YIMBY News for 5/1

[Eric Budd]

The Biggest Community Development Financing Program You’ve Never Heard Of

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KEYWORD SCORE: 51.09. affordable, affordable housing, construction, development, growth, homeowner, housing, housing and urban development, income, project, real estate, rent, residential solar, single-family, urban, zone

[image: The Bottom Line] The Federal Home Loan Bank Board building is seen in Washington, D.C. on January 23, 2026. (Photo by Robyn Stevens Brody / Sipa USA / AP Images) What would you do with $4 million in free money? You’d have to give it back in three years, but what could you do with it in the meantime? Based in Rochester, New York, the $47 million Genesee Co-op Federal Credit Union used $4 million in free money to make loans for residential solar installations and energy efficiency improvements for low- and moderate-income homeowners in historically underserved communities. That free mone

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Over a Year In, Fresno Doesn’t Have Much To Show For Its Anti-Camping Law So Far

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KEYWORD SCORE: 32.53. affordable, affordable housing, development, downtown, house, housing, housing crisis, rent, urban, walk

[image: Backyard] A homeless person rests by the Fresno Police Headquarters in downtown Fresno. (Photo by Pablo Orihuela / Fresnoland) *This story was originally published by Fresnoland, a nonprofit news organization covering the central San Joaquin Valley, in February 2026.* Responding to overwhelming criticism in the fall of 2024 that their new anti-encampment law would criminalize the homeless, Fresno leaders called a news conference to introduce a “creative solution” that they said would create a streamlined system to prevent the criminalization of the local homeless population. They calle

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The Weekly Wrap: Supreme Court Guts Voting Rights Act

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KEYWORD SCORE: 29.19. affordable, affordable housing, construction, housing, preservation, project, rent, urban

[image: The Weekly Wrap] Voting rights activists gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, early Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025, as the justices prepare to take up a major Republican-led challenge to the Voting Rights Act, the centerpiece legislation of the Civil Rights Movement. (Photo by J. Scott Applewhite / AP) Welcome back to The Weekly Wrap, our Friday roundup of stories that explain the problems oppressing people in cities and elevate the solutions that bring us closer to economic, environmental, and social justice. If you enjoy this newsletter, share it with a friend or colleague and t

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Cities in the Shadow of the Server: A Reading List for Urbanists

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KEYWORD SCORE: 24.25. development, house, housing, income, project, rent, urban, walk

(Illustration by Ubaid E. Alyafizi / Unsplash) The fight over tech infrastructure in our cities didn’t start with ChatGPT, and it won’t end with it, either. For decades, technology companies have been arriving in cities and communities with grand promises of jobs, efficiency, and automated utopias, but ultimately extracting far more than they delivered: land, water, public subsidies, data, democratic control over local decisions. The tools and the scale have changed; the pattern hasn’t. As part of our series In the Shadow of the Server, we’re sharing a selection of books that trace that patter

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In Chicago, Prosecutors Fight to Keep Exonerated People from Clearing Their Names

BOLTSmag

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KEYWORD SCORE: 21.06. housing, project, rent, urban, walk

*This story is a collaboration between Bolts and **Injustice Watch**, a Chicago-based nonprofit journalism organization examining issues of equity and justice in the court system.* *It is the third part in “Denying Innocence,” a series on the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office’s approach to innocence claims. **Read the full series here**.* About a decade into his prison sentence for a murder he always said he did not commit, Tyrece Williams told his mother to stop bringing his four children to see him. His oldest boys were teenagers by then. His appeals had failed, and it was too painful fo

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