A New Space for Affordable Homes: Above the Library [ungated] - "Several cities are looking combine apartment complexes with public library branches in a bid to add new housing units and boost community services."

Other co-location efforts have proposed combining housing with firehouses, community centers and even museums. But library branches are particularly well-suited for the role because they often boast easy access to transit, shopping and other amenities, says Yonah Freemark, a housing researcher at the Urban Institute. Since 2020, there have been nearly two dozen combined library-housing developments in the US, adding more than 1,800 market-rate, senior and affordable housing units, according to his 2025 report. [...] After a two-year court battle, the rezoning plan moved forward and the Inwood Library broke ground in 2021. The facility opened in 2024, with space for early childhood reading programs, English language for adults and tech classes on coding. The new library has become a "fixture of the community," said Anthony Marx, president and CEO of the New York Public Library. "We got a bigger library than we probably would've gotten with a straight replacement. That's ideal, right? Everybody wins." New York City has been an avid experimenter with the joint library-housing model, with four facilities completed since 2016. Three more are on the way in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn. In June, a city councilmember proposed including $60 million in the city's budget to pair another three libraries with affordable housing. Filling the Gap At least a dozen other joint library-housing developments are in the pipeline or under consideration across the US. But the broader US housing shortage is measured in millions. Libraries alone aren't enough to fill that gap, but Brooks Rainwater, president and CEO of the Urban Libraries Council, thinks combining housing with other city properties more broadly is a good long-term strategy. "When you look at the full scope of publicly owned land within cities, yeah, it can make a dent," said Rainwater, who once led the National League of Cities' solutions center.

Aging Libraries Could Offer Cities a Unique Opportunity to Build New Housing While Improving Public Services - "These complexes are one way cities can leverage publicly owned land for the public benefit."

Combining libraries with housing development has become increasingly common. In my analysis, I found that since 2000, at least 23 projects have been completed in the US, creating a total of 1,848 apartments. The majority of these projects were completed in the past decade. Seven such projects are now under construction, encompassing 597 new housing units. Two projects have been completed in Canada, with another now under construction. (Other library projects, such as Salt Lake City's Marmalade Branch, are integrated into neighborhood-scale development plans, but aren't specifically integrated into apartment buildings.)

Affordable Housing Meets the Public Library - "Affordable housing developers and public libraries are finding common ground in a number of communities across the country."

By joining forces, these partners are able to meet their distinct missions in ways they might not otherwise be able to accomplish on their own. "Libraries are a fantastic community anchor," says David Block, director of development at Evergreen Real Estate Group, which has completed two developments that combine affordable housing with libraries in Chicago and is at work on another in Denver. "The community can really rally around them and say, 'this is ours, and we value this as a place for kids to learn, as a place for seniors to come together, and as a resource for information.'" Libraries are vital to many members of a community, including people experiencing homelessness. As unsheltered individuals seek safety and warmth within their walls, some sites have even invited social workers or homeless outreach teams to help connect people with food assistance, housing resources, and counseling. In the latest chapter of this relationship, these community pillars are being built under the same roof with affordable housing to meet the needs of a wide range of individuals, families, and seniors. The Urban Institute recently reported that more than 1,800 apartments—many of them affordable units—have been built in developments with libraries since 2000. More projects are on the way.

Cities Are Tackling the Housing Crunch—by Building Above the Library - "Cornelius Place offers something else for the community: above the library are 45 apartments intended to be affordable for seniors with household incomes of up to 60 percent of area median income (AMI). Eleven apartments are part of the Section 8 program, making them more deeply affordable by requiring households to pay no more than 30 percent of their income in rent."

Cornelius, a city of 12,400 in metro Portland, anticipates growing by more than one-third in the next five years. Cornelius Place is its first three-story building, first mixed-use building, and an anchor for a new walkable-downtown master plan, says Ryan Wells, community development director. Combining a new public library with affordable senior housing made both projects possible. "There is cost sharing to construction when you mix those uses," says Wells. "We could not have built the library on its own."

Boston Is Building Homes Above Libraries—And It's Changing Lives - "A recent Christian Science Monitor article highlighted Boston's bold new approach: building affordable apartments directly above neighborhood library branches. It's a model that blends housing, learning, and community support under one roof, and it's already reshaping how cities think about public space."

A New Chapter for Library Buildings Boston is renovating several aging library branches and pairing those upgrades with new, multi-story affordable housing developments built on the same footprint. Instead of expanding outward, the city is building upward—preserving the library's role while adding dozens of income-restricted homes above it. This collaboration between the Boston Public Library, the city's housing department, and nonprofit developers aims to meet two urgent needs at once: more affordable housing and stronger, more accessible community services. How Housing Above Libraries Works Libraries already serve as trusted, low-barrier entry points for support. By placing homes directly above them, Boston is creating a built-in connection between residents and the resources that help families thrive. Some of the benefits include:

• Immediate Access to Essential Services. Residents can head downstairs to use high-speed internet, attend job readiness workshops, or meet with community partners who regularly staff the library.
• Daily Literacy Opportunities for Children. Kids living in the building can drop in to storytimes, after-school programs, and summer reading activities—all just steps from their front door.
• A Sense of Stability and Belonging. Combining housing with a beloved public institution helps reduce stress for families navigating economic uncertainty.

The Monitor's reporting highlights how these buildings become more than just apartments—they become neighborhood hubs, places where families can learn, connect, and feel supported.

Downtown Santa Cruz Library and housing construction continues - "The new library and affordable housing project is being built on a city-owned downtown parking lot bound by Cathcart, Cedar and Lincoln streets. When complete, the project will include 124 units of very low income housing, including studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. The Santa Cruz Public Libraries' new flagship branch will also be built on the site. The 41,000-plus-square-foot facility will include sustainable design, a rooftop deck and large community room. In addition to housing and the library, the site will have about 240 parking spaces, including 25 Level 2 electric vehicle charging stations, 203 bicycle parking spaces and a childcare facility." (Downtown Library & Affordable Housing Project)

A 24-year-old British national and senior member of the cybercrime group “Scattered Spider” has pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. Tyler Robert Buchanan admitted his role in a series of text-message phishing attacks in the summer of 2022 that allowed the group to hack into at least a dozen major technology companies and steal tens of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from investors.

Buchanan’s hacker handle “Tylerb” once graced a leaderboard in the English-language criminal hacking scene that tracked the most accomplished cyber thieves. Now in U.S. custody and awaiting sentencing, the Dundee, Scotland native is facing the possibility of more than 20 years in prison.

Scattered Spider is the name given to a prolific English-speaking cybercrime group known for using social engineering tactics to break into companies and steal data for ransom, often impersonating employees or contractors to deceive IT help desks into granting access.

As part of his guilty plea, Buchanan admitted conspiring with other Scattered Spider members to launch tens of thousands of SMS-based phishing attacks in 2022 that led to intrusions at a number of technology companies, including Twilio, LastPass, DoorDash, and Mailchimp.

The group then used data stolen in those breaches to carry out SIM-swapping attacks that siphoned funds from individual cryptocurrency investors. In an unauthorized SIM-swap, crooks transfer the target’s phone number to a device they control and intercept any text messages or phone calls to the victim’s device — such as one-time passcodes for authentication and password reset links sent via SMS. The U.S. Justice Department said Buchanan admitted to stealing at least $8 million in virtual currency from individual victims throughout the United States.

FBI investigators tied Buchanan to the 2022 SMS phishing attacks after discovering the same username and email address was used to register numerous phishing domains seen in the campaign. The domain registrar NameCheap found that less than a month before the phishing spree, the account that registered those domains logged in from an Internet address in the U.K. FBI investigators said the Scottish police told them the address was leased to Buchanan throughout 2022.

As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity, Buchanan fled the United Kingdom in February 2023, after a rival cybercrime gang hired thugs to invade his home, assault his mother, and threaten to burn him with a blowtorch unless he gave up the keys to his cryptocurrency wallet. That same year, U.K. investigators found a device at Buchanan’s Scotland residence that included data stolen from SMS phishing victims and seed phrases from cryptocurrency theft victims.

Buchanan was arrested by Spanish authorities in June 2024 while trying to board a flight to Italy. He was extradited to the United States and has remained in U.S. federal custody since April 2025.

Buchanan is the second known Scattered Spider member to plead guilty. Noah Michael Urban, 21, of Palm Coast, Fla., was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison last year and ordered to pay $13 million in restitution. Three other alleged co-conspirators — Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, 24, a.k.a. “AD,” of College Station, Texas; Evans Onyeaka Osiebo, 21, of Dallas, Texas; and Joel Martin Evans, 26, a.k.a. “joeleoli,” of Jacksonville, North Carolina – still face criminal charges.

Two other alleged Scattered Spider members will soon be tried in the United Kingdom. Owen Flowers, 18, and Thalha Jubair, 20, are facing charges related to the hacking and extortion of several large U.K. retailers, the London transit system, and healthcare providers in the United States. Both have pleaded not guilty, and their trial is slated to begin in June.

Investigators say the Scattered Spider suspects are part of a sprawling cybercriminal community online known as “The Com,” wherein hackers from different cliques boast publicly on Telegram and Discord about high-profile cyber thefts that almost invariably begin with social engineering — tricking people over the phone, email or SMS into giving away credentials that allow remote access to corporate internal networks.

One of the more popular SIM-swapping channels on Telegram has long maintained a leaderboard of the most rapacious SIM-swappers, indexed by their supposed conquests in stealing cryptocurrency. That leaderboard previously listed Buchanan’s hacker alias Tylerb at #65 (out of 100 hackers), with Urban’s moniker “Sosa” coming in at #24.

Buchanan’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for August 21, 2026. According to the Justice Department, he faces a statutory maximum sentence of 22 years in federal prison. However, any sentence the judge hands down in this case may be significantly tempered by a number of mitigating factors in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, including the defendant’s age, criminal history, time already served in U.S. custody, and the degree to which they cooperated with federal authorities.