Episode 78: East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative

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East Bay, Permanent Real Estate Cooperative Projects and Programs

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“I began to understand cooperatives as the seed of the solution for black liberation, for community revitalization and for a clear path to economic resilience”-Noni

In this episode our featured voice is the Executive Director of the East Bay, Permanent Real Estate Cooperative Noni Session.

We wanted to host the east bay permanent real estate cooperative on the show because they have developed a unique grass roots model to address some of the systemic housing and community issues that have faced our communities for over the last 50 plus years.

Noni Session

Over the last decade, Noni Session has put her efforts toward combating displacement for people of color in Oakland and the Bay Area. As a third-generation Oakland native, Noni has a personal interest in improving the conditions of low-income Bay Area neighborhoods where race, disenfranchisement and environmental injustice intersect.

As a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellow with the United Nations Development Programme in Kenya, Noni developed a keen ethnographic analysis of international humanitarian strategies for developing communities globally. Her work abroad led her to imagine new pathways for ameliorating resource disparities in her West Oakland community. She has since put her energy toward a grassroots Council campaign in Oakland where she garnered more than 43% of the vote. She subsequently joined efforts to tackle rapid displacement and economic instability in People of Color communities throughout the Bay Area by building cooperative networks and opportunities for collective economic action.

Today, Noni is the Executive Director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative. In her role at EB PREC, she supports BIPOC and allied communities to finance, purchase, occupy and steward collectively owned land and housing. Rather than losing more homes and communities to the devastations of the speculative housing market, her efforts ensure "development without displacement" by creating permanent, affordable, community-controlled housing.

East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative

The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC) facilitates Black, Indigenous, POC (BIPOC) and allied communities to cooperatively organize, finance, purchase, occupy, and steward properties, taking them permanently off the speculative market, creating community controlled assets, and empowering our communities to cooperatively lead neighborhood and economic transformation on their own terms.

EB PREC does much more than provide access to land and housing: We provide the organizational, network, financial, and technical inputs that increase the communities’ ability to self-organize around housing solutions. We begin with small groups of tenants and neighbors who will identify buildings in their neighborhood to shepherd into the cooperative and off the speculative market. Properties are financed by small-scale non-extractive community investments, and the organization is stewarded by a democratic staff collective that acts as activator, convener, technical support provider, and facilitator of a community-led vision.

EB PREC grew out of the convergence of multiple innovative individual, legal, and organizational collaborations over the course of the last five years, culminating in a collective project that is transforming Oakland and the East Bay’s capacity to retain its legacy community, slow the pace of gentrification and unchecked property speculation, and create authentic and sustainable community control.

Donation/Volunteer

Thank you for supporting our work, building collective capacity, assets, and community! We encourage you to make a recurring monthly donation to become a Sustainer of EB PREC. Monthly donations provide stability as we build a solid foundation for the movement for permanent affordability.
+ Donate to EB PREC: https://ebprec.org/donate
+ Learn more about the Esther's Orbit Room Cultural Revival Project: https://www.ebprec.org/esthers
+ Learn more about all the risks and rewards involved in making an investment with EB PREC by reading the full Offering Circular at: https://www.ebprec.org/offering

Videos

To find out more about the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative check out our videos:

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“As the bay area experienced its rapid changes as the population exploded. And in some ways, even as a diversity in the bay area exploded the folks who you didn’t see, in those new faces, those new careers, those new ways of being where black and brown folks, particularly legacy and long time black and brown Oaklanders”

— Noni Session,Executive Director,East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative

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