News & Events

May

2019

16

Community Groups, Housing Activists, and Electeds Call on NYC to Take Bold Action to Tackle The Housing Crisis by Supporting Community Land Trusts

Dozens of community land trust (CLT) organizers, supporters, and community members rallied this morning at City Hall, urging the NYC Council to support a new funding initiative to incubate and expand CLTs in all five NYC boroughs. The proposed initiative, championed by Council Members Donovan Richards and Carlina Rivera, comes at a critical moment, as more than a dozen CLTs are taking root in the South and Northwest Bronx, East Harlem, Brownsville, Jackson Heights, and beyond, to curb displacement and advance community-led development.

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May

2019

6

Let’s Be Real Episode 8: Neighbors Beyond Amazon

In this episode of Let’s Be Real, we speak with two organizers—Fahd Ahmed from DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving), and Sasha Wijeyeratne from CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities—from the Neighbors Beyond Amazon coalition. Reflecting on the landmark victory to keep Amazon’s second headquarters, or HQ2, out of New York, Fahd and Sasha discuss the power of community organizing, what this victory means for the communities and members that work with their organizations, and what’s next for the coalition as they continue to fight for economic development that prioritizes people over corporations.

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April

2019

18

Gotham Gazette: Little-Used Community Land Trust Model for Affordable Housing May See Big Boost

Gotham Gazette — Manhattan City Council Member Carlina Rivera is part of a growing coalition of Council members pushing for city government’s first major commitment to a seldom-utilized affordable housing model. In the face of rapid gentrification, they say, the city should invest $850,000 in Community Land Trusts, or CLTs, in the city budget currently being negotiated.

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April

2019

10

In These Times: Public Banking Can Fund the Zero-Carbon Economy

In These Times — Wall Street bankers in expensive suits stopped and snickered on their lunch breaks June 5, 2018, as an eclectic group of New Yorkers with megaphones and banners called them out for investing in socially destructive industries—including private prisons, predatory lending, weapons manufacturing and, of course, fossil fuels.

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March

2019

29

How Financial Co-ops Are Helping Puerto Rico Rebuild — and Why It Matters for New York

New Economy Project recently sat down with Pablo DeFilippi and Rene Vargas Martinez from Inclusiv to learn about their work supporting financial cooperatives (or “cooperativas”) in Puerto Rico. While mainstream banks have been widely criticized for abandoning the Island or profiting off disaster, the cooperativas have been central to Puerto Rico’s resilience and recovery. The […]

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February

2019

28

Gothamist: NYC Economic Justice Groups Refuse To Meet With Trump’s Consumer Financial Protections Bureau Head

Gothamist — In its original conception, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) exists to impose oversight on our market such that you, the consumer, don’t get grifted by investors and lenders. Like so many other government institutions, however, the Trump Administration has turned that concept on its head. On Thursday, ahead of a scheduled meeting with the CFBP director, a collection of economic justice groups announced in an open letter that they would not take a seat at the table.

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