(Photo by iStrfry , Marcus / Unsplash) People experiencing homelessness need stable housing. In Houston and New Orleans, practitioners have designed homelessness response systems that prioritize housing over shelter stays. These systems also include other services. In this episode, we hear from Next City’s Housing Correspondent Roshan Abraham, who explains the “Housing First” approach to ending homelessness. “It’s the philosophy that whatever crisis an unhoused person is facing, step one for getting that person into a more stable living situation,” he says. After that comes ..read more

Unsplash+ April is Financial Literacy Month, part of a national campaign to raise awareness about the importance of financial education in maintaining financial well-being. It’s true that financial education is an important component of building wealth, but the reality is that it does little to address the racial and gender disparities in wealth. White people tend to have more wealth than Black people; men tend to have more wealth than women; Black women tend to have lower levels of wealth, especially in later life. A finding that gets less attention is that Black women with limited economic ..read more

Back in 2008, the Congress for New Urbanism released its first report in its ongoing series, Freeways Without Futures. The report looked at 10 highways that were reaching the end of their designed lifespan and were being targeted by local activists for teardowns. Of those, three have successfully been removed 16 years later: Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct, the Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx, and Route 34 in New Haven, Connecticut. What separates those effective highway removal campaigns from those in other cities? “There are some common threads and lessons that local leaders and activists ca ..read more

(Photo by Ev / Unsplash) I’m going to tell you something you already know: Every human being is entitled to a roof over their head and a place to sleep at night. This is an indisputable truth, part of the catechism of humanistic virtue. In a world that lived up to its self-professed ideals of opportunity, any condition of homelessness would be rare, brief and non-recurring. The reality is cultural attitudes toward impoverished people – fueled by toxic portrayals, fear mongering in the media and systematic dehumanization – have made homelessness not a community problem to be solved, but an ind ..read more

Block Island Wind Farm, America's first commercial offshore wind farm, went online in 2017 near Block Island, Rhode Island. (Photo by Shaun Dakin / Unsplash) Off the northeast coast of the U.S., a budding offshore wind industry has led some to see the region as the “Saudi Arabia of wind.” As promising as it may have seemed for our fight to mitigate the effects of climate change, a recent spate of problems has laid bare the fallacies inherent in the way America builds renewable energy. It’s time to rethink our approach to the energy transition and to climate change. New York State was in the n ..read more

(Photo by Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images via Grist) This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. Across the nation, strip malls, schools, factories, and other big, nonresidential buildings bask in the sun — a powerful, and too often wasted, source of electricity that could serve the neighborhoods that surround them. Installing solar panels on these vast rooftops could provide one-fifth of the power that disadvantaged communities need, bringing renewable energy to people who can least afford it, according to a study by Stanf ..read more

(Photo by Zalo / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Welcome back to The Weekly Wrap! Next month, we’re hosting our first-ever film festival and we’re super excited about it. The Ecometropolis Film Festival will feature films that tackle the most pressing climate issues of our time — clean energy, land stewardship and sea-level rise. Click the link above to watch the trailers and sign up to watch them with us. Hope to see you there! Poughkeepsie Vacancy Study Sets Up Rent Regulation The city of Poughkeepsie released the results of a vacancy study on April 16, showing that 3.96% of units in the 112 properties e ..read more

(Photo by Los Muertos Crew / Pexels) Whether it’s a homeowner wanting to install a heat pump, a restaurant looking to invest in solar panels, or a neighborhood organization hoping to add local green energy capacity, cost and ease of financing pose barriers to improving climate resilience for many people businesses, and organizations nationwide. Too often, traditional banks are skeptical of or have not previously supported climate investments. Filling this gap requires intentional policymaking, which the Biden Administration has prioritized through its new Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF ..read more

(Photo by Li-An Lim / Unsplash) The Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund is finally here, weighing in at a whopping $27 billion. But as much as those of us in these spaces have been waiting for this, few of those who benefit from this massive federal investment will ever know how it helped them. It’s not all going to happen overnight. But – building by building, project by project — households as well as businesses will make investments that lower their energy costs and reduce their carbon footprint. They won’t necessarily know it, and they don’t need ..read more

Learning midwives Kandice White (far left), Nikiya Ellis-Chavis (center left) and Audrey Gentry-Brown (far right) with fourth-generation midwife Racha Tahani Lawler-Queen (center right). (Photo by Eric White)    In a world shaped by modern technologies and conveniences, some traditions and legacies are still being passed down through generations like sacred heirlooms. Just look at Racha Tahani Lawler-Queen, the great-great-granddaughter of four generations of Black midwives. “My grandma Mary is our midwife matriarch at 93 years young,” Lawler-Queen tells Next City. “S ..read more