Reparative Community-Owned Real Estate and Land-Based Liberation Fireside Chat
Catalyzed by the housing, resource and access inequities illuminated at the start of the pandemic, more funders have stepped up to shift funding away from traditional, extractive real estate toward community-owned real estate and land-based liberation projects. This necessary uptick, though, comes with its own set of issues when it comes to ensuring that funders and investors are not replicating the harm of predatory, traditional financing, and are instead operating through a lens of reparations, non-extraction and justice.
With this in mind, it’s clear there is a serious opportunity to educate, organize, and mobilize funders around how to provide capital in deep solidarity with the organizations and communities stewarding this work. There is far too much capital flowing to extractive real estate projects that tout “affordable housing” or “housing justice” without having any community input, ownership, or governance over the land and/or housing units which are meant to be community assets. In seeking a solution to this problem, and while considering that “those closest to the issue are closest to the solution,” it makes sense that solidarity economy investment funds would have the most valuable insight around the terms, timing, investment vehicles, and types of capital that community-owned real estate and land-based liberation projects need. Therefore, we are bringing together community-based capital stewards to host a fireside chat to share their experiences, learnings, and strategies with values-aligned funders to mobilize capital and catalyze action, in deep solidarity with community and social movements.
(Oakland, CA — Oakstop on Telegraph)
