This week, we’re revisiting an episode we released earlier this year, all about Lexington, Kentucky — a city where collaboration and creativity are transforming challenges into opportunities. In this episode, we highlighted how Lexington’s leaders are finding ways to foster nonpartisanship, boost civic engagement, and narrow the racial wealth gap.

We’re bringing this episode back now because it offers a window into the themes we explored in even greater depth during our Vanguard conference, held in Lexington just last month. Over the next couple of weeks on this podcast, we’ll be sharing special episodes that bring you along with Next City to the conference.

The Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore® Index each year ranks the 100 largest U.S. cities on factors such as park access, investment, and equity. In this sponsored episode, we explore how cities have turned their ParkScore data into action—investing in green spaces to spark civic engagement and foster a genuine sense of belonging.

Community development in America is at a pivotal moment. Long-standing federal programs that fuel homeownership, support small businesses, and promote neighborhood revitalization—especially in communities of color—are now under threat.

But on today's sponsored episode, we’ll hear how the people working on the front lines of equitable development are adapting, organizing, and doubling down on their missions. 

Guests on this episode include Nikitra Bailey, Executive Vice President at the National Fair Housing Alliance, which supports more than 170 member organizations nationwide; Dafina Williams, Executive Vice President and Chief Public Policy Officer at Opportunity Finance Network, representing over 470 CDFIs across the country; and Selina Pagán, Executive Director of the Young Latino Network, a grassroots group that has grown into a regional force for civic engagement in Northern Ohio.

This sponsored episode was produced in partnership with Third Space Action Lab. Its Anti-Racist Community Development research project was developed with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. To learn more about strategies for advancing practical, concrete change in the sector, visit The People's Practice.

This week, we’re trying something new: instead of our usual Next City episode, we’re sharing the pilot for “Not My Narrative,” an experimental mini-series that not only debunks harmful myths holding back progress but also elevates the counter-narratives driving positive momentum.

In this debut episode of Not My Narrative, Host Lucas Grindley, Executive Director of Next City, takes listeners on an examination of one of America’s most pernicious myths: the “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” mantra that claims anyone who works hard enough can escape poverty. We trace its origins from 19th-century satire to Reagan, Gingrich, and Clinton, and we’ll hear from practitioners who say the “bootstrap” story is quietly determining who merits public assistance, who deserves our sympathy, and who must simply fend for themselves.

To unravel its origins and expose its consequences, Luis Ortega, founder of Storytellers for Change, draws on his background in education and community organizing to explain how the bootstraps narrative is woven into our schools, our public discourse, and even our own self-perception. He challenges us to see that when achievement is framed solely as personal grit, it erases entire ecosystems of support—families, neighbors, networks—that actually make success possible.

Plus, we revisit two Next City interviews that show what “it takes a village” truly means, as communities care for one another. In Jackson, Mississippi, Aisha Nyandoro, co-founder of Magnolia Mother’s Trust, shares how her guaranteed-income pilot for Black mothers demonstrates that material support and dignity go hand in hand. And we revisit a conversation out of Portland, Oregon, where Lisa Larson, vice-chair of Dignity Village, recounts her journey from sleeping on the streets to helping govern a community for the unhoused. 

If you believe in the power of narrative change—and want more episodes that debunk harmful myths while elevating real-world solutions—please email us at info@nextcity.org and let’s think about ways to keep this work going.

In the U.S., approximately 3.6 million households are threatened by eviction each year, and for many, the consequences last long after the eviction itself. Even if individuals avoid losing their homes, eviction records can prevent them from securing future housing. This happens because landlords use tools that screen the rental, credit, employment, income and criminal histories of tenants—often without context or accuracy.

In this sponsored episode produced in partnership with Results for America, we discuss a proven solution: tenant screening protections. We explore how these safeguards can protect renters by ensuring fair access to housing, and we learn how communities can implement these protections to help more people secure stable homes.

Guests on this episode include Brittany Giroux Lane, Director of the Solutions Accelerator at Results for America, Marie Claire Tran-Leung, Evictions Initiative Project Director at the National Housing Law Project, and Rasheedah Phillips, Director of Housing at PolicyLink. They dive into the importance of tenant screening protections and how these initiatives can help create more equitable access to housing.

Back in the 1980s, there were more than 200 lesbian bars across the United States. By 2022, that number had shrunk to 21. This year, a group of friends in Brooklyn joined a recent resurgence of such queer spaces—and set it up as a worker-owned coop, to boot.

Boyfriend Co-op is part cocktail bar, part coffee shop, part workspace. Designed to feel like “a queer living room,” it’s all about ethical, sustainable practices—from its cooperative ownership structure to local ingredients to thrifted furniture. And it’s an example of how coops can be used to solve the problem of disappearing space for queer women.

In today's episode, we hear from Hena Mustafa, one of Boyfriend’s four co-founders, about their journey working with a co-op- focused lender to turn the concept into a fully mapped-out business. 

When fires swept through the wealthy L.A. enclave known as the Pacific Palisades, the images were chaotic: cars abandoned on Sunset Boulevard, people fleeing on foot. A bulldozer had to plow through the traffic just so firefighters could reach the flames.

Planners and researchers recognize the dangers of evacuating thousands at a moment’s notice and argue that our streets urgently need to be redesigned.

“In the event of a climate disaster, we can't always count on our cars to protect us,” notes Maylin Tu, Next City's L.A.-based Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Social Impact Design. “You kind of get a sense of safety and .. insularity in being in a car and feeling like you are not only mobile, but you're safe and you're protected. And this really kind of brought home that in a, in the case of some climate disasters, like your car is not going to save you.”

Tu recently covered UCLA urban planning professor Adam Millard-Ball's recent research on street connectivity in Los Angeles. He and other transportation planning experts hope rebuilding is an opportunity to rethink how L.A.'s streets work.

“If all the traffic that's coming out has to flow through one or two intersections, that's a recipe for chaos in a emergency situation,” says Adam Millard-Ball, a professor of urban planning at UCLA and director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. “This is not what the streets were built for.”

When the Eaton Fire tore through the Altadena neighborhood in January, many homes were lost. But also at risk was history, culture and community in a neighborhood known for its uniquely high Black homeownership rate. In the aftermath, as displaced residents were overwhelmed, private investors have swooped in, offering to buy up scorched lots for eye-popping amounts of cash.

It's Altadena versus disaster capitalists, and residents have just taken a big step forward by creating a land bank where vulnerable homeowners who need to sell their properties can keep ownership in the community's hands.

“I'm seeing lots popping up for sale…how do we, you know, how do we keep this land off the market? How do we just buy it?” says Jasmin Shupper, founder of Greenline Housing Foundation, of the moment that sparked the local organization's grant-funded effort to compete with corporate buyers. “We just need community-minded, community-centered and community-located organizations to just buy it – and then work together with the community to determine what happens next.” 

Guests on this episode include Shupper, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president of the Los Angeles City Council, and Eliana Perozo, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies. 

In our fifth-ever episode of the Next City podcast, we spoke to Jason Foster of Destination Crenshaw, a monument to Black Los Angeles that had just broken ground. Four years later, that 1.3-mile monument to Black culture—set to be the largest Black public art project in America—has started transforming the city's Crenshaw corridor.

Construction is nearly complete on Sankofa Park, the project's “crown jewel,” which will feature 40,000 square feet of green space and sculptural installations. The project launched last year with a mural by Los Angeles artist Anthony “Toons One” Martin, and, like every piece of the effort, it was an iterative process, Foster says.

“It started off just doing a mural. We ended up doing awning and lighting and some dog stencils for the dog lover business on the other side,” Foster says. “It turned into what I believe is a better interpretation of what Destination Crenshaw is, which is a holistic kind of community change using art—as not only beautification, but also an advertisement for the community [and the businesses along the corridor] to be that destination. It was something that I could not have imagined before.”

In this episode, we hear from Foster and L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who was pivotal to launching Destination Crenshaw. 

The CDFI Fund is a proven driver of affordable housing in every state—red and blue alike. But now, this vital source of financing is at risk of federal cuts. In this episode, we highlight a project in Nashville, Tennessee, made possible by BlueHub Capital, a community development financial institution based in Massachusetts.

In today's episode, we speak to Oscar Perry Abello, the author of "The Banks We Deserve," and with Karen Kelleher, president of the BlueHub Loan Fund, which recently helped finance a project in Nashville that converted two abandoned motels into affordable studio apartments. It's just one example of how community development financial institutions (or CDFIs) step in all overt the country, in red states and blue states, where big banks usually won’t.

It's also the sort of project that would be harder to finance if the Trump administration gets its wish to eliminate the CDFI Fund, the federal grant program that helps fund and support more than 1,400 CDFIs around the country. (Read our analysis of Trump's executive order on the CDFI Fund and what it means.) 

“The market is profit-driven and, to be honest, it's expensive to build housing,” says Kelleher, whose team makes about 30 loans a year to fund innovative projects like the adaptive reuse project in Tennessee. “The kinds of deals that we support…don't often pencil out without subsidy. That might be tax credits, it might be grants, it might be state funds, it might be local funds.”

Making the math work can lead to transactions that are complex, risky – and unpalatable for many market-rate lenders. That's where CDFIs come in.“We and other mission-driven lenders and CDFIs really make it our business to understand those tools, those models,” Kelleher says. “We find ways to structure our financing so we can take risks and be at the table with the community or the developer who's trying to make something happen that the market won't make happen.”

When wildfires hit Los Angeles in January, people did what they always do in a crisis: They stepped in to help. And many of them donated clothes. Lots and lots of clothes. Volunteers were quickly overwhelmed as bags of clothes began piling up at relief centers.

“What happens is the help that's being offered actually clogs the ability for those cities and the community to help, because it's a mismatch of what the community and the city needs versus what's being offered,” says chief strategy officer Annie Gullingsrud at Trashie, an organization that worked to recirculate those donations and keep them from the landfill. “When these things happen, we just need to know that what we're offering is actual, informed help—not just perceived wishful thinking.”

As donation centers struggled to handle tens of thousands of pounds of clothing, sustainable fashion initiatives and recyclers stepped up. Their initiatives are part of a larger effort to ensure that reusable and recyclable clothing doesn't end up in landfills.

You can also read our Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow Maylin Tu's original Next City article on textile waste recycling after the L.A. wildfires here.

Five years after the start of the COVID pandemic, we revisit journals from the nurses who lived through it. The stories are part of a first draft of history being remembered by the official Manhattan Borough Historian in his new book on New York’s essential workers, “When the City Stopped: Stories from New York's Essential Workers.” 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Preserving the stories and spaces that define LGBTQ communities is an act of resilience and resistance. Hear from designers, historians, and activists about the vital work of safeguarding these cultural landmarks and ensuring their legacy endures.

Stories shape how we see the world. In this episode, we bring together philanthropic leaders to explore how funders are relying on journalism to dismantle harmful narratives, amplify underrepresented voices and create equitable communities.

If you know Next City, it'll come as no surprise that we believe journalism can be a powerful vehicle for racial justice. Here in the nonprofit media world, we've seen countless examples of how philanthropy can help fund that change by funding impactful, community-driven journalism. And it's not just media funders – increasingly funders who might not traditionally focus on media are leveraging storytelling to advance their broader missions of inclusive economies, cultural preservation, health equity and more.

“We think of narrative control as a precondition for long-term change,” says Inés Familiar Miller, program officer at the Kresge Foundation's Arts & Culture Program. “Seeing real people can combat some of those negative narratives where someone else is telling you the story of the immigrant community, of the Black community, of the Indigenous community. It's just not the full picture. And once you hear directly from the people … it could provide like a very different perspective.”

In this conversation, we hear from several funders of Next City's funders, including Miller, Surdna Foundation's Vice President of Programs Patrice R. Green, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Director of Media Relations Jordan Reese, who describe their strategy in funding journalism and media. We also hear from Karen Rundlet, CEO of the Institute for Nonprofit News, on the need to view our country's journalism infrastructure as a public good.

What happens when a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on deep-pocketed developers? In this episode, we talk to the directors of "Emergent City" and the organizers who fought to preserve Sunset Park’s future.

“Emergent City” (emergentcitydoc.com) documents the 10-year saga of how Brooklyn's Sunset Park community came together to fight a rezoning wanted by deep-pocketed developers. Against all odds, residents won. Filmmakers were there from the very beginning, when developers proposed transforming Industry City, a sprawling industrial site on the Brooklyn waterfront, into a high-end retail and office complex – or, as some residents put it, a “mall.” They were there when Sunset Park residents protested that the Industry City complex, if it won rezoning, would accelerate gentrification and displacement in a neighborhood where about 70% of households are renters. They were there for some 200 days of public meetings.

By the way—this is our 100th episode! Thank you to everyone who has listened over the years. If you'd like to support and celebrate this work, please visit nextcity.org/donate to pitch in.