Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at info@reasonstobecheerful.world. Building better The New York City area is known for being a wildly expensive place to live. But there are pockets of affordability — one of which is the commuter town of New Rochelle, as the Wall Street Journal reports in a story shared by RTBC Executive Editor Will Doig. Thanks to “developer-friendly politics” that streamline the process, more than 4,500 new housing units have been built there over the last decade, and thousands more are on the way. Will says:   New Rochelle is all in on YIMBYism, and it’s one of the few places in the New York City area where rents are going down. Flower power Kyle Lybarger, a social media influencer in Alabama, raised over $100,000 selling t-shirts that featured the leafy prairie clover, a little-known endangered plant. According to a New York Times story shared by Contributing Editor Geetanjali Krishna, he used the money to purchase 24 acres of the land where the plant grows in the wild. But his biggest impact is on social media, where he’s inspiring his followers (nearly half a million on TikTok!) to grow native plants that support pollinators and other insects. Geetanjali says:   Who would have ever thought that a nerdy program on native plants that many dismiss as “weeds” could go so viral? I especially love how he talks about the power of the individual, and of small steps, at a time when so many of us are simply paralyzed by the scale of the environmental crisis: “One person, one yard, one-tenth of an acre can make a bigger difference than you think,” he says. What else we’re reading Audio of Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson arguments from Marriage Story used to scare off wolves in the US — shared by Editorial Director Rebecca Worby from the Guardian After a Six-Year Struggle, Tenants in Boston’s Mattapan Neighborhood Win Permanent Affordability — shared by Will Doig from Shelterforce Kulture City maps safe spaces for neurodivergent New Yorkers — shared by Rebecca Worby from WNYC In other news… Next week, RTBC is taking our annual summer publishing break. But keep an eye on our social media (find us on Facebook, Bluesky and Instagram), where we’ll be unearthing plenty of fun stuff from our archives all week. The post What We’re Reading: How a New York Suburb Is Bringing Down Rents appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.