Unwinding of Past Harm + Investment in Systems of Equity = Modern Vectors of Economic Liberation
"When communities come together to collectively own and manage assets, they can leverage their joint economic power to collectively assert their rights and exercise cultural and political power in a more impactful way than they would on their own. And, when neighbors build community wealth together they create safe and sovereign spaces that foster self-determination and build shared prosperity."
Nwamaka Agbo
Learn about each modern vector of economic liberation below
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
Housing is a universal need. It provides stability, security and a sense of wellbeing economically, socially, physically and spiritually. Liberation in housing involves a complete reevaluation of federal policy, private ownership, and even the housing market itself. To liberate housing, we liberate the land itself from the marketplace, we establish land trusts, reevaluate private ownership, family structures - and even our definition of "enough." While segregation, divestment and other obstacles continue to disadvantage Black communities, Black communities are responding with innovation. New solutions to housing including the creation of land trusts and the separate sale of houses on them, permanently stabilizing housing costs and preventing gentrification. Zoning must also be addressed; single family housing tracts have long been used, in combination with racial housing covenants, as a way to continue housing segregation. Cross the country, single family housing zoning is giving way to allow for additional dwelling units (ADUs), and forms of multi-family housing including apartments, condos, and community-based collective housing models like co-housing. In addition, the creation of historic cultural zoning overlays in traditionally Black and brown neighborhoods, along with changes to property taxation, can protect these neighborhoods from gentrification.
Quotes
"Housing in American communities is, for too many people, unaffordable, unstable, and segregated. The related crises of affordability, eviction, and segregation and systemic racism in housing require new approaches. Our finance system as a whole (the market undergirded by the government and its regulatory frameworks) is largely designed in the interest of profit-making and support for enterprise, with other social considerations an afterthought. While some parts of the housing finance system are geared toward answering the need for broader housing security, community investments, or equitable access to wealth-building, these have generally been treated as secondary concerns in the system’s operation. Little attention has been paid in this sphere to the problem of racial segregation.
In this series, we invite experts from research, advocacy, and government to consider how housing finance can begin to move beyond the constraints of racial capitalism and domination3 to further the creation of more just and equitable housing systems. The enclosed essays speak from a range of diverse viewpoints to explore how housing finance can be harnessed towards the ends of residential integration, equitable investment, and housing security, rather than purely for profit. Our authors offer ideas across a spectrum of proposed reforms. They describe how aspects of our current housing finance system derive from, or fail to correct for, our deep history of structural racism; they propose concrete steps toward re-engineering our current regulatory structure and housing programs to better advance equity, including addressing the particular harms of racial segregation; and they argue for expanded social housing and other visionary reforms."
Racial Justice in Housing Finance: A Series on New Directions
By Megan Haberle, former Deputy Director, Poverty & Race Research Action Council and
Sophia House, Deputy Director for Policy, Housing Solutions Lab, NYU Furman Center
Personal Narratives
Metrics
“Land trust housing also protects owners from downturns because people are not over extended; as a result, foreclosure rates for land trusts have been as much as 90 percent less than conventional home mortgages.”-Community Land Trusts (CLTs) | Community-Wealth.org
Over 99% of shared equity homes avoid foreclosure proceedings- Shared Equity Housing: By the Numbers | Grounded Solutions Network
The share of minority households living in shared equity homes increased from 13% in 1985 to 43% by 2018. - Shared Equity Housing: By the Numbers | Grounded Solutions Network
7 out of 10 Shared Equity homeowners are first time homebuyers. -Shared Equity Housing: By the Numbers | Grounded Solutions Network
Methods of Liberation
Land reparations:
Pathways to reparations: land and healing through food justice
Example: California's Novel Attempt at Land Reparations | The New Yorker
Democratize land ownership though community land trust & black commons
How a Black Commons Could Help Build Communal Wealth - YES! Magazine
Example: Black Family Land Trust
LA Mall Purchase Would Be the Biggest Victory Yet for Community-Driven Development (nextcity.org)
Black Community Group Fights Plan to Redevelop Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza (capitalandmain.com)
Collective owned infrastructure
The Freedom Georgia Initiative | Building It for Ourselves!
Developments in low-income housing policy
All people of color will have access to affordable housing | Liberation in a Generation
The radical way cities are tackling affordable housing
Why Hospitals Are Subsidizing Apartments For The Homeless
How European-Style Public Housing Could Help Solve The Affordability Crisis : NPR
Example: “The Mile High city has become a national reference point in conversations about affordable housing because local leaders aren’t just proposing solutions, they’re investing significant money to meet aggressive targets. In early 2016, Denver launched a $10 million Revolving Affordable Housing Loan Fund to help widen the capital pool for affordable housing projects. The initiative has had so much success bringing new projects online that the city expanded support for affordable housing last fall, approving plans to preserve or build thousands of units. A new $500,000 property tax increase, paired with new development impact fees, will raise $156.4 million over the next decade. “-Solving affordable housing: Creative solutions around the US - Curbed
Timelines of Equity
Timeline Of Fair Housing In America
A History of Housing Cooperatives | National Cooperative Law Center
1927- One of the first housing cooperatives was sponsored by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union.
1960’s- Dorothy Mae Richardson, a resident of the Central North Side of Pittsburgh, started the movement called Citizens Against Slum Housing (CASH) raising almost a million dollars and convincing 16 financial institutions to make community loans to rehabilitate her community. CASH marked the beginning of a new form of community-based development and led to the founding of Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) of Pittsburgh in 1968.
1966- Martin Luther King addresses the leaders of the Chicago Tenants Rights movement “...This day, we must continue our already successful efforts to organize, in every area of Chicago, unions to end slums. Together, we must withhold rent from landlords that force us to live in subhuman conditions.
And let me say, here and now, that we are not going to tolerate moves that are now being made in subtle manners to intimidate, harass and penalize Negro landlords who may own one or two buildings, while ignoring the fact that slums are really perpetuated by the huge real estate agencies, mortgage and banking institutions, and city, state and federal governments.” -https://socialistworker.org/2010/03/19/housing-struggle-then-and-now
1968- The Fair Housing Act prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin or sex.
1969- New Communities created the first community land trust on a 5700-acre tract of land in Albany, Georgia.
1974- Equal Credit Opportunity Act outlaws discrimination in lending
1988 -Congress passed the Fair Housing Amendments Act, which expanded the law to prohibit discrimination in housing based on disability or on family status (pregnant women or the presence of children under 18)
2015- the Obama Administration sought to fight housing discrimination by strengthening existing rules for Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), which require local governments that receive certain federal funds to analyze challenges to fair housing choice and establish goals and priorities to address the fair housing barriers in their local communities.
Changemakers
People of Color Sustainable Housing Network
The Black Homeownership Collaborative
National Fair Housing Alliance |
Alkebulan Community - Foundation for Intentional Community
Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia
Africatown Community Land Trust
Articles
Housing reparations | County Health Rankings & Roadmaps
Building Community Wealth: Shifting Power and Capital in Real Estate Finance
The emerging solidarity economy: A primer on community ownership of real estate (brookings.edu)
How housing reparations can help close the Black homeownership gap (reparationscomm.org)
One Way To Close The Black Homeownership Gap: Housing As Reparations | KQED
Last Week Tonight: John Oliver says we need reparations for housing discrimination. (slate.com)
A New Housing-Rights Movement Has the Real-Estate Industry Running Scared | The Nation
Methodologies for Housing Justice Resource Guide
Racial Justice in Housing Finance: A Series on New Directions
How Black real estate developers are breaking ground for underrepresented communities - ABC News
5 policy solutions to advance racial equity in housing | Habitat for Humanity +
[Origins and Evolution of the Community Land Trust in the United States]
An Unusual Community Land Trust in Colorado Is Making Its Mark
Land Banks and Community Land Trusts Partner to Unlock Affordable Housing Opportunities
A tiny home of one’s own: black women embrace the small house movement | US news | The Guardian
Black Americans are leaving their homes to start their own all-Black communities - ABC News
Building Freedom, Georgia: A Safe Community for Black Families, Built by Black Families
FHFA nominee pledges to address racial homeownership gap - Roll Call
Books
Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities
Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice
The Community Land Trust Reader by John Emmeus Davis
Podcasts
Learning to love rent control - The Weeds
For The Wild: SEVERINE VON TSCHARNER FLEMING on the Commons to Which We Belong
Film/Video
Community Land Trusts: A Model for Reparations?
Black Oaks Center for Sustainable & Renewable Living
Policy Solutions to Advance Housing Justice | ChangeLab Solutions
How housing reparations can help close the Black homeownership gap
A Black Lens of The Built World - Housing Innovation Collaborative
Webinar - Stabilizing Communities: Advancing Housing Justice Organizing and Policy Strategies
Dorothy Mae Richardson: A Visionary
More:
Questions for Research and Reflection:
- How can investing in shared equity homes stabilize home ownership for Black families?
- How do community land trusts halt gentrification?
- What is the relationship between housing justice and European notions of private property?
- How can affordable housing stabilize black economic wellbeing?
Taking Action
Consider your family's heritage and the areas your ancestors once lived. Consider how you might invest your time, resources and agency to assist Black community members with housing-related issues, e.g.:
- Pool funds for the down payment for a house
- Take out a margin loan from your investments and use it to help a Black colleague or friend put in a cash offer to purchase a house; then help them re-finance to recover your funds.
- Pool funds and assist Black community members in making renovations to their homes or taking care of deferred maintenance issues.
- Work toward changing zoning codes in your community to more equitable ones that include multi-family housing and ADUs
- Review your communities' covenants; root out racial bias wherever you find it.