Community-Owned Futures Cohort
The Community-Owned Futures Cohort brings together emerging leaders from across the country to advance ambitious, place-based work while generating lessons for the broader field.
Through the cohort, the COLA Lab provides flexible funding and peer learning to practitioners working across different geographies and models of community ownership.
At the same time, we learn alongside cohort members, their work a source of knowledge that shapes our research and contributes to the field. This community-rooted approach allows us to understand what organizations are building and learning in real time, and identify how the wider ecosystem must evolve to help community ownership succeed and grow at greater scale.
2026 Cohort
The five organizations in our inaugural Community-Owned Futures Cohort offer a window into what it takes to move community ownership from vision to reality: organizing residents, building collective governance, assembling capital, navigating institutions, acquiring and co-stewarding assets, and developing the relationships and structures needed to make their projects viable.
GES Coalition’s Tierra Colectiva CLT · Denver, CO
A resident-led coalition based in Denver’s Globeville, Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods and working to prevent displacement while building community control over housing and development. The Tierra Colectiva CLT creates permanently affordable homeownership opportunities to keep residents anchored as their surrounding areas change.
Wukchumni Community Land Trust · CA Central Valley
A community land trust created by the Wukchumni Tribe to bring land back into collective stewardship after generations of dispossession. Among other projects, the Wukchumni CLT is building a culturally centered community (Bu’ha’chai Village) where members can live close together and the community can remain connected.
LA Más · Los Angeles, CA
A community-rooted organization helping Northeast LA residents remain in their neighborhoods, demonstrating that community-controlled housing can compete even in one of the country’s most expensive real estate markets. LA Más acquires and preserves naturally occurring affordable housing by combining mission-aligned capital with resident governance to protect families from displacement.
Justice for the People Legal Center · Denver, CO
An organizing-first legal center helping communities facing displacement turn rights and policy wins into resident shared ownership. Justice for the People Legal Center combines grassroots organizing, legal strategy, policy advocacy, and acquisition support to help residents build power and purchase their properties with the governance capacity to steward them together.
New Economy Project · New York City, NY
A coalition-driven organization working to build community power and a more just local economy through organizing, advocacy, and community-controlled development. New Economy Project supports community land trusts and other non-extractive ownership efforts while helping build the citywide infrastructure and resources needed for collective ownership to grow.