Join Lucas Grindley, executive director at Next City, where we believe journalists have the power to amplify solutions and spread workable ideas. Each week Luca...
In Conversation with the Former NEA Chair on What’s Next for the Arts
Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson is the former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, having resigned when President Trump took office. She talks about how the arts are shaping urban policy, including by “healing, bridging and thriving” in communities.
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30:36
A Proven Solution For Preventing Homelessness
In this sponsored podcast episode with Results for America, learn how Santa Clara County helped thousands of Californians stay housed. In 2024, homelessness surged by 18% nationwide, with 23 out of every 10,000 people living on the streets or in shelters. The costs of homelessness are enormous – not just to the health and well-being of those experiencing it, but also to taxpayers, as governments spend billions on housing and services.But there’s a smarter solution: prevention.Santa Clara County, California, has proven it works. By helping at-risk residents stay housed — 93% remained in their homes two years later — the county kept families stable and saved taxpayers money. Every $1 spent on prevention returned $2.47 in public benefits.“More people are becoming homeless every single day, every single year, than we can house and we can ever think to house,” says Chad Bojorquez, Chief Program Officer at Destination: Home, who leads its homelessness prevention system. “If we don't turn off what we call inflow, if we don't turn off that spigot, we're never going to solve homelessness.”We'll also hear from Brendan Perry of Notre Dame's Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities and Ross Tilchin, director of the economic mobility catalog at Results for America.
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35:13
So Many Land Trusts Launched in NYC That They Created A Map
We talk about community land trusts, or CLTs, a lot at Next City. It's about ownership: The community owns the lands and stewards the land. That means that the buildings on the land – including housing and other spaces like storefronts – can made affordable to own or to rent, in perpetuity.CLTs are also talked about a lot in New York City. That's how the city went from having just a small handful of CLTs in the early '90s to having 19. Now, the New Economy Project has launched an interactive map to track all of these land trusts.In today's episode, we speak to Deyanira Del Río, executive director of New Economy Project, and Matthew Shore, a senior community organizer with South Bronx Unite and a member of the Mott Haven-Port Morris Community Land Stewards CLT, about how the city's seen this explosion of CLT growth.This story was produced through our Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies, which is made possible with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This story has been corrected to clarify NYCCLI’s advocacy for CLT bills in city council.
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33:29
How We Get The Banks We Deserve
Banks can be a force for good. It's an idea that's greeted with skepticism in some circles, given the endless list of inequities and disasters perpetuated by our country's leading financial institutions. But if you're a Next City reader, the idea that financial institutions can be part of the solution isn't foreign, given our senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello's in-depth coverage of community development financial institutions, credit unions, alternative lending practice and mission-driven banking.In his debut book, “The Banks We Deserve: Reclaiming Community Banking for a Just Economy,” Abello makes the case that it's time to shake up America's highly-concentrated banking system by shifting banking's power back to local institutions – thereby putting power back in the hands of local communities.“If we want to close the racial wealth gap, if we want to make these investments in clean energy and energy efficiency, if we want to make the investments in housing that people can actually afford, we cannot and should not be expecting big banks to come and do that,” he says. “They're not built to do it. We should go to the community-based model.”Listen to this episode to hear how Abello’s new book demonstrates ways banks’ money-creation power can be democratized. Helping communities tap into that power could address our climate, housing and economic crises.
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36:12
Fixing the Housing Crisis Goes Beyond Building More Units
The housing crisis isn’t just about supply. This episode explores innovative solutions like community land trusts, tenant protections, and expanded assistance programs that are making homes affordable — and keeping them that way.
Join Lucas Grindley, executive director at Next City, where we believe journalists have the power to amplify solutions and spread workable ideas. Each week Lucas will sit down with trailblazers to discuss urban issues that get overlooked. At the end of the day, it's all about focusing the world's attention on the good ideas that we hope will grow. Grab a seat from the bus, subway, light-rail, or whatever your transit-love may be and listen on the go as we spread solutions from one city to the Next City .
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