The Data Center Funding Affordable Housing—and Everything Else You Need to Know About This Week

• Henrico County in Virginia is channeling controversial data center tax revenue into a $60 million affordable housing fund, helping teachers and other middle-income workers buy homes far below market rate. Here’s how it works. (Time)

• Many of New York City’s new "luxury" apartment buildings are increasingly plagued by leaks, power outages, infestations, and shoddy construction and finishes, leaving tenants paying top dollar for unlivable spaces. Here’s why residents are calling many of these high-end developments "crappy luxury" and a "bait and switch." (Gothamist)

• In St. Petersburg, Russia’s former capital, residents are working together to restore crumbling historic buildings, using architectural preservation as a sort of undercover activism. Scrubbing old tiles and repairing ornate doors has grown into a larger "politics of small deeds," reviving both the city’s past and a sense of community in the present. (The New York Times)

• Barcelona’s smooth-surfaced public spaces—defined by granite ledges, open planes, and low-maintenance hardscaping—unexpectedly made the city a global skate mecca. Now, those same iconic spaces, specifically the plaza outside the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, are shrinking as new development takes over, threatening not only the vibrant skate scene, but community life. (Dwell)

• In Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, Kensington Corridor Trust, a resident-led nonprofit, is buying up property and renting it out below market rate in an effort to keep longtime residents and small businesses from being pushed out by gentrification. Across the U.S., similar grassroots models are also attempting to "decommodify" real estate. (The Hustle)

Top photo courtesy Henrico County