This story was produced with support from the Solutions Journalism Network’s How Government Responds Innovation Fund.

Camron Bridgford was eating dinner outside at a Miami restaurant when she saw a strange sight: two sidewalk delivery robots in a standoff, each one blocked by the other.

“One finally had to back out and let the other one through,” says Bridgford, senior principal at Cityfi, who worked on a 2021 landmark sidewalk delivery robot pilot program in four cities.

In the five years since that program, sidewalk bots, dubbed Personal Delivery Devices or PDDs, have gotten smaller and slower as the market consolidates, according to Bridgford. But the PDDs are still far from perfect: Even as they roll into new cities like Vancouver, bots are still smashing into glass bus shelters and getting stuck in snow.

Companies like Coco, Serve, Starship, and Robot.com say that their devices are right-sizing food delivery and offering an alternative to expensive and polluting motor vehicles that clog the streets. Critics counter that they block pedestrians, especially people using wheelchairs or other mobility devices, from using the sidewalk.

That’s on top of existing sidewalk regulation challenges, including questions over who pays for maintenance and repairs.

“You’ll have residents at community engagement events saying, ‘Why are we worried about this when I want my kid to be able to walk to school, and there’s broken sidewalks, and they can’t even get there safely that way?’” Bridgford says. “Tech can come in and want to solve issues. But if you have things like missing sidewalks, you have poor curb ramps, you have maintenance issues — those ultimately were the biggest structural barriers.”

Nor have cities figured out how to manage or price all the competing interests at the curb, including goods delivery, sidewalk bots, and parking, she notes.

As the PDD market consolidates, cities like Washington, D.C. and West Hollywood are working with companies to track sidewalk issues and raise new sources of revenue. Could delivery robot companies sharing data and revenue to help bring about accessibility improvements be the key to good robot-city relations — and to more human-friendly cities?

Sidewalk robots as disability allies?

For all the backlash, complaints about robots are quite rare in Santa Monica, says Trevor Thomas, who manages the city’s PDD program. Coco, the sole operator, deploys 50 to 100 bots.

“Every once in a while, we get a complaint of somebody who has been treated brusquely by a PDD on the sidewalk,” he says. “But it’s honestly pretty infrequent that we see one of those complaints.”

Representatives from different cities have been meeting to talk about PDD policies and how to regulate the public-right-of-way. Top of mind are data-sharing requirements, something that cities are still figuring out. In contrast with autonomous vehicle companies like Waymo, sidewalk robot companies have proven more willing to provide cities with data — including sharing information to help local governments target accessibility issues.

At least two operators, Coco and Robot.com, are investing in tools and partnerships to make sidewalks more accessible for people with disabilities.

Coco recently announced its partnership with GPS app BlindSquare to provide real-time navigation for people who are blind or low-vision. As Coco bots navigate sidewalk hazards like poorly parked e-scooters and cars blocking the sidewalk, they can relay that information to the app. Once the obstacle is gone, BlindSquare users can mark the obstruction as cleared.

“We’re all helping each other navigate the sidewalk space,” says Carl Hansen, head of government relations at Coco. He stresses that the data that robots collect is “completely anonymized.”

The feature started in Helsinki with a grant from the European Union and is live in four U.S. cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Jersey City.

Robot.com, formerly known as Kiwibot, is collecting detailed sidewalk obstruction data in D.C. and Arlington, Virginia.

“We have come to understand that sidewalks are sacred,” says co-founder David Rodriguez, who takes a hardline approach to sidewalk accessibility. If a sidewalk is too narrow for a robot to pass someone using a wheelchair, then robots shouldn’t be on that sidewalk: “We don’t think that’s respectful,” he says. Rodriguez declined to specify a minimum width.

The sidewalk mapping program tracks sidewalk issues by type and also rates the severity of each issue. Last year, Robot.com captured about 35,000 total data points, including ADA hazards like dips and heaves in the sidewalks.

D.C. is requiring this information from its only operator, Robot.com, says Rodriguez. Today, more cities require operators to share data using Mobility Data Specification (MDS) to track where robots are operating in the public-right-of-way. So far, cities don’t appear to be using sidewalk data to make accessibility improvements.

One exception: Three curb ramps on bustling Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, Los Angeles. Coco, which is based in Venice, found that the missing curb ramps turned certain blocks into “islands” for people using wheelchairs, scooters and strollers – and for the company’s robots.

“Rather than prioritize fixing [all the ramps], we could say, ‘Hey, based on our routing technology, if you added one here, here and here, this whole area becomes accessible to wheelchair users and those that need curbs, like Coco,” says Hansen.

The path to repair, however, followed the usual pattern: Coco reached out to the local council district office, who in turn coordinated with city departments to add the curb ramps.

In the future, sidewalk bots could serve as pedestrian guinea pigs, flagging issues to cities or even changing conditions in real-time. In Helinski, Coco is partnering with Swarco, a traffic light company, to track the number of pedestrians waiting at intersections.

“[The robot] can autonomously communicate with the traffic light. And if there’s some threshold of crowd waiting, [it can] add extra time to the pedestrian crossing so that more folks have to have time to get across at that intersection.”

Where robots are paying for curb ramps

Sidewalk data might be valuable, but what about cold, hard cash to repair sidewalks? West Hollywood is implementing what might be the first program of its kind to use fees from robots to improve sidewalks.

When the PDD pilot first began in 2020, the city’s license agreement for operators didn’t include any proverbial “sticks,” explains Paige Portwood, associate planner for West Hollywood. The new contract includes annual fees and penalties for ADA and geofencing violations.

West Hollywood also requires Serve and Coco to share advertising revenue at the rate of $4 per device per day. All advertising revenue, fines, and program fees will go into a special fund for accessibility improvements.

“We’re really excited about that,” says Portwood. “It’s only been three months since we’ve implemented this kind of model.”

It’s still too early to tell how much the new program will raise for sidewalks, but a December report estimates it could generate $40,000 to $80,000 per year.

Meanwhile, companies are counting on ad dollars to make sidewalk delivery competitive with more traditional forms of delivery. Hansen believes that revenue sharing with local governments needs to be “right-sized.”

“If those dollars are linked back with infrastructure improvements and other things in the pedestrian space, that can be very cool,” Hansen says. “We would love to see stuff like that.”

There is currently no mechanism for an operator to directly fund a curb ramp, as cities struggle to come up with money to fix crumbling sidewalks.

Instead, Coco and Robot.com are banking on the value of the data that they share with cities.

What data might robots capture in the future that cities could use to improve the public realm? Cities’ ability to receive and process data is only becoming more sophisticated.

“It’s pretty wild what the devices can do,” says Portwood. “They have sensors, they have cameras.”

At a recent transportation tech summit, someone suggested mounting air quality devices to the robots.

“Cities often have these, but they’re mounted up pretty high,” Hansen says. “They’re like, ‘Man, having this on a Coco as it traveled through the city would be really interesting, because you’re at the same height as a child, breathing in the same air.’”

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. If you enjoy this newsletter, share it with a friend or colleague and tell them to subscribe.

Lower Speed Limits Aren’t Noticeably Slowing City Traffic, Survey Shows

The prospect of lowering urban speed limits to increase road safety often draws opposition due to fears of traffic congestion. A new analysis of 38 cities across 19 European countries found no overall negative impact on congestion, traffic volume, or journey times due to 30 kilometer-per-hour zones in residential neighborhoods, school zones, and historic centers.

Instead, the Eurocities Pulse survey found that 75% of cities reported fewer road deaths and injuries after reducing speeds and 91% saw at least one broader positive impact on urban life, including fewer accidents, less noise pollution, cleaner air, and increases in walking and cycling.

Crucially, the survey also found that political and public opposition to these measures dropped significantly following their implementation, as did legal and regulatory difficulties.

Louisiana Republicans Move To Remove Black Districts

Following the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act and in particular its protections against diluting Black voting power, Louisiana is moving forward with a plan to get rid of two congressional seats in majority-Black districts, the Associated Press reports. The governor has also said he will move to redraw district lines before the 2028 election cycle.

Tennessee has made similar moves since April’s Supreme Court ruling. In Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled this week that a lower court-mandated congressional map that gave the state a second Black representative could be voided. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp is using the Supreme Court decision to propose an election overhaul that could make it harder for Democrats to maintain power in Atlanta.

Private Utilities’ Dark Money Funds Opposition to Public Power

The Guardian reports that private utilities are funding astroturf “grassroots” groups to shut down campaigns to switch municipalities to public utilities amid increased interest in public power. Public utilities generally have lower costs than private companies, which typically function as regional monopolies.

One private utility company in Ann Arbor called DTE Energy runs an astroturf group claiming that public utilities will lead to higher taxes. An industry consultant linked to the DTE campaign is also behind other campaigns, including the successful defeat of a public power ballot referendum in Maine.

In some cases, private utility consultants had trouble finding people to advocate for private utilities and,“the industry allegedly recruited some of their canvassers from the parking lots of plasma centers where people donate plasma for money,” according to The Guardian.

New Fed Chair Confirmed

Former top Fed official and multi-millionaire Kevin Warsh was confirmed as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, which sets federal interest rates and is tasked with reducing inflation, the Associated Press reports.

The Fed has a 2% inflation target which has been surpassed for five years; the inflation rate is currently at 3.8%, partly due to the Trump administration’s war with Iran, which has spiked gas prices. The previous Fed chair, Jerome Powell, was hesitant to lower interest rates too quickly and faced a retaliatory investigation from the Trump administration after the president sought faster rate cuts.

Members of the board serve 14-year terms and consist of Obama, Biden, and Trump appointees, so the chair will not be able to unilaterally raise or lower interest rates, but his views carry significant influence with the body.

Kentucky Rolls Out Free Childcare Pilot

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is planning to pilot Pre-K For All in two of the state’s counties, according to WEKU.

Beshear, a Democrat, proposed universal Pre-K for the state’s four-year-olds in the 2025 budget but the plan was shot down by the state’s Republican-controlled General Assembly. Beshear will instead launch the pilots through an executive order, choosing two smaller counties whose combined enrollment is around 3,000 students.

“I’ve seen that students who have the opportunity to attend preschool, they have much more success in school, they’re much more likely to graduate from high school, and they are much better prepared to enter the workforce,” one county superintendent said when the plan was announced.

MORE NEWS

• New study highlights importance of home repair assistance programs. VPM

• Texas county pauses data center construction in rural areas for a year. Texas Tribune

• California’s plastic recycling rules please no one. CalMatters

• What life is like near booming warehouse hubs outside Chicago. The New York Times

• Riverside Church divests from Vanguard managed funds following SPLC decision. The Riverside Church

• Twin Cities tenant unions say “evict ICE, not us.” PE Stakeholder

• If World Cup hotel reservations are low, does that mean soccer fans plan to camp around Kansas City? The Beacon News

• After a year of challenges, a community food network faces a new one: Spiking fuel prices. The Beacon News

• Congressman Frost introduces bill to defend manufactured home communities from Wall Street. PE Stakeholder

OPPORTUNITIES & RESOURCES

• DUE TODAY: Wells Fargo and Enterprise are launching a new cycle of their Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, a $2 million grant opportunity for scalable housing innovations in design, construction, finance, service delivery, and programs. Apply by May 15.

• The Sparkplug Foundation is offering grants to support early-stage programs that focus on music programs, community organizing, and education. Apply by May 22.

• New Profit is launching Connected Futures, a Catalyze cohort for organizations that bridge divides and bring people together to solve problems collectively. Selected organizations will receive a one-year $100,000 unrestricted grant, a $10,000 grant for leadership development, and strategic advisory support. Submit a discovery form by May 26.

• Hispanics in Philanthropy’s Líderes Fellowship is accepting applications from mid-career Latine, Afrolatines, and Native leaders working in philanthropy and nonprofits in the American Southwest. Apply by May 31.

• Arbor Rising is seeking to support nonprofits that are focused on building pathways out of poverty. Grantees will receive $125,000 in unrestricted funds and 200-300 hours of capacity-building consulting. Apply by June 9.

• The Decolonizing Wealth Project is accepting applications for its Indigenous Earth Fund, which supports advocacy campaigns and movement-building efforts that center Indigenous solutions to the climate crisis. Apply by June 11.

• Envision Resilience is opening applications for its National Design Studio Grant for schools running design studios focused on community-centered approaches to climate challenges. Apply by June 19.

Zoning is having a moment. Americans are increasingly aware that zoning helps create and perpetuate disparities in wealth, income, and opportunity, and segregation of neighborhoods by race and class. Whether this is or was the intent of those who operate zoning systems, the results are clear: Zoning is a very effective tool to exclude what we do not want in a particular location, and we have overused that tool in damaging ways.

Many analyses have shown that changes to zoning use controls and development standards – especially those that allow wider varieties of housing – could promote greater affordability and equity. Much less has been written about the key important role that zoning procedures play in creating more equitable zoning outcomes for historically disadvantaged communities.

But my 40 years of experience revising zoning systems throughout the U.S. has taught me that those procedures are just as important as the rules governing what can be built and where.

When the importance of zoning procedures is discussed, it is often limited to calls for broader public notice to make sure that “everyone affected is in the room” when zoning decisions are made. But there is much more we need to do, as outlined in the American Planning Association’s 2023 Equity in Zoning Policy Guide and detailed in my recent book, An Even Better Way to Zone.

Better, more inclusive notice is an important first step. Cities as diverse as San Diego and Detroit now notify renters as well as property owners for most zoning decisions, and many other cities are following suit.

But biases in zoning procedures run deeper than that. Even when everyone is invited (and understands the invitation), those with better English skills, a better understanding of local government decision-making, and greater ability to attend hearings are often more successful at defending their neighborhoods from changes that are needed in the community as a whole.

To counteract those biases, a second important, but often controversial, change is required: We need to remove public hearing requirements and discretionary reviews for projects that comply with objective zoning and subdivision regulations. I call these “late-in-the-game hearings,” because in most cases they are intended to review the details of a project that already meets zoning requirements.

That’s right. Fewer public hearings can lead to more equitable zoning outcomes and a fairer distribution of housing and employment opportunities. That’s because fewer public hearings means fewer opportunities for subjective decision-making about projects that already reflect what the zoning rules say we want to see happen.

Originally, zoning policy offered few opportunities for discretionary decisions on development approval after rezonings have been approved. But since World War II, we have multiplied the opportunities for subjective decision-making, and that is a major source of zoning inequity. Examples include discretionary site plan and building form and design reviews based on subjective criteria. Albany, New York, has removed its public hearing requirement for Minor Development Plan Reviews, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, has done the same for its Development Plan Approvals.

But removing late-in-the-game public hearings requires that two types of hard work happen first. The first is to ensure that substantive zoning regulations reflect key citywide and neighborhood planning goals. If the zoning rules accurately reflect what will promote “public health safety and welfare” as embodied in the adopted comprehensive plan, then there is no need for a separate discussion of whether individual projects that comply with those rules will promote those same goals.

The second key is to ensure that criteria used in rezoning, subdivision, and other development decisions are clear and objective rather than vague and subjective. That means removing words like “harmonious,” “appropriate,” “character,” “contextual,” “compatible,” and “consistent” from the criteria used to make development approval decisions and replacing them with objective statements as to what is acceptable in different areas and situations.

The use of vague terms often leads to arguments as to what they mean and whether the proposed project complies. Some residents have a lot more time, money, and ability to engage in those arguments, particularly when needed types of development are unwanted in their neighborhoods.

But the harm embedded in vague zoning criteria is even deeper than that. The prospect of having to argue about whether a proposed development complies with subjective criteria can discourage smaller and less well-financed builders from pursuing a needed project. Many firms owned by disadvantaged populations, women, and veterans fall into this category.

It is far better to debate how to replace subjective with objective terms once than to debate compliance over and over again for each project. Bloomington, Indiana’s General Compliance Criteria and Rochester, Minnesota’s criteria for General Development Plan approval do a good job of avoiding those vague criteria.

A third way to make zoning procedure fairer is to limit appeals of late-in-the-game zoning decisions. While an appeal process is clearly needed because people make mistakes, in recent years there has been a rise in the use of appeal procedures to delay needed projects and get “a second bite at the apple” – i.e., a chance for a second decisionmaker to make a different decision based on the same facts.

Obviously, vague and subjective appeal criteria feed this problem, because reasonable decisionmakers can easily disagree about what vague terms mean. Appeals should only be accepted if the appellant cites a specific objective rule or requirement in the zoning regulations that has been ignored or misapplied by staff. Prince George’s County, Virginia’s criteria for review appeals by the Board of Appeals is consistent with this approach.

In addition, the appeal should be “on the record” — based on a review of the same information that was available to the original decisionmaker. Appeals are not intended to be opportunities to introduce new evidence.

Finally, if at all possible, the appeal should go to a hearing officer or someone experienced in making decisions based on evidence in the record, rather than to elected officials who may be more subject to public pressure. Denver, Colorado, has long followed this approach.

It’s no secret that zoning and development approval procedures perpetuate major gaps in opportunity, income, health, and wealth for historically disadvantaged communities. But cities and community leaders should also know that simple, behind-the-scenes procedural reforms like these can make a real difference in outcomes.

On a cold morning in Minneapolis last winter, one of us stood outside a local school to ensure that all children and families could move safely to and from school without fear. Bill was there not as an official or community organizer, but as a concerned neighbor alongside other parents, volunteers, and community members.

ICE’s brutalization of our people in the Twin Cities drew plenty of attention in the media and elsewhere. But what mattered most that cold day, and so many other days this winter, was not quite as public. It was what happened somewhat invisibly: the networks that formed and solidified, the neighbors checking in on one another, the volunteers coordinating behind the scenes, the nonprofits and small businesses organizing in real time.

These networks existed in nascent form before the federal invasion of Minnesota. Under federal pressure, they only became stronger, more hyper-local, and more resilient.

What emerged in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and what continues today, offers a crucial lesson that local leaders across the country cannot afford to ignore.

Protecting a free and civil society requires three pillars working in concert: brave people, willing organizations, and robust public space. The Twin Cities didn’t build these overnight. But when the moment came, all three were ready.

Democracy depends on civil society

A functioning democracy requires more than laws and elections. It requires people moving freely, encountering one another, speaking and participating in shared civic life. The authors of the Constitution understood this, and thus the right to assemble was outlined in the First Amendment.

Democracy, in some cases, depends upon the existence of places where civic life could unfold.

Violence empties these public spaces when federal agents are allowed to determine who does and does not belong. The impact of our communities’ fear ripples outwards. Speech contracts, connection weakens, trust erodes.

Public space does more than host civic life; it produces the relationships that sustain it. The trust, familiarity, and informal networks that emerge from everyday encounters in parks, sidewalks, schools, and commercial corridors are what make rapid, coordinated civic action like that in the Twin Cities possible.

In other words, the ability of a community to respond, organize, and protect itself is not built in a moment of crisis. It is a foundation built over time, in the shared spaces where people come to know one another. In the Twin Cities, three interconnected pillars uphold that foundation.

The human network

The most visible element of the Twin Cities response was people showing up.

While ICE targeted Black, Brown, and vulnerable communities, volunteers organized school watches. Neighbors maintained a presence in parks and along key street corridors and sidewalks. “Commuters” tracked federal enforcement activity across neighborhoods, sharing information in real time.

Mutual aid systems operated in parallel. Volunteers delivered food and supplies to households sheltering in place. Others coordinated rides to medical appointments or immigration check-ins. This network operated school by school, block by block, park by park. And it was entirely voluntary.

The speed and scale of this mobilization were not incidental. They were the product of a civic culture shaped by years of organizing, high levels of civic participation, a dense nonprofit ecosystem, and strong immigrant communities with deep traditions of organizing and mutual support. Widescale individual and organizational response to the murder of George Floyd further strengthened these networks, creating relationships and capacities that could be activated again when needed.

There is also a less discussed dimension: the personal impact of participation. Showing up for neighbors is not only protective—it is connective. For Bill himself, it has been cathartic to do this. In moments of uncertainty, civic action became a way to reassert belonging, human connection, and shared purpose.

The connective tissue

People alone are not enough. What allowed the human network to function at scale so effectively was a second pillar: organizations and communications systems built over years.

Nonprofits and advocacy groups across the Twin Cities had spent years building trust, relationships, and operational capacity. When the moment came, their networks could be activated quickly and effectively. Their volunteers were not starting from scratch, and to some extent they could plug into (and adapt) existing systems.

Small, locally-owned businesses also played a critical role, offering places to gather, organize, and sustain community presence. In many cases, they did so before formal political responses materialized, often at significant financial and personal risk.

These systems and organizations were reinforced by a decentralized but highly effective communication infrastructure. Signal groups, real-time alert systems, license plate tracking, supply coordination, and fundraising platforms created a shared operational picture across neighborhoods. Information moved quickly and resources followed. This infrastructure did not emerge spontaneously. It was built incrementally, carefully, through prior investments in organizations, tools, and relationships.

For local leaders, the implication is clear: supporting community-based organizations is not peripheral to governance, but central to the resilience and success of civil society.

Our common ground

The third pillar needed to protect civic society and democracy is the ground we stand on. People and networks organize in service of something: the ability to move freely through shared space, to gather, to encounter others, to live publicly. Public space is where civic life happens. Without it, the other pillars cannot reach their full potential.

In the Twin Cities, community members stationed on sidewalks, outside schools, and in parks were not only protecting individuals. They were maintaining the conditions for public life to continue. This represents a shift in how the concept of public safety is understood.

Traditionally, the protection of public space has been assigned almost exclusively to formal enforcement systems. The model that emerged here is different: resident-led, relational, and rooted in place. But this approach also exposes a tension that local leaders must confront.

The Twin Cities has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to mobilize people and networks, and this mobilization of people is essential. However, ensuring all neighborhoods have access to well-maintained, vibrantly programmed, welcoming and engaging public spaces is equally essential.

Minneapolis and St. Paul are nationally known for having rich public realms, but they also have some of the worst racial disparities in the nation. The cities have been and continue to be difficult places for people of color; the federal invasion is just the latest example of how the inequity is working.

Our environment has the potential to be used as a foundation for change, but it requires political will. It requires a willingness to disrupt status quo investment patterns, prioritize civic infrastructure, and commit sustained resources to the spaces that anchor public life.

An invitation and a warning

The lessons we have learned are not unique to the Twin Cities. We believe they are transferable, if and only if local leaders adopt these priorities before it is too late:

Invest in people. Supporting the more radical conditions that allow civic networks, including immigrant communities, neighborhood associations, and informal organizing structures, to form and thrive is critical. Early investments and planning are necessary, as systems change cannot happen overnight.

Strengthen the connective tissue. More varied sources of funding and support for the nonprofit organizations and systems that coordinate community response and provide services also enables the local infrastructure that allows information, resources, and support to move quickly and effectively in a crisis.

Bolster public space. The parks, libraries, trails and community centers in every community, what we call civic infrastructure, should be treated with the same seriousness of purpose as physical infrastructure like roads and utilities. Investing in design, programming, and management of these places will make shared spaces accessible, safe and welcoming across divides of race, class, age and belief, and will provide places for people to connect and organize in a crisis.

Those 2,200 federal agents did not leave the Twin Cities to return to their homes. They are relocated elsewhere, and what happened here can still happen in other cities. Our road to economic and social recovery is long. Local leaders can and should invest in laying the groundwork to ensure that the worst outcomes can be forestalled and resisted.

From the Twin Cities, the message is one of both caution and solidarity. This work is difficult. It is exhausting. And it is deeply meaningful. For policymakers, civic leaders, and people who love their communities, the time to build these systems is not when the crisis arrives. It is now.

When 19-year-old C.J. Kesner moved into The Mothership six months ago, he had already cycled through multiple relatives’ homes across three states. Disagreements and broken trust had left him without a stable place to live.

Now living at The Mothership, a youth homelessness shelter model that opened two years ago in Denver, Kesner has a bed to sleep in. He also sees a therapist, joins group activities with other residents, can access medical care, and has a case manager who placed him on a waitlist for housing serving people with autism.

“It’s a warm, safe place to go and be welcomed under the wings of other people,” Kesner says, adding that he feels like he’s getting back on his feet for the first time in years. And recent data suggests the facility’s Housing First model helps youth like Kesner transition out of homelessness significantly faster and cheaper than more traditional options, offering a potential solution that other homeless service providers can adopt.

“This has reinvented shelter, and we should be doing it for everybody, everywhere,” says Christina Carlson, CEO of Urban Peak, the local nonprofit that runs The Mothership.

Urban Peak was founded in 1988 to provide temporary daytime shelter to homeless youth in Denver. The nonprofit has since grown to serve more than 1,000 youths per year, providing services ranging from case management and housing navigation to supportive services.

In March, Urban Peak published the results of an independent study by data analytics firm QREM, which found that homeless youths are exiting The Mothership to permanent housing within 33 days on average at a cost of just $7,812 per youth. For comparison, a new housing voucher program targeted toward homeless youth costs about $10,000 per voucher, The Colorado Sun reported.

The study, commissioned by Urban Peak and completed last fall, analyzed data from 2,589 individuals Urban Peak served between Jan. 1, 2017, and June 30, 2025. “The Mothership is helping youth reach positive permanent housing outcomes on average three times faster than the rate seen before the Mothership was operational,” analysts concluded in their report, adding that they were “confident that the reason for this increased rate is due to the building itself and the way programs and services can be delivered to the youth” within the building.

Addressing youth homelessness

Youth homelessness is one of the most complex social issues cities face. Children, adolescents and teens can become homeless for similar reasons as adults, like leaving an abusive home, but many services and shelters are not designed to meet the needs of young people.

Defining youth homelessness is also challenging. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines youth homelessness as anyone under the age of 24 who lacks a fixed and stable place to sleep. The Department of Education includes youth who have run away from home, live in motels, and are doubled up with friends or family. States also have their own definitions of youth homelessness, which can further complicate the matter.

Altogether, there are roughly 4.2 million homeless individuals aged 13 to 25 nationwide, many of whom are homeless without a parent or legal guardian. That’s according to a 2018 report from the Voices of Youth Count, the most recent survey data.

The Colorado Department of Education estimates there are more than 24,000 homeless students across the state at the end of the 2024 school year, and about 10% of that total are in Denver County schools.

The total number of homeless youth in Denver represents an increase of more than 56%, or roughly 8,600 students, since the 2020-2021 school year. However, a 2025 study by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz campus suggests that the total is likely a significant undercount.

Denver’s primary method of addressing homelessness is through congregate shelter, as it is in other cities across the U.S. However, Denver had just 96 beds available for homeless youth in 2024, with 72 of those in transitional housing settings, according to federal data. That total number of available emergency shelter beds represents a 55% decline since 2019.

“If congregate beds were the answer, these problems would have been solved decades ago,” Chad Holtzinger, architect and president of Shopworks Architecture, a dignified design firm in Denver that designed The Mothership, said in a statement.

Building the Mothership

The Mothership was born out of a nearly decade-long process to reimagine how Urban Peak can better meet the scale of need in Denver, Carlson says. She described the process as involving “thousands” of meetings with community groups and homeless youths, as well as Urban Peak’s board and staff.

Through that process, Urban Peak learned there is a gap between congregate shelter and permanent housing that needs to be addressed. For instance, two large shelters in the Denver metro area closed over the last couple of years due to a lack of funding: The Source in Boulder and The Place in Colorado Springs. Those closures left dozens of homeless youth with nowhere else to go.

The Mothership addresses that gap by combining services and housing options that help people build life skills and a sense of community before they move into more permanent options, she adds. Students who live at The Mothership can access GED test preparation and take the test at the center as well.

The four-story building has 136 shelter beds as well as on-site medical care, case management, employment training, and educational classes. The beds are divided into five distinct “neighborhoods” organized by resource needs, including a neighborhood dedicated to minors aged 12-17, one for people recovering from substance abuse challenges, and one for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The new building was funded by a $16.8 million injection from Denver’s voter-approved RISE bond program, $11 million from the New Market Tax Credit, $3.8 million from the state of Colorado, a $3 million investment from the federal government, and $4 million in private donations.

Putting housing first

The Mothership follows a Housing First model, whereby youth receive a bed, food, and access to basic hygiene services before moving into more complex services such as legal aid or mental health treatment.

Housing First is a service delivery method that prioritizes placing someone experiencing homelessness in housing as quickly as possible. The model was first developed in New York in the 1990s and was adopted as a federal policy in 2004 during the George W. Bush administration. Housing First was the primary approach the federal government used to address homelessness before the Trump administration ended the practice by executive order in 2025.

A 2020 systematic review of 26 studies on Housing First concluded that it reduced homelessness by 88% and led to significant reductions in emergency department use and hospitalizations. Research has also shown that Housing First programs like can disrupt justice system involvement and improve mental health outcomes for homeless youth.

At Urban Peak, this process has yielded a couple of significant results, according to QREM’s analysis. For example, youth at the Mothership receive services at a younger age and stay connected with wellbeing services, employment, and housing options longer than before the campus opened, according to the report. Youth also progress more rapidly through the Mothership’s services compared to other offerings.

QREM’s analysis found that youth at the Mothership spent an average of five months receiving wellbeing services – food, hygiene, and a bed – which halved the historical average time youth spent in these services before the Mothership opened. The Mothership also increased the amount of time homeless youth received education, employment, and permanent connection services, according to the report.

Kesner says meeting youth at the Mothership who have had similar experiences helped shift his perspective on homelessness. For instance, Kesner said he met an individual named “Bones” during a meditation class. After they talked about their past experiences, Kesner says he realized they had much more in common than he had thought. That relationship has also helped Kesner feel a sense of belonging at the Mothership.

“I know my friends here have my back,” Kesner says.

Carlson says one of the keys to the Mothership’s success is that it makes youth guests and staff feel safe, which Shopworks Architecture baked into the building’s design. The four-story building features high ceilings, abundant natural light, and unobstructed sightlines on every floor. Each floor includes natural wood tones and soft paint colors to create a calming atmosphere. There are also no sharp corners, which Carlson says is an intentional feature for youth with a history of institutionalization.

“The real question we should be asking is, ‘How can we create an ecosystem that helps youth experiencing homelessness build self-determined, fulfilled lives?’” Holtzinger says. “Environments like The Mothership are the answer to this important question.”

Going forward, Carlson hopes other nonprofits serving homeless youth will adopt the Mothership model.

“We can solve homelessness,” Carlson says. “A model like this can be applied to lots of different populations, whether it’s seniors, families, or recovery communities.”

When developers come to town with visions of large-scale construction — a stadium, a corporate campus, an Amazon warehouse, a data center — communities have increasingly turned to community benefit agreements to help ensure residents don’t get the short end of the stick.

The premise is straightforward: you want to build here, you give us something in return. Long-term jobs for residents. Affordable housing. A community fund. In exchange, you get a smoother path through the approval process.

But developers can walk away, corporations can pull out, and real estate firms can go bankrupt. When that happens, these hard-won agreements tend to go with them. Some of the biggest, most notable community benefit agreements ever negotiated spent years stuck in limbo; others never made any progress because the mega-development projects they were tied to never even broke ground.

After Pittsburgh’s Hill District learned that lesson firsthand, local leaders found a way to failure-proof a community benefit fund tied to a large-scale development site. Now, after a decade of waiting, it’s finally paying out.

“Everybody wants to act like the money just fell out of the sky, but it didn’t. It came from a lot of very, very hard labor and a very difficult period.”

The Greater Hill District Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund was created after years of community organizing and a lawsuit filed by the Hill Community Development Corporation against the city and the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins. More than a decade has passed since it was crafted, but only a fraction of the development expected at the 28-acre Lower Hill site has actually occurred — resulting in only a fraction of the dollars expected for the fund.

But thanks to the fund’s unique payment-in-lieu-of-taxes structure, the community still gets its slice of the pie, no matter what gets built at the site. And rather than funding a predetermined list of specific projects, an advisory board consisting of representatives from established community groups decides what to do with the funds over time.

Hill District community members have spent the past few years proposing, screening, negotiating, tweaking, and signing off on an array of projects in the Hill District — some of which the Greater Hill District Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund recently, at long last, announced as its first development project grant recipients.

“There was no funding because there was no development,” says Marimba Milliones, executive director at Hill Community Development Corporation, which spearheaded the effort to create the fund. “Now everybody wants to act like the money just fell out of the sky, but it didn’t. It came from a lot of very, very hard labor and a very difficult period. When we deprive people of the real story, we deprive ourselves of future generations knowing their power, too.”

So here’s the real story.

Moving forward from demolition

Community benefit agreements are in many ways a response to the mid-20th century era of urban renewal, when cities and large real estate developers worked hand-in-hand to demolish neighborhoods wholesale to clear the way for large projects (regardless of whether they promised direct benefits to surrounding communities).

Black communities often felt the brunt of those bulldozers. By 1962, urban renewal had displaced upwards of 800 primarily African American communities, leading to generations of what social psychologist Mindy Fullilove coined as “Root Shock,” in her landmark book of the same name.

The Lower Hill itself was one of those communities. In the early 1950s, the City of Pittsburgh used its slum clearance powers to begin demolishing 100 acres of the Lower Hill, displacing more than 8,000 residents and 400 businesses.

A few years after the demolition was complete, a portion of the site became the Civic Arena, which in 1967 became the former longtime home of the Pittsburgh Penguins. The city also gave the hockey team exclusive development rights over the adjacent 28 acres, which was slated to become a cultural district that never came to be. In 2010, the Penguins moved across the street to what is now the PPG Paints Arena. When the Civic Arena was demolished in 2012, the rest of the site was still just parking lots — which most of it still is today.

As the City of Pittsburgh started to re-think what to do with the undeveloped Lower Hill parcels, the Hill CDC led a campaign to establish a community benefit agreement with the Pittsburgh Penguins that would cover all of the then-completely vacant 28-acres of the Lower Hill. For more than two years, Milliones co-chaired a Lower Hill working group along with local council member R. Daniel Lavelle. The team and the Hill CDC co-signed that agreement in 2014.

After the Penguins and the Hill CDC signed it, Milliones expected that the agreement would then be attached to the city’s preliminary land development plan for the entire 28-acre Lower Hill site. That would have given the plan an added layer of legitimacy and enforcement, as the Pittsburgh City Planning Commission would then be charged to ensure each individual parcel’s specific development plan would adhere to the agreement.

But, without warning, it all fell apart. The commission suddenly approved the plan without the community benefit agreement included.

“We just all spent two years around this table in a pretty scrappy format — it was not an easy thing to even get to signing that document,” Milliones says. “To be told no after we got to that agreement, I think really shows that there was perhaps an intent of not fulfilling some of the community benefits.”

So Milliones filed a lawsuit against the city and the Penguins.

Benefits for whom?

In its most basic form, a community benefit agreement is a contract signed between the developer of a large project and representatives of the surrounding community. There may or may not be a clearly outlined way to monitor the delivery of promised benefits; there may or may not be a clear mechanism to hold the developer accountable in case of failure to deliver.

Such agreements typically start with ensuring large-scale projects hire local workers during the construction period and sometimes afterward: construction jobs and subcontracts today, concession jobs and vendor contracts tomorrow. More recent community benefit agreements or plans include anti-displacement tactics, like support for new affordable housing or covering property tax increases for legacy homeowners living near mega-projects like Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

But, with the notable exception of Detroit’s groundbreaking community benefits ordinance, there are no real standards or regulations for how community benefit agreements come about, how they’re negotiated, and how they’re enforced over time.

Read more: The Test Just Began for the Community Benefits Movement

Community organizers typically insist on community benefit agreements being legally binding. Yet in some cases, like Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal/Barclays Square development, even that becomes challenging to enforce when the big real estate firm that signs the agreement later goes out of business.

The earliest community benefit agreements came about as a result of community organizers pressuring, protesting or otherwise wielding people power to stall public approval processes for large scale developments — like L.A.’s Staples Center, which in 2001 set the precedent for what is considered a successful community benefits agreement.

But some of those early community-driven community benefit agreements never materialized any benefits because the mega-projects they were tied to simply never got off the ground — like the 2013 community benefit agreement signed as part of a failed plan to turn the massive Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx into a multi-rink ice sports facility.

Later agreements have sometimes come from large-scale developers preemptively trying to head-off community opposition by presenting a list of promises (that they may or may not intend to fulfill), or developers negotiating a list of promises with public officials behind closed doors and presenting the deal to the community as a done deal. That was the case with the 76ers’ proposed community benefit agreement with Philly’s Chinatown as part of building a new arena — a plan that has since fallen through.

“When big capital comes to communities that are impoverished and challenged, you have all types of dynamics that manifest as a result,” Milliones says. “It’s just a very complex terrain to navigate, and I would love to see more people educated around how to navigate it, so they know they’re not alone.”

Designing a LERTA

Timing was everything for the Hill District community’s efforts. Though Milliones didn’t know it, the Penguins were under immense pressure to push forward what they had planned as the anchor development project for the Lower Hill — a new corporate headquarters for U.S. Steel.

Milliones’ lawsuit was holding up the preliminary land development plan, which was holding up any approvals for specific parcels that would have been redeveloped as part of that specific project. So, with their backs to the wall, the city and the hockey franchise reached a settlement with Hill CDC in January 2015.

The centerpiece of the settlement was the creation of a first-of-its-kind Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance, or LERTA, district covering the 28-acres of the Lower Hill.

Known by different names under enabling legislation in different states, LERTA is essentially a development subsidy that involves reducing or eliminating property taxes paid on parcels in areas qualified as economically distressed.

Each government or entity that typically receives a share of property taxes from a given parcel or set of parcels must agree to forego at least a share of the property tax revenue they’d be entitled to receive over a set period of time.

In this case, that period was 10 years. The city, the local school district, and Allegheny County all agreed to forgo a set amount of property taxes from the 28-acre Lower Hill site for a decade.

Typically, the foregone revenue stays in the developer’s pocket — ostensibly helping a project pencil out. But Pennsylvania’s enabling legislation for this type of incentive is very flexible. Instead, the original Lower Hill LERTA diverted the 28-acre’s property taxes equally into two funds.

One fund would support infrastructure improvements within the 28-acres. The other fund was the Greater Hill District Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund, which would support community benefits for a larger designated area outside the 28-acres.

In other words: rather than subsidizing the developer, the tax break subsidized the neighborhood. And critically, it was attached to the land, not to any single project or developer.

A new development

On paper, the LERTA was a big win for Milliones and the Hill District. In reality, U.S. Steel was facing financial troubles – troubles that had everyone, including the Penguins, fearing the project might never come to pass. Indeed, the corporation pulled out of the project before the end of 2015, leaving no source of funds for the Lower Hill LERTA.

It wasn’t until 2021 that the Pittsburgh Penguins finally came through, closing a deal to build a new corporate headquarters in the Lower Hill for First National Bank, a $50 billion regional bank with roots in Western Pennsylvania.

Under the terms of the LERTA, that project would have been required to make payments into the Greater Hill District Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund over the course of 10 years. But the development partners agreed to make all of those estimated payments in one, up-front lump sum of $7.2 million.

The Penguins, meanwhile, are no longer in the picture. The franchise finally gave up its exclusive development rights over the Lower Hill in October 2025. The city’s economic development arm, the Urban Redevelopment Authority, has taken over the development rights for the remaining Lower Hill parcels.

In March 2026, the Greater Hill District Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund announced the first four of what will hopefully be many development projects that it supports over the next decade. Under the terms decided by the fund’s 12-member community advisory council, the fund will also be supporting workforce development programs as well as programs for children, youth and education.

“Now everybody likes to erase how we landed here, and I don’t think that’s healthy for communities,” Milliones says. “One of the things that I’m very passionate about is communities owning their power. You can’t own your power if you don’t understand how these stories happen.”

Keeping the community in community benefit

The fund’s structure means the community doesn’t just receive money — it also decides where it goes.

In addition to the Greater Hill District Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund’s community advisory council, applicants generally must also win approval from a separate community panel that has the power to review all development proposals for the Hill District. It’s a process that takes time. For Black architect-turned-developer Alicia Volcy, it took years from identifying a site to redevelop to getting approval from both bodies.

Volcy first came to Pittsburgh in 2011 as part of a Carnegie Mellon University program to diversify the design and development industries. One of the first places the program took participants was the Hill District.

It reminded her of home — Miami’s Overtown. Another neighborhood with a storied history as a Black cultural mecca. Another one of those 800 African American communities that had been decimated by Urban Renewal. Another neighborhood where commercial or industrial properties along once-thriving corridors now seemed mostly forgotten by whoever owned them but nonetheless held promise in her eyes.

Turns out the Urban Redevelopment Authority owned dozens of those properties. The entity had spent decades slowly acquiring properties in the Hill District, often demolishing what was left after years of neglect by absentee private landlords. In 2019, the Urban Redevelopment Authority issued a “request for qualifications” from developers interested in “revitalizing” one or more of 170 properties along the Centre Avenue Corridor, the main artery going through the Hill District.

Volcy eventually submitted a proposal centered on a former lumber warehouse at 2239 Centre Avenue, which the Urban Redevelopment Authority had acquired in 2007 for $163,000.

“Areas like Overtown and Wynwood [in Miami], they contain a lot of large buildings that were warehouses and things like that,” Volcy says. “They’ve been really turned around now into areas that are just overflowing with art and entrepreneurs and vendors. Those spaces have really transformed, in a sense. I do see [the Center Avenue corridor] being a place that could also have that same type of vibrancy and movement that it once had.”

Volcy drew up plans to convert the first floor into two commercial retail spaces, and a second floor with 12 subsidized artist studios. She dubbed the project “Rhythm Square.”

“The premise is that this is a project that is for people to be able to find their rhythm,” Volcy says. “Artists for sure. Budding entrepreneurs. There’s also space for nonprofits as well as consultants who have an interest in working with artists or entrepreneurs. I see this as a hub for people who are trying to dive into that new thing to have access to the resources they need, a hub for all of those things coming together.”

But as in many historically disinvested communities, development — especially for emerging developers, and even more so for a Black women developers with little to no friends and family capital — the project would require plenty of public funding. Getting those public dollars takes a strong show of community support. In the Hill District, that means running your proposal past the Development Review Panel.

A partnership of seven neighborhood groups, including Hill CDC, the Development Review Panel meets monthly to review development plans for alignment with the Greater Hill District Master Plan, which was drafted in 2011. Since then, the panel has approved 44 projects, declined 10, and is currently reviewing another 16. The panel even weighs in on projects inside the 28-acre Lower Hill site for their compliance with the master plan.

Volcy submitted her proposal for Rhythm Square to the panel for review at the panel’s October 2023 meeting. To receive a letter of support from the Development Review Panel, each project must score at least 80% on its alignment with the Greater Hill District Master Plan. Over the following few months, Volcy and her Rhythm Square development team met twice with the panel offline. It took some back and forth, but by September 2024, Rhythm Square got its final score of 86% and a letter of support to move forward.

Volcy agrees it’s absolutely necessary that the community have a voice in development, though she says the process could be improved.

If Voley didn’t have the ability to produce plans, drawings and renderings by herself, she’d have to secure the funding to commission those documents before presenting her project to the panel. “That’s a lot of investment to do up front, only to find out the community may not be in alignment with what’s presented,” Volcy says.

“The panel wants to see drawings and capital stacks. It can put a developer in a situation where they’re having to present a project that is pretty much complete before coming to the community, which doesn’t allow the community to have more of a voice up front.”

The most recent cost estimate for phase I of Rhythm Square’s development is $3.6 million, but without work getting started Volcy hesitates to put a final number on what she’ll eventually end up fundraising for the project phase.

But the March announcement of $250,000 in support for Rhythm Square phase I from the Greater Hill District Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund has her feeling optimistic after years of waiting to break ground.

“I will say it is a very exciting time and exciting things are going to happen this year for Rhythm Square,” Volcy says. “I feel confident saying that. There’s been so much that’s happened over the past few years, it’s easy sometimes to lose sight of everything it took to get here.”

Sponsored content from The Culture & Community Power Fund. Sponsored content policy

This sponsored series is created in partnership with The Culture & Community Power Fund (C&CPF), a national funders’ collaborative advancing the role of culture in building identity, agency, and collective power. This series explores the cultural ecosystem—the traditions, stories, rituals, and spaces that sustain frontline communities—and what it takes to support and strengthen it. Read the complete series.

Boston’s Chinatown has for many years faced incredible pressures of displacement, but a network of nonprofits has turned art, storytelling, and organizing into a strategy to empower the community to fight back. 

In this sponsored episode with The Culture & Community Power Fund, leaders of three community organizations explain how the Chinatown Cultural Plan gives their coalition a shared roadmap for collaboration. 

“Embarking on this cultural plan allowed us an opportunity to step back, talk to many organizations, community members, see what people are doing, and see how our work complements each other and strengthens each other,” says Cynthia Woo, director of the Pao Arts Center at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center. 

The center is among a network of community organizations working on the plan that received unrestricted funding from C&CPF, a national funders’ collaborative that supports organizations working on the front lines in communities impacted by systemic oppression. Erik Takeshita, director of C&CPF, says the philanthropic sector will too often “focus on the organization as a unit, not necessarily as the community, as the unit of change and intervention. As a result, you end up with these fractured communities.” 

In Boston’s Chinatown, the network they’re supporting also includes the Asian Community Development Corporation and the Chinatown Community Land Trust. 

Angie Liou, executive director of ACDC, explains their “anchor strategy,” which uses arts and culture as an anti-displacement tool “and a tool to strengthen Chinatown's boundaries and sense of identity and belonging.”

Lydia Lowe, executive director of the Chinatown CLT, explains how art and storytelling drive their organizing and even helped the land trust acquire its first permanently affordable homes. 

“Sharing stories is a really important part of strengthening our power,” Lowe says. “Because we want every generation to be grounded in that history and to know that there are struggles that happened before us and we can win and we can make a difference.”

Listen to the episode below or subscribe to the Next City podcast on Apple, Spotify or Goodpods.

Recently I was told a story by an individual who helps lead her county’s opioid settlement fund allocation. These are the dollars flowing to states and local governments from settlements with pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacy chains found liable for their role in the opioid crisis. In a meeting with state officials, she shared, the state proudly shared that it had used a portion of its funds to make a bulk purchase of naloxone, a life-saving medication that can rapidly reverse opioid overdoses.

The problem, as she described it, was that many counties had already used their own funds to purchase naloxone. The state’s decision was well-intentioned but ultimately duplicative. As a result, counties that had planned ahead lost the opportunity to direct scarce dollars to under-resourced clinics, treatment centers, or other supports their communities needed.

This story may be apocryphal. I cannot independently verify it, and the individual who shared it asked not to be named. But the dynamic it illustrates is real: Across the country, governments are making serious, good-faith decisions about how to deploy limited resources. Too often, those decisions are made without a clear view of what other governments are doing.

Residents experience the consequences. They do not distinguish between city, county, and state responsibilities. They experience government as a single system. When that system is misaligned, services are duplicative in some places and absent in others.

This challenge is becoming more acute. According to the National Association of Counties, an estimated $1 trillion in costs may move from the federal government to state and local governments in the coming years. At the same time, American Rescue Plan Act funding is expiring, economic conditions are uncertain, and expectations for public services continue to rise. Budget leaders are facing difficult tradeoffs and, in many cases, real reductions in service.

In response, many thoughtful practitioners have focused on how governments can get their own houses in order. Andrew Klein, in both Governing and Next City, has called for greater internal clarity: understanding what services truly cost, aligning around priority outcomes, and engaging residents in decisions about tradeoffs. Jed Herrmann has likewise written in both Next City and Governing about the need to better coordinate federal grantmaking within governments to reduce inefficiency and increase access to available funds.

These are important and necessary steps; governments must understand their own operations if they are to make disciplined choices. But there is a missing piece. Governments do not operate in isolation. They operate alongside other governments with overlapping responsibilities, funding streams, and service obligations. Even well-intentioned decisions, made rationally within a single jurisdiction, can lead to inefficient and duplicative outcomes when viewed across the broader system.

Part of the reason is structural. Intergovernmental collaboration at the sub-state level has, with some exceptions, been most effective when driven by mandate or tied to specific funding streams. In the absence of those forces, coordination often falls through the cracks because no one is clearly accountable for it.

But overlap itself is not the problem and in some cases, it is necessary. Complex challenges such as homelessness, workforce development, and public health do not fit neatly within jurisdictional boundaries. When overlap is intentional, it can be a strength. It allows governments to bring different tools, authorities, and perspectives to bear on a shared problem.

The challenge arises when overlap is unintentional or poorly understood. Without visibility into who is doing what, governments can double-spend in some areas while leaving others under-resourced. They can pursue parallel strategies that fail to reinforce each other. They can step into policy vacuums — as is being driven by this administration — in inefficient and duplicative ways when money is hard to come by. And, at its worst, they can make it harder for residents to access services that are meant to support them.

There are examples of a different approach. In Memphis and Shelby County, local leaders created a joint office focused on violence prevention. Violence does not stop at a city boundary, and the drivers of violence often extend beyond any single jurisdiction’s authority. By aligning funding, strategy, and implementation across city and county government, leaders were able to direct resources more deliberately and avoid competing or duplicative efforts.

This kind of coordination does not happen by accident. It requires governments to build new habits and capabilities.

First, leaders need a clearer view of the landscape. That starts with building a local program inventory and mapping it against neighboring jurisdictions. Understanding what services exist, how they are funded and who is responsible for them is a prerequisite for making informed decisions. There are opportunities to partner with national and local organizations to support this work in a coordinated way.

Second, governments need to make explicit decisions about where to lead, where to partner and where to step back. In a moment when federal retrenchment is creating pressure for state and local governments to fill gaps, the instinct to lean in is understandable. But those decisions cannot be made in a silo. Acting alone shapes how scarce dollars are used across the system. In some cases, the most effective choice will be to support another level of government that is better positioned to deliver a service at scale.

These steps are not easy. Governments often struggle with collaboration within their own organizations, let alone across jurisdictions. Data systems are fragmented; incentives are not aligned; political considerations are real. None of this changes the underlying need.

If governments are going to meet this moment, they must be honest about what is happening inside their own organizations and across the broader system of governments in which they operate. Internal discipline is essential but insufficient.

Faced with corporate landlords that control multiple buildings, tenant organizers are assembling the neighbor-to-neighbor relationships that scale renter power and make political wins possible.

In this two-part podcast episode, Next City's managing Editor Aysha Khan talks with four organizers leading the tenants' rights movement across very different American contexts. 

Khunsa Amin, an organizer with the Union of Pinnacle Tenants in New York City, recounts how years of door-knocking enabled thousands of renters to push back when their corporate landlord entered over 90 buildings into bankruptcy proceedings, drawing the support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. 

“Safety is going to come from neighbors knowing each other, skilling up together, being in shared spaces of trust and vulnerability, and feeling OK to move in high-stakes and intense moments,” says Amin.

Emma Anderson, Lexington organizer with KY Tenants, shows how the same movement for tenant rights looks in a Republican supermajority state. In Los Angeles, Pablo Estupiñan, Deputy Director of Organizing at Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE), explains how a recent wave of city council wins on right to counsel, an updated rent stabilization ordinance, and stronger anti-harassment penalties was made possible by tenant organizing. And when Estupiñan looks to the future, he hopes that tenant organizing evolves into support for social housing and “giving it back to tenants and the community to decide the fate of their buildings and being able to run them.”

René Christian Moya, Tenant Power Organizer at the Debt Collective, describes how the Tenant Power Toolkit exposed one of the country's biggest evictors and reframed housing as a debt system that disciplines tenants while financing corporate portfolios. 

“As a tenant organizer, I've constantly heard tenants say, ‘I didn't know how to be a neighbor until I started organizing in my tenant association,’” says Moya. “We're not just trying to organize structures, we're trying to create a way of life, that communal instinct that we have that has been ripped away from us by social systems has to be rerouted in people's organic day-to-day life.”

These episodes are based on a SolutionsFest event, available in Next City's webinar library. Listen to these episodes below or subscribe to the Next City podcast on Apple, Spotify or Goodpods.

NEW YORK (AP) — When a heat wave hits, millions of air conditioners switch on at once, straining the electric grid and driving up the risk of outages — and residents’ power bills. To ease that strain, power companies may ask customers to do something many probably won’t: Set the air conditioner a few degrees higher.

Now, a renter-friendly pilot program in New York City is testing a different approach: plug-in batteries that can power air conditioners offline during peak demand, helping take pressure off the grid at its most stressed moments while still keeping residents cool.

“It’s basically a souped up version of the power bank that you would use to charge your phone when you go out,” said Andrew Wang, the chief executive officer of Every Electric, the company behind the pilot, which has partnered with the city’s energy company Con Edison.

The devices, about the size of a microwave, charge when electricity demand is low and then run window AC units for a few hours when demand spikes. It’s one of many partners participating in Con Edison’s demand response programs, which pay customers to reduce or shift electricity use to support the grid.

The pilot program is expanding to more than 1,000 homes this summer and participants can get rewarded in cash rebates.

Experts say this initiative reflects the broader shift toward so-called virtual power plants, in which many small, distributed energy resources are coordinated to reduce strain during peak demand. When scaled, solutions like this could have a significant impact on power reliability and affordability.

Why electricity gets pricier during heat events

When electricity demand spikes, utilities often turn to backup power plants that don’t run as often, and are typically less efficient and more polluting, said Kevin Brehm, a manager at RMI, a nonprofit that researches energy systems and the transition to clean power.

Over time, those spikes can push utilities to build more power plants, often fossil-fuel based, to meet demand, with the costs eventually passed down to consumers.

“There’s a question of emissions, and then there’s also a really important question around affordability,” said Brehm.

That’s why power companies often ask residents to conserve energy during the hottest days of the year, and set higher rates during peak hours to encourage people to conserve power. Those strategies “can be hard to rely on because they don’t know exactly how consumers are going to behave,” Brehm added.

That’s where solutions like Every Electric’s can help.

Battery networks can take the pressure off

Utilities and governments are increasingly looking for ways to manage rising electricity demand as heat waves become more frequent and intense.

One approach is Every Electric’s demand response program, which pays customers to reduce or shift electricity use during periods of high demand.

Virtual power plant programs are another solution expanding state by state. They connect thousands of small energy devices, like home batteries or smart appliances, and coordinate them to send power back to the grid when demand spikes, easing strain without building new plants. California, for example, is working to develop one of the world’s largest, paying hundreds of thousands of participants to send stored energy back to the grid during extreme climate events. Most of these programs are limited to homeowners with solar panels.

Con Edison said batteries can help reduce peak demand, support renewable energy and lessen the need for new infrastructure.

Every Electric’s program works specifically for people with window AC units, who are typically renters, though it does not export power back to the grid. Instead, it reduces demand by using stored battery power.

Still, Brehm said programs like it are part of the broader push to integrate consumer energy devices into the grid and reward the services they provide.

“I can’t put solar panels on my roof,” said Bianca Pasternack, a New York City renter enrolled in the program. “This is at least something that’s accessible and easy. It was very set-it-and-forget-it.”

Pilot program of plug-in batteries to AC units is growing

The battery plugs into the AC unit, then into the wall outlet. It’s connected to a smartphone app that detects when demand is low, charging the battery during off-peak hours and using it to power the AC during peak times, usually from 1 to 4 p.m. or 4 to 8 p.m. during the hottest months.

Participants can also earn money for taking part, roughly the equivalent of the cost of a July electric bill, according to the company. Pasternack said she received a $100 gift card at the end of the season.

The company says its pilot is growing from about 200 kilowatts of flexible capacity last year to roughly 2 megawatts this summer, and could expand much further. By comparison, California’s program exceeds 200 megawatts. The company is looking to expand to other cities, Wang said.

Although Every Electric’s program currently operates at a small scale, Brehm says systems like this could meaningfully reduce strain on the grid if they reach enough households.

“It’s a matter of how we’re able to get to that scale,” he said, noting that widespread adoption is a key issue that depends on how easily the technology can be deployed and integrated into the grid. He added that Every Electric’s installation process is easily accessible. “It’s plug-and-play and you don’t need a ton of permissions.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Sponsored content from The Culture & Community Power Fund. Sponsored content policy

This sponsored series is created in partnership with The Culture & Community Power Fund (C&CPF), a national funders’ collaborative advancing the role of culture in building identity, agency, and collective power. This series explores the cultural ecosystem—the traditions, stories, rituals, and spaces that sustain frontline communities—and what it takes to support and strengthen it. Read the complete series.

When LaShaunda Pickett-René first called New Orleans home, she looked for places of belonging.

“I was a young mother at the time, looking for, you know, community spaces that I could be in, either with my child or just with other people who were somewhat near my age group,” says Pickett-René.

She was introduced to the Ashé Cultural Arts Center, a nonprofit focused on art and empowering the community through wellness, economic development, and social justice initiatives with the lens of the African Diaspora.

Now the organization’s chief strategy officer, Pickett-René says Ashé proved to be a place where she could learn, grow, and feel connected. The center is expanding on that mission by pushing for equity via initiatives such as advocating for a more equitable and inclusive cultural economy for artists and culture bearers working in the carnival industry and launching a capital campaign, “We Anchor The Culture,” to establish an employee and community-owned hotel and community investment fund among other high-leverage, high-impact work in and with community.

Funding Culture in the Community

Ashé is a long-term partner of The Culture & Community Power Fund, a funders’ collaborative founded in 2022 that invests in organizations building community power through cultural practices with unrestricted awards, ecosystem funding and regional and national networking support.

With funding from the Culture & Community Power Fund, Ashé invests in the people who create New Orleans’ cultural economy.

Ashé used the support, in part, to create an entrepreneurship training program for residents focused on the cultural economy and Carnival. They also provided direct support to the Alliance for Cultural Equity, a collective of 19 to 22 cultural organizations, for the acquisition of archival equipment. Finally, they provided opportunities for artists, activists, and residents to participate in major events, which included sending 20 artists and activists to the UN Climate Conference in Egypt as the only representatives of the State of Louisiana.

The fund aims to highlight the value of “really hyperlocal organizing, and then national network connecting,” says Erik Takeshita, director for C&CPF. “Ashé is a great example of that hyperlocal connection.”

Building a Space for Representation

Ashé began as an arts installation called “Efforts of Grace,” created by artist Douglas Redd and writer-producer Carol Bebelle to counter negative portrayals of Black communities in New Orleans. They called out the media for often depicting Black men as “drug dealers, addicts, and prisoners.” Redd and Bebelle were commissioned by concerned community members who wanted a more accurate portrayal.

“This was something that showed us as we actually are in our daily lives [and] professions,” says Chief Executive and Equity Officer Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes, calling the installation “more reflective” of the Black community that Redd “knew and grew up in.”

The exhibition toured nationally, including being shown at the Atlanta Olympics, before community members created a permanent gallery space in New Orleans.

In 1998, when neighbors expressed a need for a meeting space for Black residents, Bebelle realized they already had one.

“She was like, it can be open whenever we want it to be open, it’s our decision,” Ecclesiastes says.

Ashé’s role became even more essential after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when it served as a gathering place for a city in crisis.

“That is when I think the institution of Ashé was kind of solidified as this place that not just the cultural community, but community in general, can turn to and look to in times of need and crisis,” Ecclesiastes says.

Building Equity for Carnival States

The efforts around Carnival enabled the organization to begin developing a framework to better compensate the cultural contributors, whose practices and traditions have become the cultural content and experiences that drive major economic development and growth in the region.

“Carnival makes $175 billion a year in the world, and the Black, Latino, and Indigenous people that provide the cultural content for Carnival collectively make only 2-5% of that in any given year,” says Ecclesiastes.

So Ashé Cultural Arts Center works with the Organization of American States, a hemispheric organization of states (nations) in the Americas, to partner with “Carnival producing nationals” on increasing market share and economic enrichment for the artists, culture bearers and communities that create the cultural content fueling the multi-billion dollar global Carnival industry, says Ecclesiastes.

Through OAS, Ashé connects with governmental, cultural, and business leaders in and across the Americas as they explore policy and practical frameworks that can be adopted and iterated in places where carnival is celebrated. At the same time, Ashé works with stakeholders state-side to understand and unveil strategies and solutions in New Orleans to right-size the local $1 billion carnival industry.

Part of this is economic development through the AfriCarnaval initiative, which provides tools and opportunities to culture bearers and other organizations that contribute to Carnival, allowing them to benefit from the tourism dollars invested in the New Orleans region. The goal is for local artists, culture bearers, and communities to benefit in proportion to their economic and cultural contributions. Plus, these groups are invited to participate in policymaking around Carnival and help grow policies that center Black cultural equity.

Reimagining Community-Based Hospitality

The idea for an employee and community-owned hotel emerged in 2018 as part of Ashé’s strategic plan. They found that the cultural community powering New Orleans’ tourism industry had little ownership in it. The goal: create a hospitality space with dignity and that benefits its true engine.

Ashé aims to raise $50 million to build the hotel, establish a community investment fund, and to renovate the home of the late Douglas Redd as artist residencies. Plus, the campaign will fund repairs to 29 apartment units above the center as a major affordable-housing grant sunsets. To get all that work done, the organization also hopes to expand staff capacity while ensuring fair compensation, and to build community power through collective and collaborative fundraising to support other art and culture organizations and leaders in the city.

“We recognize that our culture lives in our buildings, but it’s our people who make the culture possible,” says Pickett-René.

A Vision for Cultural Power

Ashé’s plans reflect a broader mission: building structural power for the people who make New Orleans what it is. From funding cultural workers to reshaping Carnival economics to building community-owned assets, the organization is challenging long-standing inequities in the city’s creative economy.

To Pickett-René and Ecclesiastes, this work goes beyond preservation. It’s the intentional construction of a New Orleans that celebrates its cultural heritage while supporting and compensating those responsible for its heritage.

“New Orleans is a unique place in that while we have so much cultural content, while we are a destination for people around the world, we have a bit of a desert when it comes to corporate and large-scale investors and sources of capital,” says Pickett-René. “So we have to be a bit creative, and we have to be strategic.”

Learn more about Ashé Cultural Arts Center’s approach to building community power through culture in a webinar and podcast featuring Executive Director Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes.

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. If you enjoy this newsletter, share it with a friend or colleague and tell them to subscribe.

Urban Road Infrastructure Can Contribute To Serious Psychological Issues

A new study published in Environmental Epidemiology offers fresh evidence that road infrastructure may be seriously harming the mental health of people who live near it.

Analyzing New York City hospital data by ZIP code, researchers at Brown University found that neighborhoods with higher levels of “community severance,” a measure of how thoroughly roads and traffic patterns physically isolate a community, had significantly more schizophrenia-related hospital visits.

The association held even after controlling for air pollution. The researchers point to lost social connection, reduced walkability, and chronic stress as likely mechanisms.

The federally-funded study’s findings carry a pointed implication for the EV transition, researchers note: Electrifying the vehicle fleet won’t fix a built environment designed around car dominance.

Tennessee Works To Remove Majority-Black District

In response to the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act last week, Tennessee elected officials are looking to dismantle its only majority-Black district, The New York Times reports.

The new maps would break up Shelby County, which includes Memphis, into three districts. Two of those districts would include Republican-leaning rural areas outside Shelby County.

The new maps drew protests outside the statehouse in Nashville and an appearance by Georgia voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams. Tennessee’s general assembly is Republican-led and last week’s Supreme Court ruling made it harder to prove racially-motivated redistricting, so voting rights advocates have an uphill battle.

NYPD Protects Illegal West Bank Land Sale in Manhattan

A “real estate expo” held at Park East Synagogue in Manhattan on Tuesday facilitated sales of land in Israel and the illegally occupied West Bank. Multiple journalists who attended the expo confirmed that the land being sold was in the occupied West Bank.

The NYPD closed off six blocks surrounding the synagogue and kept anti-apartheid protestors cordoned in a pen, Hell Gate reports. Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the land sale while praising the NYPD’s response, leading to criticism from the group PAL-Awda, which helped organize the protest: “The [Strategic Response Group], who you promised to disband, drove motorbikes into protestors. Tell us how you are preserving New Yorkers right to protest,” the group responded.

The illegal land sale follows a slew of acts of terror by Israeli militants against Palestinian schools and children in the West Bank. These include the murders of a 14-year-old and the brother of an English teacher, the destruction of a British-funded children’s school, and blocking of roads to schools with barbed wire.

New Orleans Will Be Lost to Climate Change by the End of the Century, According to Study

A new report warns that New Orleans must begin relocating residents ahead of imminent sea level rise in the coming decades, The Guardian reports. The analysis warns that the city could be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the century.

Published in Nature Sustainability Journal, the paper states that the New Orleans area “may be the most physically vulnerable coastal zone in the world” and argues for “orderly managed relocation” of the city’s more than 360,000 residents over the coming decades.

“They are facing one of the highest sea level rises in the world and I don’t know how long human effort can fight against that tide. It’s like a timebomb,” one of the study’s authors told The Guardian.

Maine Governor Vetoes Landmark Data Center Moratorium

Maine Gov. Janet Mills has vetoed an 18-month statewide moratorium on data centers powered with 20 megawatts of energy or more, a bill that would have been the first of its kind.

The Daily Yonder reports that Mills, a Democrat, had sought an exemption in the legislation for a $550 million data center in Jay, Maine, at the site of a former paper mill that had shuttered. “The 2023 closure of the Androscoggin Mill dealt a devastating blow to the Town of Jay and its surrounding area,” Mills said. A petition in support of the moratorium gained over 7,000 signatures, according to The Daily Yonder. Meanwhile, Microsoft is weighing abandoning its pledge to roll out renewable energy to compensate for its energy use.

MORE NEWS

• A hidden liability for U.S. cities: Looming infrastructure repair costs. Wall Street Journal

• Trans people could soon be banned from homeless shelters. The 19th

• Can BART’s new speedy fare gates finally solve the ‘piggybacking’ problem? San Francisco Chronicle

• The return for these investors isn’t money. It’s more affordable housing. The New York Times

• Virginia is the first Southern state with paid leave covering domestic violence. Axios Richmond

• Nevada considers statewide heat office as deaths climb. Governing

• Trump administration sues Denver over its 1989 assault weapons ban. Associated Press

• This voucher is supposed to help homeless New Yorkers leave shelters. A majority don’t qualify. The City

• MAGA-friendly Richland County voters preserve ban on wind and solar. Signal Ohio

• NYC budget hawks say subway discounts for the poor are better than free buses for all. Gothamist

• With rent relief and free lawyers, L.A. courts attempt to stop evictions before they get to trial. LAist

OPPORTUNITIES & RESOURCES

• Third Wave Fund is accepting applications for its Artist-in-Residence program, an annual, paid, and virtual residency supporting an emerging visual artist in strengthening their practice of creating art for social change. Apply by May 13.

• Next City is looking for its next cohort of rising urban leaders to join this year’s Vanguard gathering in Chicago, planned for Sept. 15-18. Our network of 600-plus Vanguards includes planners, community developers, nonprofit leaders, artists, designers, local officials, and more. Apply by May 14.

• Wells Fargo and Enterprise are launching a new cycle of their Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, a $2 million grant opportunity for scalable housing innovations in design, construction, finance, service delivery, and programs. Apply by May 15.

• The Sparkplug Foundation is offering grants to support early-stage programs that focus on music programs, community organizing, and education. Apply by May 22.

• New Profit is launching Connected Futures, a Catalyze cohort for organizations that bridge divides and bring people together to solve problems collectively. Selected organizations will receive a one-year $100,000 unrestricted grant, a $10,000 grant for leadership development, and strategic advisory support. Submit a discovery form by May 26.

• Hispanics in Philanthropy’s Líderes Fellowship is accepting applications from mid-career Latine, Afrolatines, and Native leaders working in philanthropy and nonprofits in the American Southwest. Apply by May 31.

• Arbor Rising is seeking to support nonprofits that are focused on building pathways out of poverty. Grantees will receive $125,000 in unrestricted funds and 200-300 hours of capacity-building consulting. Apply by June 9 at 5 p.m. Eastern.

• The Decolonizing Wealth Project is accepting applications for its Indigenous Earth Fund, which supports advocacy campaigns and movement-building efforts that center Indigenous solutions to the climate crisis. Apply by June 11.

Whose city is it?

Sociologist Saskia Sassen posed this question in her seminal 1996 article, where she argues that cities are not neutral places, but contested terrains where immense economic and political power concentrates in the hands of some at the expense of many. At one point it was “Boss” Tweed and his Tammany Hall machine that ruled New York City, at the expense of ordinary taxpayers. Today, one might argue it’s the developers who wield the power, and who have contributed to the housing crisis that helped sweep Mayor Zohran Mamdani into office.

But as a new administration takes the reins, a relic of the old guard remains: the 467-m tax abatement.

Enacted last January to spur office-to-residential conversions, this policy is a textbook attempt to bend city regulation to privilege the powerful few over the needs of the rest of us.

Aimed at tackling the housing shortage, the 467-m tax abatement was enacted last year alongside the City of Yes amendments, to spur the conversion of vacant Midtown and Lower Manhattan office spaces left empty by the pandemic. Though framed as a response to the housing crisis, the program offers developers a massive property tax exemption lasting 25 to 35 years for projects completed before 2031.

The justification for this epic tax break is its affordability requirement, but these criteria are neither plentiful enough in number nor deep enough in affordability to make any meaningful impact on the housing crisis.

Only a quarter of units must be offered as “Affordable Housing Units,” with the remaining majority rented out at market rate to high income tenants. What’s more, their definition of what is affordable is dubious at best. For a single-person household, the maximum income for most of these units is approximately $91,000 — an income bracket most New Yorkers would rightly consider affluent, not in need of public subsidy. While 5% of the affordable pool is reserved for the lowest income brackets, even these rents remain at $1,215 a month. As a graduate student who struggles even in a below-market-rate apartment, I can attest that these figures are out of touch with the need for large-scale, genuine affordability in this city.

A quick glance at the kind of projects already using this “affordability” tax abatement confirms where the true priorities lie. Projects such as the 5 Times Square development, the Pfizer World Headquarters conversion, and 25 Water Street are luxury properties catering to the New York elite, with token affordable units tucked into the margins.

To make matters worse, in exchange for this minimal, temporary affordability, the city is forfeiting an estimated $5.1 billion in property tax revenue over the lifespan of these exemptions.

The criticisms of the new 467-m tax abatement are not new. Similar gripes were filed against 467-m’s predecessor, 421-a, and its current counterpart, 485-X. Defenders of these policies concede the lack of sufficient affordable housing, but claim that the housing crisis demands more units — full stop — viewing the tax break as a necessary tool to spur construction. They argue the city isn’t losing $5.1 billion in revenue, because that tax income wouldn’t exist if the buildings remained empty. And they will remain empty if we decrease the incentive or increase the requirements. Half a loaf is better than none.

I agree that repealing 467-m is not necessarily the answer. But this defensive “better than nothing” approach stagnates us. It treats the city as a desperate suitor, rather than a powerful regulator.

Developers aren’t going to leave New York’s prime real estate to rot forever. They are waiting for the best deal, and New York keeps giving it to them. Take the 25 Water Street development I mentioned earlier, which was highlighted in former City Comptroller Brad Lander’s report on the tax abatement program. The massive conversion in the Financial District was already underway when the 467-m abatement was passed, yet its developers still received the benefit retroactively. This means a project that was already financially viable without the subsidy will now operate tax-free, leading to an estimated $538 million in foregone tax dollars for the city.

If we are going to hand over $5.1 billion in potential tax revenue, the trade-off better be radical. We should be demanding 50% affordability, rather than just 25%, or units geared toward households making 30 to 40% of local median income, not 80% as 467-m requires. We should be demanding a diversity of unit sizes to cater to low-income families and permanent deep-rent freezes.

We are told we must be grateful for the crumbs of 25% affordability, because the alternative is a vacant skyline. This is a strategic threat pushed by the real estate lobby to maximize benefits.

Until we stop letting developers set the terms of our crisis, Sassen’s question will remain unanswered. However, I am hopeful.

If Mayor Mamdani’s first 100 days in office are any indication (appointing radical advocates like Cea Weaver, immediately intervening in the Pinnacle Realty bankruptcy to protect tenants, and holding rental ripoff hearings), he is ready to flip the script. If Mayor Mamdani is to truly transform this city, he can’t flinch when developers threaten to walk away, because the alternative — subsidizing a luxury skyline while the rest of us struggle — is a price we can no longer afford to pay.

This small eastern South Dakota town is well known for its deep agricultural roots, its popular Fourth of July celebration and its regionally famous bakery specializing in bi-colored “zebra donuts.”

But now, Centerville has a new claim to fame: The town of about 900 people located 40 miles southwest of Sioux Falls has become known as a statewide leader in downtown redevelopment.

The successful effort to buck the trend of declining Main Street districts in small South Dakota towns has been fueled in part by a progressive approach to development by local leaders and a sense of entrepreneurship by local business owners.

But the redevelopment of Centerville has largely been driven by implementation of a strong vacant building ordinance that has become a model for other municipalities across the state.

“Vacancies in the central business district are a detriment to your city,” said Jared Hybertson, economic development coordinator in Centerville. “I hear from a lot of other communities looking for guidance because this is a prevalent problem across the state.”

Not a good look for downtowns

A decade ago, Centerville had 14 vacant storefronts in a downtown that encompasses only a few square blocks.

Some properties were occasionally used as rentals, a few served as storage for junk or remnants of former business and others were simply withering toward condemnation. The look was one of decline that was not enticing to potential new visitors, residents or business owners.

“I was frustrated at the number of vacant buildings we had,” Hybertson told News Watch. “Perception-wise, as a small town, you’re either growing or you’re dying, and there isn’t much in between.”

Cities will determine whether the world succeeds or fails in confronting climate change. Urban areas produce roughly 75% of global carbon emissions, a share that continues to grow as more people move to cities, and are also on the front lines of extreme heat, flooding, air pollution and other climate impacts.

To guide how they grow and adapt to shape the best possible future of the planet, cities need cutting-edge scientific research – knowledge gaps that higher education institutions are well-positioned to help fill.

By and large, academia remains distant from the practical realities of urban decision-making. New research appears in journals that most people can’t access, written in technical jargon, created without much consideration of the needs of practitioners or without significant consultation with local practitioners and community groups. And universities have long been seen as sources of economic and social strain in cities, as ivory towers that drive up rental prices and bring nothing but noise and elitism.

But they can also be central partners in helping local governments, particularly in their host cities, to navigate the climate transformation. They produce knowledge, develop innovative technologies, and train the next generation of practitioners and policymakers.

If cities are to react faster on climate and resilience, universities must connect with and change how they work with communities and city leaders.

Local governments know what they don’t know

A major new, multi-year report from the nonprofit Federation of American Scientists examines how deeper connections with universities can support U.S. cities’ and counties’ research needs.

Their survey of local government staff found that housing was consistently the highest priority area of research for jurisdictions, specifically questions around improving affordability. This was followed by human services, transportation, climate and energy, service delivery, community engagement and economic development.

Local governments also reported the need for support with evaluating the impacts of policy intervention, figuring out ways that governments can do more with less, and providing access to new data.

But a study of barriers to these research collaborations revealed that many university community members believed local government officials would find them elitist and detached and their research impractical.

Incentivizing collaboration and public impact

For higher education institutions to fulfill this vital urban research function, they must move beyond siloed academic work toward sustained collaboration with municipal governments, civil society, and residents.

Doing so will require re-envisioning how universities evaluate success. Academic incentives typically reward publication quantity, which drives funding to their institutions, rather than investing in partnerships that drive long-term, collaborative research. Scholars who work directly and cooperatively with communities and practitioners to test, refine, and scale interventions should be recognized and supported. Community-engaged scholars working to advance a public mission should be rewarded with promotion and tenure committees, not seen as exceptions or relegated to short-term positions.

For academic departments and institutions looking to change attitudes toward community-engaged research, a number of resources have emerged to share best practices on changing these reward mechanisms, including a guide from Campus Compact and a recently-published case study on a public regional state university’s experience.

What urban-academic partnerships can look like

Some institutions are already pointing the way forward.

At Hunter College in New York City, nearly 50 funded community partnerships across 25 neighborhoods are aligning research with local priorities, from air quality to urban greening. As part of this work, the college recently convened city officials, researchers, local farmers, activists, and residents to directly shape more equitable, sustainable municipal procurement policies.

In Philadelphia, a new grants program at the University of Pennsylvania is directing millions of dollars toward projects that foster long-term partnerships with the city, including efforts to connect residents with urban nature and leverage cross-disciplinary collaboration for tangible public health benefits.

And as noted in New America’s report on advancing public institutions’ missions through AI, a group of National Science Foundation grant-funded scholars who had never engaged with the public sector was able to quickly-develop several AI-based solutions for the City of Detroit’s urban planning and climate change efforts.

These examples point to an important lesson: effective climate solutions go beyond reducing emissions. They integrate environmental goals with economic opportunity, public health, and community well-being. And crucially, they are designed with residents, not just for them.

One promising direction is community-engaged research partnerships that bring practitioners, experts, and community organizations together as equal partners. For instance, the firearm injury prevention program at the Yale School of Public Health has forged an interdisciplinary hub of research and practice in applying a community-rooted public health approach to solving the gun violence crisis.

From knowledge to action

Cities already hold many of the tools needed to confront climate change. What’s often missing is a stronger bridge between science and practice.

Local leaders are increasingly ready to take decisive action on climate, but implementing solutions requires aligning those ambitions with communities’ everyday priorities and building trust in the process. Research can play a critical role in this effort, but only if it reflects the realities of urban decision-making.

If universities back these necessary efforts, research can be informed by and respond directly to on-the-ground challenges while producing evidence that shapes policy and implementation.

Bridging the knowledge-action divide is a critical test in addressing the existential threats of the 21st century. By forging trust through these mutual learning pathways, these collaborations can spread people-centered solutions at the urgent pace that climate change demands.

If you’ve flown into Boston’s airport or explored its downtown, chances are you’ve stood on land that was once underwater in the city’s history and that is projected to be flooded in the future. The city has more made land than any other in North America: It added 5,250 acres of new land throughout its history, amounting to one-sixth of its current land area.

Boston boldly refashioned its own geography by creating low-lying land, but in doing so has left some of the city’s most economically important neighborhoods and infrastructure vulnerable to flooding with sea level rise.

Creating land and ecological challenges

Turning the extensive marshes and mudflats around Boston into dry land was a gradual process. After Boston was founded in 1630, its colonial government encouraged private landowners to build docks and wharves into the water, providing a scaffolding for later fill. By the 19th century, public and private actors increasingly created new land along the waterfront for a variety of uses, including railroad infrastructure, industrial facilities, residential neighborhoods, and new parkland.

These projects were prompted by social, economic, and environmental reasons. The creation of Back Bay, one of Boston’s central neighborhoods, was justified both by a desire to retain elite residents in a city overwhelmed by an influx of immigrants and by poor environmental conditions created by sewage in the tidal river and drainage obstructed by tidal dams and railroads. The last and largest fill project in Boston swallowed five small islands around East Boston to create and expand Logan Airport in the 20th century.

Boston’s made land has been central to its continued economic growth, as many of the neighborhoods once filled for industrial and commercial purposes have been redeveloped into mixed-use neighborhoods and office and lab space. But widespread land-making has profound ecological consequences.

Boston’s history of port, industrial, and urban development has shaped its ecological relationships with water and created numerous challenges for a future that will see heavier precipitation and sea-level rise. It has left large parts of the city at risk, including Back Bay, parts of its downtown waterfront, East Boston and Logan Airport, and the recently redeveloped Seaport District. Filled land also brings additional issues with contaminated soils, seismic risk, and land subsidence. The city’s Back Bay neighborhood was constructed on wooden piles that could degrade with changing groundwater levels, necessitating ongoing groundwater monitoring.

The city’s current predicament shares parallels with the development histories of other North American cities built on large areas of reclaimed land and fill, including Manhattan, San Francisco, Miami, and Toronto. In filling urban wetlands, these cities removed ecologically based flood control systems that dampened waves and buffered developed land from storms.

Decades of research has shown that a hardened shoreline benefits cities’ socioeconomic growth at the expense of ecological resilience, ultimately resulting in greater vulnerability. Much of Boston’s shoreline is protected by some kind of engineered structure, limiting opportunities for wetland restoration and leaving many communities dependent on shoreline structures for their continued protection.

Projections for sea level rise in Boston by the end of the century vary widely depending on global greenhouse gas emissions, from just 30 inches to 6.5 feet – and even more if the West Antarctic ice sheet experiences massive ice loss. Because Boston has a relatively high tidal range of nearly 10 feet, tidal cycles have an important influence on the likelihood of coastal flood events. The confluence of storm intensity, tidal cycles, and sea-level rise will shape coastal flood hazards in Boston, particularly in large waterfront areas situated on low-lying filled lands. According to the City’s analysis, a 1.5-foot increase in sea level over the year 2000 baseline could expose more than 10% of the built environment to storm flooding and about 5% to regular tidal flooding

Funding flood protection

Bostonians may have constructed their own future floodplain, but they have been working proactively to plan to protect it for more than a decade.

Boston has been a leader in incorporating resilient design for sea-level rise and storms into its considerable new development, evolving from voluntary guidelines to increasing regulation of resilience in buildings. The city created a Coastal Flood Resilience Overlay District, which requires projects in the projected 1% chance flood plain with 40 inches of sea-level rise to comply with a set of coastal resilience guidelines.

Ultimately, Boston will need much more than resilient buildings to protect its vulnerable neighborhoods from flooding. Through the Climate Ready Boston initiative, the city has developed a clear plan to protect its 47 miles of shoreline at sea levels expected later in the century, focusing on low-lying areas and key flood pathways.

Yet for all its planning for climate adaptation along its shoreline, Boston has not yet identified large-scale investments to turn these plans into reality. Most adaptation projects that have been completed along the shoreline have involved parcel-by-parcel protection measures. Stitching together larger flood protection for areas with a mix of public and private landowners will require coordinated planning and marshaling new sources of financial support.

The city’s recently-created Office for Climate Resilience is anticipated to better coordinate these kinds of projects. Boston has been working to harness private development to improve resiliency, but larger-scale solutions would almost certainly require major federal investment.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has launched a multiyear study of coastal resilience in Boston in 2022, in partnership with the City of Boston. The process of conducting the study will involve a public participation process that could help refine and coalesce the various visions of Boston’s shoreline into implementable plans. A newly-passed $3.1 billion state bond bill, the Mass Ready Act, will provide additional state support for coastal resilience, restoration, and flood control projects. But given the uncertain state of federal support for climate resilience efforts, stakeholders in the city are actively looking for other funding options.

Boston’s efforts to build municipal capacity and consensus networks around climate change will likely provide a key advantage in implementing adaptation measures using federal and state dollars when they’re available. But it does not fully address the yawning gaps in funding between what the city has planned and what it can finance.

Furthermore, the long process of public engagement in resilience planning threatens to create public confusion and exhaustion as communities are drawn into plans that never seem to be implemented.

Numerous stakeholders are working toward a greener and more resilient vision for Boston’s rivers, coastal waterfront, and stormwater systems. Boston benefits from its massive educational infrastructure and a wealth of talent in design, landscape planning, coastal science, and engineering that can imagine and execute innovative coastal flood protection systems that create new ways of interfacing with rising seas.

But planning for coastal protection has often focused on design and engineering over the profound changes in governance and finance needed to implement these plans. This is where Boston’s next focus should be for innovation.

Between redevelopment and retreat

Governing urban systems requires a balance between top-down governance and “bottom-up” experimentation for improving sustainability and resilience, as well as flexibility and responsiveness to local events and changes, including public participation in infrastructure design and reorganization.

Currently, Boston lacks a regulatory environment that promotes innovation and adaptable management on its coasts. One potentially powerful tool at Boston’s disposal is the public trust doctrine, which is enshrined in Massachusetts law as Chapter 91, sometimes called the Public Waterfront Act. The state has been updating Chapter 91 for coastal resiliency, but attention often focuses on technical regulations rather than rethinking the role of the public trust in protecting public interests as shorelines shift. The newly-passed Mass Ready Act allows for streamline permitting for coastal resilience and restoration, which may help reduce inertia in adaptation projects.

To date, most of Boston’s efforts have focused on harnessing existing green space in publicly-owned land and resilience through redevelopment of privately-owned land. Using private development to create resilience can be effective, but it ultimately brings more residents and infrastructure into waterfront areas.

Although managed retreat has been essentially absent from discussions of adaptation in Boston, as the risks and costs of waterfront development grow, the city may face diminishing investment in the waterfront, even if the word “retreat” is never used.

Eventually, piecemeal decisions about waterfront land use could shift to a dedicated strategy. Boston could reinvent retreat as a proactive vision for a coastal city. The city and metropolitan area could focus planning on densifying inland areas at higher ground and those that can be effectively protected, while directing future growth away from shoreline areas that are the hardest to protect.

Given its densely built coastal environment, Boston also has opportunities to embrace hybridity in its infrastructure, developing flexible, adaptive, multifunctional systems to manage coastal risks that share elements of gray, green, and blue infrastructure. This may include opportunities to integrate coastal protection and stormwater management.

Boston’s intense focus on waterfront resilience since Hurricane Sandy in 2012 has sometimes overlooked connections between stormwater and coastal flooding, but stormwater flooding will likely be a growing problem in areas of the city and metropolitan area.

As a city and metropolitan area facing significant risks from both coastal and inland flooding, the city and its metropolitan areas could seek innovative approaches to manage water across its inland and coastal neighborhoods.

Excerpt adapted from Climate Change and the Future of Boston by Courtney Humphries, published by Anthem Press. Copyright (c) 2026 Anthem Press. All rights reserved.

This op-ed is part of In the Shadow of the Server, a Next City series on the fight over urban technology infrastructure — who builds it, who benefits, and how local leaders can push back.

The data center boom is often described as inevitable. Artificial intelligence use is suddenly ubiquitous. Cloud computing is growing. Streaming, e-commerce, and digital services need somewhere to live. So when a developer arrives with another massive, windowless facility, local officials are told to move quickly: approve the zoning, extend the infrastructure, grant the tax break, and be grateful the future chose their town.

That story leaves something important out.

Data centers may be part of the future, but they are not optional for Big Tech. The AI and cloud business models require more computing capacity near power, fiber, land, and major markets. Like Amazon warehouses when the company moved to rapid delivery, data centers are coming many places fast — and that gives public officials far more bargaining power than developers want them to believe.

Localities should start acting like it.

This is an argument for public officials trapped in a broken site-selection game — and for the community groups and unions that can help them break it. City leaders should not have to negotiate in a “prisoners’ dilemma” created by nondisclosure agreements, consultant-driven urgency, and threats that the project will go elsewhere. But they rarely rewrite the rules alone. Outside pressure (a.k.a. “civic engagement”) is how transparency, job standards, and community benefits become deal terms.

Too often, economic development deals begin from the opposite assumption: that local governments must compete for Big Tech’s favor by offering secrecy, speed and subsidies. A company hiding behind an LLC quietly approaches officials. The project gets a code name. Residents are kept in the dark. By the time the public learns what is happening, the site has been selected, utilities lined up, zoning nearly settled, and tax abatements already moving.

At that point, the public’s leverage has been spent before the public knew it could have any.

Public officials need to stop treating Big Tech projects as prizes to be won and start treating them as transactions to be governed. Too much economic development policy chases famous corporate names with large subsidy packages, when the better strategy is investing in public goods that help many employers: schools, infrastructure, workforce training, small businesses, and local industry capacity.

The issue is not whether every data center should be opposed. Communities need digital infrastructure. Construction workers need work. Cities need property tax revenues (if they don’t abate them). The question is whether some of the richest corporations in the world should get to use public assets on private terms.

The scale of Big Tech’s own spending makes the subsidy argument weaker. Just five companies — Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft, and Oracle — have announced more than $710 billion in AI capital expenditures in 2026. The rush has been compared to the construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway system. Companies in that kind of buildout are not waiting for a county tax abatement to decide whether the AI economy needs servers. They need them. The public should negotiate from that fact.

Good Jobs First has long warned that data centers are not ordinary economic development projects. Hyperscale facilities can consume hundreds of acres, require enormous amounts of electricity and water, generate noise and air pollution, and receive large tax abatements. That scale of public burden should change the scale of public demands.

Start with the money. Tax abatements are not free. They are public spending through the tax code. When a city, county, or school district gives up revenue, that money is no longer available for classrooms, safety, libraries, parks, roads, housing, public health or basic services. When a state exempts data center equipment, building materials, or power purchases from sales and taxes, local governments usually lose revenue too, and with no say.

Worse, in many places the public cannot even see the bill.

Good Jobs First reports that 14 states and scores of localities fail to disclose how much revenue they lose to data center tax abatements. In states that do report, losses are soaring: Georgia, Virginia and Texas each lose $1 billion or more per year. That is not economic development strategy. It is spending without a budget.

The first reform is simple: Disclose the cost. Every state and locality that loses revenue of any kind to a data center tax abatement should report that loss in its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report.

The second reform is simpler: Stop subsidizing data centers.

Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, and other tech giants are not deciding whether they need data centers. They are racing to site them – in lots of places. Tax incentives are for industries that need help: These facilities are core infrastructure for companies worth trillions of dollars, not fragile start-ups or mature companies struggling to modernize. The best incentive policy is to repeal the tax breaks and require companies to pay their full freight.

That means full taxes. It also means fair energy prices and no utility tax abatements. Before communities even talk about “community benefits,” data center companies need to pay sales and property taxes and be placed in separate utility rate classes so households and small businesses are not forced to subsidize new power capacity built for hyperscale demand.

Good Jobs First made the same point about Amazon warehouses: When a corporation is coming because its business model requires it, governments should not pay it to arrive. They should turn the tables. Amazon needed warehouses near customers. Today, Big Tech needs data centers near land, energy, fiber, and markets. In both cases, the question is the same: why should taxpayers subsidize what the company already needs to do?

Public officials need to look at the world the way AI executives do, not the way site-selection consultants want them to. The companies know they must build. They know power, land, water, fiber and public approvals are increasingly scarce. With polls showing that 69% of Americans don’t want a data center near them, the companies also know they have fewer and fewer options. That is why communities should not give away leverage at the front door.

Process reforms come first. Communities cannot negotiate benefits for a project they are not allowed to understand. That means no nondisclosure agreements. No project code names. No mystery end users hidden behind LLCs. No rushed votes before residents know how much electricity and water the project will use, how many polluting backup generators it will need, what subsidies are requested, what infrastructure upgrades are required, and what jobs will actually be created.

For activists, unions, and neighborhood groups, these process reforms should be the opening demand. For public officials, they should be the minimum condition for taking any proposal seriously.

Then come the benefits — real ones, not corporate-washing. Community Benefits Agreements can be powerful tools. But they can also become a donation here, a STEM photo op there, a few charitable checks used to distract from a bad deal.

A real community benefit agreement cannot be a side letter attached to a subsidy giveaway. It must be enforceable, negotiated early, and tied to the actual costs of the project: infrastructure impact fees, energy and water protections, noise and pollution mitigation, public reporting and clawbacks if companies fail to deliver.

Then come job quality standards. Data centers can involve huge capital investments and major construction work, but they often create relatively few permanent jobs. That makes the construction phase the central employment impact of the project.

If public resources are involved, agreements should require project labor agreements, prevailing wages, local hiring, jobsite safety standards, and participation in state-certified apprenticeships. Permanent jobs should also carry job-quality standards: good wages, benefits, direct employment where possible, and first source hiring access for local residents.

This is not anti-growth. It is how communities build capacity for growth.

Data centers do not exist in a separate labor market. When they draw from the same pool of electricians, pipefitters, and other skilled workers without investing in training, they worsen skills shortages for everyone else. Responsible deals should grow the workforce, not simply consume it.

The AI economy is not inevitable in the form currently being offered. Communities don’t have to be roadkill. The question is not whether cities can afford to demand more from data centers. The question is whether they can afford not to.

Sponsored content from The Culture & Community Power Fund. Sponsored content policy

This sponsored series is created in partnership with The Culture & Community Power Fund (C&CPF), a national funders’ collaborative advancing the role of culture in building identity, agency, and collective power. This series explores the cultural ecosystem—the traditions, stories, rituals, and spaces that sustain frontline communities—and what it takes to support and strengthen it. Read the complete series.

In a city like Boston with deep history, Black and Brown communities have long been excluded from the stories and the systems that generate economic stability.

“There is this idea that the winners write the story,” says Cierra Peters, director of communications, culture and enfranchisement for Boston Ujima Project. “If you grew up in America, there’s this understanding that power is always exercised or conferred through the stories of the wealthy and the powerful.”

Rooted in Kwanzaa’s principle of Ujima — collective work and responsibility — the Boston Ujima Project is changing the power dynamic through community-led approaches to economic development, narrative change and creative production.

The organization’s work has been amplified by an award from The Culture & Community Power Fund, a funders’ collaborative that invests in organizations building community power through cultural practices with unrestricted awards, ecosystem funding and regional and national networking support.

For the Boston Ujima Project, this means more of what it always does: making strategic investments through democratic participation, ultimately demonstrating how economic justice can be built from the ground up.

“We were really thoughtful with the funding and decided to spread it out across areas of work that we already had deep relationships with, and were in support of,” says James Vamboi, Ujima’s chief of staff for community and culture.

Funds were distributed across several initiatives, including a one-year guaranteed-income pilot that supported movement leaders who seed community-sustaining work in Greater Boston. They are now working to establish a legal fund to support peers in the alternative lending space subject to hostile litigation, procure support for creative entrepreneurs and member initiatives, and develop a community collectors program and coalitions fund.

In addition to sending funds to local partner organizations working on their own community-driven economic models, Boston Ujima Project invests in a peer-to-peer fund that supports organizations in other locations, such as the Kensington Corridor Trust and its model of community ownership in Philadelphia. Allies include Urbane, The Guild in Atlanta, and East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative in Oakland.

“For the Boston Ujima Project to be successful, they recognize that community-driven economic models need to be successful in other places, too,” says Erik Takeshita, director of C&CPF.

Excavating History Through Community Storytelling

To build a cooperative economic system, Boston Ujima Project first develops a vision that is meaningful and resonant with its community. Culture and storytelling are inextricably linked with the way they gain buy-in from the community, so the organization works to “excavate” the histories of those who have been ignored or excluded.

To get the community’s buy-in and commitment, the stories that Boston Ujima Project tells must center its membership, as opposed to its funders and investors.

“We are our own audience,” says Nia Evans, executive director for Boston Ujima Project.

Evans says real change gives people a voice in the work. This happens via a process called “everyday democracy,” which offers avenues for decision-making beyond scheduled voting by Ujima’s membership. This can look like inviting member teams to practice daily governance and enroll new community members in programs like the Community Wealth Fund.

“We think — as much as possible — about how to take the abstract and make it concrete,” sats Evans.

Recognizing Creative Labor

To shape the community narrative, Boston Ujima Project insists artists must be recognized as workers. This aligns with the work of thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois and groups like the NAACP that have always centered art in their organizing.

For economic justice to function, communities need to envision a future when it does work. Art builds urgency and a “collective imagination,” says Peters.

If artists are central to movement building, says Evans, they must be supported as laborers.

“Artists are workers who experience interesting perceptions and existence in our society as kind of people with, you know, magical gifts, who don’t need to be sustained necessarily,” says Evans.

Speaking From Inside the Circle

Ujima has also helped unify community development work locally. At one point, Boston had more nonprofits per capita than anywhere, which meant competition for resources.

In the spirit of its name, Boston Ujima Project looks for ways the ecosystem of organizations can work collectively toward solutions that meet the needs of the community. One hope of the organization, for example, is to open a public bank.

“I think that speaks to what success would look like,” says Evans. “We don’t have to fight each other for resources.”

They want a future in which independence and representation create an environment where community members can “speak from inside the circle,” while also prompting questions about what it would be like to widen the circle further. Peters says the organization is well on its way.

“I have experienced a magic about Ujima. I think this is where we really shine,” says Peters. “I want all of our decisions to be shaped by those who live with consequences. And that’s my wish for the world.”

This story first appeared in Bolts, a nonprofit newsroom covering the nuts and bolts of power and political change, from the local up. It has been republished here with permission.

On Christmas Eve, residents of Roxbury, New Jersey, a township 50 miles west of Manhattan, learned from a Washington Post article that the Department of Homeland Security had plans to purchase a vacant warehouse on the outskirts of town and convert it into an ICE detention facility. The news was part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s larger plan to buy up warehouses across the country to house 92,600 new detention beds for expediting deportations, a scheme acting ICE director Todd Lyons likened to “[Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”

By mid-January, Roxbury’s Township Council, an elected body of seven people, all Republicans, passed a resolution affirming that it “unequivocally opposes” modifying town warehouses for ICE use. Roxbury Mayor Shawn Potillo, who forms part of the council, stated during the vote that his approval of the resolution did not mean that he opposes the country’s immigration laws.

The resolution was merely symbolic; it wouldn’t actually stop ICE from buying the warehouse in town and turning it into a detention center. In February, it was announced that DHS had purchased the warehouse for $129 million, double its assessed value. The federal government plans to retrofit it into a processing facility for detainees who will stay three to seven days before being transported to detention centers elsewhere or removed from the country. The federal government initially claimed they intended for the warehouse to hold up to 1,500 detainees but have scaled that estimate back to 542 following public opposition.

“We must reiterate in the strongest possible terms that this property is not an appropriate location for a facility of this nature in a suburban community,” Potillo and the council wrote in a press release after the feds announced they were moving forward with the plan.

Roxbury’s reasons for opposing the facility are varied. For one thing, the council estimated that losing the warehouse to ICE would cost the city $85 million in tax revenue over 30 years. Local leaders have also raised concerns about what it will mean for the environment, traffic, and property values. One resident who spoke at the January meeting said she was worried the facility would affect her ability to sell her home.

Last month, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport joined with Roxbury township to sue to stop the warehouse conversion. They alleged in a federal lawsuit that DHS had ignored federal policies requiring the government to engage with state and local governments and consider their positions, as well as provide proof that a project won’t harm the environment before moving forward. They also said that the agency’s plans require creating additional capacity for water and sewage, which could hurt a protected region of New Jersey where Roxbury is located. That region provides drinking water to 70 percent of the state’s residents and is subject to strict development standards.

The fight against the facility has brought together an unlikely coalition of immigrant rights advocates and town leadership who have said they support the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda but do not want to host an ICE facility. Small towns across the U.S. caught in clashes with DHS over warehouse conversions have turned to similar arguments in a bid to stop the projects.

“The town council is unsurprisingly caught in a very difficult position, because they are having to fight efforts from the Trump administration, despite them being very supportive in general, of Donald Trump and the Republicans in power,” William Angus, the co-founder of immigrant advocacy organization Project No Ice North Jersey Alliance, or Project NINJA, told Bolts.

On Feb. 28, members of Project NINJA organized a public protest against the Roxbury ICE facility in coordination with 22 other cities around the country where similar facilities are being proposed. Still, Angus says, the group’s concerns don’t resonate with everyone in town.

“I can very vigorously argue about the humanitarian side of why this is wrong … but with some people, that argument has no sway,” says Angus. “So we have to focus on the issues that will speak to those people, because at the end of the day, there are many good reasons—from the environmental to the water and the sewer—that make this a bad fit for the town, regardless of where one sits on the political spectrum.”

Potillo did not respond to a request for comment.

The warehouse is located in New Jersey’s Highlands region, a bucolic 1,300-square-mile stretch in the northern part of the state that spans from the Delaware River in the west, all the way to the New York border. The area is protected under 2004 legislation that created rules for water and wastewater usage in the area and limited development. Despite this, DHS in a January letter to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), described extensive plans to transform the warehouse, including upgrading existing water and sewage systems or installing new ones.

The region is overseen by the New Jersey Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council, a body in charge of reviewing development applications for compliance with the legislation. Ben Spinelli, executive director of the council, tells Bolts that the warehouse should have never been built in the first place because of its proximity to vernal pools and forest that are key to maintaining the quality and quantity of water that feeds into the state’s drinking water supply.

“Because this is a site that contains significant, important natural resources, that should have kept it from ever being developed anything close to the warehouse level, let alone a place where you’re going to house [people]—we have a number of towns in the region that don’t have 1,500 people living in them,” says Spinelli.

The warehouse’s previous owner, the Texas-based real estate investment firm Dalfen Industrial, bought the building in 2023 as a “last-mile” delivery site, but it has remained vacant since.

The facility has just four toilets and is approved to supply 12,000 gallons of water each day. But increasing the capacity for 1,500 people would require roughly 187,500 gallons each day and add more than fifteen times the amount of sewage currently processed by the facility, according to the lawsuit. Despite DHS needing approval from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the Highlands Council to complete the project, Spinelli says that the agency has not filed plans for changing the water system. The review of the site could happen quickly, he explained, but there would likely be new legal challenges to the final decision filed by the losing side that would stretch on for years.

“It’s not as easy as just signing off on a permit,” Spinelli tells Bolts. “It’s a very complex multi- input system that you’re dealing with here.”

The lawsuit faults DHS for not getting the necessary approvals from the Highlands Council and NJDEP, as well as for violating the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), which requires federal agencies to work with state and local governments to ensure a project doesn’t harm the environment. That can include an extensive environmental impact report or a shorter assessment. DHS has done neither, according to the lawsuit.

Roxbury and New Jersey also claim that the Trump administration violated the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, which stipulates that the federal government consult with state and local leaders about its plans. According to the suit, “DHS accounted for none of these views here, declining to discuss its plans with state and local officials before making its final decision, and failing to affirmatively solicit their views.”

In response to the lawsuit, the US Department of Justice, which represents DHS, said that it didn’t need to follow such approval policies because the project will have such minimal impact on the area that it qualifies for an exemption.They argue the increase in capacity could possibly require upgrades to the wastewater system but it’s too early to tell whether that will be the case and they’re not legally required to disclose those determinations at this point. DHS did not return requests for comment from Bolts.

DHS also has to contend with New Jersey laws aimed at preserving endangered species and the water supply that either prohibit development altogether or require a mitigation plan and public comment before approval.

According to a DHS memo on its warehouse conversion plan, the agency intends to open all of the new facilities nationwide by November 30, 2026. The Roxbury warehouse could be converted as early as June, according to the suit, though the lawsuit itself could delay things—on April 7, New Jersey and the town filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop work on the site. A hearing on the motion is set for May 12.

Though Roxbury has pointed to environmental concerns in its arguments against the warehouse conversion, local leadership has continued to support the Trump administration’s ramp up of immigration enforcement. Township Attorney Anthony Bucco, also a state senator, has sponsored the New Jersey Laken Riley Act, which would allow undocumented immigrants charged with crimes such as theft to be detained without bail. Advocates unsuccessfully called for Bucco’s removal as township attorney because of conflict of interest issues related to his support for pro-ICE legislation.

Representative Tom Kean Jr., a Republican representing Roxbury in Congress, has faced criticism from town leadership for his inaction on the project. Kean “did not engage to the level we had hoped to provide the advocacy our residents deserved,” the town wrote in its February press release announcing the DHS purchase. Since then, Kean has introduced The Local Taxpayer Protection Act, which would create a federal grant program for towns that lose property tax income or experience increased utility costs because of a DHS detention facility.

Earlier this month, Kean wrote a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin imploring him to “take a deeper look” at the department’s plans for Roxbury. Potillo also extended an invitation to the DHS secretary but had not heard back as of publication.

Kean in 2022 defeated Democratic incumbent Tom Malinowski for the seat and is up for re-election in the swing district in November. His Democratic opponents have seized on his inaction, with one calling his sponsored legislation, which has not moved, a “bullsh*t bill.”

Roxbury’s fight against the warehouse mirrors similar battles state and local governments are engaging in as ICE attempts to carry out its plans to convert warehouses across the country into mega prisons. In many areas, local leaders have resorted to novel methods centered around environmental preservation to try to stymie construction.

In Social City, Georgia, a small town outside of Atlanta where ICE planned to incarcerate up to 10,000 detainees, residents put a lock on the water meter because the federal agency did not provide information about how water and sewage usage would impact the community.

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown in February sued over plans to create a processing facility in a Williamsport warehouse, citing similar concerns expressed in Roxbury about the facility’s effects on the local environment. Court filings showed the federal government’s environmental review, which determined that any adverse impact would be “minor,” took just a single day to conduct. A judge granted a request for a preliminary injunction earlier this month, ruling that the expedited review violated NEPA and ordering the federal government to conduct a more comprehensive environmental assessment.

Michigan also filed a lawsuit alleging that DHS ignored federal guidelines as it plans to build an ICE detention facility in the small city of Romulus, a suburb of Detroit—which local leaders similarly argue would harm the local water supply, economy, and public safety. Federal officials also completed a one-day environmental review there, finding that the property qualified for a streamlined analysis applicable to projects that “normally do not significantly affect the quality of the human environment.” They claim the detention center wouldn’t increase infrastructure needs, even as they note that it may need to expand the sewer system. The Michigan attorney general filed for a preliminary injunction in late March, with a hearing set for May 18.

“We’re seeing a lot of different uses—whether it’s through public pressure, economic pressure—the use of local government ordinances to say, ‘this is not the type of thing that’s going to be helpful to our communities,’” says Shayna Kessler, director of the Advancing Universal Representation Initiative at the criminal justice reform organization Vera Institute of Justice.

In New Jersey, advocates are now pushing for nearby towns to pass ordinances restricting future warehouse conversions if ICE’s efforts in Roxbury fail and the agency chooses to build there instead.

Project NINJA, the immigrant advocacy group opposing the warehouse, has compiled a list of 280 similar warehouses or vacant industrial buildings in the area for sale. The town of Sparta, about 12 miles north of Roxbury, unanimously passed an ordinance in March prohibiting the development of detention facilities. Sparta Mayor Dean Blumetti told Bolts in an email, “I will pass on the opportunity to discuss further. I will just state that we, the governing body, are always proud to have the opportunity to take action that reflects the wishes of our residents.”

Angus of Project NINJA says it’s been difficult to convince North Jersey Republicans to be proactive about stopping future ICE development in the area.

“There are things that they can do to protect their residents… but that has not found a very receptive audience, and it’s mainly because Republicans don’t want to criticize the Trump administration,” he says. “They’d rather stay out of it.”