Camille Squires

The US government wants the future of mass transit to run on batteries. A slate of new federal initiatives to cut the carbon emissions from buses and trucks was announced by US vice president Kamala Harris on March 7. The programs include $1.1 billion in new funding to help cities and states purchase electric buses for their public transit systems, and $17 million for school districts to purchase electric school buses.

Mass anti-war demonstrations spread across cities in Russia over the weekend. From the capital of Moscow to smaller cities in Siberia, thousands of people took to the streets in a rare demonstration of opposition against the government on Feb. 26 and 27.

As Russian forces launched several missiles at the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv the night of Feb. 23, thousands of citizens hunkered down in subway stations. On Thursday Feb. 24, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko imposed a curfew and halted public transit so that subway stations could be used as round-the-clock shelters.

The threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine escalated as Russian president Vladimir Putin officially recognized the independence of two Ukrainian regions controlled by pro-Russian separatists. On Feb. 23, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared a state of emergency and began calling up reservists into its armed forces in preparation for an all-out invasion.

In December, hundreds of thousands of Americans weren’t able to pay their rent on time.  Data compiled by the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) shows that last December only 92% of households paid their rent on time compared to 98% in April of 2019.

The 2022 Super Bowl halftime show at SoFi stadium in Los Angeles was the first time hip hop took center stage on football’s biggest night and it was an absolute hit. The ensemble show featuring hop legends Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eminem, and Kendrick Lamar, as well as R&B icon Mary J. Blige, has now been viewed more than 35 million times online.

It’s never been more expensive to buy a home in the US. Last December, the median home sale price for existing homes hit a record $364,300, up nearly 20% from a year prior. There’s no sign of prices, or sales, slowing down much as an explosion of demand, including many first-time buyers, crashes into a market with few homes available for sale.

Free Sunday night? Got a few thousand dollars lying around? Why not go to the Super Bowl?

Americans are spending more to show their love this Valentine’s Day. Across the US, people are expected to spend $23.9 billion on Valentine’s Day gifts this year, up from $21.8 billion in 2021, according to a survey from the National Retail Federation. Of course, inflation has something to do with that. This rise in valentines spending represents a 9.6% increase. US prices have risen 7.5% in the last year.

On Feb. 11, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel sold 10,000 shares of company stock, valued at $1.8 million in total. By the following day, Bancel’s Twitter account, had disappeared without warning.

San Francisco could soon become the latest city to tell property owners to put vacant housing on the market or pay up. On Feb. 8, city supervisor Dean Preston and supporters submitted a proposal for voters to decide this November whether the city should create a new vacancy tax, a measure now being adopted around the world to encourage potential landlords to put more housing on the market.

Fewer Americans were in homeless shelters at the start of 2021 than at any time since at least 2007, according to early estimates from US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Roughly 326,000 people without a permanent residence were considered “sheltered” homeless in temporary housing such as emergency shelters HUD reported on Feb. 4 (pdf).

Communities around the US are already feeling the effects of climate change in the form of extreme flooding. The summer of 2021 brought devastating floods to places ranging from New York City to small-town Tennessee.

Hi Quartz members,

Spain’s government just passed sweeping rent control as part of its first-ever national “right to housing” law.

When it comes to public spending on early child development, the US has trailed most other developed nations for decades. But a new report (pdf) from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) puts this discrepancy into stark relief: The US government spends just 0.3% of its GDP on child care and early childhood education, compared to the OECD member nation average of 0.7%.

Blackstone, one of the biggest corporate landlords in the US, reported its highest earnings year on record on Jan. 27,  largely on the strength of rising rents in its real estate portfolio. Blackstone reported $1.4 billion in net income in the fourth quarter, and $5.9 billion for the year, nearly six times what they made the previous year.

In a speech to American mayors last week, Biden made his priorities clear on how cities should spend emergency funding from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan clear: affordable housing, childcare and jobs, and police.

New homes, like many other goods, have gotten much more expensive for developers to build. Material costs for residential construction rose 15% in 2021 over the previous year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Producer price indexes (pdf).

US home builders are responding to skyrocketing demand for housing by picking up the pace of construction. New construction for two types of housing—apartment buildings and single-family homes— rose by 13% and 22%, respectively, as builders responded to buyers’ demand for more expansive living arrangements during the pandemic. The latest report (pdf) from the US Census Bureau shows that 1.1 million new single-family homes started construction in 2021, and 460,000 units of apartment housing in 2021.

Spin, which operates electric scooters and bikes across North America and Europe, is downsizing. On Jan. 7, Spin’s CEO Ben Bear announced the company would be pulling out of all of its markets in Germany, Spain, and Portugal, as well as seven places in the US with “open markets,” where local officials place no limits on the number of micro-mobility companies allowed to operate. It will be pulling out of 21 markets altogether and laying off a quarter of its staff.

US millennials are slowing their roll when it comes to car travel. A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice found a wide generational divide in the daily driving habits of adult Americans.  Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) are driving 8% less than Gen X (1965 to 1980), and 9% less than younger baby boomers (1956 and 1964).

The recently-passed US infrastructure bill is poised to give $1.2 trillion to cities and states. Business and municipal leaders hope to funnel some of those dollars into a relatively new model for building America’s infrastructure: the public-private partnership (P3).

Minimum-wage workers across the US are getting a pay bump in 2022. Higher minimum wage laws took effect across 21 states and 35 cities in the US on Jan. 1. It’s the largest simultaneous increase of sub-national minimum wage policy in US history, according to the National Employment Law Project.