Community Wealth Building
= community-based investment in, and control over, wealth creation
Description
1. Ted Howard [1]:
"Employees, companies, non-profits, cities, and states are using diverse and innovative strategies to create community wealth. It is wealth that improves the ability of communities and individuals to increase asset ownership, anchor jobs locally, expand the provision of public services, and ensure local economic stability, rather than just boost corporate profits and shareholder fortunes.
A common thread runs through the employee-owned firms, community development corporations, and even the traditional co-ops: the idea that real wealth equality can only be built by communal involvement in the means by which that wealth is produced. Such approaches provide ownership for million of American – in many cases, through a tangible asset that can appreciate and be passed on to subsequent generations. Others create community wealth by enabling businesses and jobs to stay in the United States.
“But more than that, these ownership strategies give people a real stake in their community, strengthening the bonds of citizenship and the connections between people, institutions, and places. These are not incidental by-products of a progressive ownership society; they lie at its core.
Community wealth building programs are creating local “commons” of economic activity, particularly in disadvantaged communities. They are also helping to popularize and legitimate the idea that common/collective ownership, widely distributed and anchored in communities, is a practical and workable approach to solve local economic problems.
Few Americans are aware that there has been a steady and continuing build-up of new and alternative forms of economic activity through the United States over the last several decades. Across the country, democratic, community wealth-building institutions have begun to multiply dramatically in number in recent years. Although many ventures are small in size, a number have already become a major presence in their communities and have implications for longer-term community change. The various efforts differ from traditional corporations, on the one hand, and small individually-owned businesses, on the other.
At one level are a variety of community-building neighborhood corporations and related efforts. At another level are enterprises largely or entirely owned by employees who live in, and are members of, the community. At still another are new nonprofit efforts which undertake economic activity in order to support their community service missions. Beyond this are numerous publicly owned enterprises, which both provide jobs and services and make money for cash-starved municipalities. Still other new efforts include large number of cooperatives, community housing land trusts, and various hybrid community oriented economic efforts."
(http://onthecommons.org/node/1066)
2. Marjorie Kelly:
"In a new report that I co-authored with my Democracy Collaborative colleague Sarah McKinley, we show how this comprehensive, “systems” approach—which we call community wealth-building—is unfolding in 20 cities, including: New York; Newark, New Jersey; Burlington, Vermont; Chicago; Minneapolis; and Oakland, California. We believe that this approach is on the cusp of going to scale. Traditionally, municipal economic development was a play with two actors: private business and government. Cities, with few options besides trying to attract business by offering subsidies, had the weaker role. But with the advent in recent decades of community benefits agreements, living wage laws, and ordinances blocking big-box stores, a third actor has stepped up, changing the dynamics of the process. The community—led by nonprofits, foundations, and civic organizations (and including large “anchor” organizations rooted in place such as nonprofit hospitals and universities, which together account for about seven percent of GDP)—is increasingly bringing its economic power and potential to bear.
...
In the face of seemingly intractable trajectories toward a more unequal society, there is hope for our common future in the growing movement around community wealth-building at the city level. And there’s tangible evidence that the movement can succeed. Nonprofits and foundations can help by adopting anchor mission strategies; directing investments, jobs, and purchasing locally; and encouraging city government and other large institutions to do the same. They can place deposits with community development financial institutions. They can start their own social enterprises or offer technical assistance to those who do. Collaborative networks can form in every city to help more retiring business owners sell to employee owners. We urge everyone to find their own role to play in building inclusive cities."
(http://ssir.org/articles/entry/building_the_inclusive_city)
Status Report 2007: USA
Ted Howard [2]:
"For example: community development corporations have grown from a mere handful in the late 1960s to more than 4,000 today;
- there are also more than 11,000 employee-owned firms (ESOPs), which employ more people than all the workers in America’s private sector labor unions;
- cooperatively-owned businesses involve more than 100 million members nationwide;
- nonprofit housing land trusts that create permanently affordable housing as a community-held asset are expanding throughout the country (last year, the city of Irvine, CA made a commitment to develop 10,000 units of housing within its community-owned land trust);
- in one of the fastest-growing and most interesting innovations, a host of local municipal enterprises (a community-ownership mechanism) – ranging from telecommunications infrastructure and municipal power companies to city-owned methane recovery businesses, transportation systems, and hotels – are winning the enthusiastic backing of both Republican and Democratic mayors."
(http://onthecommons.org/node/1066)
Example
Marjorie Kelly:
"Si Se Puede got its start through the Brooklyn-based Center for Family Life (CFL), which is part of SCO Family of Services. For years, CFL took traditional approaches to helping clients succeed in the workforce—helping them with resumes, for example, and coaching them before interviews—but its leaders were always on the lookout for new ways to improve their programs’ effectiveness.
Researching alternatives, they learned of several successful cooperatives and determined to bring that approach to their own community. Launched in 2006, Si Se Puede was the first, but the center has since created other worker cooperatives that do handiwork, childcare, and painting. And last year, CFL joined a coalition led by the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies in a campaign that resulted in New York City allocating $3.3 million over two years to develop worker cooperatives. The allocation is part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s quest to address economic inequality, which he calls the most important issue of our time.
A few examples:
- In Buffalo, New York, the city’s small-business development center is partnering with a local nonprofit, People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH), to ramp up worker co-op development. The goal is to use the successful model of the Breadhive worker cooperative in Buffalo to spur additional worker co-ops on Buffalo's West Side. The small business development center, housed at Buffalo State, will provide the technical business expertise, while PUSH, which is both a community organizing group and an experienced social enterprise developer, will help incubate the new worker cooperative businesses.
- In Portland, Oregon, the Portland Development Commission (PDC) is partnering with nonprofit community groups—including the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA)—in its Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative. The PDC has delineated six districts in areas with high concentrations of people of color and high poverty; community members in each one have articulated a vision for improving the local commercial areas by fostering economic opportunity and neighborhood vitality. The PDC has committed to giving each district $1 million over 10 years to bring these visions to fruition. While the PDC initiative helps NAYA serve its neighborhood, NAYA in turn helps the PDC reach effectively into a community by tapping its deep-rooted relationships there.
- In Minneapolis, as part of Mayor Betsy Hodges’ Zero Waste City initiative, the city is building on its partnership with the nonprofit Better Futures Minnesota (BFM), which pays ex-offenders to deconstruct houses and salvage materials, diverting those materials from landfills. The city began partnering with BFM in 2014, combining ecological and workforce goals with its Green Deconstruction Pilot Project. The city benefits by tapping the nonprofit’s unique workforce engagement skills, while the nonprofit benefits from a steady contract with the city, which in this case is acting as an anchor institution." (http://ssir.org/articles/entry/building_the_inclusive_city)
Policy
Scotland
Neil McInroy (interviewed by Michael Shuman)
* MS: Scotland now has officially embraced community wealth building (CWB). I want to unpack that term in a minute, but what has this policy shift looked like in Scotland?
NM: I think the policy shift is but one component; we also have and continue to grow a movement of folks and a range of on-the-ground practice. It means CWB and the central idea that the patterns of wealth matter in terms of who owns the wealth, where it goes, and how it is used virtuously (and not just extracted) are now a component part of Scotland’s economic development landscape. We now have the legislation mandating, in effect, that every local council in Scotland must produce a CWB plan. This means that CWB will become THE local economic development plan. And the Scottish national government itself needs to measure and report on CWB. We still have a long way to go, though."
(https://mainstreetjournal.substack.com/p/scotland-makes-community-wealth-building?)