in different shapes. In this episode of Next City, we partner with ShelterForce and take a journey across the country to explore solutions from the Bay Area and Durham, North Carolina. One organization in the South includes them in its brand new housing developments — on land owned by the community.This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

An encampment of people experiencing homelessness was reimagined as a tiny home village that still provides housing 20 years later.This episode is sponsored by:• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

A Bay area church designed a program that it says isn’t charity; it’s countering systemic racism.This episode is sponsored by:• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

Two former cellmates persuaded Atlanta’s leaders to legally protect formerly incarcerated residents from discrimination.This episode is sponsored by:• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

U.S. cities are responding to the global #LandBack movement by returning land to the stewardship of Indigenous people — to whom it rightfully belongs.This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

Pilots of guaranteed income programs are launching in cities all over the United States. We talked with the researchers tracking the results and what they show.This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

Who says change can’t happen quickly? One group says they’ve figured out the playbook for fast-tracking bike lanes.This episode is sponsored by:• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.This episode is sponsored by:• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

Cities everywhere are proving paying a fare to ride the bus isn’t necessary, and getting rid of fares altogether makes them more useful.This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

This El Paso landscaping company is now owned by its employees. And while that’s not entirely unusual, the way the sale happened could be a model for the future.This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

What rideshare did for cars is proving possible for buses in cities everywhere. It’s called microtransit. This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

Private equity firms own their homes. When these tenants weren’t getting repairs they needed, they put their rent in escrow.This episode is sponsored by:• Solutions of the Year - If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.

What could leaders do to make ebikes the transportation of the future?This episode is sponsored by:• Solutions of the Year - If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.

This Oklahoma city bet that remote workers would move to the city if offered a set of incentives, including cash. They were right.This episode is sponsored by:• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address. • Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

The big news that a billionaire had “given away” his company to fight climate change is actually part of a movement that is redefining the goals of business. This episode is sponsored by:• Solutions of the Year - If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size. • Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

Using art to redesign streets cut by half the rate of traffic crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists.This episode is sponsored by:• Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.• Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

Evanston, Illinois is sending checks — long before the debate even gets started at the federal level about whether reparations are possible.This episode is part of the Solutions of the Year series. If you are in search of solutions that make cities more just and equitable, then get a copy of Next City’s Solutions of the Year special issue magazine. To get your copy now, head to nextcity.org/22solutions and make a donation of any size.

Village Hearth in North Carolina is one example of LGBTQ seniors innovating ways of creating truly inclusive housing.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

Until recently, there wasn’t any standard definition of a city. Now researchers can finally make comparisons across countries and continents.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

When finding an affordable place to live seemed fanciful, these organizers formed a collective called Queer The Land and purchased housing together.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.The Bottom Line - Sign up for this newsletter exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.

This nonprofit shows foundations that their support isn’t about exporting some scarce resource; it’s about unleashing a community’s own plentiful potential. This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

Today on the show we’re talking about a travel guide — The Damron Guides. It was like a Green Book for LGBTQ Americans traveling the country and looking for safe spaces.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

No, it’s not more police. From Oakland to Newark, community violence intervention programs get results, and one researcher says they could be even more effective if fully supported. This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android

These beer lovers created a specialty line that just might help preserve lesbian culture — even as gathering spaces like lesbian bars disappear.This episode is sponsored by:The Bottom Line - Sign up for this newsletter exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.

The reality is that transgender women experience poverty rates as high as 30%. Rates of poverty are worst for Black and Latinx transgender people. For example, 41% of Black transgender Americans report having experienced homelessness. Two Californian cities are attempting to roll out guaranteed income programs specifically serving their transgender residents. This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

Libraries in New York City are proving you don’t need fines to get books returned. What can everyone learn from what’s working?

Hedge funds have quietly bought up local newspapers across the country. A movement of nonprofit newsrooms is countering corporate news. This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

What becomes possible when the public owns the bank? A city-owned bank could decide, for example, that it wants to support Black-owned businesses and others that have historically lacked access to credit. Now an American city is pioneering a future that prioritizes the public’s interest.This episode is sponsored by:The Bottom Line - Sign up for this newsletter exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.

The event is called “place-keeping” as it turns back a wave of anti-Asian hate that came with the pandemic, fights gentrification, and celebrates what makes Chinatown special.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

Heat is intensifying, thanks to climate change. A coalition of cities is pioneering a makeover for roads and rooftops that makes everything feel cooler. This episode is sponsored by:The Backyard Newsletter - The Backyard is a weekly email exploring solutions for problems related to tenants rights, inclusive communities and more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/backyard and find the orange bar to enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

The California cap-and-trade program is building up cash while lowering carbon emissions. We look at one way that money is being put to use.This episode is sponsored by:The Backyard Newsletter - The Backyard is a weekly email exploring solutions for problems related to tenants rights, inclusive communities and more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/backyard and find the orange bar to enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

The rising cost of homes in Evanston is driving gentrification and displacement. A worker-owned real estate developer wants to make housing more affordable by adding places to live — even in your backyard.This episode is sponsored by:The Backyard Newsletter - The Backyard is a weekly email exploring solutions for problems related to tenants rights, inclusive communities and more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/backyard and find the orange bar to enter your email address. Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

When decisions about whether to remove a child from a home are race-blind, fewer Black children end up in the system. This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Solutions of the Year, an 80-page print magazine exploring solutions for poverty, climate change, homelessness, and much more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

With a growing understanding that eviction is a cause of poverty, it’s imperative we find solutions that keep tenants in their homes. One Philadelphia program has found a way to reduce eviction filings by 75 percent.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Solutions of the Year, an 80-page print magazine exploring solutions for poverty, climate change, homelessness, and much more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

A bakery in Oakland isn’t owned by a person or profit-hungry investors. Instead it’s owned by something called a “perpetual purpose trust” where the majority owner is literally the business’ mission. Artisan Firebrand Bakery and other businesses like it are redefining what it means to be successful.This episode is sponsored by:The Bottom Line - Sign up for this newsletter exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.

A foundation in Vancouver decided to see what would happen if it gave a lump sum of cash to people experiencing homelessness. It changed their lives.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

We Could Stop Policing Homelessness and Start HelpingDescription: Many business districts hire security to “solve” homelessness. But these advocates argue they should spend less money on security and more on an idea for helping — a hygiene hub, which anyone can visit to get cleaned up, throw out trash, or even just use the bathroom.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

Guaranteed income programs are spreading fast. One designed by Black moms in Jackson, Mississippi has become the longest-running guaranteed income pilot in the nation.This episode is sponsored by:The Bottom Line - Sign up for this newsletter exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.Solutions of the Year, an 80-page print magazine exploring solutions for poverty, climate change, homelessness, and much more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

The push for equality has often been emboldened in Greensboro, North Carolina by its education system. We talk with historians, and with the chancellors of two Greensboro universities — UNC-Greensboro and NC A&T — about how a city realizes its full potential.Next City’s annual Vanguard conference was hosted in the city of Greensboro, where we learned about its past and the solutions that make it special. Action Greensboro was our partner in hosting the convening in September 2021.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

Tracing the origins of a city like Greensboro, North Carolina uncovers the character of the place it is today.  Next City’s annual Vanguard conference was hosted in the city of Greensboro, where we learned about its past and the solutions that make it special. Action Greensboro was our partner in hosting the convening in September 2021.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

Meet the co-founder of an organization working to dismantle the “oppression economy” and manifest the “liberation economy.”This episode is sponsored by:The Bottom Line - Sign up for this newsletter exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.Solutions of the Year, an 80-page print magazine exploring solutions for poverty, climate change, homelessness, and much more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

The North Carolina town of Princeville is considered by many to be the first ever founded in the United States by African-Americans. The town’s existence is threatened by the legacy of racism and the future of climate. Yet residents say it persists, in part, because of the value put on Black leadership.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Solutions of the Year, an 80-page print magazine exploring solutions for poverty, climate change, homelessness, and much more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

The open secret about philanthropy is that way more resources are put behind making money than giving it away. What we don’t always know is whether the money-making operation shares the same values as its grant-making.This episode is sponsored by:The Bottom Line - Sign up for this newsletter exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.Solutions of the Year, an 80-page print magazine exploring solutions for poverty, climate change, homelessness, and much more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

Having a criminal record stops plenty of people from getting their next job — even if they have a marijuana-related conviction, and even if what was once illegal in their state is now perfectly fine. But there is an algorithm for that, if only cities and states would use it to clear the records of thousands of people.  This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Solutions of the Year, an 80-page print magazine exploring solutions for poverty, climate change, homelessness, and much more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

A change in how banks do business caused an explosion of private companies becoming our landlords. One neighborhood in Los Angeles is part of a movement keeping the control of land and property out of giant corporations’ portfolios and in the hands of communities.This episode is sponsored by:The Bottom Line - Sign up for this newsletter exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.

Almost half of the stores that opened in 2020 was a Dollar Store. The pandemic might’ve contributed to the problem, but it’s not the only issue. Dollar Stores proliferate in low-income neighborhoods where fresh produce and other healthy food access are scarce. Some cities are stepping in to stop the phenomenon.This episode is sponsored by:The Bottom Line - Sign up for this newsletter exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

A new monument is designed to showcase the rich cultural history and beauty of the predominantly Black community in Crenshaw. A stop for the metro line is being added and usually the comes with gentrification and eradication of culture. So maybe the most critical goal of the project might be this: to show Los Angelenos and visitors to the city that the Crenshaw community—most famously portrayed on film in Akeelah and the Bee and Boyz n the Hood—isn’t a neighborhood to be passed through. It’s a destination worth traveling to. It’s a community that is worthy of art, beauty, economic investment, and most importantly—honor and respect.This episode is sponsored by:Next City Newsletter - Signing up for our newsletters is the best way to stay informed on the issues that matter. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/newsletter and enter your email address.Next City App - Downloading the Next City App is a smart way to stay informed. Turn on notifications and it’s easy to ensure you never miss a story. To download the app now, search for Next City in the Android or Apple store.

You’ve probably heard complaints about Uber and Lyft from drivers who spend all day working for the apps but who aren’t full-time employees. A group of drivers started asking, "Why don't we have our own app?" And from there, a new app that is 100% worker owned was born. It’s already live in the nation’s biggest competitive market — New York City.This episode is part of The Bottom Line, a series exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.This episode of Next City highlights one of our Solutions of the Year, an 80-page print magazine exploring solutions for poverty, climate change, homelessness, and much more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

ChiFresh Kitchen is a worker cooperative, which means the founders share equally in the management of the business and the profits. But those aren’t the only benefits they have in mind. The founders say they’re trying to empower formerly incarcerated women, give themselves a second chance, and show others they can do the same thing.This episode is part of The Bottom Line, a series exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.

Time is running out to reduce our carbon footprint. Did you know that 40% of carbon comes from buildings? Meanwhile there’s a startup called BlocPower that will replace your old heating and cooling systems with a new heat pump — even if you think the building can’t afford to pay for it.This episode is part of The Bottom Line, a series exploring scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The Bottom Line is made possible with support from Citi.This episode of Next City highlights one of our Solutions of the Year, an 80-page print magazine exploring solutions for poverty, climate change, homelessness, and much more. To subscribe now, head to nextcity.org/donate and make a donation of any size.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for homelessness. But there is a by-name database. “Built for Zero” is solving chronic homelessness, one person at a time. The key is that organizers ask each person what they need to get off the street.

Don’t listen to people who say our problems are too big to solve. We're here to set the narrative straight on a new podcast from Next City. Join us as we dive into the true tales of city-building superheroes like you. The ones care so much they HAVE to help their communities. Here at Next City, we cover stories straight from the streets about the issues that not enough people are talking about. Ever heard of a team of formerly incarcerated women started their own business when other employers turned them away? Or have you ever wondered why in some neighborhoods you can spot a dollar store on seemingly every block? What about homlessness in your city; are they doing enough? There are cities where the goal is ending homelessness and they have lessons to share as they head toward zero.We love trains at Next City. It seems like every urbanist loves a train? Join us on the truth train as we take it from city to city uncovering more stories like these on our new weekly podcast from Straw Hut Media, "Next City.'My name is Lucas Grindley, executive director at Next City, where we believe journalists have the power to amplify solutions and spread workable ideas.Each week I get to sit down with trailblazers to discuss urban issues that get overlooked. At the end of the day, it's all about focusing the world's attention on the good ideas that we hope will grow. Grab a seat from the bus, subway, light-rail, or whatever your transit-love may be and listen on the go as we spread solutions from one city to the Next City.