Dalvin Aboagye

What does resident relief and equity look like to those crunching the numbers?
Asset managers who oversee the finances of an affordable housing stock for about 5 million households have had to reevaluate every aspect of their workflows in response to the economic and operational risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike their counterparts who oversee the portfolios of market-rate housing developments, both for-profit and nonprofit affordable housing providers must maintain cash flow...

This is the final part of a four-part series published in partnership with Scenic Hudson.org’s HV Viewfinder.
Sometimes we’re told change will take decades, even generations. Then world-shaking events like the COVID-19 pandemic show us it really can happen in a hurry. Such is the case with climate change—too often, we’ve been told that altering our approach to energy, agriculture, and everything else associated with making our world more sustainable will have to be incremental. Suddenly, this...

This is part one of a four-part series published in partnership with Scenic Hudson’s HV Viewfinder.
Sometimes we’re told change will take decades, even generations. Then world-shaking events like the COVID-19 pandemic show us it really can happen in a hurry. Such is the case with climate change—too often, we’ve been told that altering our approach to energy, agriculture, and everything else associated with making our world more sustainable will have to be incremental. Suddenly, this year we s...

David, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy, sat facing the rest of the circle and began to speak. He remained uninterrupted for several minutes as the five others seated in the room—one of whom was his mother—listened intently, staring at him through masked faces. The blue polka-dotted carpet and clean white walls conjured the image of a therapist’s office, but between the respectful atmosphere and the circular arrangement of the chairs, the whole affair felt more like a suppor...

For generations, the canopies provided by the Eastern hemlock trees have been integral to the Empire State’s forest ecosystems. Although more plentiful in the Adirondacks, the Catskills and Hudson Valley area also host the needled evergreen — the Eastern hemlock is the third most common tree in the region.
As centuries have gone by and the inhabitants of the area have changed, the hemlocks have weathered all nature has had to offer, until now. Swaths of Eastern hemlocks in New York State have...

Sobering fact: the energy needed to heat, cool and power all U.S. homes accounts for 20% of national emissions. While we keep nominally improving our boxy domiciles, some have abandoned the modern home model in favor of living within the Earth itself. The idea first got attention during the environmental movement of the 1970s and 80s, especially taking hold in the Southwest. Yet earth-sheltered homes have been around for centuries, and all over; early human settlements and Indigenous groups u...

From Kansas City's overlooked mob past to the Black gamblers who funded their communities while staving off both the mafia and the cops.
“Here’s the thing about America: The minute you relax and fatten up, somebody hungrier is gonna come along looking for a piece of your pie,” the precocious teen Ethelrida Pearl Smutney (E'myri Crutchfield) narrates during the first tense face-off in the first episode of the fourth season of FX's irreverent crime anthology series Fargo, set between Don Donate...

The last thing Helen wanted was to be alone.
Despite her husband being asleep in the other room, Helen, who uses drugs intravenously, knew the risks associated with using heroin solo if something went south. (Her name has been changed to protect her privacy.) Her two-year pathway to addiction had followed the same trajectory as thousands of other Americans: after developing a dependency to prescription painkillers after a surgery, she started using harder drugs to stave off the symptoms of wi...

The coronavirus pandemic, the subsequent transition to telework, and sky-high costs of city living have led some young American professionals to depart from major metropolitan hubs for America’s rural and suburban communities. Businesses are rethinking the necessity of the office.
Christopher Ingraham, a data reporter originally from upstate New York, found himself in a similar position–albeit several years ago. In 2015, Ingraham was based in Washington, D.C. He penned an article at the Washi...

Amid the brick and brownstone homes of Hudson, Nkoula Badila is teaching fellow residents within the city’s communities of color to sow seeds of green.
After launching a GoFundMe campaign in June, Badila’s community gardening initiative, Grow Black Hudson, shot past the initial $10,000 funding goal within 6 days. It amassed an extra $3,000 that’ll let organizers gather more supplies, plants and seeds. Thanks to this funding, plus in-kind donations, Badila and fellow community members have alr...

After months of lockdown limbo, gyms and fitness centers in New York State are beginning to reopen. The pandemic drove millions to shift exercise outside, to parks and beyond, in the meantime. Experts say those healthy new habits have been beneficial — not only for health, but for public access, community ties, and climate change. Will they last?
For many, a good chunk of quarantine has been spent breaking out their old pair of running shoes or revisiting old grade-school gym class exercises ...

As Kathy Stevens sits in the shade contemplating the Catskill Animal Sanctuary’s next move, she loses her train of thought at the sight of a few goats approaching. She beams at each of their bleats. The four young recent rescues — Levi, Chester, Molly and Arlo — rush at her, licking her face and nibbling at her clothes like housebound dogs excited to have their owners back home.
“You always want people to have this,” says Stevens, the founder of the Saugerties-based sanctuary. For the last tw...

Step outside your home on a nice night and take a look around. What do you see? Around the lights on the front porches of nearby houses, in the glow of street lights — even in the light of the moon, you’ll notice the fluttering and flittering of moths.
Any night owl has seen these furry flying insects whizzing around and clinging to windows, anxiously attracted to the lights indoors. While some people see them as pests who eat their way through clothing and food (only a couple of moth species...

Zohna Everett’s finances had her on the ropes. Throughout much of 2018, the 42-year-old resident of Stockton, California, was barely making ends meet as her professional and personal life problems started to collide. After being laid off from her job with the federal government earlier that year, she struggled to replace the lost income as a delivery driver for DoorDash, a situation made worse by car problems.
The hardship put a strain on Everett’s marriage, to the point where divorce was on ...

Something snapped in American society when Minneapolis police officers murdered George Floyd on May 25, 2020, Memorial Day in the United States. The following day, protesters took to the streets in the Twin Cities; every day and every night since, more people have marched, in cities and towns across the country, defying curfews, the pandemic, and the at-times violent police response. Defying, finally, the expectation of what life in this country should be like for its Black and brown resident...