Yazmin Auli’s neighbors in North Philly were the first to believe in El Coqui Panaderia y Reposteria. After almost two decades, 28 employees hired and millions of loaves of pan sobao, Auli is excited to be investing back into that same community. Literally.

In December, Auli opened up new accounts for herself and for her bakery at Finanta Credit Union, which had just opened its first branch in Philly just a five minute drive from El Coqui’s location at the Harrowgate Plaza shopping center. She’s moving the bakery’s everyday banking out of the big bank that’s been charging her for daily operations like making change. Serving a largely immigrant community means a lot of daily cash transactions for El Coqui, Auli says, and those small charges add up.

It was Finanta that made the first loan to El Coqui more than a decade ago, helping Auli move the business out of her home kitchen and into its first brick-and-mortar commercial space. Back then, Finanta was just a revolving loan fund. It couldn’t offer to open bank accounts for its clients at that time, but it could provide small startup business loans using a version of lending circles — also known as tandas, sou-sous, hui, paluwagan or other names overseas and in diaspora communities. Finanta has been around in various forms since the early ‘90s, but it only obtained a credit union charter in 2022 — an astonishingly rare occurrence nowadays, as Next City reported at the time.

Among the credit union’s first account holders in Philly are the low-income households receiving $500 a month over a 14-month period as part of a guaranteed income pilot program run by Xiente, a local nonprofit. The payments get direct-deposited into accounts at the credit union, which households can access using debit cards, online and now via Finanta’s branch itself — located in the middle of a popular commercial corridor and right on a stop for two busy bus lines.

“It was a bank willing to work with our families where some of us have never been a client with a bank before.”

“It was a bank willing to work with our families where some of us have never been a client with a bank before,” says Michelle Carrera Morales, executive director at Xiente. “They needed a trusted organization and we needed the flexibility Finanta offered to the demographic that we serve.”

The organization recently closed on an $8 million New Markets Tax Credit deal with Finanta to renovate one of the buildings on the former St. Boniface Parish campus into a new “economic mobility center,” designed to bring Xiente’s financial counseling, economic and workforce development and other programs — currently scattered across the former parish facilities as well as several residential buildings that Xiente owns nearby — under one roof.

Finanta’s new credit union branch means North Philly residents now have an option to put their money to work for their own neighborhoods, helping finance investments in projects like Xiente’s new economic mobility center, beloved local businesses like Auli’s El Coqui, or homeownership for their longtime neighbors regardless of citizenship status.

They don’t have to finance these projects alone — Xiente’s project has funding from the state as well as philanthropy. But they can be part of the financing, instead of just passive recipients of outside funding.

The $688 million question

It wasn’t always this way, but in the community development world right now, target communities themselves seem to be the last place anyone is looking for sources of investment in those communities.

Opportunity Zones, touted as the nation’s newest yet already largest economic development incentive, hinge on developers and project sponsors convincing corporations and high net-worth investors to invest some of their dollars today in the hopes of some tax-free capital gains income in ten years.

Private foundations are increasingly seen as sources of investment in affordable housing or small business, or even unorthodox approaches like worker-owned cooperatives or community-controlled real estate. That funding comes out of the income earned from the $1.6 trillion that foundations have invested in stocks, bonds and other assets including private equity and venture capital.

Federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and New Markets Tax Credits, at least, depend mostly on big banks purchasing the tax credits to support projects located in areas where each big bank has branch locations, giving those communities at least some ostensible connection to those investments — although the decisions about those investments are often made in distant underwriting departments with little if any real relationships to those communities.

In theory, at least some federal dollars as well as state or local government dollars also come from the communities where they’re sent back to fund community development. But there’s rarely a direct line.

Prior to obtaining its credit union charter, Finanta had decades of experience raising community development dollars from large banks, philanthropy, and federal as well as state and sometimes local government sources. As a federally-certified community development financial institution, or CDFI, Finanta has so far received $55 million in financial assistance from the U.S. Treasury’s CDFI Fund, as well as $160 million in New Markets Tax Credit allocations.

Finanta has combined all of those funding sources to make $580 million in loans and investments since inception in 1992. Of that, 86% has been loaned or invested in borrowers or businesses located in low-income communities, and 64% has gone to borrowers of color.

Finanta’s relative impact and reach has been typical of the 500-plus CDFIs that operate as revolving loan funds. Some specialize more in affordable housing or residential lending, others more small business or commercial. While a number of those loan funds had local investor roots, like raising funds from local religious order communities or churches to invest nearby, loan funds like Finanta have mostly specialized in bringing in all those other sources of funding from beyond the communities where they make their loans.

“All of my nos from over there are now yeses. I’m able to cater to my community in the way I really want to, in a way that has been missed, instead of just looking at everyone as just a number.”

And yet, in just the 19134 ZIP code that Finanta’s new Philly branch shares with El Coqui, there are $688 million in deposits held across nine different bank branches — some of which can be seen from the credit union’s front door.

Iris Santiago managed one of those branches before joining Finanta last year as its new branch manager.

“All of my nos from over there are now yeses,” says Santiago, who grew up in the area and whose family still lives nearby. “I’m able to cater to my community in the way I really want to, in a way that has been missed, instead of just looking at everyone as just a number.”

Many small businesses in her neighborhood are seen as too risky by bigger banks.

“Around North Philly, you bump into so many people posted up outside on the streets doing business, not having a brick and mortar, maybe doing it from a good truck that’s not necessarily registered,” Santiago says. “Not that long ago someone had their business taken away because they didn’t have all the proper licensing since they were stuck at different stages of documentation. They’re not a member yet but I cannot wait to see that person and say, ‘Hey, I can help you.’”

Typically, a new credit union is very limited in the kinds of lending and investments it can make. The National Credit Union Administration, the independent federal agency that charters credit unions and insures their deposits, tends to limit new credit unions to personal loans or car loans in their first few years of operation until they can prove themselves to be sound financial managers.

But since the credit union is attached to an established loan fund as its primary sponsor, Finanta’s new credit union members in Philly have immediate access to the organization’s full suite of borrowing options. These include home mortgages accessible to borrowers who lack a social security number but have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), as well as Finanta’s Affinity Group Lending Program, the lending circle program that Auli used to obtain her first small business loan for El Coqui.

No such thing as a hopeless place

When it obtained its credit union charter in 2022, Finanta joined a select few CDFIs that combine a loan fund and a full-service depository institution under one organizational roof.

That list includes North Carolina-based Self-Help Credit Union and Self-Help Ventures Fund, D.C.-based City First Bank, Arkansas-based Southern Bancorp, and the Mississippi-based Hope Credit Union and Hope Enterprise Corporation.

“Sitting next to [Hope Credit Union co-founder] Bill Bynum talking about the impact that credit union had on Black families in the South, my mind opened up,” says Daniel Betancourt, Finanta’s CEO. “The mass retail approach means we’re targeting help for a lot of people versus entrepreneurs who are just a segment of disadvantaged communities. In a way it’s a much bigger vision.”

Depending on who you ask, Hope’s hybrid loan fund-credit union model was an accident, fate or divine intervention.

In the mid-1990s, a group of philanthropic and civic leaders came together to form Enterprise Corporation of the Delta as a loan fund to provide financing and other assistance for businesses and economic development projects in the Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. To run the fund, the founders recruited Bill Bynum out of North Carolina.

Upon moving to Jackson, Mississippi in 1994, Bynum went out to find a church he and his family could join. At Anderson United Methodist Church, Bynum met Rev. Jeffery Stallworth, whom he told about his life back in North Carolina. Bynum had worked at Self-Help Credit Union, where he was a charter organizer and early employee. He was inspired to work there in part because he had seen how a credit union based in his vice-principal’s garage was the only banking option for Black residents in the town where he grew up. Later, financing from Self-Help enabled Bynum’s family to become homeowners.

The Sunday after that first meeting, Pastor Stallworth introduced Bynum and his wife to the congregation — and announced that Bynum would be helping the church achieve its longtime goal of chartering a credit union to serve its members. Chartered in August 1995, that credit union was named after Bynum’s wife: Hope Simmons Bynum, who passed away in 2019.

Fast forward to the early 2000s. At his day job, Bynum was working at Enterprise Corporation of the Delta, raising funds from philanthropy and other sources and working on a growing pipeline of loans and projects. It was among the very first crop of federally-certified CDFIs in 1996, receiving $2 million from the brand-new CDFI Fund in the agency’s first round of financial assistance.

But the loan fund’s pipeline was starting to grow faster than Bynum could fundraise; generations of disinvestment had left the Mississippi Delta region with a deep backlog of investment needs.

Meanwhile, Bynum spent many of his off-hours helping run Hope Credit Union, which was starting to take off. The credit union’s membership had expanded to include other nearby church congregations in the Mississippi Delta. Its deposits grew from $1.6 million in 2001 to $3.4 million by 2003. Hope was starting to hold more in deposits than it could make in loans through its limited staff and volunteers.

In hindsight, more than 20 years later, the solution seems almost too obvious. In 2003, Enterprise Corporation of the Delta became Hope Credit Union’s primary sponsor organization, formalizing what started out as an informal partnership between the organizations. Some of the first loans that the loan fund had made, where the projects or businesses had stabilized and were reliably making monthly payments, were refinanced by the credit union — freeing up the loan fund to finance the next few economic development projects or businesses in its pipeline while using members’ deposits to invest in projects that were already generating jobs and other benefits for their communities.

Hope Credit Union went from zero commercial real estate mortgages in 2003 to $27 million in 2007. Over the same time period, the credit union also went from zero home mortgages to $25 million — meeting a growing demand from many of its church-based members. In terms of deposits, by 2007 Hope Credit Union had grown to $45 million.

In 2011, Enterprise Corporation of the Delta rebranded as Hope Enterprise Corporation. Currently, the loan fund and credit union have more than $1 billion in assets combined, while Hope Credit Union holds $628 million in deposits from nearly 50,000 members stretching across the Delta, New Orleans, Memphis, Alabama and Georgia.

Finanta isn’t quite there yet, having just obtained its credit union charter in 2022 and only opening its first branch in Philly in December. It also has branches in Reading and Lancaster, PA, where the loan fund has also been working since the early 1990s. So far Finanta’s credit union has close to 2,000 members and more than $15 million in deposits across all of its branches.

“The loan fund is learning from the credit union,” Betancourt says. “It’s almost like a more grassroots workers movement, if you think about it. I came from traditional banking, but this is a more community organizer approach.”

Even before federal funding sources became unstable, communities were piecing together funds to keep building affordable housing. 

In this episode, Next City Senior Economic Justice Correspondent Oscar Perry Abello explores locally funded solutions, including a land trust, a philanthropic coalition, an innovative community banking program, and a ballot initiative. 

In Pittsburgh, Julie Nigro of the City of Bridges Community Land Trust describes a “pay it forward” model in which homes are sold at below-market rates and resale prices are permanently capped. 

“We are keeping that wealth in the neighborhood,” Nigro says. “So it's not one homeowner that is gonna have a windfall of funds that they're going to use to then leave and go buy a market-rate home. That investment is staying with that home for future generations and future households that are gonna inhabit that home in that community.”

Sarah Kirsch of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta explains how a mayor’s commitment catalyzed a public-philanthropic partnership that has committed more than $145 million for affordable homes. 

“A light bulb moment for me was really understanding how important the local political will is for funders to come alongside the public sector and say, we're willing to go big on investing in affordable housing,” Kirsch says.

Plus, Rey Garcia of Texas National Bank in the Rio Grande Valley describes how the bank created its own community development corporation to help first-time homebuyers get into new homes. And Tiffani McCoy, co-founder of House Our Neighbors in Seattle, explains how her organization took a social housing model directly to voters, winning a payroll tax on high-compensation employees that is anticipated to generate roughly $50 million a year.

“We are over-reliant on the federal government,” McCoy says. “That is OK when it's good times. But now we are in this existential crisis.”

This episode is based on a SolutionsFest event, available in Next City's webinar library. Listen to the episode below or subscribe to the Next City podcast on Apple, Spotify or Goodpods.

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.

After Chavez Allegations, City and State Governments Move Quickly To Erase Him From Public Spaces

After stunning allegations of sexual abuse by the late labor rights icon César Chavez became public this month, city and state leaders across the country have mobilized to erase Chavez’s name from parks, streets, universities, schools, libraries and community events that had honored one of America’s most influential labor leaders.

Chavez’s face has been swiftly removed from murals from the Bay Area to Chicago to Philadelphia, and statues are being taken down from Denver to Milwaukee to Tucson. Sacramento has cancelled an annual march and is planning to rename a downtown plaza; San Antonio has launched a survey to rename César E. Chávez Boulevard; San Diego’s mayor issued an executive order to remove Chavez’s name from city facilities, programs and public assets. Renaming streets can take longer, though, costing cities and businesses alike significantly.

California lawmakers have passed a bill to rename César Chavez Day to Farmworkers Day, following similar efforts in several municipalities; the bill is expected to be signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom before the scheduled holiday on March 31.

Detroit’s Affordable Housing Fund Might Double From City-Owned Commercial Property Sales

Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield has signed an executive order to allocate 100% of city-owned commercial property sales proceeds to the city’s affordable housing development and preservation trust fund, Smart Cities Dive reports.

The fund already received 40% of such sales, which brings in about $2 million annually. Once this new directive goes into effect in July, it will receive an estimated $4 million to support affordable housing development. Units built with trust fund money must remain affordable for at least 30 years, per a City of Detroit press release.

Hawaiians Assess Damage After Major Flooding

Thousands of residents on Oahu and Maui evacuated their homes late last week, as recent storms in Hawai’i caused the worst flooding the state has seen in at least two decades.

More than 200 people were rescued from the flooding. Hawai’i Gov. Josh Green said the storms have caused at least $1 billion in damages, the Guardian reports. Farms on both islands have reported millions in crop damage. These types of storms have been made worse by human-caused climate change and global warming.

Gaza’s Cash Flow Crisis Is Impacting Daily Life

Almost no new cash has entered Gaza since October 2023, when banks shut down due to Israel’s bombardment of the city. Prism reports that the lack of small bills is preventing Palestinians from buying items for their basic needs, like medicine and bread. Merchants often do not have change so people aren’t able to complete purchases even if they do have cash.

Further, electronic payment systems are not reliable because of internet and phone outages. “A process that should take seconds can stretch into several minutes in an environment already marked by crowding, pressure, and constant anxiety,” Athar Ihab Abu Samra writes.

Colorado Is Losing Affordable Units, and the State Isn’t Helping

Colorado is building affordable housing, but isn’t preserving enough of the ones that already exist. According to reporting from the Colorado Sun, Gov. Jared Polis and state officials believe prioritizing new construction is the best way to use the limited dollars dedicated to affordable housing projects.

As it stands, the state is at risk of losing 24,000 affordable units over the next 15 years, despite Proposition 123, a 2022 voter-approved initiative designed to both preserve existing affordable units and build more. Housing advocates say policymakers need to change course so that fewer affordable housing units are lost.

MORE NEWS

• Evanston reparations committee rolls out grants to boost Black-owned businesses. Black Enterprise

• New Bernie Sanders AI safety bill would halt data center construction. Wired

• A Colorado clean air plan targeting dirtiest offenders is actually working. Here’s how. Colorado Sun

• Two literal crypto bros built a real estate empire. Then the homes started to fall apart. Wired

• Hawaii teens take on the state – and win. Yale Climate Connections

• Mamdani to create Office of Community Safety, a first step in fulfilling campaign promise. Gothamist

• USDA cancels land access program for young farmers. Civil Eats

• NYC reinvigorates push for ADUs. Smart Cities Dive

• New Jersey township fighting ICE jail faces another development battle over affordable homes. Gothamist

• Mapping ICE’s expanding footprint, and the communities fighting back. NPR

OPPORTUNITIES & RESOURCES

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• PRIORITY DEADLINE TODAY: The Urban Ocean Lab’s Senior Fellows program is looking for senior practitioners with city, state or federal experience strengthening coastal and urban climate resilience. Apply by March 27 for priority consideration.

• Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive is accepting applications for its Just Leader Fellowship, an eight-month program that supports QTBIPOC leaders ages 18-30 as
  “ecosystem builders, dream tenders and movement alchemists.” Apply by March 31.

• Smart Cities Dive is accepting nominations for its Public Service Award for outstanding local leaders who drive local impact. Nominate a candidate by March 31.

• The We Are Family Foundation is accepting funding applications from cultural leaders under 30 who are using creative practice (including design) to drive social and community impact. Apply by April 4.

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• The Just Economy Institute fellowship is accepting applications from financial activists leveraging capital as a tool for positive change. Register for an info session on April 2 and apply by April 30.

• 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. Register for info sessions on April 7 and 15, and apply by May 15.

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The National League of Cities recently released its 2025 City Fiscal Conditions report, the 40th edition of an annual pulse check of local finance officer opinions and hard annual comprehensive financial report data. This year’s numbers reflect flatlining revenues, rising cost pressures and growing anxiety about being able to balance future budgets.

Over the past five years, the share of finance officers reporting that they will be “less able” to balance next year’s budget compared with last year’s has steadily increased from 11% to 55% — the highest level since the Great Recession period.

These findings “reflect a shift from pandemic-era recovery to a more measured phase of fiscal recalibration,” National League of Cities CEO Clarence Anthony writes in the report’s forward. His may be an optimistic assessment.

The unfolding realities of a new fiscal federalism and unpredictable economy suggest that what local governments face goes far beyond recalibration. They may well be facing an existential crisis.

HR 1, or the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, dramatically altered federal funding for Medicaid, SNAP and other programs. A National Association of Counties report estimates that HR 1’s changes to the intergovernmental partnership could have a downstream impact on subnational governments approaching $1 trillion over 10 years, a figure that does not account for a long list of other actual or proposed federal downsizing actions.

Unlike a recession, these actions are not a cyclical downturn. They would mean permanent, or at least long-term, revenue loss and spending mandates. A bogey this big begs one of the most fundamental questions for cities and counties: What is the role of local government?

Years ago, I read an article in the Washington Post that profiled newly-elected members of my local county council. What struck me was a quote from one of the new members, who said something along the lines of, “I did not run for council to collect garbage and trim trees. I want to make people’s lives better.”

It is a noble sentiment, I suppose, and not isolated. Over the past half century, per capita local government spending, adjusted for inflation, has roughly doubled. Beyond the historical core services of public safety, sanitation and streets, many local governments have expanded their health, housing, welfare, environmental protection and other offerings, often with seed money and support from the federal government.

In response to the federal pullback, a natural instinct of elected officials is to try to fill the gaps left behind. They would be wise to pause and make an honest assessment of their fiscal outlook and community needs and priorities. To these leaders, I would offer these sensible steps to determine how their local government will adapt, or transform, to meet this moment of truth.

Align on what outcomes matter most

Discussions about local government priorities tend to center on programs and funding levels. Council members argue for more police officers, advocates fight to protect library hours, unions lobby against job cuts. When current budgets become unsustainable, it is necessary to step back from the details of how government is functioning and reassess what we want government to accomplish.

Agreeing on “priority outcomes” and how to measure progress toward them allows for a blank-slate dialogue about government’s role and resource commitment. By focusing on outcomes, the conversation about how to make neighborhoods safer, for example, can expand from the number of police officers to approaches that may be more cost-effective in the long run, such as better street lighting, conflict mediation and targeted policing.

Consider alternatives to government

The notion of “privatization” has been demonized by defenders of status quo government service delivery, those who fear that inviting profiteers into the public province will result in rip-off and ruin — and can cherry-pick examples to prove their point. The truth is that there is a continuum of service delivery alternatives, from fully government run to fully private, with many options in between.

These include contracting for service delivery (with private companies, nonprofits or other governments); public-private partnerships (which usually involve private investment and risk sharing); vouchers that enable clients to purchase services on the private market (think Section 8 housing); and regulated monopolies (such as power companies).

Local governments facing a financial reckoning should ask some basic questions about every service: Does it have to be delivered by government? Are there commercial or nonprofit alternatives to achieve the same or similar results with less public cost and risk? What are the trade-offs of changing to an alternative service delivery method?

Take efficiency seriously

If you polled politicians about their favorite ways to reduce spending, “increasing efficiency” would surely be high on the list, perhaps only surpassed by “reducing waste, fraud and abuse.”

It makes sense. From a value perspective, efficiency is about getting the same result for less cost. Who doesn’t want that? In reality, “driving efficiency” can be like taking a sporty convertible out for a Sunday spin; it turns heads but lacks a clear destination. Evidence of this aimlessness can be found in the performance measures that local governments publish, very few of which have anything to do with reducing the unit cost of services.

Governments that are serious about efficiency should set measurable goals for it; radically rethink how work is done (first without new technology, then with it); and offer financial incentives for cost-reducing improvements, such as a gainsharing program where employees see a cut of productivity savings in their paychecks. The debate about whether government should be run like a business will never end, but the spirit of “every dollar counts” should be universal.

Engage residents about choices and trade-offs

Each local government should reflect the values and priorities of its residents, but when those values and priorities run up against fiscal constraints, how can leaders engage their communities about tough choices? The wrong answer is to have more open mic town hall meetings, where wishful thinkers, professional advocates and cranks hog airtime and clear the table of options that need to be considered.

Wise local leaders seek to educate the public about how government raises and spends money and put residents on the spot about how to make ends meet. These conversations should start from outcomes, as noted, and proceed to nuts-and-bolts trade-offs, such as consolidating health services with the county, replacing a fire station with affordable housing or charging a trash fee. They should take place in a cross section of neighborhoods and be supplemented with a robust random sample survey that cuts through the noise to amplify the sentiments of ordinary folks.

Some residents may resist making choices because they believe their taxes should be enough to pay for everything they want. Leaders need to be prepared to demonstrate that they are making the most of every dollar.

Fortify your finances

As local governments rethink their roles, scope of services and delivery methods, they should also take steps to become more financially resilient. In the same way that emergency managers run mass casualty exercises, finance directors should tabletop financial scenarios and be prepared for a range of economic, environmental and political risks.

Actions may include bolstering reserves, monetizing assets, rethinking the revenue portfolio, and reforming pension and health benefits. The point is that just as the scope of government needs attention, so does its structure.

While it sounds trite to say that local governments are facing an unprecedented challenge, it is hard to ignore the bad budget news from cities and counties across the country, and the impact of federal retrenchment has only just begun. It is also trite to say, “never let a crisis go to waste,” but local leaders should heed that advice.

The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the organization.

In a once-thriving neighborhood in the southeast part of Atlanta, Lakewood Elementary served families who came to work at the General Motors assembly plant, a sprawling 100-acre landmark that became a path toward economic mobility for entry-level workers. At its height in the late 1970s, the plant employed as many as 5,700 people.

But by the early ‘90s, when Gloria Hawkins-Wynn moved into the community, signs of decline were evident. The last Chevy Caprice rolled off the assembly line in 1990, and a popular antique market at the now-defunct Lakewood Fairgrounds shut down in 2006. The closure of the elementary school two years earlier further contributed to neighborhood blight, turning the abandoned structure into a hotspot for criminal activity.

“We get prostitution. We get drug dealing. We get drive-by shootings,” Hawkins-Wynn told a local news station four years ago. A neighborhood representative, she urged city leaders to turn the eyesore over to a developer.

Former students begged the city to save the school, home to some of their earliest memories: Dick and Jane books, dances in the auditorium, a principal named Mr. Hinkle. Still visible on the school’s deserted playground is a faded map of the United States.

“Please don’t demolish it,” wrote one woman. Walking to Lakewood with her mother, who died when she was 7, is a cherished memory.

Now the old school is one of several in Atlanta slated to become apartments. It’s a transformation that is increasingly taking place across the country as city leaders and developers look to give new life to vacant buildings once bustling with students and teachers.

In 2024, nearly 2,000 apartments were built in former schools across the U.S., a record high and four times the number a year earlier, according to an analysis from RentCafe, a property search website. School-to-apartment conversions are now the fastest growing segment of a niche industry devoted to makeovers of historic spaces.

As student enrollment continues to shrink nationwide and more districts, including Atlanta, make the painful decision to close schools, the Lakewood project offers a glimpse of what’s to come: Seventy-four school conversion projects are already underway across the country, RentCafe’s data shows. With enrollment loss in traditional schools expected to continue, districts will be left with even more surplus properties.

Renovating existing structures “offers a way to help those buildings continue on as community assets,” says Patrice Frey, president and CEO of RePurpose Capital, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

For the first time since the Great Depression, renovation projects, including historic preservation, surpassed new construction in 2022, according to the American Institute of Architects. Supply chain gridlock and “the rapid escalation of materials costs” likely contributed to the shift, Frey says.

Data from the Brookings Institution showed that between the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years, 12% of elementary schools and 9% of middle schools lost at least one-fifth of their students. Many districts delayed closures in response to parents and generations of former students who pleaded with leaders to keep the neighborhood institutions open. Some districts, like Seattle, are still putting it off.

But maintaining underenrolled schools, especially those with just a couple hundred students, can be a financial drain. The Houston, Memphis-Shelby and Cedar Rapids districts are among those that have recently announced or discussed closures. That means they’ll eventually have to decide what to do with the buildings.

An earlier Atlanta project, completed in 1999, offers a preview of what’s in store for Lakewood and many other former schools. Bass High School was redeveloped into Bass Lofts, a three-story structure that sits in a bohemian neighborhood known for vintage clothing stores, dive bars and record shops. Mallory Brooks, a photographer, moved into one of the units 10 years ago after relocating from Florida.

“It was the first place I looked at, and I was definitely smitten,” she says. Stepping through the main entrance, “you are transported immediately to being in a school.”

Old lockers, welded shut, line the ground-floor hallways, and a large Depression-era mural of women dancing sits above the stage in the auditorium. While rows of seats remain intact, some tenants also use the space to store their bikes. Brooks appreciates how sunlight pours through the 10-foot-high windows — “I’ve been able to basically create a greenhouse in my apartment,” she says. But regulating the temperature is difficult, and she looks forward to HVAC upgrades.

‘Legacy residents’

Lakewood Elementary is one of eight sites that the Atlanta Public Schools is now repurposing through an agreement with the Atlanta Urban Development Corp., a nonprofit arm of the city’s housing authority that renovates historic properties into mixed-income residences. The plan, part of Mayor Andre Dickens’ pledge to increase affordable housing, includes giving teachers the first choice of apartments. That was important to Cynthia Briscoe Brown, a former Atlanta Board of Education member whose last vote in December was to close or merge 16 schools.

“Seventy percent of APS employees do not live within the city limits of Atlanta,” she says. “One of the board’s priorities in developing these properties is to make it possible for our employees to not have to drive so far before their work day.”

A lawyer with experience in real estate, she took an interest in the dilapidated properties when she was first elected in 2013. But she also has personal ties to the site where Peeples Street Elementary, one of the eight former schools, once stood. Her father, Woodson Briscoe, attended the school, which sat just down the street from the boarding house, run by an aunt, where the family lived.

“This was the Depression. They were a young couple with a family, and they couldn’t afford their own house,” she says. Today, as real estate costs in the neighborhood climb, with some homes priced well over $500,000, families are facing the same problem. “The West End is gentrifying to a point where a lot of legacy residents are having trouble staying.”

‘A pall over neighborhoods’

Peeples Street closed in 1982. The structure has been gone for 30 years, torn down after a fire left little worth saving.

But some shuttered schools can sit vacant for decades, attracting crime and casting “a pall over neighborhoods,” Alyn Turner, a sociologist with Research for Action, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, told a group of Atlanta leaders in February.

In a hotel east of downtown, they gathered in a dining room to discuss ways to lessen the negative impacts of the upcoming closures on both students and the neighborhoods where they live.

Turner cited a Pew study showing that between 2005 and 2013, 12 urban districts, including Atlanta, Chicago and Pittsburgh, sold, leased or repurposed 267 school properties, but still had more than 300 on the market.

School closures “tend to concentrate in communities that have already experienced displacement and disinvestment,” she says. “People can experience a closure as yet another signal of neighborhood decline.”

In Gary, Indiana, reporters examined a rising number of 911 calls near abandoned schools — an almost 600% increase between 2022 and 2024. They found fires, hundreds of requests for extra police patrols and 26 reports of “shots fired.” In 2015, a Chicago teenager was found dead in a former Gary high school. Four years later, three teenagers fatally shot a woman and dumped her body in an emptied-out elementary school.

Like any abandoned building, a boarded-up old school can “provide cover” for criminals, according to researchers at Arizona State University. Run-down, vacant structures can even escalate criminal behavior, they write, sending a message that no one owns or cares about the property.

Maintaining former school buildings until they’re sold or repurposed can make the neighborhood feel safer, Turner told the Atlanta group. But like Briscoe Brown, some participants says they worry about the opposite effect — gentrification that leaves some lower-income families behind.

“How can you help the people who are still there?” asked Femi Johnson, a senior director at Achieve Atlanta, a nonprofit that focuses on college access. “Can it be a food bank? Can it be a community health center?”

In her hometown of Philadelphia, she saw the former Edward Bok Vocational School, part of a wave of closures in 2013, transformed into an event space with a rooftop bar, a destination she felt didn’t serve the community’s needs.

Developers are drawn to former schools because of their historic architectural features, like wide hallways and stairwells. The former Monsignor Coyle High School in Taunton, Massachusetts, now Coyle School Residences, boasts “soaring ceilings” and original windows.

Tax credits for historic preservation can offset some of the costs of modernization, but come with restrictions on what developers can change and which “character-defining features,” like a gymnasium, must go untouched, says Pittsburgh developer Rick Belloli.

In 2022, his company, Q Development, acquired Mt. Alvernia, a former Sisters of St. Francis convent and all-girls school north of Pittsburgh. He described the massive, 333-room main building, the Motherhouse, as “a gloriously spectacular historic building” with cast iron stairways and arched ceilings. But he’s still navigating the approval process, and some developers, he says, avoid former schools because of those hurdles.

‘Choice properties’

Like Coyle and Mt. Alvernia, many of the school-to-apartment conversions are concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest. Columbus, Ohio, ranked first on RentCafe’s list of cities with the most school conversion projects.

Next on the list is Cleveland, where the former Martin Luther King Jr. High School, in the predominantly Black Hough neighborhood, was among those affected by more recent enrollment loss. In 2020, the district closed the school, which had dropped to less than 350 students, and a Maryland-based developer acquired the 11-acre site for $880,000.

Last fall, knowing the building might be demolished, former students gathered to reflect and grab what mementos they could. Some cut strings off the basketball hoops, says Ronald Crosby, who attended in the late 1980s. Others took old library cards and team jerseys.

Ronald’s sister Johnetta Crosby has fond memories of the school. “We had teachers that took their time to make sure you learned,” she says. “If you didn’t have anything to wear, they made sure you did. If you couldn’t afford to eat lunch, they fed you anyway.”

D’Angelo Dixon, who graduated in 2018, felt more conflicted. “Black stuff” leaked from the ceiling, he remembered, and academically, he felt behind friends who attended other schools.

Some alumni hoped the developer, Kareem Abdus-Salaam, would save the building but that’s not part of his vision for the new residential community, a mix of apartments, townhomes and retail space.

“I really want to just level the whole site and bring it up, almost like a phoenix rising from the ashes,” he says. He expects to break ground this spring. “There are so many abandoned schools in this country that are sitting on choice properties.”

He does, however, intend to make use of the large stones that still border one corner of the property by crushing them into gravel for a quarter-mile walking trail that will wind through the development. Along that pathway, he plans to erect signposts with historical photos of the school so former students “can have some feeling of yesteryear.”

In Atlanta, the partnership between the school district and the city gives officials a say in what the developers preserve. They’ll integrate the original Lakewood Elementary building into the overall design.

With a strip of commercial properties on the corner, including a popular restaurant and coffee shop, Hawkins-Wynn, who still lives a few blocks away, hopes the redevelopment will spur even more investment in the neighborhood.

On a recent afternoon, the transition was obvious, but so were the obstacles in its path. As she walked the perimeter of the property, a construction crew put up plywood on a new home across the street. A few lots down, trash and discarded mattresses piled up on the curb.

“This is why we need redevelopment,” she says, pointing to the debris. “It’s still shady around here, but it’s changing like you won’t believe.”

Chicago is a city with distinct neighborhoods. It’s also a place known for its architecture and good food.

And as Anton Seals Jr., lead steward of Grow Greater Englewood, recently told me: “This is a place where grassroots movements, labor and design are citizen-led, actively reshaping our political landscape.”

This year, Next City’s Vanguard Conference is making its way to Chicago on Sept. 15-18, 2026, to learn about all of those details with equity and justice at the center. Applications for the next cohort are being accepted until May 14 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern (with a discounted early bird deadline on April 7).

As you prepare to submit your application, we’ve rounded up some of our top stories on how urban changemakers in Chicago are working to transform the city.

The theme for this year’s Vanguard is: “The America that Never Was: In the Pursuit of….” Throughout the convening, we’ll explore the gap between what America has promised for centuries and what communities — particularly Black and Brown ones — have received. We’ll also highlight the ways that communities across Chicago have built models for building community wealth, despite decades of disinvestment.

Some of those solutions are highlighted below.

1. The South Side’s New Collective Approach to Commercial Corridors

E.G. Woode, a collective of architects, designers and entrepreneurs founded to “demonstrate and promote an alternative to the traditional commercial real estate model,” purchased its first property in Englewood, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side in 2018. That building opened its doors in 2022, with four Black-owned businesses occupying the spaces.

The collective is also an incubator and a vehicle for businesses to access the capital necessary to revitalize buildings and corridors like Englewood’s 63rd Street. During E.G. Woode’s 2022 opening ceremony, it announced that it had secured a second property and had raised the funds to revitalize it. It expects the second location, which is a 10,500-square-foot food hub, to open by this summer.

2. Can Art Bring Justice to Black Homeowners?

An artistic project, Inequity for Sale by Tonika Lewis Johnson, raises awareness about Chicago’s predatory lending history. The project was part of Johnson’s work in her former role as the National Public Housing Museum’s Artist-as-Instigator. It continues to bring awareness to the predatory lending practiced in Greater Englewood during the ‘50s and ‘60s, which has led to present-day inequities in the city.

As Next City previously reported, as part of the exhibit, Johnson placed yellow and black “landmarkers” outside several former homes purchased through land sale contracts. Each marker included the dates the sale took place and the names of the former owners.

3. In Chicago’s Food Deserts, Community-Led Markets Fill the Void as Big Chains Falter

Chicagoans are keeping each other fed. In 2022, the nonprofit Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) opened the Go Green Community Fresh Market. The market is located in Englewood, a neighborhood long neglected by traditional food retailers.

At Go Green, residents can also access social programs and workforce development. As Next City reported in June 2025, the store’s impact is tangible, as it has “attracted more than 6,700 rewards members, partnered with over 25 vendors of color, and facilitated 52,000 redemptions of its “Distinguished Resident Discount.” And its employees get paid living wages with benefits.

4. How Community-Oriented Residents Are Changing Chicago

On Chicago’s South Side, the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, or R.A.G.E., is on a mission to “create tangible solutions and mobilize residents and resources to restore our community.” Founded in 2010, the organization’s work is rooted in four pillars: membership, community engagement, economic justice and youth development.

Through its ‘Re-Up’ initiative, R.A.G.E. is developing real estate, investing in businesses, and training people to be part of the workforce in the community. And the organization is collaborating with other entities in the area, including some on this list, like E.G. Woode and IMAN.

5. Formerly Incarcerated Women Launch Worker-Owned Food Business During COVID-19

ChiFresh Kitchen, a worker-owned commercial food services cooperative that launched in May 2020, is on Chicago’s West Side. At its one-year mark, the co-op was serving 500 meals per day, and it bought a 6,000-square-foot building in 2021 to further expand its capacity to prepare 5,000 meals daily.

“We’re trying to empower formerly incarcerated women, give ourselves a second chance and show others they can do the same thing out in the community,” Kimberly Britt, one of the worker-owners, told Next City in 2020.

This story was produced as part of Next City’s joint Equitable Cities Reporting Fellowship with Resolve Philly’s Germantown Info Hub.

In rooms across Germantown over the past year, strangers sat down together to write about grief.

Some had lost children. Some had lost friends. Many had experienced the ripple effects of gun violence that have reshaped life in the neighborhood.

Now their poems are moving out into the streets. This spring, the public art project “Healing Verse Germantown: The Streets Is Talking” will display their words across this Philadelphia neighborhood, turning everyday spaces into places for remembrance, reflection and healing.

“People who walked into [the workshops] as strangers, now feel that they have a deeper connection,” says Yolanda Wisher, the project’s co-curator and a Germantown native. She and her co-curator, Trapeta B. Mayson, are both former poet laureates for the City of Philadelphia.

“[Their connection] wasn’t just necessarily that ‘We both live in Germantown,’ but it’s that ‘We both lost somebody, and we are both going through an experience of grief, and how does that connect us more than any demographic information might connect us?”

Healing Verse Germantown was launched after it won Bloomberg Philanthropies’ 2023 Public Art Challenge, which provides $1 million grants to fund urban arts initiatives addressing crucial civic issues. Since 2024, its organizers have held 10 poetry workshops and community events in the neighborhood to help residents reflect on their experiences with gun violence and loss through verse.

In the coming weeks and months, installations will pop up across Germantown to display some of the resulting poems in a range of creative forms, from sidewalk and sneaker installations to VR constellations and interactive floral offerings. A neighborhood map of the exhibition will help visitors navigate the many components.

Wisher says the goal is to cultivate an “element of surprise and spontaneity, and also delight.”

“To walk upon a space that you are familiar with or to come upon a bus stop that you’re always at, and then one day there’s a poem there,” she says. “Not only that, but it’s a poem written by somebody in your neighborhood; it’s a poem about maybe a shared experience of your neighborhood that may also speak to you individually.”

She hopes the poems give passersby a moment of respite as they go about their daily lives: “Moving from place to place, task to task, there’s a reminder there of something very human – a very human experience that, through a poem, you can plug into and be connected to.”

Read more: Why We’re Teaching Urban Planning Students To Write Poetry

More than 170 community members participated in the poetry workshops, which produced upwards of 200 poems from participants of all ages and experience levels. Project organizers selected 19 artists whose poems will be displayed in the exhibition.

Hip-hop artist and poet Andre Saunders’ poem was among those selected for the exhibition. He says he felt the power of the community-driven workshops right away.

“It allowed me to create based on what the energy of the room brought,” Saunders says. “It was definitely necessary and very therapeutic for people … Being in those rooms, [new poets] were inspired to probably push themselves to a higher level, hearing and seeing the people around them.”

Some workshops were open to the public, while others were dedicated to first responders, youth, healthcare workers, Deaf residents and men in a post-transitional supportive services program. Those who attended received stipends and were connected with mental health resources.

Several poems written during workshops have also been featured on the Healing Verse Poetry Phone Line (1-855-POEMRX2), which also shares mental health resources with listeners.

Germantown resident RuNett Ebo began writing poetry after she lost her great-grandfather at the age of 10. Decades later, Healing Verse Germantown will feature Ebo’s poem “Hawkeye Took Flight,” which is about the passing of her son and celebrates his life.

“His spirit is still alive for me. His spirit is still moving around,” she says.

Ebo hopes the idea of focusing on how their loved ones lived, rather than how they passed, resonates with her neighbors: “The thing that I would like for people to do is grab a hold of comforting thoughts, hold on to those things that make that loved one still special to them.”

Healing Verse Germantown was supported by the City of Philadelphia through Creative Philadelphia and fiscally sponsored by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

For Wisher and Mayson, leading the initiative just underscored the creative spirit they’ve for years seen in their neighborhood.

“I know Germantown to be an artistic hub. This is a community that has historically been pioneering,” Mayson says. “We need projects of this level, with this level of funding, to be able to expose all the great artists and all the great opportunities that are in Germantown, to the wider community.”

When artists take up residencies within parks departments, sanitation bureaus and transportation agencies, they help turn a community’s collective imagination into infrastructure.

In this episode, Next City's editorial director Deonna Anderson speaks with the three co-founders of CAIR Lab about their work bringing artists-in-residence programs to government:

• Amanda Lovelee, a U.S. Cultural Policy Fellow at Stanford University
• Johanna K. Taylor, an associate professor at Arizona State University
• Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, who runs the consulting practice Justice + Joy

They share examples of artists helping to invite community participation and imagine futures that don't yet exist. 

“Artists take ideas in their head and invite people in, and so they invite people into democracy and the civic process,” Lovelee says.

“We see people coming together with the ability to dream of things that are yet unknown,” says Taylor. 

This episode is based on a SolutionsFest event, available in Next City's webinar library. Listen to the episode below or subscribe to the Next City podcast on Apple, Spotify or Goodpods.

The Canadian housing landscape over the last decade has been defined by an escalating crisis of affordability, a severe shortage of non-market housing and the rapid financialization of residential real estate.

Between 2024 and 2026, housing policy in Canada has been dominated by aggressive supply-side targets, billions in federal loan guarantees for private developers and the revival of historical precedents such as the standardized housing design catalogue.

Despite the unprecedented spending and political will, the fundamental architecture of housing unaffordability remains largely intact across the nation. At the center of this policy paradox is a failure to address the foundational driver of the crisis: the commodification of land.

The dominant policy discourse relies on the neoclassical assumption that an absolute increase in aggregate housing supply will eventually trickle down to lower the cost of shelter. State interventions have mostly sought to incentivize the private market to build more, faster and cheaper. But so long as urban land remains a speculative asset, new construction alone won’t make housing affordable.

The limits of supply and technical fixes

The federal government’s approach is anchored in the National Housing Strategy, a 10-year, $115-billion plan. As the crisis intensified, the government aimed to double the pace of housing construction, targeting up to 500,000 new units annually.

The vast majority of federal housing capital is directed toward incentivizing private market development. For instance, the Apartment Construction Loan Program was backed by $54.9 billion in loans.

While this provides low-cost financing to developers, the resulting “affordable” units are often pegged to median market incomes. Data indicates that new units under such programs command average rents of $1,565, requiring an annual household income of over $62,000 to be considered affordable.

Simultaneously, provincial governments have aggressively intervened in municipal land-use planning. British Columbia mandated dense, transit-oriented development around major hubs.

However, the mere legalization of density does not guarantee affordability. When provinces mandate high-density zoning around transit stations without concurrent land-value capture mechanisms, the immediate result is a massive, speculative spike in land values.

A centerpiece of the federal strategy to accelerate housing supply is the revival of the CMHC Housing Design Catalogue. Released as a fully operational tool early this year, the modern catalogue provides over 50 standardized, ready-to-use architectural blueprints available free of charge. The designs focus explicitly on “gentle density” — the insertion of small-scale multi-unit housing into existing low-density neighborhoods.

While utilizing a standardized catalogue reduces “soft costs” and administrative friction, saving builders an estimated 5% to 6% on total project design costs, it does not fundamentally alter the economic calculus of housing affordability.

The paramount factor is the commodification and speculative valuation of the land. If a builder saves $20,000 on blueprints but the underlying dirt costs $2 million due to speculative upzoning, the resulting fourplex will inherently be priced as a luxury asset rather than affordable housing.

Prioritizing accessibility over speculation

When housing operates primarily as a speculative asset, its basic purpose — shelter — becomes secondary to its exchange value.

In Canada, the rental market is heavily consolidated: 22% of rental units are owned by wealthy families, 20% by corporations and 8% by financialized landlords like REITs. All of these players utilize the housing market for aggressive profit maximization.

So, what can we actually do if the very bedrock of our housing market depends on these speculative dynamics? How do we begin to physically and legally separate the use of housing from its exchange value?

There is already strong precedent in Canada for alternative models that prioritize cooperation over commodification. One proven strategy is the community land trust, a nonprofit, community-governed organization that acquires land and holds it in perpetuity. By permanently removing the land from the speculative market, the trust captures and neutralizes the appreciating land value.

By 2024, approximately 45 CLTs were operating across the country, managing roughly 10,000 residential units. (See a map of members of the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts below.) The Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust in Toronto successfully grew its portfolio to 85 properties, protecting over 200 affordable rental units and shielding tenants from speculative displacement.

Beyond building new stock, the aggressive acquisition of existing private rental stock by nonprofits is essential. Between 2011 and 2021, Canada lost at least 15,000 affordable rental units annually to conversions and demolitions; for every one new affordable unit built, 15 were lost to the private market.

The BC Rental Protection Fund, launched in 2023 with a $500 million investment, provides capital grants to housing providers to purchase at-risk rental buildings. In less than three years, the fund preserved more than 2,200 homes, effectively removing them from the speculative market forever.

The public lands pivot: a crucial, but modest, start

The construction of new non-market housing requires addressing the exorbitant cost of urban land.

The federal government’s 2024 “Public Lands for Homes” strategy represents an ambitious plan to unlock 250,000 new homes by 2031 by utilizing surplus federal properties. Crucially, the mandate emphasizes the retention of public ownership, entering into long-term, low-cost ground leases with nonprofit, cooperative and private developers.

By leasing rather than selling the land, the state removes land acquisition costs from the developer’s pro-forma and can mandate strict affordability covenants. This mechanism effectively subsidizes the housing without requiring massive cash outlays, ensuring the land remains immune to financialization.

The Vienna blueprint

For a comprehensive vision of how a decommodified housing system operates at scale, policymakers frequently look to the “Vienna Model.” In the Austrian capital, approximately 60% of the population lives in social or publicly subsidized housing.

The success of this model rests on universalist access: income thresholds are set broadly enough that up to 75% of the population, including the middle class, is eligible. Furthermore, a massive portion of Vienna’s housing is built and managed by limited-profit housing associations that receive low-interest public loans and are legally bound to cap rents at cost-recovery levels.

Paired with a sophisticated city-run land procurement fund that stockpiles urban land exclusively for social development, Vienna effectively locks private speculators out of the land value uplift.

A cooperative urban future

Initiatives like the CMHC Housing Design Catalogue provide valuable technical efficiencies, but they address only the physical assembly of the dwelling. They leave the economic bedrock — the commodified, speculative cost of the land — entirely untouched.

To achieve true affordability, Canada must systematically transition its housing framework from commodification to cooperation. Canada’s housing crisis is often framed as a problem of supply. But the deeper issue is the financialization of land itself. Unless policymakers confront that reality, building more homes will simply produce more expensive housing.

By expanding community land trusts, scaling up acquisition funds, utilizing public land banks for 99-year ground leases and emulating Vienna’s limited-profit approach, we can re-establish shelter not as a securitized asset, but as a foundational social infrastructure.

This story was produced as part of Next City’s joint Equitable Cities Reporting Fellowship for Rural-Urban Issues with Kentucky’s CivicLex.

When floodwaters rushed through their rural Clay County property in February 2025, the Salmons family didn’t apply for federal disaster aid. The storm destroyed their farm equipment and the bridge to their home, but they knew others were hurting more.

“So many people lost their lives, lost their whole homes. It didn’t get in our house. It wouldn’t have been right to file,” Sharon Salmons says. “We’re too old to farm now anyway.”

But she, along with her husband and grandson, still drove two counties away to a free legal clinic hosted this month by the nonprofit law firm Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky, known in the region as AppalReD Legal Aid.

“We have several pieces of property. We don’t want it sold; we want it left for our heirs. If they need a place to land later on, if they lose their homes, we don’t want them to be homeless,” Salmons says.

If the Salmons wanted to apply for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) aid, however, they would need to prove they legally own their land. In much of Appalachia, that’s not always straightforward. Generations of inherited land, informal transfers and poorly written wills often leave property titles “tangled.”

“To be eligible for FEMA assistance, you need to prove things like your identity, your occupancy of the disaster-damaged residence,” says Whitney Bailey, AppalReD’s Disaster Response Project Director. “And then, if you are a homeowner, ownership.”

That’s where AppalReD’s legal aid comes in. Inside the Passport by Molina Healthcare Hazard Resource Center, staff and volunteer attorneys sat down one-on-one with property owners and heirs to sort through complicated or unclear property titles that were making it difficult for them to access FEMA aid.

The Rooted in Appalachia clinic, like most of AppalReD’s pro-bono services, is free to people across the region who meet certain low-income requirements. Clinics like these aim to protect households from future flood complications, as well as potential predation from real estate companies.

AppalReD has put on similar estate planning and title clearance clinics for years, but this is the first one hosted specifically by its disaster response team. It comes at an unassuming point in time: No one is wading through floodwaters in downtown Hazard, and FEMA application deadlines have long since passed (though appeals and payments continue to be processed). But officials say the relief effort is still ongoing.

“The once in a thousand years flood came twice.”

Disasters that once seemed rare are becoming more common in Kentucky, which has been hit hard by numerous natural disasters in the last five years. Eastern Kentucky in particular was ravaged by floods in 2022, and again in 2025. Dozens died, and thousands were temporarily or permanently displaced. “The once-in-a-thousand-years flood came twice,” says Charnel Burton, AppalReD’s pro bono director.

In response to the 2022 floods, FEMA paid out more than $11.8 million in housing assistance to Perry County alone. That covers the 116 homes within the county reported by FEMA as destroyed, as well as the 1,310 that sustained at least minor damage. Getting that money as an individual or business, though, isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Not every disaster survivor can prove they own their home. Often, the person applying for aid isn’t clearly labeled on the title, even if the property has been passed down or gifted to them. This situation is called heirs’ property, which is a type of tangled title.

Rhonda Chaney is a flood survivor who was tied up in a title issue and couldn’t successfully apply for FEMA aid. This one wasn’t specifically heirs’ property: She was living in a friend’s property at the time of the July 2022 floods. Afterwards, she had no choice but to continue living in that friend’s home, despite mold caused by the water damage.

“Everything that could help me, couldn’t, because I had no income,” Chaney says. “I had no income because I was in the process of getting my disability. When the flood hit, I had not driven since … September of ‘21. So, I didn’t see a reason to change my address [on my drivers license]. There were different things that you had to have in line.”

She also faces an heirs’ property situation with her deceased dad’s property. That land has 14 heirs, all with 100% interest. And because of missed child support payments, the state of Kentucky also has a lien on the property; it couldn’t be sold as is without a large amount of taxes and state claimed funds being taken out.

At the clinic, Chaney and AppalReD figured out together that the statute of limitations had passed, with more than 15 years since the judgment was entered. As for the flood-damaged home, AppalReD helped her file appeals for FEMA aid; Chaney says these didn’t go anywhere, but she was still grateful for the free assistance.

The trauma of that flood stuck with her, as did the water damage on the house. But federal disaster aid didn’t last.

“What do you do when the Red Cross shelter closes … and you have to go back to that flooded home and sleep on those wet mattresses covered in plastic, so that you have a place to sleep? Who worries about people having to do that, that are breathing in the mold?” Chaney says.

“Because after the flood, then comes the mold.”

Bailey is originally from Lexington, Kentucky’s second-most populous city. When she moved to work at AppalReD’s Prestonsburg office, reality hit her hard. Even with most homes at risk due to climate change and lying low in the floodplain, people in the floodplain can’t afford to build a life elsewhere.

“My friends and family in Lexington, they would say, ‘Why don’t these people just move?’” Bailey recalls. “And I’m like, they can’t. Where are they going to go? The housing market, there’s no housing stock … [You] have to pay for gas, pay for boxes or tote bins to pack your things, and so many other expenses that add up really quickly.”

Appalachia: A hotspot for heirs’ property

Normally, when someone dies, their assets get divided up per their written will. When a property owner dies without a well-written will, the land is passed down to the heirs – with the original property owner’s name still on the title – and it’s unclear who actually owns what. That creates a legal situation known as heirs’ property, and it can get complicated quickly.

Bailey says AppalReD’s services are aided by community partners, like the organization Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN), a Winchester-based community development nonprofit focusing on land stewardship that runs the Appalachian Heirs’ Property Center.

“We definitely utilize [LiKEN] as a resource, and especially if we have funky cases, we’ll shoot an email over to Kevin [Slovinsky, the director of LiKEN’s Land and Revenues Program] and say … what are your thoughts? We’re a little stumped.”

LiKEN first began researching these title issues in 2020; in conversations with Black farmers in central Kentucky, they found the biggest barrier to federal farmer’s aid was clouded titles.

“In Eastern Kentucky, the reason that there is so much heirs’ property is because there’s a very high rate of either intestate succession – dying without a will – or wills that are poorly written.”

While heirs’ property often occurs when someone dies without a will (which triggers a specific legal process called intestate succession), many wills are also unintentionally written in a way that creates heirs’ property, Slovinsky explains. If the land isn’t divided up, each heir will have equal claim to all the land, opening the door for complications.

“In Eastern Kentucky, the reason that there is so much heirs’ property is because there’s a very high rate of either intestate succession – dying without a will – or wills that are poorly written.”

Slovinsky says the three biggest hotspots for heirs’ property issues in the United States are the Deep South (specifically among Black families), east Texas and central Appalachia (West Virginia and eastern Kentucky).

And in all those areas, having tangled titles can leave families and heirs vulnerable to bad actors. In other regions with high property value, like North and South Carolina, real estate companies exploit Partition Actions to become partial owners (co-tenants) of the property, and then force it to be sold at auction. In eastern Kentucky, it’s more common for heirs to face property tax delinquency foreclosure.

Back in 2024, Slovinsky got a call from an elderly Black woman in Kentucky who had found herself tangled up in a complicated legal situation made worse by what he describes as a “privatized market for property tax debt.”

The woman, who was a co-tenant of heirs’ property, had been preyed upon by an out-of-state real estate company that aggressively buys up certificates of delinquency across the state. Because the deed was in her aunt’s name, she and her relatives – all of whom were on fixed incomes – had difficulty paying the property tax on it, and the land faced foreclosure. A third-party company sent a relative a letter saying it would pay the taxes on the family’s behalf; the woman was left confused as to why a company would buy the debt, as all she had been told was the tax had been paid.

Companies try to buy up heirs’ property this way much more than they do land with clear titles or commercial property, Slovinsky explains. And when the property is being foreclosed upon, the heirs don’t always figure it out because the title is clouded.

“The [county] property valuation administrator, who is the one in control of assessing property values, regularly does not have the accurate mailing address or the contact information for the owner because they don’t know who the owners are,” Slovinsky explains. “Oftentimes [for] heirs’ property, the mailing address is either the address of the property itself, where there is no home and no post box, or it is a geographic location.”

For example, he’s seen mailing addresses as vague as “The Right Fork of Maces Creek,” referencing a creek in Viper, south of Hazard. Since most of these letters don’t make it to the co-tenants of the property, they may not figure out the property is being foreclosed upon until it lands in the public newspaper.

Historically, coal and oil companies have taken advantage of these circumstances.

“Selling heirs’ property is very difficult, but it only takes one heir to lease a property,” says Slovinsky. Just one heir (including a real estate group) can lease it out to mining companies. “In the absence of a clear owner, extraction companies pretend that they own it.”

For more information on heirs’ property in low-income communities, watch Next City’s “From Tangled Titles to Shared Prosperity” webinar, in partnership with Results for America.

Higher ground

AppalReD’s March clinic was hosted days after a ribbon cutting in Prestonsburg for two new ‘higher ground’ homes. The initiative, headed by the state government and in partnership with the Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises (FAHE), aims to construct seven new communities outside of the floodplain.

Bailey says these higher ground communities will greatly benefit eastern Kentucky’s low-income residents, but it’ll take a long time.

“It’s 2026, and that [flood] was from July 2022. People have to live somewhere in the meantime.”

For Chaney, that meant continuing to live in a mold-infested house, which she says would’ve cost more money to repair than it’d be to replace. Now, she’s fortunate to live on the Knott County Chestnut Ridge High-Ground Community site; the site was dedicated and families began moving in last year.

To purchase one of the homes, flood-affected households can submit buyer inquiries and work with FAHE’s homeowner assistance program, subsidizing costs with block grants. Like AppalReD’s clinics, the program is specifically for low-income residents; they must meet program affordability requirements, demonstrate an unmet need, and provide accurate documentation of potentially duplicative assistance.

Every year, 20% of the mortgage balance is forgiven, so after five years, she will own the home outright. For someone who lost what little she had in 2022, it means the world.

“I have a home. It’s been three years in the making, but I have a home,” Chaney says.

Chaney’s new home is at much lower risk of being hit by a disaster, but that chance isn’t zero. She now knows proper estate planning will help ensure that she and her descendents never have to deal with the clouded title struggles she faced.

“When I go back home, I’m gonna talk to all the people that have the same type of house I have, and let them know that there is a free clinic that will help them do this. And they won’t have to worry about going out and paying somebody to do it,” Chaney says.

Burton from AppalReD sat with Chaney and figured out the estate planning for her new higher ground home together. “It’s important that your wishes be made known in a way that your heirs can do what you wanted them to do,” she says. “That your property can go where you want it to go, and you make sure that your wishes are honored after you pass.”

This story has been updated to reflect that LiKEN is a community development nonprofit, not a policy research organization, and to clarify how third-party companies reach out to heirs.

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.

Baltimore’s Beleaguered Red Line Plan May Pivot to BRT

Facing rising construction costs and difficulties in securing federal funds and land, Baltimore’s long-sought Red Line light rail project is facing an existential crisis. But The Baltimore Banner reports that Maryland Transit Administration officials have developed two backup plans to keep the east-west connectivity plan – currently estimated to cost $8 billion — alive.

One alternative includes developing the 14-mile Red Line as a bus rapid transit (BRT) line, which would cut costs significantly and enable more route flexibility while still providing riders with stations and a lane with dedicated right of way. The other option would be phased light rail construction, using only state funds to build the west half and pushing to receive federal funding for the east half later.

Governor Wes Moore, who resurrected the project and promised construction would begin during his tenure after his predecessor cancelled the Red Line, has not weighed in publicly on whether he is considering either contingency plan.

Even Being Near a World Cup Host City Could Bring Communities Millions in Economic Benefits

The Atlanta Sports Council predicts that hosting eight soccer events for the FIFA World Cup this summer will generate up to $500 million in economic benefits for the city. But even nearby cities stand to benefit, Smart Cities Dive reports.

An economic impact analysis by an Emory University economist found that the World Cup could bring 3,500 to 10,000 visitors a day to the city of Decatur, Georgia, six miles from Atlanta. With each visitor expected to spend about $500 daily, Decatur’s economy could see a boost of $62.6 million to $142.5 million, between purchases, state and local taxes paid by visitors, and jobs created and wages paid to workers. Research on the financial impact of hosting major sporting events suggests, though, that outcomes are frequently more modest than hoped.

Yet with the federal government still withholding congressional funds for security that were promised to host cities, some cities say they may need to cancel World Cup-related programming soon. Local lawmakers and advocates also remain concerned about national security threats; the likelihood of ICE enforcement at stadiums and public events; and whether small businesses and marginalized communities will benefit from any economic boom.

Rural Colorado Wants To Hold Big Cities Accountable For “Buy and Dry” Land Deals

For decades, Western cities have relied on so-called “buy and dry” water transfers, purchasing agricultural water rights and leaving farmland permanently fallow to supply growing urban populations. While some cities have voluntarily committed to better land stewardship in recent years, some have abandoned these efforts, driving resentment among the rural communities left behind.

The Colorado Sun now reports on a draft bill to hold cities and speculators responsible for funding revegetation work after they buy farm water and dry up land to benefit Colorado’s larger cities and their suburbs. The proposal has been supported by water districts in the Arkansas River basin that have lost up to 92% of their irrigated farmland to such deals.

Chicago Mayor’s Use of TIF Funds To Fill Budget Holes Comes Under Fire

For local public officials, tax-increment financing, or TIF, can seem like a magical way for redevelopment to pay for itself. Cities designate an area as “blighted,” then set aside a portion of property taxes from that area to subsidize new investments there. Critics say TIF (which goes by other names in some states) pulls money away from schools, fire departments, parks, libraries and other local public services usually supported by local property taxes.

Chicago has infamously had upwards of 150 TIF districts — as many as the next nine heaviest TIF-using cities combined — according to a study of TIFs by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Recently, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has been using TIF dollars under his control to plug budget gaps for the city, which has upset some well-intentioned developers who have been heavy TIF-users in some of the hardest neighborhoods in Chicago to develop real estate. Those developers voiced their opinion this week in a Chicago Sun-Times op-ed.

Top Architecture Firm Won’t Design More ICE Detention Centers After Employees Push Back

Last month, employees at DLR Group, one of the world’s biggest architecture firms, learned that the company held a CivicCore contract to turn a former private prison in Oklahoma into a new ICE detention center.

Mother Jones reports that after employee outcry — including a PR specialist at the firm handing in his resignation — DLR Group’s CEO said the company would not take any new projects involving ICE detention or deportation facilities, and that it would donate all profits from the Oklahoma contract.

Workers at major tech and media companies have been increasingly organizing to curb their firms’ complicity in ICE activity (as well as in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza), but collective action in the field of architecture remains rare, Mother Jones notes. “Every time you hear about a kid being removed from his parents, somebody had to make that choice, and somebody had to produce those plans and those blueprints,” one worker said.

MORE NEWS

• Cuba reconnects electrical grid after 29-hour blackout amid U.S. oil blockade. But millions are still without power. CBC

• Five tools local governments are using to block ICE detention centers. Smart Cities Dive

• Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents, even as its population grew. Pew Charitable Trusts

• A Texas rancher donates his water rights to the state, marking one of the first times the program has been used in 30 years. The Texas Tribune

• Reckoning with state and federal cuts, Los Angeles safety-net clinics push for a new tax. KFF Health News

• Seattle Social Housing Developer wins new tool from state lawmakers. The Urbanist

• Ohio cities are signing secret deals and hiding corporate names from the public. A state bill would prevent local officials from signing NDAs. Cleveland.com

• Housing bills to boost supply and protect tenants head to Virginia governor’s desk. Virginia Mercury

• ‘We cannot replace USAID, but we can do big things’: conservation plots a future without American money. The Guardian

OPPORTUNITIES & RESOURCES

• DEADLINE TODAY: The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center Residency Program is accepting expressions of interest for its 2027 Lake Como residencies from innovators, practitioners, artists and researchers across disciplines and across the globe. Submit by March 20.

• DEADLINE TODAY: The Greenlining Institute’s Leadership Academy is accepting applications for its 11-month fellowship. Apply by March 20.

• PRIORITY DEADLINE TODAY: The Urban Ocean Lab’s Senior Fellows program is looking for senior practitioners with city, state or federal experience strengthening coastal and urban climate resilience. Apply by March 20 for priority consideration.

• Scotland’s Urban Studies Foundation is providing seed funding for collaborative primary research proposals from around the world related to “urban urgencies.” Apply by March 23.

• Building Common Ground is offering pro-bono design and development support for rural-focused, community-led groups, organizations, Tribes, municipalities, or informal coalitions working on place-based cultural, civic, or humanities-driven design projects. Apply by March 27.

• Smart Cities Dive is accepting nominations for its Public Service Award for outstanding local leaders who drive local impact. Nominate a candidate by March 31.

• The We Are Family Foundation is accepting funding applications from cultural leaders under 30 who are using creative practice (including design) to drive social and community impact. Apply by April 4.

• The Vienna International Summer School on New Social Housing is accepting applications from early-career researchers, practitioners and critical thinkers in related disciplines. Apply by April 10.

• 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. Register for info sessions on April 7 and 15, and 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.

This story was originally published by Grist.

When Krystal Steward started knocking on her neighbors’ doors in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2021, to discuss energy efficiency and sustainability upgrades, she was met with a lot of blank stares.

She was new to the issues herself, she said. But the longtime social worker kept at her new job doing outreach for Community Action Network, a local nonprofit dedicated to serving under-resourced communities. She slowly started getting people in her neighborhood to take part first in home energy assessments, then a city program to swap out appliances, make structural fixes, and more.

“In the beginning it was kind of hard — a lot of people were reluctant. If someone is knocking on your door and telling you they can fix up your home for free, most people don’t believe that,” Steward said. But, she added, “Once one person tried it out, they’d tell their neighbors, and others would jump on board.”

Now the neighborhood, Bryant, is set to pilot a first-in-the-country program that officials hope will speed the city’s transition to renewables — and offer a new model for how local governments can control their energy future.

The idea is technical, but has sparked enthusiasm across Bryant and Ann Arbor: a new city-created Sustainable Energy Utility, known colloquially as the SEU. Rather than replacing the privately-owned utility that serves Ann Arbor, the plan is for this city agency to run in tandem, offering a supplemental service that residents can opt into.

If they do, they’ll stay connected to the regular grid, but will be outfitted with solar panels, battery backup systems, or other infrastructure, drawing on that power for their home use and opening up the prospect of selling any excess. The city, meanwhile, would pay for the installation and maintenance of these systems, which Ann Arbor would continue to own — a vision of energy generation and storage distributed across the city.

The plan begins in the coming months in Bryant, a 1970s-era community with about 260 homes, many of which are officially considered “energy burdened.” A quarter of residents pay more than a third of their incomes on utilities, in a neighborhood that is one of Ann Arbor’s only areas of unsubsidized affordable housing, according to Derrick Miller, Community Action Network’s executive director.

The SEU is a major step in a yearslong process to address Bryant’s energy affordability and sustainability concerns — and then expand the approach across the city.

“When we started having a conversation about how to decarbonize the neighborhood about four years ago, it felt outlandish. Now, it doesn’t feel like anyone can stop us,” Miller said.

Two parallel utilities

The appeal of the SEU became clear in November 2024, when a ballot measure on the proposal was approved by nearly 80 percent of Ann Arbor voters. A little over a year later, city officials are ready to implement the vision, said SEU Executive Director Shoshannah Lenski.

In late February, the city announced that it was accepting expressions of interest from residents and businesses to take part, accompanied by a flurry of community meetings, animated videos, and ads in local theater playbills.

Customers who opt in will get two utility bills — one for the power supplied by these new city-owned clean energy systems, and one for any power they’re still drawing from the regular grid — which Lenski and her colleagues say will add up to less than they currently pay.

“Just like customers don’t own a power plant, the city owns and finances the system upfront, and they pay for that electricity through a monthly bill,” Lenski said. She noted that the model could prove particularly helpful for renters, who often get left out of green energy incentives. Signing up large multifamily buildings will be important to quickly expand the SEU’s size, she said.

In addition to installing clean energy systems at participants’ homes, the SEU could build its own microgrids, something that would set it apart from other municipal clean energy programs. For instance, the agency could install solar panels on a school to supply power when students and teachers are in the building, and that power could go to other SEU customers when classes are out.

Backers say the strategy allows Ann Arbor to build out its green energy system with lower financial risk — and lower potential for political or industry pushback.

“When coupled with DTE’s planned investments in clean energy, these voluntary, fee-based programs help accelerate economy-wide decarbonization while maintaining reliability and affordability,” Ryan Lowry, a spokesperson for DTE Energy, which currently supplies energy to the city, said in an email.

It might seem surprising that DTE, Michigan’s largest electric utility, is supportive of the SEU. But industry experts noted that many investor-owned utilities are struggling under the unprecedented new demands for power. Having a local government try to help manage power needs could be seen as an asset, they suggested — though DTE will have no formal role in the SEU.

So far, more than 1,500 people across Ann Arbor have indicated that they want to sign up. The SEU plans to serve around 100 to 150 customers in Bryant this year, expand out to reach 1,000 next year, and then grow by several thousand annually after that.

A missing 40%

The approach answers a question prompted when Ann Arbor adopted an ambitious climate plan in 2020.

That framework included an electrical grid powered completely by renewable energy within a decade, but a city analysis in 2023 warned it was likely to miss that goal by more than 40 percent. In order to reach it, the city would need to push DTE to accelerate its renewable energy buildout, or lean on state officials to do so — or detach from DTE entirely and create a separate city-owned utility, an idea that does have some support in Ann Arbor.

But from the city’s perspective, these options seemed too risky or uncertain, Lenski said — until officials realized that the Michigan constitution allows municipalities to create and run their own utility, even if there’s another present.

“That’s where the idea of the SEU was born,” she said.

When University of Michigan researchers compared the four options, they found the SEU model had the greatest potential to lower energy prices and emissions, boost reliability, and help low-income communities.

“Overall, it came down to having some benefits of local control without some of the costs,” said Mike Shriberg, a professor who led the research, noting a similar model should be possible in every state.

Still, some worry the strategy does not go far enough. Advocates who want the city to break with DTE and replace its services with a utility fully owned by Ann Arbor are seeking a November ballot measure to set that process in motion. (Organizers are currently collecting signatures.)

Brian Geiringer, executive director of the advocacy group Ann Arbor for Public Power, said the SEU plan still leaves too much responsibility for the city’s energy transition with DTE.

But if voters do approve creating a fully public utility, he said, it would not mean an end to the SEU: The two approaches could work together, with the SEU focused on generation within Ann Arbor, and a publicly owned utility able to make its own decisions on purchasing power.

“If you draw a circle around Ann Arbor, the SEU is doing stuff inside the circle. And we’re interested in having the city control what comes in from outside of the circle,” Geiringer said.

Local control

Like Ann Arbor, hundreds of cities are working to implement climate goals — and running into similar gaps between ambition and practicality, especially when it comes to control over energy sources.

“Cities have set these goals, and the utilities aren’t obligated to follow those,” said Matthew Popkin, manager for U.S. cities and communities at RMI, an energy think tank.

“So Ann Arbor’s SEU is an example of cities taking more control of their future without dismantling or acquiring existing utility systems,” said Popkin. “That’s a really interesting model.”

Other models also exist. In Washington, D.C., for instance, a program called the D.C. Sustainable Energy Utility has been operating for 15 years, overseeing the city’s efforts to help residents use less energy.

The initiative is far narrower than the Ann Arbor vision, functioning not as a utility but rather as an organization contracted by the city to boost energy efficiency and increase access to clean energy through subsidies and rebates.

The program is a central part of the city’s goals to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, said managing director Benjamin Burdick, and has helped cut some 10 million metric tons of emissions while saving residents more than $2 billion from reduced energy use.

Nationally, “the conversation that we’re hearing is around how do you continue to talk about climate with affordability,” he said. “Programs like the D.C. SEU are going to continue to be the way that we double down.”

The work in Ann Arbor is now receiving its own attention across the country.

“What caught my eye about Ann Arbor’s efforts were the references to citizen involvement and co-investment in their own grid,” said Jim Gilbert, a retired medical product designer in Boulder, Colorado, who is now helping the city assess the Ann Arbor model.

Boulder has dealt with recent power outages due to worsening climate impacts and aging infrastructure, and Gilbert said an SEU could offer a way forward.

Back in Ann Arbor, as the city prepares to launch the initial pilot of its SEU, the plan is to reach half of the Bryant neighborhood by the end of the year — and local residents are “all in,” said Krystal Steward.

Older members of the community are particularly excited, she said, noting that many are on fixed incomes and will particularly benefit from lower energy bills.

“It’s hard for me to keep up,” Steward said. “Now it’s not me reaching out to residents to sign up — they’re blowing up my phone.”

Concerns about institutional investor activity in the housing market have moved quickly to the center of federal housing policy. President Trump recently issued an executive order directing federal agencies to examine ways to limit large institutional investors from acquiring single-family homes and to prioritize homeownership opportunities for families. Congress is now considering related measures through the Senate’s bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act and the House’s Housing for the 21st Century Act — legislation that together represents the most consequential housing policy debates in years.

Institutional investors are at the center of the debate, and understandably so. Over the past decade, institutional investors have rapidly accumulated enormous single-family rental portfolios in many markets — particularly in communities hit hard by the foreclosure crisis.

Policymakers across the political spectrum are rightly asking whether this activity has reduced opportunities for families seeking to purchase homes. The contentious debate over how to address this issue risks derailing this rare bipartisan housing legislation.

But the central question should not simply be how to restrict investors. It should be how to ensure that families and communities have a meaningful opportunity to purchase homes first – especially when those homes originate from federally-backed mortgage programs.

There is already a policy framework designed to accomplish this, though it remains largely overlooked in the current debate: First Look.

First Look policies emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 housing collapse, when policymakers confronted the difficult challenge of returning millions of foreclosed homes to the market to benefit homeowners as opposed to large investors.

The National Community Stabilization Trust, which I lead, was created during that period to pioneer systems that gave owner-occupant buyers, nonprofits and mission-driven community developers the first opportunity to purchase distressed homes before investors could compete.

Over the past 18 years, NCST has transferred roughly 28,000 homes nationwide, representing more than $1.8 billion in transactions and more than $325 million in savings for local homeownership efforts.

We operate in what is known as the housing aftermarket, the process through which distressed government-backed mortgaged assets return to the market. When borrowers default on federally-backed mortgages, those assets move through a series of disposition channels designed to return them to the market and recover taxpayer-backed investments. Historically, this process often produced real estate-owned (REO) properties temporarily held by federal agencies or government-sponsored enterprises before being resold.

It was in the years after 2008 that institutional investors built a substantial share of their housing portfolios in the housing aftermarket. They used their considerable capital to acquire non-performing mortgage loans in bulk before foreclosure. After purchasing the debt, they completed the foreclosure process and took ownership of the underlying property.

This mechanism became one of the primary ways large investors assembled single-family rental portfolios following the Great Recession.

Many of these homes represent naturally occurring affordable housing – older properties in established neighborhoods that can become attainable homeownership opportunities with modest rehabilitation.

The federal government already has substantial influence over this pipeline. Each year, large numbers of housing assets connected to federally backed mortgages move through government-controlled disposition channels. Without intentional policy intervention, however, these assets often flow directly into investor portfolios.

This is precisely where First Look policies can make a meaningful difference.

A First Look policy creates a structured window during which owner-occupant buyers and mission-driven community purchasers receive the exclusive opportunity to purchase distressed homes backed by federal programs before investors are allowed to compete.

The policy recognizes a simple market reality: individual homebuyers and nonprofit developers rarely have the capital or speed to compete directly with institutional investors. Without a structured opportunity, they frequently lose access to homes that could otherwise support homeownership and neighborhood stability.

Every year tenst of thousands of homes flow through these housing aftermarket channels. From 2014 to 2024, more than 2 million government-backed single family assets were sold.

To work effectively, First Look must be implemented with balance. A window that is too short has little practical impact, while one that is too long risks homes deteriorating due to extended vacancy. A 45- to 60-day First Look period provides an appropriate balance, giving community buyers time to assemble financing while ensuring properties efficiently return to productive use.

A national First Look framework should also be paired with a Certified Buyer Program that verifies the qualifications of participating community purchasers and tracks outcomes over time. Certification helps ensure that nonprofits, local governments and mission-driven developers have the capacity to rehabilitate homes and return them to owner-occupancy, while also providing transparency on how federally-backed housing assets are ultimately used.

Ensuring that communities have the first opportunity to purchase government-backed assets would not solve the housing shortage on its own. But it would represent a practical and bipartisan step toward expanding pathways for affordable homeownership.

In a housing debate increasingly focused on institutional investors, one principle should remain clear: When taxpayer-backed housing assets return to the market, families and communities should have the first chance to buy them.

This story was originally published in the author’s newsletter. Subscribe for more reporting.

One Bay Area city is blazing a trail that local organizers hope others will follow with new and comprehensive ethical investment policies.

“It’s a small city that has an appetite for making a difference,” says Preston Jordan, a member of Albany City Council and its Audit and Fiscal Sustainability Standing Committee, who championed the new policies. “So there’s ingredients, there’s context here that make it possible for Albany to be a leader.”

Albany is home to about 20,000 people. Many are members of Albany and El Cerrito for Palestine, a grassroots organizing group launched in the winter of 2023 that also includes residents of neighboring El Cerrito.

For more than a year now, between regular demonstrations, film screenings, and fundraising events to support organizations leading on-the-ground relief efforts in Palestine, the group has been working with local lawmakers to amend the city’s investment policies. Its aim is to ensure that city funds are not invested in companies implicated in human rights violations, war crimes, or other harms.

The effort grew out of an earlier campaign to mobilize the Albany City Council to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The council voted 4-0 to adopt that resolution in March 2024.

“By the end, we were filling the room, and 90% of the people contributing were all for the ceasefire,” recalls Barry Preisler, an Albany and El Cerrito for Palestine member. “The city council and city officials got to hear us and realize how important it was to so many people, so that laid the groundwork for moving forward more easily on divestment.”

Read more: These City Councils Are Changing Their Public Comment Rules as Gaza Ceasefire Debates Dominate

Members of Albany and El Cerrito for Palestine, including Barry and his wife, Haiganoush Preisler, committed to organizing around an ethical investment resolution soon after and took the idea to then-mayor Aaron Tiedemann. “When it was brought to me as a council member, I thought it was the right thing to do,” Tiedemann says. “As a small city, we can’t always have a huge impact on the big issues, but we can control where our money is invested and make sure that’s consistent with our values.”

Tiedemann lost his reelection bid in November 2024, but nonetheless introduced the idea of working with Albany and El Cerrito for Palestine to amend Albany’s investment policies at his last council meeting. When the council reconvened in 2025, Jordan carried the project forward.

Developing new policies required a series of meetings between local organizers, lawmakers on Albany City Council’s Audit and Fiscal Sustainability Standing Committee, the city’s treasurer, and its investment manager. That manager works for the firm hired to manage Albany’s portfolio, and he offered advice on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment approaches, which have become increasingly common since the UN began encouraging the model for socially responsible investing in 2004.

“The investment manager for Albany came to meeting after meeting and presented, ‘Here’s different ways the implementation could work,’ so we didn’t have to invent this from scratch,” Jordan says. “We made some substantial adjustments, but we had professional advice giving us a menu of starting points.”

Ultimately, the Albany City Council voted to pass new ethical investment policies in two parts. First, it adopted an ESG investment policy and a separate implementation plan in September 2025. That plan outlines the ESG factors that the city’s portfolio manager must consider when investing the city’s funds. For example, it directs the manager not to invest in the aerospace and defense, firearms and ammunition, and oil and gas industries, as well as in any companies rated high-risk for harm.

Read more: The Quiet, Local Success of the Israel Divestment Movement

Because those directions are outlined in a standalone implementation plan that is referenced in the city’s investment policy, rather than in the policy itself, the criteria are easier to amend regularly. The city’s overarching investment policy is reviewed only once per year.

The first change to that implementation plan came soon after it was adopted, when, in November 2025, the city council voted to add a values statement to strengthen its human rights standards. Albany and El Cerrito for Palestine organizers advocated for the change because, under standard ESG models, some companies accused of human rights violations can still slip through the cracks.

“We kept coming back to Caterpillar as an example of where this all falls apart,” says Peter Bernhardt, an Albany and El Cerrito for Palestine organizer who worked on the new policies. Caterpillar sells machinery to Israel, which weaponizes it against Palestinians in military operations and home demolitions.

But Caterpillar was not flagged using the ESG investment criteria Albany first adopted in September. That’s because the company did not fall into any of Albany’s proscribed industries and common tools that portfolio managers use to determine ESG risk, like Morningstar’s Sustainalytics, have begun to exclude certain conflict zones from their determinations altogether.

Morningstar announced that it would no longer consider “issues pertaining to [the] Israeli-Palestinian conflict area” in December 2024, following demands from pro-Israel groups who claimed Morningstar was biased against Israel. The company had already made decisions to stop using UN Human Rights Council data and the terms “Occupied Palestinian Territory” and “occupied territory.”

“There’s a huge hole in their ratings,” Jordan says. “Therefore, we need a backstop of having this language in the policy so that Albany itself has the latitude to exclude specific companies based on findings that they are likely involved in these behaviors.”

Alongside Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin was identified as the only other company in Albany’s portfolio that did not align with its new investment policies. Barry said that because the targeted companies represented only a tiny portion of the city’s portfolio, organizers did not “face an argument that this is going to have a significant financial impact.” Instead, he said, “We could focus on the moral and the ethical questions.”

The city no longer holds investments in Caterpillar or Lockheed Martin and is precluded from making similar investments in the future.

While the specifics of Albany’s portfolio may have given organizers a leg up, they believe other strategies that made their campaign a success could be replicated anywhere. For starters, they recommend building relationships with lawmakers.

“We invited the council members to come and talk with us, and we did that with the ceasefire campaign, too, personally, one-on-one,” Haiganoush says. “We were able to get them to look at the facts themselves.”

“I think that made the biggest difference in actually moving things forward,” Bernhardt agrees. “Because once you, with respect, engage with them to try and educate them on a topic they have not necessarily paid close attention to, you stand a better chance of success. Then, having numbers show up at city council meetings to talk is just icing on the cake.”

Jordan says he also recommends organizers be willing to make compromises during the legislative process, not on their moral or ethical demands but on finding the best path toward meeting them. He says that for Albany organizers, the plan to pass the city’s new investment policies in two parts, with the human rights-related commitments coming second, “was understandably a bit uncomfortable.”

But, based on council members’ expertise and the relationships the groups had fostered, they were able to move forward rather than reach an impasse. “That took trust,” Jordan says.

It also resulted in a more comprehensive policy that accounts not only for human rights violations, but other harms both at home and abroad, including gun violence and the pollution wrought by the oil and gas industry. Albany now boasts one of the most progressive ethical investment commitments among cities nationwide.

The organizers who demanded the change and their allies in the city government hope Albany’s process and policies will serve as models. Tiedemann says: “I think that a lot of other cities can do this if you just approach it calmly and go with the intent of doing the right thing.”

Every Waymo ride, every Uber Eats delivery, every “seamless multimodal journey” begins and ends on a sidewalk. Yet while cities race to fine-tune algorithms, sensors, and smart infrastructure, the most fundamental network we all rely upon remains dangerously underfunded and unevenly maintained.

Sidewalks are the connective tissue of urban transportation, serving as the beginning and end of nearly every trip. But responsibility for maintaining and clearing them remains a patchwork system. That means that, as cities and companies invest billions in autonomous vehicles, robotic delivery, and smart city technology, we’re building on top of a foundation with critical gaps.

The sidewalk crisis

The irony is that the most sophisticated transportation technologies being deployed today still rely on the oldest infrastructure in our cities. After all, a system is only as strong as its weakest link.

Our ability to connect to this foundational social and physical infrastructure is a documented problem. About one-third of Americans live in communities without sidewalks. And the consequences are dire. The burden of bad sidewalks falls to those most vulnerable — wheelchair users, the elderly, children — depositing people from the side of the road into the middle of the street, leading to injury or death. A 2023 Governors Highway Safety Association report finds that 65% of pedestrian deaths occurred in locations without sidewalks.

Although the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990, cities across America are still behind in implementing this legislation by providing wheelchair-accessible sidewalks. Several cities have faced costly litigation over sidewalk access and repair, including Portland, Los Angeles and Baltimore.

Though cities typically steward their own sidewalk inventory data, the absence of comprehensive national sidewalk data is part of the story, too. Washington State is on the verge of being the first state in the country to have a comprehensive sidewalk database within its borders. Its residents’ mobility depends upon predictable, navigable public space – as does the feasibility of the smart city innovations being tested in the so-called Silicon Forest.

A game of Pac-Man

The curb cut effect, a concept popularized by Angela Blackwell Glover, reminds us that infrastructure designed for accessibility benefits everyone. Curb cuts and building ramps built for wheelchair users also help parents pushing strollers, travelers rolling suitcases and workers moving carts. But it also applies to rented electric scooters, delivery robots and every other walking or rolling automaton Big Tech can dream up.

For a delivery robot to function safely, it needs exactly what a wheelchair user needs: a continuous, unobstructed path. Broken pavement, missing curb cuts, snow piles, overgrown trees, and uneven surfaces are system failures that can make an entire route impossible. From Chicago to Moscow, videos have shown food-delivery robots getting stuck in snow.

“​​For these robots to work, the city has to be walkable,” Nico Larco, director of the University of Oregon’s Urbanism Next Center and co-author of a 2022 study on whether pedestrian delivery devices could benefit cities, told Streetsblog.

Their tests found that delivery robots were unable to operate in some neighborhoods because of infrastructure limitations such as cracked sidewalks, overgrown trees blocking the path and cars parked across pedestrian space. The machines encountered many of the same barriers faced every day by wheelchair users and pedestrians.

“A lot of these cities have sidewalks that are too narrow, or there’s no ADA ramp on one side — or even both sides — of the street,” Larco said. “That doesn’t work for people, either.”

Think of it like a game of Pac-Man: Players can only move smoothly through the maze if a corridor remains open and predictable. If a path is blocked, the route is unusable. In the real world, each missing curb cut, broken slab or uncleared stretch of sidewalk functions like a wall appearing where a corridor should be.

And then there are the ghosts, the unpredictable hazards that suddenly appear in an otherwise clear path: a snowbank pushed into the curb ramp, a delivery truck parked across the sidewalk, construction fencing that forces pedestrians into the street, even stuck delivery robots and abandoned e-bikes blocking the sidewalk. For someone using a wheelchair, pushing a stroller or relying on a navigation algorithm, they can make an entire route unusable.

Instead of competing for space, some researchers suggest that humans and robots can collaborate to enhance accessibility. In a study by Carnegie Mellon University, researchers found that when people with disabilities work with roboticists, it can result in new design choices and better uses for robots and sidewalks are made. When people with disabilities were involved in the design conversation, ideas such as robots clearing sidewalks for debris, acting as crossing guards, reporting blocked paths, and carrying supplies for people emerged.

If cities want to build truly seamless, high-tech transportation systems, they need to start with the ground beneath our feet. That means treating sidewalks not as optional amenities but as core mobility infrastructure — with dedicated funding, clear responsibility for maintenance, and the same level of planning attention we give to roads and, now, robots.

Carlos Ochoa is a Latino Memphian. He has lived in Memphis, Tennessee, for over a decade. And for a large portion of that time, he’s worked to protect immigrant rights in the city. He’s the media correspondent for Vecindarios 901, a volunteer-based coalition rapidly responding to the fear and chaos Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee has brought to the Memphis community since he invited the National Guard in, as part of the Memphis Safe Task Force.

According to Ochoa, people are afraid to drive to work or take their children to school. It’s not just immigrants who are afraid.

“The state troopers are conducting these mass dragnets on our city. They are pulling people over for pretextual stops. They might say, ‘Well, we thought you weren’t wearing your seatbelt and so we’re pulling you over,’” says Ochoa, who noted other unwarranted reasons working-class Memphians have been arrested. “We’re not really seeing these kinds of tactics play out in more affluent neighborhoods. We’re seeing them happen in working-class family neighborhoods.”

Ochoa explains that while people in his community are taking the threat against immigrants seriously and responding accordingly, the lack of state support and historic murders against people protesting state violence mean the situation in Memphis is much different compared to cities with more liberal state representatives.

“People need to understand that Memphis is a place of resistance, but our situation makes it really difficult. If you look at Martin Luther King Jr., for example, organizing and fighting for freedom can cost your life. And so that’s part of the calculus of people here. Memphis also has a long history of police violence, and so showing up to protests or confronting law enforcement agents or confronting federal agents can mean losing your life here.”

However, that isn’t keeping people from organizing and addressing the resource and safety gaps these contracts are creating.

Together, the Memphis Safe Task Force, a multi-agency partnership established via an executive order by President Donald Trump last year, “to combat violent crime in the city, 287(g) contracts, which grant local officers special federal authority to investigate any undocumented person, and Republican state leaders are working to create a hostile environment for immigrants.

Three organizations, Vecindarios 901 (V901), Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope (MICAH), and Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), are fighting back. All of them are immigrant rights organizations with different methods and the same goal: to protect Memphian immigrants. The organizations are network-based groups offering resources and some type of direct service for local immigrants.

While some elected officials in more liberal cities and states like Mayor Jacob Frey in Minneapolis and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz are denouncing ICE presence in their communities, the landscape in Memphis, Tennessee, is very different, where many local and state officials are actively working with and in support of ICE presence. (Editor’s note: There are a handful of electeds in Tennessee who’ve filed a suit against Governor Lee’s deployment of the National Guard, according to reporting from Tennessee Lookout.)

More people are starting to bear witness to the kinds of cruelty of the federal government against all working class communities across the country. And people are really starting to want to become more involved.

Ten states now have statewide policies prohibiting law enforcement officers from cooperating in one of the primary programs Trump is using to carry out his mass deportation agenda. In February, Maryland passed a law prohibiting local and state law enforcement agencies from entering into civil immigration enforcement agreements with the federal government. The new law also requires agencies to terminate existing immigration enforcement agreements on or before July 1, 2026. Jurisdictions in the state have had 287g agreements in place for 18 years. According to The Associated Press, Frederick County in Maryland has turned over 1,884 people to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since 2008. This will no longer be the case.

And in California, municipal and county governments have set aside public money to help immigrants and rapid response networks build legal defenses, amid increased immigration crackdowns.

However, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee requested the Memphis Safe Task Force, which the White House announced in September 2025. The task force is made up of the National Guard and 30 other local, state, and federal agencies across the state. It claims to be “hypervigilant policing” to rid the city of criminal activity.

The task force has introduced new agreements called 287(g) contracts, which were signed into law on November 4, 2025. It’s part of a federal program from the 90s that has been granted new perks under the current administration: financial incentives for the counties that agree to it.

While these agreements have been around for decades, there has been a 916% increase in counties joining the federal program since January 2025. According to the ACLU, the Trump administration is quietly using the 287(g) program to turn local police and sheriff’s departments into arms of its deportation machine. These agreements claim to offer protection from violent criminals. However, the reality is that nearly 60% of the people ICE detained in Tennessee last year had no convictions.

Since Memphians aren’t able to rely on their state officials to protect their immigrant communities, they are doing the work themselves. On December 12, 2025, MICAH gathered community members and met with Shelby County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner Jr. to discuss the 287(g) contracts in hopes of having him terminate them.

This campaign culminated in a resolution unanimously passed by the school board in October 2025, according to Chalkbeat. Iris Mercado from TIRRC explained that while the resolution has passed, the school system is still working on putting the additional bus services into effect. In the meantime, TIRRC has organized car pooling services through mutual aid efforts with interested neighbors.

MICAH, Vecindarios 901, and TIRRC gathered together to start a petition demanding the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department cease the 287(g) contracts and they presented it at a December 2025 meeting with the department. According to Gisela Guerrero and Erika Alegria, two organizers with MICAH, Bonner is the one with the power to dissolve the current 287(g) contract that is plaguing Memphis. Alegria, who attended the meeting, shared that the Chief Deputy made it clear he would not be terminating the agreements.

Alegria and Guerrero, two Memphian Latina women, explained that Sheriff Bonner and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department have spent the last few years building trust and care with the Latino community across Memphis.

However, the Latino Memphis community cannot support the sheriff and these contracts, given the safety risk they have brought to their community.

Alegria says Bonner confirmed during the meeting that he has the authority to sign the contract or end the contract. However, the financial incentives, which are a new addition to these agreements presented by the current administration, are keeping him from doing so. Sheriff Bonner confirmed that the department had received $4 million as part of the 287(g) agreement, according to Alegria. Next City reached out to Sheriff Bonner’s office for comment, but received no response.

This program allows ICE to exist within this community without visibility. For V901, which offers a rapid response hotline number that Tennesseans who might be targeted can call, this makes its work much harder.

According to Ochoa, V901’s media manager, the 287(g) agreements between ICE and counties across Tennessee have escalated not only ICE’s power but also its presence in the city.

The largest bulk of the organization’s work is related to its volunteer-trained observers who, when they are on call, get notifications of ICE-related activity and dispatch to the notified area. Once they arrive at the site, volunteers exercise their First Amendment rights to observe federal agents within the Memphis community.

While Vecindarios has been around for a few years, its work and presence as an immigrants’ rights coalition have ramped up over the last 12 months.

“I think more people are starting to bear witness to the kinds of cruelty of the federal government against all working class communities across the country. And people are really starting to want to become more involved,” says Ochoa.

According to Ochoa, Vecindarios 901’s growing impact is a result of Tennesseans realizing that the federal government’s presence in their city isn’t just about immigrants’ rights. It’s about people responding to the federal government conducting massive dragnets in their community.

However, documents from the task force itself show that the people they have arrested so far are not violent criminals. In fact, the majority of people being arrested do not have a criminal record.

According to Alegria, during the meeting Sheriff Bonner stated that he is not concerned with immigrants or the ‘immigration problem.’ He went on to say that he did not sign this contract to help detain criminals.

While the task force claims to fight criminals, the Institute for Public Service Reporting, in collaboration with Lighthouse Reports, released an investigation that found the Safe Task Force’s presence is creating its own public safety threats.

With 2026 being an election year for Deputy Chief, Sheriff Bonner has until August to act and cease the contracts, according to Guerrero. MICAH is creating a campaign to raise awareness and ensure the pressure to cease the contract is applied to whoever could win the election seat in August.

This story was produced through our Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies, which is made possible with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

After decades of consistent growth, assets of community development financial institutions (CDFIs) fell 6% — a drop of $19 billion — from December 2023 to June 2025, according to a new report issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Even through each of the past two biggest economic crises, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Global Financial Crisis, CDFIs grew in assets as a group. While other financial institutions pulled back from low- and moderate-income communities, these institutions stepped in and kept homeowners and tenants in their homes, kept businesses open, and helped their communities recover from broader economic downturns.

On its face, the recent drop could suggest that lenders focused on low-income communities are now pulling back. But that’s not what’s happening.

Many CDFIs are still growing, making loans and expanding membership. Mississippi’s Hope Credit Union doubled in size from December 2008 to December 2009. It’s nearly tripled in size since Covid-19 first hit, growing from $300 million in assets in March 2020 to $857 million by the end of 2025. Meanwhile in the South Bronx, New Covenant Dominion Federal Credit Union held just under $1 million in assets as of March 2020, and it’s now at $4.5 million in assets.

The recent drop-off in overall CDFI assets is something for cities to be concerned about, but not for the reason that might seem obvious. The financial institutions that serve these communities aren’t retreating or shrinking in size.

Instead, some of them are — at least temporarily — letting go of the CDFI-certified status that until recently provided them reliable support to expand and deepen their work. Funding delays, regulatory changes and staffing constraints have made it difficult for some lenders, especially credit unions, to keep that designation.

And experts tell Next City they expect this trend to continue. What that means is that as these institutions continue to carry out their mission, they may not be able to make as many low down payment mortgages, small business loans, or loans to build or rehab vital community spaces in low- and moderate-income communities.

“We’re seeing credit unions drop certifications for different reasons,” says Pablo DeFilippi, executive vice president at Inclusiv, a national network of credit unions with a community development mission. “The complexity of the new application is one of those issues, but even without certification, their impact will continue and their business model will continue.”

Tale of the tape

CDFIs are certified by the U.S. Department of the Treasury to have a primary mission of community development and provide at least 60% of their lending or other financial services to eligible low- and moderate-income census tracts or “other targeted populations” — including African Americans, Latin Americans, Native communities and certain Asian immigrant groups, as defined by the CDFI Fund, an arm of the U.S. Treasury Department. Banks, credit unions, revolving loan funds and venture capital funds can all apply to the CDFI Fund for certification as CDFIs.

CDFI certification makes institutions eligible for financial assistance from the CDFI Fund, a Treasury Department program that provides them with capital, tax credits and other resources. Larger banks can also provide funding to CDFIs (including other banks that are CDFI-certified) as part of meeting their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act.

Collectively, CDFI assets have grown nearly tenfold since 2011, according to the New York Fed report. Researchers compiled data from publicly available sources, including quarterly call reports submitted to federal regulators for either banks or credit unions, as well as 990 forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service by nonprofit loan funds or venture capital funds.

When broken down by institution type, that growth has not been the same across all categories.

In 2011, CDFI-certified banks with CDFI certification made up the largest share of assets, with $23 billion at the time, followed by credit unions with $16 billion, and loan funds with $8.3 billion.

By 2025, CDFI-certified loan funds had quadrupled in size to $32 billion.

CDFI-certified banks grew by more than five times, peaking at $127 billion in 2024, but fell slightly last year to $125 billion.

Cooperativas — a network of member-owned cooperative-banking institutions in Puerto Rico that are state-insured instead of federally-insured — became eligible for CDFI certification in 2018, holding $200 million in assets at the time, and have since grown to $11 billion as of 2025.

CDFI-certified credit unions, meanwhile, peaked at $295 billion in 2023, but have since dropped to $277 billion as of 2025.

A lot of the recent growth in CDFI assets came during the Covid-19 economic downturn. Federal programs provided unprecedented support to CDFIs, especially for banks and credit unions. Much of that support came in the form of massive one-time infusions of economic recovery grants as well as investments made under the $9 billion Emergency Capital Investment Program, or ECIP — which did not include loan funds at all.

New Covenant Dominion Federal Credit Union’s rapid growth after the rise of Covid-19 was powered in part by an ECIP investment of just $148,000.

As the New York Fed report notes, the drop in CDFI assets since 2023 coincides with a notable decline in the total number of credit unions that are maintaining their CDFI certification. The credit unions aren’t failing or shrinking, but their CDFI certifications are expiring or lapsing — which otherwise doesn’t affect their status as chartered, federally-insured depository institutions.

“The report is a summary of CDFIs’ relationship with the U.S. government,” says Zoila Jennings, lead impact investment officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “I wasn’t so distressed when I saw the numbers, mostly on the credit union side. We’ve had CDFIs in our portfolio that couldn’t get re-certified yet or [organizations seeking first-time CDFI certification] that couldn’t get in.”

Certifiable

The CDFI Fund recently overhauled the CDFI certification and annual recertification process — the CDFI Fund also requires certified institutions to submit data and other documentation on an annual basis to maintain their CDFI status. The overhaul goes back to under the Biden administration, when journalists found evidence of a CDFI-certified loan fund making predatory loans and filing debt recovery lawsuits against thousands of low-income, predominantly Latino borrowers.

The overhauled CDFI certification process is intended to weed-out organizations that may look like or say they have a primary mission of community development but in reality have a business model that intends to extract from low-income borrowers or trap them in endless cycles of predatory debt.

The CDFI Fund itself was in the midst of rolling out the new application process when the Trump administration started making attempts at terminating the CDFI Fund and its entire staff. The chaos and cuts led to a certification backlog as well as confusion and uncertainty, even for institutions that were among the first to be CDFI certified back in 1996.

Strong bipartisan support has helped keep the CDFI Fund around, at least on paper. But the turmoil has affected CDFI certification among credit unions more than banks or loan funds so far.

CDFI loan funds

CDFI-certified loan funds are typically nonprofit organizations that depend heavily on grant funding to maintain their operations. They tend to have the most experience writing grant applications, whether to the CDFI Fund itself or state and local government funders or philanthropic funders.

It’s almost taken for granted that a CDFI loan fund will apply every year or at least every other year for financial assistance from the CDFI Fund. They’re more dependent on its financial assistance than other CDFI types. In a typical loan fund model, every $1 in financial assistance from the CDFI Fund allows the loan fund to borrow $5 or more in funding from other sources including banks or foundations — funds that it deploys as loans to individuals, organizations or projects. There are relatively few other places for revolving loan funds to replace the CDFI Fund as a source of that $1.

Given their heavy reliance on the CDFI Fund’s financial assistance, loan funds are holding onto their CDFI certifications for dear life, even as a growing backlog of now $1 billion in financial assistance across multiple CDFI Fund programs remains stuck in the approval process. For those funds to go out, both the U.S. Treasury and the White House Office of Management and Budget must sign off. It’s the latter’s approval that’s been the main barrier, CDFI industry insiders tell Next City.

There are at least five states that have financial assistance programs for CDFIs (New York, Virginia, South Carolina, Michigan and California), but even those programs are still in pilot phases or have remained relatively limited in available funding.

CDFI loan funds have the smallest median asset size compared to other types of CDFIs. While they’re doing everything they can to keep their CDFI certifications, loan funds are running up against the limits of how much they can grow without more of those financial assistance $1’s that are hard to come by. As a result, they are slowing down lending pipelines for projects, small businesses and individuals in the communities they serve.

CDFI banks

CDFI-certified banks are less financially dependent on financial assistance from the CDFI Fund. As regulated institutions, they accept deposits to build their balance sheets and earn the bulk of their income on the difference or “spread” between the interest rates they pay depositors and the rates and fees they charge borrowers.

CDFI banks can and usually do set aside at least some of that spread income to support their growth. For every $1 they set aside, banks can pull in up to $10 in deposits, which allows them to keep making more loans.

CDFI banks can use financial assistance from the CDFI Fund as $1’s to fund their growth, but they don’t have to. They’re more likely to use financial assistance from the CDFI Fund to do things like supporting down payment assistance for homeowners or creating loan loss reserves that help bring down interest rates for small business loans, loans to worker-owned cooperatives, or community facility loans to build or maintain recreational centers, senior centers or health clinics. As loan loss reserves, financial assistance from the CDFI Fund can serve as collateral for making loans to people or organizations that don’t have a lot or any of their own collateral.

As a group, CDFI banks have the largest median asset size of all CDFI types (although the largest single CDFI is Tampa-based Suncoast Credit Union). Being larger than other CDFI types, CDFI banks have more cushion than others to wait out any uncertainty around the CDFI Fund, but it’s not unlimited capacity. While they are mostly able to keep plugging away on their pipelines overall, they will eventually start to run out the clock on specific programs for down payment assistance or certain small business loan programs with dedicated loan loss reserves — if they haven’t already.

CDFI credit unions

CDFI-certified credit unions are similar to banks in that they are also regulated institutions that accept deposits and earn spread income. But as not-for-profit, member-owned financial cooperatives, credit unions have volunteer boards of directors elected from their members on the principle of one member, one vote. As such, credit union board directors have the incentive and the power to keep interest rates as low as possible but just high enough to maintain financial stability for the credit union.

As a group, CDFI credit unions have a median asset size more than 10 times that of CDFI loan funds, but just about half that of CDFI banks.

Many CDFI credit unions are staffed by volunteers or may only have part-time staff. If they do have any staff, they are less likely to be dedicated to writing grant applications the way loan funds do. A CDFI credit union may not have any grant funders other than the CDFI Fund, to which it may apply for financial assistance only once every few years.

Given they have access to spread income and often zero dedicated grantwriting staff who would be handling re-certification paperwork, it’s not surprising that a greater number of credit unions have been allowing their CDFI certifications to lapse, resulting in what looks like a retreat from CDFI target communities.

At Inclusiv, a national network of credit unions with a community development mission, Senior Vice President for Policy Alexis Iwanisziw expects the dip in CDFI certification among credit unions to continue, as the New York Fed report only includes numbers up to June 2025, and many CDFIs weren’t up for recertification until the second half of the year.

“It will get worse before it gets better,” Iwanisziw says. “But even among those members of ours not making it through, it’s not changing their business model or the markets they want to serve. They’re still there but they will have fewer resources to bear on their higher impact work.”

Not going anywhere

Separate from CDFI certification, there’s also the low-income designation from the National Credit Union Administration — the independent federal agency that charters credit unions and insures their deposits. The NCUA may designate a credit union low-income if more than half of its members have a family income of 80% or less than the median family income for the metropolitan area where they live or the national metropolitan area median income.

As a group, over the past two years, low-income designated credit unions have been setting new records nearly every quarter in terms of both asset size and members served, currently at $1.27 trillion in assets and 79.7 million members. That’s the highest those two numbers have ever been.

In terms of institutions, there are currently 2,390 low-income designated credit unions — a number that does continue falling every quarter, in line with broader consolidation across the industry. Even low-income designated credit unions are either merging with each other or other credit unions. But there isn’t a wave of credit union failures due to turmoil at the CDFI Fund.

When I moved from government into nonprofit leadership, I was ready for a steep learning curve. But I was surprised to find how many of the tools I relied on in public service translated almost directly to running and growing a nonprofit.

In my current role helping lead a multi-region cash-support initiative for moms and babies, my colleagues and I have used those tools to secure public funding, coordinate across agencies and align our work with broader anti-poverty goals.

But the playbook we use is not specific to cash transfers or public–private partnerships. It is a set of habits that any nonprofit leader can adopt, whether you run a fledgling food pantry, a local arts organization or a regional network of health clinics.

Here are three concrete practices from government that nonprofit executives can adapt right away.

Treat government like a primary stakeholder, not an afterthought.

In government, you quickly learn that the “public” is not an abstract concept. It shows up as very specific people with names, titles, timelines and constraints. And as a nonprofit, the same is true for the public sector.

All nonprofits, even those that do not receive public dollars, still operate in a policy environment that shapes everything from their clients’ eligibility for benefits to the zoning that affects their services.

Instead of waiting until a grant opportunity or crisis appears, public sector leaders are trained to systematically map these relationships and to track stakeholders’ needs, interests and areas of influence. When I worked at the Treasury Department, my team managed a huge spreadsheet of private and nonprofit stakeholders, documenting our interactions, their views and priorities and any requests we had for them. That way, we could quickly gear up for a conversation or anticipate how an influential firm or advocacy organization might react to a policy decision.

Doing this as a nonprofit can create opportunities for new funding, higher visibility or partnerships that deepen your impact. To integrate this concept into your nonprofit work:

• Build a basic stakeholder map. List the agencies, elected offices and staff roles that touch your mission at the city, county, state and federal levels. Then identify the program managers and policy staff, not just the top officials. These are usually the people who end up taking the meetings, leading the initiatives and suggesting plans of action to their principals, so having their ear is often more important than rubbing elbows with the top brass. Get to know what problems they are trying to solve; sometimes, your organization might have (or be) the solution.

• Assign and track relationships. Treat government contacts the way you treat major donors. Assign an internal owner, set a cadence for check-ins and keep simple notes about their priorities and constraints.

• Offer value before you need anything. Share anonymized data trends, client stories or short memos that help public officials understand what you are seeing on the ground. This builds trust and makes it easier to ask for support later. My most useful meetings as a public servant were with organizations that had done the research to know my priorities, and came bringing insights that could strengthen my team’s work — furthering our progress toward shared goals.

At our organization, this kind of structured outreach has helped us secure public investments, obtain administrative waivers and design programs that complement rather than conflict with existing benefits. Smaller nonprofits can do the same with just a spreadsheet, a clear point person and a few hours a month.

Build coalitions that actually do things, not just meet.

Government work rarely happens in a straight line. You spend much of your time coordinating among departments, agencies and outside partners that each control a different piece of the puzzle.

Nonprofit leaders often think of “coalitions” as large, formal groupings that require heavy staff time and produce more meeting notes than action. While I’ve seen more than a few of those in my time in public service, my experience also teaches me that coalitions can be lightweight and still powerful — if they are designed around a few concrete, shared tasks.

To build a useful coalition in your field:

• Start with a narrow, shared goal. Instead of “ending hunger,” aim for “ensuring every client can keep their food benefits when they start a new job,” or similarly specific outcomes.

• Define one to three joint activities. For example, share talking points for local budget hearings, align on a basic data indicator to track, or coordinate outreach in one neighborhood for a limited period.

• Give someone “quiet ownership.” One organization should own scheduling, note-taking and follow-up. This does not have to be a new role – it can be a slice of an existing staffer’s job — but it should be handled by someone with an eye for detail and skill at managing relationships.

In our case, we work with a coalition of organizations across the country focused on direct cash assistance for families. What makes it effective is not the size of the group, but the fact that we use it to align on messaging, share emerging research and coordinate with policymakers on specific opportunities rather than talking in generalities.

This model can be applied to any range of nonprofit specialities, and foster connection and collaboration in place of the corporate “us vs. them” mentality that too often seeps into mission-driven work.

Run your nonprofit like it must be “shovel ready.”

In government, promising ideas often die because they are not ready when funding or political will appears. As a result, public-sector leaders spend a lot of time preparing projects so they can move quickly when a window opens. Most public sector workers have a long list of ideas that they would love to translate into action — the trick is being prepared to seize the opportunities that come along (and creative enough to recognize them).

Nonprofits frequently operate the opposite way: brainstorming ambitious projects and building out grant proposals without building the internal structure to properly execute them. Borrowing a “shovel ready” mindset can help leaders be prepared when public or private funding, policy changes or partnership opportunities suddenly materialize.

To make your organization shovel ready:

• Pre-design a few high-impact projects. For each, outline goals, target population, core activities, a simple budget and the outcomes you would track. Keep these to two or three pages and update them periodically.

• Clarify decision pathways in advance. Decide who needs to sign off on what, and by when, if an opportunity appears. The fewer steps and the clearer the thresholds, the faster you can move.

• Practice “tabletop exercises.” Once or twice a year, convene your team and walk through a hypothetical opportunity: a new city contract, a philanthropic challenge grant or a policy pilot. Identify what would slow you down and fix those bottlenecks.

You do not need a government background, or government funding, to borrow these habits.
What matters is building a culture inside your nonprofit that values structured relationships with public officials, purposeful coalitions and genuine readiness for opportunity.

If you can identify key public stakeholders, collaborate around a few concrete actions and keep a short list of shovel-ready projects on the shelf, you will be better positioned to advance your mission whenever the moment arises. Start small, but start now.

In the early 19th century, a freeborn Black New Yorker braved arson, home invasion, incarceration and beatings to call out a ring of corrupt city officials who were coordinating the illegal abduction of Black people off of New York’s streets to be sold into slavery in the South.

One of the participants in that circle was Richard Riker, the city’s first district attorney and later a judge, born to a wealthy family who owned the island that still bears their name.

The man standing against him was David Ruggles, a prominent Black abolitionist and journalist who had nearly been taken twice. Ruggles denounced Riker by name, calling him and his co-conspirators the “Kidnapping Club.”

When New York City shuts down Rikers Island prison at long last, let’s add to the resonance of the island’s renewal by renaming it for David Ruggles. At a moment when our city again faces government officials seizing people off our streets to feed profits, it would be an especially fitting tribute.

Born in 1810 to a free and prosperous Black family in Connecticut, Ruggles arrived in Manhattan at 17 years old to work as a sailor, just as New York’s 1817 Act Relative to Slaves and Servants came into force. The law ended slavery in the state on July 4, 1827. Ruggles later opened a grocery store at his home on what’s now Lispenard Street; later, he opened the earliest-known African American bookstore in the country and published an abolitionist periodical called The Mirror of Liberty.

With the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 as legal cover, Riker and a crooked network of judges and cops had arranged to have people seized and sold into slavery in the South. Not only did they abduct self-liberated people fleeing slave states, they also targeted African Americans who were born free, purchased their freedom or were manumitted.

One boy was snatched from his schoolroom, University of Michigan historian Jonathan Danial Wells recounts in his book “The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War.” Victims were denied representation, witnesses and the right to have their papers reviewed.

In 1835, the same year that white anti-abolitionists set fire to Ruggles’ bookstore, Ruggles co-founded the anti-enslavement New York Committee of Vigilance. He and his colleagues educated African Americans about their rights and directed them to safe houses. They also petitioned for the freedom of enslaved crew members aboard ships in port.

Ruggles didn’t only write and organize. He turned his own home into a stop on the Underground Railroad — and persuaded a young man he sheltered to remain in the United States to continue the struggle against slavery. That man was Frederick Douglass.

Ruggles died at 39 and never saw the end of slavery, but his legacy of liberation lives on.

So, too, does the despicable legacy of Richard Riker. Once the Riker family sold the island to the city, the prison built there carried forward the spirit of the Kidnapping Club: a place notorious for racial injustice, inhumane treatment and the abuse of state power.

Now it’s set to close and transform into something productive. One of the more exciting proposals for the island is Renewable Rikers, a hub for clean energy production and transmission, composting, and other elements of a circular economy.

But the traumas inflicted by Riker and the prison demand deeper redress. We can demonstrate to those who abuse power that they won’t achieve immortality by stamping their names on our landscape – and that the names of their dissidents will supplant them.

Replacing Richard Riker’s family name could be a straightforward process: The U.S. Board on Geographic Names accepts suggestions and explanatory documentation through a web portal. Local administrators and governments are given particular consideration.

In fact, this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration corrected an erroneous racist naming of an island in southern Brooklyn in a matter of weeks. While researching my upcoming book, “Paddling New York City,” I set out to understand why the small habitat restoration in Marine Park – called White Island by NYC Parks — was called “Mau Mau Island” on Google Maps and in an annual “naval battle” of artists aboard makeshift rafts.

I learned that the name “Mau Mau” was first suggested, and rejected by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, in the 1970s. The racist term for Black assertiveness (derived from the British disparagement of the Kenyan anti-colonial uprising) was briefly in vogue, due to the popularity of Tom Wolfe’s essays and the 1970 book “Radical Chic & Mau Mauing the Flak-Catchers.” In this century, the rejected name had accidentally been applied during a database update, one of NOAA’s local representatives told me when I informed her of the derogatory term – and so it was swiftly corrected to White Island. (Google Maps, however, still uses the racist name.)

Sometimes, however, well-intentioned engagement can gum up the works.

In 2001, I wrote an article for the Times about Negro Point on Wards Island, having noticed the antiquated and offensive name while plotting a kayaking course through Hell Gate. The city’s Department of Parks and Recreation moved promptly to rename it Scylla Point, to pair with Charybdis playground across the water in Astoria. Others stepped up with proposals reflecting Lenape and African American heritage. Tugboat pilots cautioned that confusion might follow.

The issue remains unresolved 25 years later. NOAA saw no reason to keep the name Negro Point on nautical charts in the interim, as the NOAA official explained to me, so the offensive name exists only on spreadsheets and out-of-date commercial maps.

There are no such complications with renaming Rikers Island. The island was once a nub of rock, before it was enormously expanded by landfill. It was not inhabited by Native Americans, and the name of the family that once owned the land is disgraced in our civic life.

There is no reason for us to tarry or get lost in debate.

Sometime between the celebrations of our nation’s 250th birthday and the bicentennial of the freeing of our city’s African Americans, let’s honor David Ruggles’ pioneering – and unfinished – work to have New Yorkers walk our streets secure in their freedom.