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