Community Economic Development

History, Tools, and Strategies 4th Annual African Americans in WNC and Southern

Appalachia ConferenceUniversity of North Carolina at Asheville

What is Community Economic Development

(CED)? The core definition of CED embraces 1. efforts to develop housing, jobs, or business opportunities for low-income people;2. in which a leading role is played by nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations 3. that are accountable to residentially defined communities

*From William Simon, The Community Economic Development Movement: Law, Business, and the New Social Policy (2002)

It is NOT traditional economic development…It focuses on building collaborative, inclusive, and locally controlled economies More sustainable More democratic Builds individual independence

through working with your community

GOAL: Improve quality of life beyond the purely economic.

• Strategy• Fight homelessness• Lack of jobs• Drug abuse• Violence and Crime• Quality child care• Medical care• Homeownership • Community revitalization

Building Healthy Communities

Expanding our definition…

RECONSTRUCTIONThe Freedmen’s Bureau

In the years following the Civil War, the Bureau of Refugees,

Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen’s Bureau)

provided assistance to tens of thousands of former slaves and

impoverished whites in the Southern States and the District of

Columbia.

The Bureau was established in the War Department in March

3, 1865 to undertake the relief effort and the unprecedented

social reconstruction that would bring freed people to full

citizenship.

It issued food and clothing, operated hospitals and temporary

camps, helped locate family members, promoted education,

helped freedmen legalize marriages, provided employment,

supervised labor contracts, provided legal representation,

investigated racial confrontations, settled freedmen on

abandoned or confiscated lands, and worked with African

American soldiers and sailors and their heirs to secure back

pay, bounty payments, and pension.

http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/gastudiesimages/13th%20Amendment.htm

History of CEDBlack Economics and Politics

Booker T. Washington W.E.B. DuBois

Up from Slavery Souls of Black Folk

Community development

Black Organizations

Black Businesses Black Professionals

Black Scholars

Black Churches

HBCUs

Elected Congressmen

Banking

Dean Charles Hamilton Houston Quote

• "A lawyer's either a social

engineer or he's a parasite

on society." ... A social

engineer was a highly skilled,

perceptive, sensitive lawyer

who understood the

Constitution of the United

States and knew how to

explore its uses in the solving

of "problems of . . . local

communities" and in

"bettering conditions of the

underprivileged citizens.“

History of CEDThe Civil Rights Era

Community Action Program

Neighborhood Based CED

Approach

Grassroots Organizing for

Economic Justice Model of

CED

History of CED1980s -1990s – Toward a Market Based Antipoverty Agenda

The Reagan/Bush Years The Clinton Years

What does a CED lawyer do?

Strategist Transactional • Help develop local affordable

housing policies

• Develop best practices to promote

benchmarks and create

comprehensive plans

• Education

o Frame your legal issue

o Know your rights

• Equitable Development

• Community Organizing

• Facilitator

• Mediator

• Finance Options

• Microenterprise

• Inclusive business practices

• Minority and Women Owned

Businesses

• Individual Development Accounts

• Worker Owned Cooperatives

• Small business Legal Services

• Social Enterprises

• Community Land Trust

• Finance Options

• Draft legal documents

• Youth Collaborative

Community Lawyering

• Nontraditional approach to the practice of law• Political, rebellious, collaborative, poverty lawyering, or

reconstructive poverty lawyering

“PROBLEM SOLVER”

COMMUNITY

How is the Work Funded?Philanthropy / Government Grant Funded

• CED Movement through CDCs – 1960s to nowo Historically examples include Ford Foundation, Federal Government (e.g.,

Community Development Block Grants)

Market Based Models

• Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA)

• Community Development Financial Institutions

(CDFI) Fund – 1994

Tools and Models for CED Work

Traditional/Market Based CED

• Free social services

• Community/ Neighborhood Associations

• CDCs / other nonprofit models

• Market basedo Small business programs

o Asset building programs

o Affordable Housing: Low Income Housing Tax Credit

Emerging Trends

• Social Enterprise

• Shared Ownership

Models

• Public private

partnerships

• Impact investing

• Slow Money Movement

• “Locavesting”

Emerging TrendsSocial Enterprise

• Revenue generating

and/or financially

sustainable mission-

driven businesses or

nonprofitso “Triple bottom line”

• People

• Planet

• Profits

“Shared Ownership”

• Employee ownership

• Cooperatives

• Credit unions

• Community Land Trusts

• Community renewable

energy

Market Based CED Renaissance Community Co-op- Grocery cooperative in Greensboro food desert

Photo: Courtesy David Reed/Fund for Democratic Communities

Social Enterprise RecycleForce

- Jobs, training, and services for ex-offenders

Photo: Courtesy waste360.com

Shared Ownership Opportunity Threads

- Worker co-op cut & sew shop in Valdese

Photo: Courtesy Opportunity Threads Facebook page

Evergreen Cooperatives

- “The Cleveland Model”

Social Enterprise, Shared Ownership, Traditional Community Development

Photo: Courtesy community-wealth.org / Democracy Collaborative