Launching Two Cooperative Ownership Initiatives!

After 3+ years of organizing, the People of Color Sustainable Housing Network is proud to announce that we have built the ground work for two exciting projects in the coming year, the Community Co-Ownership Initiative and the East Bay Permanent Real-Estate Cooperative. These projects come after years of building strategic partnerships, ongoing community fellowship, and acquiring organizing resources. Through this work we hope to build innovative community controlled housing models that are replicable and can shift the tides of this displacement and affordability crisis here in the Bay Area and beyond. Finding just, healthy and sustainable housing is still the number issue facing communities in the Bay Area, neither the market nor the traditional non-profit housing sector has been able to deliver affordable housing for low-income households on the scale to which we need it. In putting forward models that help us to pool our resources, share legal and technical expertise, and co-create community governance systems, we hope to expand the network of resident-controlled permanently affordable housing sites that are committed to justice and sustainability.

We are partnering with the Sustainable Economies Law Center on developing the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EBPREC), a scalable cooperative housing model designed to spread the idea that all people should aspire to live in community controlled housing.This developing model builds limited equity housing principles into emerging cooperative real estate ownership models becoming popular in New York City and a handful of other places. In this model, a Cooperative Corporation is formed to take title to the land. The owners (aka members) of the cooperative will include residents of the cooperative's property and of the surrounding community. This cooperative can hold a single property, or it can serve as the platform for the development of a new model of property ownership, acting as a container for the acquisition of multiple properties within a city or region. The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is the first iteration of this model. To get involved and for more information visit the East Bay PREC website: www.ebprec.org.

The Community Co-Ownership Initiative is a partnership between the Northern California Land Trust and the People of Color Sustainable Housing Network (POCSHN), along with other members of the Bay Area CLT Consortium (BACCLT) to diversify and expand access to shared ownership and resident controlled housing through leadership training, development of new financing tools, and technical support. The partnership leverages the technical expertise and stewardship knowledge of NCLT with the broad reach and engagement of POCSHN’s diverse grassroots membership. To learn more visit the project page.