Fighting for People-Driven Investment: how local knowledge and engagement can support efforts to build wealth in place

9:30AM, Room 406

Public policy makers, including "progressive" policy makers, often accelerate gentrification by promoting interventions that privatize real estate, undervalue non-financial assets, and strip wealth from low-income households and people of color. The participants in this session are dedicated to activating local knowledge in the planning process as a way of upending this status quo and forging ahead with more equitable investment. Mara Kravitz of the New York City Real Estate Investment Cooperative will address her organization's strategies for building community awareness of NYCREIC loan capital, for making investment decisions democratic, and for partnering to build local power. Josh Carrera of Mayday Space, an organizing center and event space for grassroots organizations, will discuss how Mayday is organizing to stabilize their space in Bushwick, Brooklyn, backed by the NYCREIC. Camryn Smith of Communities in Partnership in Durham, North Carolina will explain why community-rooted organizations are essential for addressing systemic inequity for communities of color and materially poor people and how CIP is taking action in in Durham, NC. University of North Carolina professor and participatory action researcher Danielle Spurlock will explain how community based engagement techniques enhanced existing community capacity to shape local policy decisions.

Fighting for People-driven investment: Text

Panel organizers

Mara Kravitz

Mara Kravitz is a founding board member of the NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative. She was formerly helping turn public data into public places at 596 Acres, and is currently working on a net zero energy development in her hometown.

Josh Carrera

Josh Carrera is the Project Coordinator for Mayday Space - an organizing center and events space for grassroots organizations to host their fundraiser parties, leadership retreats and more. As coordinator, Josh oversees mayday programming, volunteer engagement, and partnership development. Prior to working at Mayday, Josh oversaw programming at the Center for Whole Communities. Josh grew up in Brooklyn, New York and has studied natural resources and international development.

Camryn Smith

Camryn Smith is a proud resident of Old East Durham and a community activist & organizer. She is a founding member of Communities In Partnership (CIP), a grassroots community organizing & education group in Old East Durham, and serves as Executive Director. CIP focuses on addressing policy and systemic inequity for communities of color and materially poor people in Durham focusing on social determinants of health, economic development, gentrification and housing.

Danielle Spurlock

Danielle Spurlock is an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Over the past four years, she has collaborated with Communities in Partnership, a nonprofit in Old East Durham, and researchers from Duke University and North Carolina State University (NCSU) to examine how information elicited from nontraditional engagement techniques can shape local agenda-setting and policy-making.

Laura Wolf-Powers

Moderator

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