We wanted to send this newsletter early in the month because if you are in a rural community, defined for this purpose as one with 10,000 or less population, in selected states and areas, the Laura Jane Musser Fund Rural Initiative has grant funding for planning and new initiatives. But you must apply by October 2. Grants will encourage collaborative and participatory efforts among citizens in rural communities to strengthen their towns and regions in economic development, business preservation, arts and humanities, public space improvements, or education. Eligible applicants are nonprofits and local units of government working in Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, Wyoming, and select counties in New York, North Carolina, and Texas.

Lately in community development circles, there is conversation about "abundance." This seems to trace back to the March book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson about abundance, which may be another phrase for growth and innovation. The authors argue that we can create more resources than we use, if only we tamp down administrative hurdles. While modest deregulation may help address the lack of housing supply in some markets, let's not allow our enthusiasm to mean that we build more on the outskirts of our cities and towns. See this great article about decreasing car dependence to help with affordability, among other things.

Those of you in storm-prone climates may want to pay special attention to the resourcefulness of New Orleans, which has built solar-powered community lighthouses in vulnerable neighborhoods, intending that "next time" will be more survivable. (These aren't literally lighthouses; they are resource hubs.)

Philadelphia has really stepped up by formulating a local program aimed at reducing or eliminating appraisal bias, the phenomenon by which appraisals for comparable homes are systematically lower for predominantly minority neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods. Why is it a problem? Simple. Home equity is a primary means by which American households accumulate wealth and then pass that wealth on to the next generation. Read about the measures Philadelphia has taken to deal with appraisal bias locally.

The Center for Democracy Innovation has launched an initiative called Better Public Meetings. The experience of the three cities where this is being researched have concluded that alternative forms of resident inclusion in meeting deliberations can be more easily accommodated under sunshine laws than many suspect.

We read an interesting paper about the advisability of renting the ground floor of new apartment buildings to nonprofits. The concept would allow buildings constructed using Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) to allocate ground floors for social service or arts and culture nonprofits to benefit the apartment dwellers themselves. While the authors do not completely oppose the common practice of reserving these ground floor spaces for commercial purposes, they simply advance the idea that rather than allowing these spaces to sit vacant, nonprofit tenants should be recruited. While not completely prohibited in most instances, nonprofits often encounter barriers such as a required conditional use permit under a zoning ordinance. In addition, nonprofits may not be able to pay as much rent as for-profit businesses, or even if they could, developers may think they can't. Yet the general decline of in-person retail begs for rethinking our concept of ground floor retail everywhere.