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USA Today
4 hours ago
- Business
- USA Today
Elon Musk is building a supercomputer in Memphis. Not everyone is loving it.
The images of xAI's Colossus supercomputer versus Memphis' Boxtown neighborhood are stark. David versus Goliath. Power versus pride. Far from the media spotlight where Elon Musk feuds with a sitting president and talks of starting a new political party, a largely unknown controversy is playing out in Memphis as the world's richest man builds what he calls the world's biggest supercomputer. The project is happening in Boxtown, a South Memphis neighborhood that is 99% Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Nearly half of Boxtown's 2,865 residents have annual household incomes below $25,000 a year, yet many are homeowners. The images of xAI's Colossus supercomputer versus Boxtown are stark. David versus Goliath. Power versus pride. The indeterminate future of artificial intelligence versus the tawdry reality of majority African American neighborhoods becoming home to industrial polluters. Clumsy communications and lack of transparency have eroded the project's political support. Answers to the public's questions about environmental damage have been obscured by nondisclosure agreements with public agencies, redacted public documents and explanations coming from the Chamber of Commerce and mayor's office instead of from xAI itself. Michelle Taylor, the Shelby County Health Department director, has criticized the project's lack of transparency, saying her department was kept out of the loop in the early stages of its development. Why is a Memphis community fighting Elon Musk's supercomputer? After months of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, the Greater Memphis Chamber announced in June 2024 that xAI would build the "world's largest supercomputer" in Memphis. Chamber representatives have often acted as de facto spokespeople for the project, rather than allowing xAI officials to respond for themselves. The project, which has increased in scope since that announcement, has raised many questions about air pollution, water usage and the equity of government incentives for the project. Neighborhood residents and environmental advocates have fought back, but it isn't easy. The swiftness of the project's progress leaves few options for stopping it. Desperate opponents like the Southern Environmental Law Center and NAACP plan to sue, and the nonprofit Memphis Community Against Pollution has organized to fight the project. Opinion: AI is changing our world. At what point will it change our reality? Colossus critics cite sweetheart deals and environmental racism A leader for the opposition group is state Rep. Justin Pearson, a Democrat from Memphis, who became nationally known when the Republican supermajority in the legislature expelled him after he used a megaphone during a gun control protest on the House floor in 2023. Pearson, who was reappointed to the state office by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, brings star power to his role with anti-supercomputer protests. He says African Americans are 75% more likely to live near toxic hazardous waste facilities and have higher cancer rates than White Americans. xAi in Memphis: Unpacking how Elon Musk's xAI supercomputer project in Memphis unfolded over the past year Already located near Boxtown are some of the region's largest emitters of hazardous chemicals: Tennessee Valley Authority's Allen Combined Cycle Plant, Valero Memphis Refinery and Nucor Steel. Yet, the nearest air monitoring station is 9 miles away in downtown Memphis. Fueling the opposition is a lack of convincing answers about issues like whether xAI should receive an air-emissions permit for 15 natural gas turbines as a backup energy source, and whether the turbines that have been operating at the site for a year are legal. Supercomputer's opponents face a colossal battle The addition of Colossus in Memphis raises two inconvenient truths: the city's failing grade in air quality (in 2021, the American Lung Association gave Shelby County an "F" grade) and charges of environmental racism in light of the history of locating polluting industries in African American areas of the city. When Memphis Mayor Paul Young hired a firm that concluded there were no dangerous levels of pollutants in Boxtown, critics dismissed it as a political stunt since the results supported the mayor's point of view. Memphis Community Against Pollution has announced that it will pay for air quality sensors for the Boxtown area. Young and others have made much of the fact that Colossus will pay $33 million in city and county taxes. But while the mayor says Musk's operation will get no tax breaks, the $12 billion project is assessed for property taxes at $2.2 billion. In addition, my research found that xAI buys electricity − enough for a city of more than 200,000 − from the local utility at the industrial rate of $64 per megawatt hour. Meanwhile, residents of Boxtown and all other residential customers in Memphis and Shelby County pay almost twice as much, at $122 per megawatt hour. In the rush to support the project, there's been little public discussion about tying the Memphis brand to Musk and becoming home to Colossus, which serves as the engine for what he has called the development of 'truth-seeking' systems. Yet, there's an air of inevitability about the completion of Colossus as it becomes a reminder about how powerful teams of lobbyists and public relations consultants get what they want, while grassroots groups can offer little resistance. Regardless of xAI's success in Memphis, it's clearly created division in a city in need of harmony. Tom Jones is the principal of Smart City Consulting, which focuses on public policy development and strategic planning. He writes a monthly column for Memphis magazine and has written the Smart City Memphis blog for 20 years.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Multifamily starts spike for 5-plus units in June
This story was originally published on Multifamily Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Multifamily Dive newsletter. Dive Brief: Starts for buildings with five or more units jumped 30.6% month over month in June and rose 25.8% year over year to a seasonally adjusted rate of 414,000, according to a monthly report from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall housing starts came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.3 million in June — a 0.5% decrease YOY and a 4.6% increase compared to the revised May estimate. Single-family home starts clocked in at a rate of 883,000 homes, a 10% YOY fall and a 4.6% month-over-month decline. Apartment developers pulled permits for a seasonally adjusted rate of 478,000 apartments in buildings with five units or more, an 8.1% YOY increase and a 2.1% increase compared to May. Dive Insight: While multifamily starts jumped in June, the feeling in the apartment development and finance community is that it is still extremely difficult to underwrite deals. Part of the issue is the still-high delivery levels in many areas of the country. However, the amount of new deliveries in buildings with five or more units is starting to decline, according to Census figures. At the end of June, 720,000 units were under construction, a 19.6% YOY drop and a 0.6% month-over-month decline. Multifamily developers finished an annualized 383,000 apartments in buildings with five or more units, a 39.8% YOY drop and a 21% month-over-month decline. With the new supply, acquiring existing properties has become more attractive for many equity investors. 'You're seeing that in some markets, you can buy a new product below replacement costs,' Berkadia Managing Director Brad Williamson told Multifamily Dive. However, Williamson said that his team is still working on construction loans, with about $2 billion closed as of this summer. 'We're doing a lot of multifamily construction and condo construction,' Williamson said. Williamson also pointed out that not all new construction is equal. 'The garden product on the multi side pencils a lot better,' he said. 'But once you get into the mid- and high-rise, those deals tend to be more expensive to build and tend not to pencil.' Click here to sign up to receive multifamily and apartment news like this article in your inbox every weekday. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
San Francisco Chronicle
16 hours ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump's immigration raids are wreaking havoc on California's economy and schools
The Trump administration's unrestrained assault on immigrants has battered California's economy and driven down attendance at its schools, a pair of recent reports contend. Taken together, the studies by researchers at UC Merced and Stanford University assert that President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda is having cascading effects that extend beyond California's under-siege immigrant communities. Examining monthly population totals from the U.S. Census Bureau, UC Merced found that nearly 465,000 California workers withdrew from the labor force the week of June 8, when federal immigration authorities descended on Los Angeles-area neighborhoods and work sites to arrest nearly 2,800 people. The drop in workers depressed private-sector employment by 3.1% from May. In the past four decades, only the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession saw greater monthly declines in private-sector workers, said associate sociology professor Edward Orozco Flores, the report 's lead author and faculty director at UC Merced's Community and Labor Center, a public research institution based in the San Joaquin Valley. The data can't explicitly say which workers stayed home or were laid off and furloughed, and doesn't indicate which industries experienced the greatest declines. But the effects were not limited to Southern California, Flores said. 'Geographically, there was no statistical difference between L.A. and the rest of the state,' he said. The reason, he surmised, was the immigration enforcement tactics on display in the state. Along with sending federal immigration agents and thousands of military troops to Los Angeles, the Trump administration has dispatched masked immigration agents to health clinics, schools, home improvement stores and immigration courts in other parts of the state, including San Francisco, where protesters clung to an unmarked ICE van leaving a courthouse earlier this month. 'What's become clear is this administration is making a remarkable spectacle around immigration enforcement,' Flores said. 'The majority of it (the worker loss) seems some kind of response to a very visible display of immigration enforcement.' Trump's California crackdown exacted a geo-specific toll in the world's fifth-largest economy, the UC Merced report shows. While the state's labor force declined significantly, the U.S. as a whole experienced a half-percent increase of roughly 563,000 workers between May and June. Most of the evaporated workers in California — 271,541, or 58% — were American citizens. Flores said there are several reasons why this would be the case, and they revolve around how interwoven the immigrant population is into the state economy. When crops go unharvested by predominantly immigrant farmworkers, the rest of the agricultural supply chain is paralyzed. When immigrants stop shopping at supermarkets and retail stores, managers reduce their employees' hours. When the immigrants who make up a significant proportion of in-home caregivers are too afraid to leave their homes, the working adults in those homes also can't go to work. 'We have long known that noncitizens do not work in a vacuum,' Flores said. 'When noncitizens are not working, it harms the entire supply chain.' Gov. Gavin Newsom noted the implications for California's economy earlier this month, when he called for an end to the raids in Los Angeles. 'Instead of targeting dangerous criminals, federal agents are detaining U.S. citizens, ripping families apart, and vanishing people to meet indiscriminate arrest quotas without regard to due process and constitutional rights that protect all of us from cruelty and injustice,' Newsom said in a July 7 statement. 'Their actions imperil the fabric of our democracy, society, and economy.' Even before Trump's recent escalation in California, parents in the state's agricultural epicenter were keeping their children home from school at alarmingly irregular rates in response to heightened immigration enforcement, according to a Stanford report released in June. On Jan. 7 — a day after Congress certified Trump's election victory — Border Patrol agents from the agency's El Centro sector conducted an unusual immigration sweep 300 miles north of their post in rural Kern County. Their Operation Return to Sender resulted in 78 arrests and about 1,000 detentions, criticism by Biden administration officials, an ACLU lawsuit and a spike in student absenteeism at southern valley school districts touched by the dragnet. Stanford Graduate School of Education professor Thomas S. Dee examined three years of daily attendance figures from five school districts in four counties — Fresno, Kern, Kings and Tulare — whose districts serve more than 500,000 students, more than 70% of whom are Hispanic. He found that, in January and February, absences jumped by an average of 22% across all the districts and by about 30% among the youngest students — those in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. 'That's a period where kids are learning really critical foundational skills, such as how to read,' Dee said. As with the economy, the effects are manifesting with nonimmigrant students and families. Jesus Martinez, executive director of the Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative, said the Fresno-based nonprofit's educational partners have reported widespread fears among all their students, including U.S.-born students with immigrant parents and friends. 'It extends beyond the undocumented individual,' he said. Some 5.5 million U.S.-born children live with a parent who is an unauthorized immigrant, according to a Center for Migration Studies analysis of census data. The California Legislature has considered 23 immigration enforcement-related bills this year, seven of which concern schools. Bills to deny access to federal immigration authorities to schools if they don't have a warrant or a court order and to require schools to notify parents and staff when immigration authorities are on school grounds require two-thirds support to pass. Dee said public schools are still grappling with a post-pandemic knot of chronic absenteeism, sagging enrollment and declining funding, problems he expects the raids to exacerbate. He said fall enrollment figures will help indicate how California's schools, whose funding is tied to enrollment, responded to the Trump administration's immigration incursions. 'What we're seeing could eventually become reduced enrollment if families flee the region,' he said. 'There are reasons to be concerned.' Dee also acknowledged the Trump administration would likely be untroubled by this result, as another one of its priorities is dismantling the public education system. 'It seems consistent with other ways in which the administration has been creating disruptions and even chaos in education,' he said, noting the administration's 'evisceration' of the Department of Education and its threats to Title I funding, intended to address achievement gaps among lower-income students. As for what happens next, Flores pointed to the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Along with adding as much as $6 trillion to the national debt, Trump's signature domestic policy achievement will supercharge immigration enforcement by $170 billion and turn U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the country's largest law enforcement agency. 'No one has a crystal ball, but I think it would be reasonable to expect that this trend will continue and possibly even worsen,' Flores said. 'If this is the effect we're seeing due to the escalation of June 8 and we can expect further escalations, it is difficult to imagine that things simply go back.'
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
The surprising way San Francisco has become more affordable in the last 20 years
Just 1 in 5 San Francisco households can afford to buy a mid-priced home in their city, where the typical price tag is about $1.29 million. But back in 2005, only 1 in 10 households could afford a mid-priced home. That's according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau and real estate company Zillow. The Chronicle calculated how many households could buy a mid-priced home — including co-ops and condominiums — while keeping their housing payments below 30% of their income. The value of a typical San Francisco home grew by a whopping 66%, from $780,000 to $1.29 million, over the past two decades. But incomes have more than doubled over the same period, from about $58,000 to $127,000 in 2023 (roughly $136,000 in 2025 dollars). While the data indicates more San Franciscans can afford to own a home, the rapid increase in incomes since 2005 is due in part to many of the city's lower-income residents leaving, often pushed out by the city's high housing costs. And homeownership is still out of reach for the vast majority of San Francisco households, as measured by income levels. The Chronicle's analysis was based on Zillow's typical home value for each neighborhood in June 2005 and June 2025, assuming a 20% down payment, the San Francisco property tax rate for those years and the average 30-year mortgage rate for those months. The income estimates for 2025 were based on the Census Bureau's 2023 estimates, adjusted for inflation to 2025. The analysis did not include insurance costs or homeowners association fees, which have climbed rapidly in recent years. The most affordable neighborhoods in 2025 are generally located in and around downtown San Francisco, with more than 40% of households able to afford the typical home in the Tenderloin, Lower Nob Hill and Civic Center. Those neighborhoods, where the bulk of the city's new housing over the past two decades has been concentrated, have also become affordable to many more households since 2005. Only one neighborhood is affordable to a smaller share of San Francisco households than it was in 2005 — Hunters Point, where housing costs have grown at a faster rate than any other neighborhood, though the neighborhood has relatively low home values. The fact that more households can afford a home doesn't help the families that have already left San Francisco. Several economic changes to the region — the tech boom, the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic — resulted in lower-income households moving out and, in some cases, higher-income households moving in. Of course, not everyone who can buy a home wants to. Renting a home in the Bay Area is often much more affordable than purchasing one, and not everyone wants to live in downtown San Francisco, where most of the for-sale homes are condominiums. And then there's the issue of affording a $300,000 down payment, which is much harder for a first-time homebuyer than someone coming with cash from a previous sale. On the other hand, many San Francisco households have decided that owning a home in the city is worth exceeding the 'affordability' threshold. About a third of San Francisco households with a mortgage pay at least 30% of their income toward housing costs, Census Bureau data shows.
Newsweek
4 days ago
- Business
- Newsweek
Millennials Are Reviving This Midwest City
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. While the Midwest grapples with the consequences of decades of population decline, one city in the region, Des Moines, is thriving against the odds—thanks, in part, to the numbers of young people choosing to make it their home. Jacob Hardigree, 33, is one of the many Des Moines escapees who have recently decided to return to the city after spending years away from Iowa. Hardigree, who was born and raised in Des Moines, left the city in his 20s, when he landed a job working at Yellowstone National Park in California. In the following years, he lived in California and southwest Montana, where he met his now-wife. Life might have been very happy for Hardigree, but it was not particularly cheap: in Bozeman, Montana, a two-bedroom home was nearing the $1 million price tag after the pandemic, he said—an impossibly high expense for the young couple. Bozeman's sky-high home prices ended up running them out of the city and Montana. About three years ago, Hardigree and his wife decided to move to his hometown—Des Moines. "When we moved here we ended up making the same money as back West and now make more, so buying our home was pretty hassle-free," Hardigree told Newsweek. "Now we have a child—which we also would have never done in Bozeman." Bucking the Trend The latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that Des Moines continues to be the fastest-growing city in the Midwest, with an estimated population of 753,913 in 2024, up 6.3 percent from 709,517 in 2020 in its metropolitan area. This includes the cities of Ankeny and West Des Moines. This number puts the city almost at the same level as some of the fastest-growing cities in the South, the region that is attracting the most newcomers, such as Phoenix, Arizona (6.9 percent) and Nashville, Tennessee (6.8 percent). This phenomenon started a while ago. In the last decade alone, Des Moines grew its population by a stunning 16.98 percent, while much of the region continued struggling with an exodus of residents and several Midwestern states lost congressional seats because of these population declines. While the Midwest grapples with the consequences of decades of population decline, one city in the region, Des Moines, is thriving against the odds. While the Midwest grapples with the consequences of decades of population decline, one city in the region, Des Moines, is thriving against the odds. Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/AP But the data show that it has accelerated during the pandemic, likely because of the housing affordability crisis across the country. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, Des Moines' metro grew 1.9 percent faster than a year earlier. "Some of our population growth, as with many states, is the result of post-COVID recovery," Les Sulgrove, statewide housing analyst at Iowa Realtors, told Newsweek. "Our state has a large rural population and with the ability to work from home during COVID-19 and subsequently having the option now of working back in the offices for part of the week and home from the remaining time has been a boost for our metro and suburbs." Des Moines' low unemployment rate, Sulgrove said, is a factor driving this population growth. "There are jobs for pretty much anyone that wants to work in our area and the employment industry is also diversifying," he said. "The metro, once known primarily for insurance and agriculture, has shifted in recent years more towards data centers and technology. We still have very strong ties to our core industries through our universities and colleges and are able to keep many of our college students here after graduation." The city's affordability, especially for first-time homebuyers, also plays in favor of Des Moines. "Where many markets have seen wide swings in home values and employment, our markets have always been consistent and steady. Our median sale price has remained steady with the most recent year-over-year appreciation of values at 4.2 percent," Sulgrove said. The median family income for Des Moines is $109,000, according to Iowa Realtors data, "and that is more than the income needed to buy a home with a minimum down payment," Sulgrove said. "With consistent equity gains, buying a home makes sense." According to the latest Redfin data, the median sale price of a home in Des Moines in May was $216,250, down 1.9 percent from a year earlier. At the national level, a typical U.S. home cost $440,910, up 0.6 percent from a year earlier. But even the Des Moines housing market is not perfect. "Our biggest challenge is virtually like every market. The return of starter home stock levels is extremely low in our city and we need that segment to increase to spur more move up buyers," Sulgrove said. "As soon as mortgage interest rates come down closer to 6 percent, we know that will psychologically open the door to more home seller holdouts," he added. "We saw a big jump in business last year when rates dipped close to that rate." A Multi-Generational Haven Young people have played a significant part in boosting Des Moines' population in recent years. "Millennials have certainly contributed to Greater Des Moines' recent momentum, especially through their investment in urban living, entrepreneurship and early career opportunities," Tiffany Tauscheck, president & CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, told Newsweek. "However, the region's growth has been fueled by a broader, multi-generational trend that reflects Greater Des Moines' overall attractiveness to people at different stages of life," she said. The city has seen significant population growth over the past decade from adults ages 35 to 54 with college degrees, "a segment that has increased by a remarkable 26 percent," Tauscheck said, highlighting the city's attractiveness as a thriving job market. "This group represents individuals in their peak earning and family formation years who have discovered this is a great place to grow in their career and raise a family. This type of talent is highly valuable for any region, and Greater Des Moines has outperformed most other metros in attracting and retaining them," she said. "We also see growth in retirement age adults choosing to remain or relocate in the region, oftentimes to remain near or move closer to their children and grandchildren who live here, which strengthens our ability to retain younger generations." While millennial migration helped fuel renewed energy in areas like Downtown Des Moines, Tauscheck and her colleagues are also observing an influx of Gen Zers, who are now beginning to enter the workforce, "and many Gen X and Boomer professionals choosing to stay here long-term due to lifestyle advantages and career opportunities," she said. The Young People Calling Des Moines Home Josh, 42, is a chef and a Des Moines native. He left the city to attend culinary school and lived in New York, New Orleans, and Saint Paul for 16 years, during which he visited his home city and "enjoyed the improvements and investments Des Moines seemed to consistently be making." Eventually, in 2022, he and his family decided the time was right for them to come back to Des Moines, where they now live in the Beaverdale neighborhood. "We have family and friends here, and the timing worked out to make the transition back to DSM," Josh told Newsweek. After living in some of the most vibrant metropolises in the country, Josh can appreciate how much more affordable the cost of living is in Des Moines, though he said he "would never discount the life experiences obtained from living somewhere different than where you grew up for a while." Josh and his family love "what Des Moines has to offer for us and our family," and he thinks that the investments that have been made in the area will continue to draw people there in the future. "We are happy in Des Moines and thankful to have such great communities around us. It might not be the final stop on the journey, but we're not looking to leave anytime soon," he said. Some young people are making their way to Des Moines from other states having no previous ties to the city. Sara Brown, 40, moved to Des Moines from Kansas 11 years ago for work and never looked back. "I made the decision to move to DSM when my company closed the office I worked at in Kansas and offered relocation to our office in West Des Moines," she told Newsweek. She had only visited Des Moines once before she made the decision to move, but she knew that there were a lot of opportunities in her industry—financial services— in the city should things not work out with her company (which they did). "Beyond that, I loved that DSM was a bigger city than where I grew up in Kansas, but not so large that I'd feel totally lost. DSM is also an active city with a lot to do," she said. Like Josh, Brown lives in the Beaverdale neighborhood in northwest Des Moines. "My husband and I love living in Des Moines proper, and don't envision ourselves straying too far," she said. Brown has owned a home for nearly eight years now, and even with the low interest rates at the time, she doesn't think she could have afforded to buy a similar property in New York City or Los Angeles. While she thinks that it can be easier for millennials to live in the Midwest in general, given the relatively low cost of living, she admits that the region—even places like Des Moines—cannot offer the same excitement as larger cities. "I know a lot of people who have made the move—including my husband, who was only an acquaintance at the time of our moves!," she said. "The majority of those who moved with my company are still happily residing in Des Moines, although a few have returned home to Kansas." Vee, 31, who was born and raised in Charlottesville, Virginia, moved to Des Moines in 2022. "My brother was the first to live in Des Moines. He moved here for his job from Montana in early 2017. I came to visit him in the summer of that year, not expecting much from the city. But I fell in love the first day I visited," she told Newsweek. When the time came to move out of Virginia, the city was her only choice. "I wanted to move from the small area where I lived in Virginia to a more urban/city setting. However, NYC and other major cities were a big no due to cost of living, rent, safety and the layout," she said. "Des Moines is a city but it's different from the others." Vee believes that Des Moines "is one of the better places in the U.S. for millennials," offering low rents and home prices as well as an underrated art scene, dog-friendly bars, speakeasies, breweries and several music events every year. "I wish more millennials and Gen Zers would move here," she said. "I don't think they know what they're missing out on."
