Estimates suggest that, on any given night, almost 800 individuals are unsheltered, and more than 3,700 are living in emergency or transitional housing in Philadelphia. Homelessness can often be connected to difficulties in finding affordable housing.

In Lafayette, Louisiana, homelessness and the lack of affordable housing are creating strain, prompting NIMBYism among community members and leaving civic leaders uncertain of a clear path forward. Understanding this challenge and the tension it can create throughout a city, ULI members gathered community members and leaders to dig into the difficult challenge of housing the city’s unhoused and most vulnerable residents. Supported by the ULI Homeless to Housed (H2H) grant initiative, Catholic Charities of Acadiana in Lafayette and ULI Louisiana gathered more than 300 residents for a series of community workshops to better understand the challenge and to outline pathways toward more deeply affordable housing and services for people most in need.

“ULI members in San Antonio understand the precariousness of their city’s housing crisis,” says Javier Paredes, principal at StudioMassivo and ULI San Antonio member leader. “They [also] recognize the power of aligning housing with transit to create greater housing stability.” In response to San Antonio’s housing crisis, ULI San Antonio members and staff applied to participate in a local technical assistance grant program from ULI’s Homeless to Housed (H2H) initiative.

Roughly 10,000 people live on the streets or in temporary shelters in San José, California. This estimate, based on 2023 point-in-time calculations, sparked ULI members in the San Francisco Bay area to leverage ULI’s Homeless to Housed (H2H) grant initiative to help uncover potential housing solutions for their bayside neighbor.

In late September 2019, 7,300 commuter students were settling into their routines at the University of Southern Maine (USM) in Portland, where the academic year had just begun. Then, at the end of the month, a fire main broke beneath the repurposed industrial building serving as the student center, flooding it with six inches of mud. City officials declared the building uninhabitable, leaving the school without a student center.

As California pushes toward a clean energy future, the city of San José has emerged as a leader in building electrification, offering valuable lessons for other cities nationwide. With residential buildings representing the largest source of natural gas use in the city, San José’s initiatives aim to reshape how these buildings are powered while prioritizing community needs, equity, and affordable housing. In 2022, ULI partnered with San Jose on an Advisory Services Panel (ASP) to inform this policy direction for multifamily buildings of all types. The aim of the ASP was to support the city in enabling property owners to step up their electrification retrofit efforts, encourage the adoption of on-site solar and batteries, and move the market forward.

Increasingly, such disasters as storms, wildfires, pandemics, and flooding are spurring cities across the United States to prioritize resiliency. Coastal communities throughout Florida know the urgency firsthand. From the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, many Florida communities were isolated in 2024 when hurricanes and other weather-related events closed roads and cut off power. Our most vulnerable populations took an especially hard hit. Planners, academics, and community members are rethinking how to elevate their response and help communities become more resilient. Could one answer be on four wheels and a chassis?

Hurricanes damage and disrupt communities, properties, and economies in various ways, whether direct, indirect, or both. Translating these impacts into credit risk and other financial implications can be complex. However, a range of tools and analyses enables lenders, investors, and developers to pre-emptively anticipate hurricane damage when a storm approaches, as well as to adjust long-term strategy to mitigate risks and seize opportunities over time.

Kansas City’s Berkley Riverfront, on the banks of the Missouri River, is rapidly becoming one of the most promising urban developments in North America. With a history rooted in trade and commerce, and an unmatched reputation for world-class sports, the Heartland of America riverfront is on the brink of becoming a diverse, modern-day community hub of activity, blending residential, commercial, and recreational space.