Community Ownership Field Guide: A Multi-City Panorama
This three-part series of comparative case studies is designed to answer questions that matter across the field:
What makes some community ownership projects succeed and others fail? Are there common strategies for acquiring capital? How are ecosystems built and strengthened?
Each case study is accompanied by an implementation tool, which translates the findings and frameworks into tailored recommendations that can be applied right away.
Redesigning Property Relations: The Paths to Viability in Community Ownership
A framework for understanding how community ownership organizations shift who owns real estate, who controls it, and who benefits from it. We identify three paths to viability — invention, coordination, and integration — to explain how these groups make their models viable within their unique local contexts.
Paths to Viability in Community Ownership: Action Guide
A practical companion to the case study, this action guide helps practitioners, funders, and policymakers apply the framework through interventions tailored to their current "path."
Resourcing Community Ownership: The Processes of Capital
The recurring processes through which community ownership organizations assemble capital and navigate structural barriers, turning relationships and community support into the financing they need to acquire and sustain assets. This study reveals both the ingenuity required to finance community ownership today and opportunities to build a more supportive capital system long-term.
The Processes of Capital: Action Guide (COMING SOON)
Building on the case study’s findings, this action guide outlines interventions for lenders, philanthropy, policymakers, and other field actors to reduce barriers to capital and better resource community ownership at scale.
Thinking in Ecosystems: Community Ownership Beyond Property Lines
A study of how community ownership takes shape when infrastructure is still informal, revealing the connective tissue that moves projects forward. We examine how relationships, trust, and shared learning accumulate across projects to form the infrastructure of an emerging field.
Thinking in Ecosystems: Action Guide
This companion implementation tool offers recommendations and interventions for strengthening the relationships and support networks that community ownership projects rely on. It helps identify opportunities to strengthen existing ecosystems and build the infrastructure needed for community ownership to grow.