If you are interested in attainable housing solutions for a variety of incomes, check out this inspiring example of using market-rate housing to make a development possible from the Pacific Northwest. (See our page on community land trusts if you don't know what they are.)

The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides help for those on one end, probably the left end, of the ideological spectrum of those we reach with this newsletter. If you are interested in housing or worker cooperatives, or other such fundamentally different economic models, become acquainted with this Center.

If you aren't willing to stretch that far, maybe you will benefit from discussing "conscious capitalism" in your community. I think many small businesses in your own neighborhoods already embody this principle, but here's a very brief video introduction to the idea that could be used to stimulate discussion among your small businesses. Many of them are terrified right now, whether because of tariffs, immigration crackdowns, or just regulatory churn, so convening them for an uplifting conversation is a great idea.

If you aren't in a city large enough to have a transit system, you are probably tired of hearing about transit woes. But a big part of the population lives where some type of public transit is feasible. We hear often that you have to have density to make transit sustainable, but CityLab found an example of successful bus ridership in a suburban setting. All that Brampton, a suburb of Toronto, had to do to get people on the bus was offer service at 5-minute intervals. Wouldn't that be a relief from having bus service every hour or two like near my house? Missing the bus and being very late to work or your doctor’s appointment is a major disincentive against transit use.

Also from the same source, I liked the discussion of the struggle for adequate funding of public transit, which many people think is on its last legs in light of funding cuts or threats in many states. See a good discussion of the hidden costs of cutting public transportation. The authors correctly argue that the costs of public transit are quite visible, whereas many costs of the road system are relatively invisible. For starters, in the U.S. the feds subsidize 80% of road building but only 50% of transit. Easy to see why short-sighted local officials may choose cars.

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