Stories of Resilience From 2020
A year of intense challenges also offers a chance to break from the unsustainable, inequitable status quo. March 10, 2021, 8am PST | James Brasuell | 2020 brought a deadly pandemic, crippling recession, protests against racial injustice, and bitter political division all against a backdrop of unprecedented climate change impacts, according to the promotional material for the e-book. All of those disruptions and challenges allowed a new vantage point, however, and many people have used the new perspective to imagine a new kind of future. The book collects original articles and op-eds that do just that kind of productive work.
Authors included in the book include Angie Schmitt, Daniel Parolek, Mustafa Santiago Ali, Calvin Gladney, Jacqueline Patterson, Bechara Choucair, Corinne Kisner, and Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. The entire work is edited by Laurie Mazur.
A Compact, Connected, Clean, and Inclusive Recovery for Mexico
As the Mexican government charts the country’s recovery from COVID-19, a newly published paper charts national solutions to urban transportation and housing challenges that will put Mexico’s cities on a path to prosperity and resilience. March 9, 2021, 11am PST | Todd Litman Share
Many Mexicans on low incomes live in poorly constructed housing on the outskirts of sprawling cities, lacking access to basic services such as electricity and water, and relying on patchy public transport to reach urban centers. As a result, thousands miss out on jobs and essential services such as healthcare and education.
Bozeman s Only Racially Diverse Neighborhood at Risk
Thanks in part to an influx of remote workers, the Montana town faces soaring housing costs and practically non-existent vacancy rates. March 4, 2021, 9am PST | Diana Ionescu |
When Montana State University decided to reallocate its family and graduate student housing to undergraduates, they may have dealt a fatal blow to what one professor calls Bozeman s only racially diverse neighborhood. The university-owned housing, writes Surya Milner in High Country News, was home to custodians, researchers and tenure-track professors at the university, many of whom are now forced to relocate to more expensive housing in other parts of the city or leave the city altogether.
Record-Shattering Decline in Housing Inventory
New data reveals how far the U.S. housing market has stayed from anything resembling normal. March 3, 2021, 5am PST | James Brasuell | Much of the housing market has gone missing.
That s the provocative lede of a story by Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui that quantifies the state of the national for-sale housing market. Homes that usually would have been up for sale are staying off the market about half as many homes are available for sale right now as last winter, according to the article.
The story is the same in markets historically defined by much different dynamics so inventory is down in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and Cleveland, for example. The decline in inventory is record shattering, according to the article, and it follows years of erosion in the national housing inventory. This picture is a product of the pandemic, but also of the years leading up to it, according to Badger and Bui.