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How North Carolina’s Vietnamese Refugees Are Helping a New Wave of Afghans Resettle
This story was co-published with Triad City Beat as part of our joint Equitable Cities Reporting Fellowship For Racial Justice Narratives. Life was already chaotic when Mir Habibullah Akhagar and his family arrived in Washington, DC. They were one of hundreds of thousands of Afghan people fleeing the Taliban regime, which took over Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, in Aug. 2021. His family’s evacuation to the U.S. took weeks to coordinate: weeks living in cramped hotel rooms, dodging heavy surveillance and catching long flights to make it to America.
I’ve Been Homeless In Oregon. I Know the Supreme Court’s Ruling Will Only Worsen Homelessness.
When community supervision in Benton County, Oregon enforced homelessness on me, I had two choices: Invest in a tent, car, RV, old school bus, etc., or rent a motel room until my money ran out. My options for motels were limited to The Rodeway Inn or the Super 8, both...
The Future of Human Transit
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...
Minnesota’s New Green Bank Is Powering a Net-Zero, Mixed-Use Development With Affordable Housing
An artist's rendering of the planned residential development at The Heights, a mixed-use development slated to bring 1,000 living wage jobs,1,000 affordable housing units, and strong environmental benefits to Saint Paul's East Side. (Image by LHB Corp) For nearly a century, Hillcrest Golf Club was home for golf aficionados in...
Chicago’s “People’s Cooling Army” Is Giving Tenants Free Air Conditioners
Perhaps the most basic demand of a tenant is that the living space they pay for is, in fact, livable. Yet as extreme heat becomes the norm, organizers claim that for many low-income Chicago renters, this basic condition is not being met. An initiative called the People’s Cooling Army, launched...
Cities Want To Give Workers Heat Breaks. States Are Stopping Them.
This summer’s most recent heat wave has broken temperature records in nearly 50 cities across the southeast. As these blistering temperatures move east, cities across the Northeast are bracing for triple digits while Houston residents are preparing for scorching heat without power. Millions of Americans are suffering under a heat advisory, meaning that exposure to the elements for just an hour or two could severely impact their health. Across the country, cities are encouraging residents to stay inside and are opening up cooling centers wherever possible to help prevent deadly heat stroke.
Urban Farms Are a Lifeline For Food-Insecure Residents. Will New Jersey Finally Take Them Seriously?
This story was co-published part with The Jersey Bee as part of our joint Equitable Cities Reporting Fellowship, examining segregation in Newark and Essex County, New Jersey. In Montclair’s Third Ward is a tiny farm with big community value. In the summertime, Montclair Community Farms transforms its less-than-10,000-square-foot lot...
The Weekly Wrap: In Oakland, An Experiment in Community Traffic Enforcement
Welcome back to The Weekly Wrap, our Friday roundup of stories that explain the problems oppressing people in cities and elevate the solutions that bring us closer to economic, environmental and social justice. Oakland Will Test Community Traffic Enforcement. Oakland’s city council approved a pilot project that will use resident...
The Government Is Failing To Meet Refugees’ Basic Needs. We’re Picking Up the Slack.
Yasmeen Zargarpur (center), co-founder of One Community Social Services, stands in front of the organization's warehouse of supplies for resettling refugees. (Photo courtesy One Community Social Services) In the days after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, the U.S. military evacuated tens of thousands of vulnerable Afghans to U.S....
This City Covered Up a Contaminated Park For Decades. Now What?
This story was co-published with Triad City Beat as part of our joint Equitable Cities Reporting Fellowship For Racial Justice Narratives. It’s a hot and humid afternoon in Greensboro, North Carolina. School just let out for the day, and the faint tune of an ice cream truck jingles in the distance. A big, yellow school bus rolls through the Morningside Homes neighborhood. It squeaks to a stop, and a little boy jumps out and into the arms of his sister and cousin.
Can We Make Homebuying Permanently Affordable?
The first home sold as part of Richmond's Maggie Walker Community Land Trust. (Photo courtesy Maggie Walker Community Land Trust) 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.
It’s Time For Commercial Landlords and Cities to Face the Music
A version of this op-ed was originally published on PostAlley.org and has been adapted with permission. Blank street walls and empty storefronts have become a crisis in American downtowns, attracting undesirable activities and driving away customers who no longer feel safe traversing sidewalks. How did we get here?. A decade...
A Proven Model for Supporting Maternal Health in Philly
This story was co-published by Next City and MindSite News, a nonprofit publication focused on mental health. When Yarilette visited the emergency room in Fall of 2020, she couldn’t believe she was pregnant. She was 19 years old, in her first year at community college, and living with a friend. She felt she wasn’t ready, but once a doctor confirmed that she was nearing the end of her first trimester, she did the only thing she could think of: She put school on pause and tried to make more money.
The Federal Funding To Make Clean Energy Equitable Is Here. It’s Up To Cities To Do the Right Thing.
A clean-energy revolution is upon us, as cost-saving solar power and other green technologies become more widely available. But not everyone can take advantage of these upgrades. Low- and moderate-income families may not be able to afford the upfront cost of solar panels or energy efficiency improvements that would save them money in the long run.
The Real Consequences of Not Funding POC Arts
The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, New York. (Photo by Ajay Suresh / CC BY 2.0) Smaller arts organizations are often led by people of color. And the trend is that they’re often underfunded through their city governments in comparison to their bigger, whiter counterparts. In this episode, we hear from two leaders who are dreaming up new ways to fund POC-led arts organizations: Stephanie Cunningham, executive director of Museum Hue and Marco Carrión, executive director at El Puente.
Pennsylvania Legalized Speed Cameras. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.
The results are in: Speed cameras save lives, according to a study from the University of Pennsylvania. This is great news for cities and states seeking to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries as pedestrian deaths remain staggeringly high. The success of the pilot is building momentum for more speed cameras...
Chicago’s Unique Bike Giveaway Program Is a Win for Mobility Justice
When the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) launched its Bike Chicago program in the summer of 2022, the city began working on its goal to promote active transportation and target “mobility hardship” by injecting working-class communities with free access to cycling. Now, a report on the first two...
What Congestion Pricing Did For One City
In the wake of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul derailing plans for congestion pricing in Manhattan, StreetsblogNYC editor-in-chief Gersh Kuntzman and Streetfilms videographer Clarence Eckerson visit Stockholm, Sweden to see how implementing a congestion charge changed Stockholm for the better – from visible differences in traffic to the city’s flourishing pedestrianization programs.
I’m the Mayor of St. Paul. Here’s How Our City Is Erasing $100 Million in Medical Debt.
We all deserve the right to access life-saving medical care without being trapped by staggering costs that leave us unable to pay for our housing, food and other basic needs. Over the next year, 43,000 residents of Saint Paul, Minnesota will receive a letter in the mail telling them that their medical debt – the crippling hospital bills that have been hanging over their head for years – have been paid off.
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