Even as billions in federal clean energy funding sit trapped in legal limbo, community lenders are determined to keep the green transition alive.

This episode of Next City explores how to press forward with the clean-energy transition despite a federal freeze on the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

Next City’s senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello speaks with Neda Arabshahi, executive vice president of the Inclusiv Center for Resiliency and Clean Energy; Amir Kirkwood, CEO of the Justice Climate Fund; and Beth Bafford, CEO of Climate United. Together, they explain how local institutions like credit unions and CDFIs are funding solar projects, energy-efficiency upgrades, and resilience hubs even without federal dollars. According to these leaders, the clean energy movement isn’t waiting on Washington.

“The clean energy transition is happening. But who is benefiting from that transition is unequal,” says Bafford. She argues it’s now the responsibility of changemakers to ensure resources still flow to “people, places, and communities across the country that otherwise were going to be kind of in the back of the line in terms of clean energy adoption and really should be at the front.”

This episode is based on a Next City webinar, a recording of which can be viewed in our library.

This is Lucas Grindley from Next City, a show about changemakers and their stories. We’re off this week for Labor Day but we’ll be back next Wednesday with more inspiring and workable ideas that move our society toward justice and equity. 

If you can’t wait for the next story, head to NextCity.org for the latest coverage. 

As always, we’d love to hear any feedback from our listeners. Please feel free to email us at [email protected]. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods or anywhere you listen to your podcasts. We’ll see you next week.

Communities need spaces for art; you can't support art without supporting artists. We're talking with three leaders working on alternative models for sustainability.

Charles T. Brown, author of "Arrested Mobility," discusses why mobility is not afforded in the same way to everyone – and the dire cost of this inequity.

New York was once the world’s oyster capital. The director of a new feature-length impressionist hybrid documentary, "Holding Back the Tide," traces the city’s many life cycles with the oyster as her main character. Emily Packer follows environmentalists restoring oysters to the harbor, while examining the oyster not only as entangled with nature, but also as a queer icon, with much to teach about our society’s continued survival. Packer is interviewed by fellow New Yorker, Eliana Perozo, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies.

The documentary "Razing Liberty Square” shows what happens in Miami as sea levels rise and the rich move inland, encroaching on residents of the Liberty Square public housing project. The film tells the story of a historically Black community faced with a $300-million-dollar “revitalization” of their neighborhood. In this episode, hear from a resident and climate activist, Valencia Gunder, who says she’s fighting a new form of racial injustice: climate gentrification.

Black power is more than symbolic. It’s a measurable reality tied to things like ownership, investment in neighborhoods, and—ultimately—life expectancy. 

In this episode with the authors of two new books—“The Black Power Scorecard” and “The Banks We Deserve”—Andre Perry and Oscar Perry Abello talk about systems that have historically failed communities of color and what it will take to build lasting institutions that truly serve them. The episode is based on a Next City webinar produced earlier this year, "Achieving Economic Justice and Power."

Perry argues that Black communities already hold real power, except it’s often undervalued or ignored. His research reveals a strong link between life expectancy and factors like ownership of homes and businesses—which requires deliberate financial investment. As he puts it, “Nothing grows without investment.”

Abello calls out the stark disparities in community banking. Of the roughly 4,000 community banks in the U.S., only about 120 serve communities of color, meaning most character-based lending remains inaccessible to Black and brown entrepreneurs. 

Listen to the episode to get examples of solutions and learn how to grow what’s working.

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.