Skip to main content

Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy

Community Land Cooperatives And Neighborhood Economic Development

Ecovillagers Alliance is a nonprofit initiative of educators, organizers, systems engineers, and storytellers. We came together from a crazy quilt of past attempts to establish community control of land and buildings by different models—co-ops, land trusts, co-housing, communes—none of which quite addressed the inhumane realities of modern urban real estate. So we went back to the drawing board to ask: what instrument of neighborhood real estate stewardship would be democratic, just, and sustainable?

Now we are organizing a real estate investment cooperative for the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, with the exclusive purpose of incubating, funding, and assisting what we call “community land cooperatives,” at a micro-neighborhood level of roughly one-half to one city block. Each community land co-op, similarly to a community land trust, will serve as a permanent owner of the neighborhood’s land and buildings, removing them from the speculative marketplace. The community land co-op provides a way for residents (and community businesses) to own shares instead of properties and to access a unified, holistic decision-making process around development, management, and rents for homes and commercial spaces sharing the block.

Read the rest at Shelterforce

 

Go to the GEO front page

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is to verify that you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam.

What does the G in GEO stand for?