August 27, 2025 • 25 mins
Communities need spaces for art; you can't support art without supporting artists. We're talking with three leaders working on alternative models for sustainability.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Strawt Media.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The more that we can show that these are solutions
that really work for people, and eventually maybe the political
tides will change and we can actually galvanize the social
support that we desperately need from the coffers of government funding.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
This is Lucas Griinley from Next City, a show about
change makers and their stories. Truth is, there are solutions
to the problems of pressing people in cities. If you're listening,
I hope it's because you want to spread good ideas
from one city to the next city. Everywhere you look,
the arts are threatened funding from the government. You're shrinking
at best, and meanwhile, gentrification and displacement isn't slowing down.
(00:45):
Cultural spaces are struggling, and artists risk being pushed out
of communities. So what can we do about it? To
help answer that, we're talking with three leaders working on
alternative models for sustainability in Minnesota, Laura's able of Springboard
for the Arts spent years testing guaranteed income for artists.
Then we'll turn to Toronto, where urban planner Erica Henninbury
(01:06):
shows how community land trust can protect cultural spaces. And finally,
an Oakland Anima Shiris of the East Bay Permanent Real
Estate Cooperative shares how her community is buying back buildings
and restoring a historic jazz corridor. Communities need spaces for art,
they need affordable places to live for the artists themselves.
And you can't support art without supporting artists, which is
why we'll start with Laura from Springboard.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I think traditionally urban planners community planners come to arts
and culture from the perspective of product or a project,
you know, a public art peace or a specific artists
designed project in their community. And of course those things
are really valuable and have all kinds of impacts on
(01:57):
community planning and on healthier communities. But I am more
interested in the idea that it is actually the presence
of creative people and the cultural opportunities that they create
in an ongoing way and for everyone that is this
essential building block of healthy communities. And I think that
(02:20):
presence of culture and creativity and specifically supporting creative people
is a really big part of creating community health, particularly
around social connection and social infrastructure. I think right now
we're for sure in a moment where we see how
essential it is for people to have relationships with their neighbors,
whether that is to lead to mutual aid or other
(02:42):
care networks like we need these local social connections and infrastructure,
and also specifically from a community planning lens, I think
the presence of creative people and cultural opportunity are a
huge part of steps we can take towards repair of
extraction and of damage that have been caused by previous
(03:05):
urban and community planning efforts. Particularly when you think about
things like redlining the interstate highway system and other kinds
of toxic infrastructure like trash burners, etc. A lot of
what is harmed in the process of those kind of projects,
at its root is about theft or.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Extraction of culture.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
So if we start from the perspective that it's creative
people that matter, then communities need strategies to support creative
people and to make sure they can live and stay
in the communities that they care about and have been
a part of making and building. And that's really what
led Springboard to guaranteed income and to the movement around
guaranteed income and direct cash support programs.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Springboard launched its program back in twenty twenty one and
has since grown to serve one hundred Minnesota artists with
five years of support. That makes it one of the
nation's longest running pilot prote for guaranteed income, which means
it's especially useful for researchers who are trying to show
whether this works.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
One of the reasons we came to this work was
really coming out of the pandemic and having done a
lot of emergency relief work and understanding at a really
deep level that artists are really often occupying a gray
area between small business owner and gig worker, and in
that gray area there is a lot of safety net
gap as there is for a lot of other people
(04:30):
in those categories, and really looking for strategies that felt
more systemic, you know, trying to move beyond emergency relief
into actual system change. So in early twenty twenty one,
alongside the City of Saint Paul and their citywide guaranteed
Income program, we stood up our Guaranteed Income Pilot, which
(04:51):
over time has now grown to be a pilot that
includes one hundred artists in half in Saint Paul in
our neighborhood here and half in the rural community where
Springboard is based in Ottertel County. And this following announced
that the total time period for our pilot is five years,
which makes Springboard's pilot one of the longest running guaranteed
income pilots in the country.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Not just for artists but for anyone. So now we are.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Four years in to this work, and one of the
things that I've really come to believe deeply in is
guaranteed income as a tool for repair and for specificity
in place. So in both of the communities that we
work in, you know, in Frogtown and Rondo, we are
rooted in the Rondo neighborhood, that is Saint Paul's historic
black neighborhood that was bisected by the Interstate Highway. So
(05:40):
there was a huge extraction and theft of wealth, generational
wealth and culture. And so thinking about supporting creative people
here has to come from that history. In Ottertel County,
these are communities that are undergoing tremendous economic transformation and
trying to make big economic changes and dealing with other
(06:00):
kinds of workforce issues, and also trying to figure out
how to be communities that are welcoming to newcomers, and
so thinking about how guaranteed income supporting creative people in
that context. Those contexts are different they have some connections,
but they also are important to kind of build in
(06:21):
to how you're designing the project. We're midway through this project,
but I can just say like part of this has
been so joyful because it really reinforces like just supporting
people with a safety net and with basic stability really
has this huge impact and benefit to the whole community
(06:42):
in terms of the work that artists are able to create,
and particularly the ways that they're able to create work
and want to create work for their own communities versus
based on what they think a funder or some other
gatekeeper wants them to do. One of my favorite things
(07:03):
about the whole movement around guaranteed income is that it
really roots policy change and policy advocacy in trying something first.
So rather than just seeing this as a policy advocacy strategy,
all of the work that's happening across the country is
really rooted in this idea of pilots to policy. So
we're part of a whole set of organizations and cities
(07:26):
that are trying to prove through research and through pilots
that this actually works and then translate that into policy advocacy.
So right now, Springboard is stewarding a statewide coalition in
Minnesota that's trying to pass a statewide guaranteed income in Minnesota,
and that's rooted in all of these organizations experiences of
(07:47):
actually delivering guaranteed income.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
And I think there's.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Something really powerful and important about saying like, we don't
have to wait to try these things. We can actually
do things that make a practical difference in people's lives
now and then use that to create greater policy or
system change.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
After the break, we'll hear how community land trust can
be adapted to safeguard cultural spaces, ensuring they stay in
community hands. Welcome back before the break. Laura is Able
from Springboard for the Arts showed us how guaranteed income
(08:23):
is giving artists stability and strengthening communities in Minnesota. Now
we go to Toronto, where urban planner Erica Hennibury says
the community land trust model is being used to protect
creative spaces and keep them in community hands. Hennibury contributed
a chapter on cultural land trust that you can find
in the new Rutledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning.
Speaker 5 (08:47):
I'm an urban planners is my second career. My first
vision arts and culture and primarily queer theater, and so
I'm coming from that perspective, that kind of lived experience
of creator and trying to find space and running a
theater company and things like that. So for the past
ten years have been really interested in community land trusts
(09:09):
and have been researching and exploring them, and recently really
trying to explore the sort of emerging form.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Of cultural land trusts.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Chapter four point five is the chapter that I wrote
cultural clts and as emerging as an emerging solution to
the artists space crisis. A CLT's aim is really to
provide permanent, affordable space. The space can be agriculture housing,
commercial space, community space, arts and culture space, and can
(09:40):
be anything in the green space, things like that. It
is a membership based organization and is governed governed by
the community, so the community members vote on an elected
board of directors. Typically, the lands owned by a CLT
are never resold. The whole idea is to take it
off of the market, to decommission its commodity status, and
(10:04):
to put it in Marxist terms, to transform from an
exchange value to a use value. The idea is to
expand and to use any revenue to purchase more land
and to get more space for people and to take
more and more land off the market. These organizations are
community serving and so what the community needs is what
(10:26):
the land.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Will be used for.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
And just this feels really important to talk about the
origins of the model, like this is really an African
American innovation. The first CLT was in nineteen sixty nine
in an Albany, Georgia, and it was called New Communities, Inc.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
And in nineteen.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
Seventy they acquired a five thousand acre piece of land.
Then into the nineteen eighties, land trust really transitioned into
more of residential formats, realizing that it was a way
to invest in disinvested in vacant properties and to bring
them to life and to give people affordable places to live.
(11:08):
And in the into the nineteen eighties it was really
often paired with coopses the kind of growth especially in Canada,
huge growth in the cooperative movement in Canada.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
So those two pieces.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Went together where the CLT would own the land and
the cooperative would manage the properties on the land. And
then the sort of new generation of a community land
trust is evolving into a context of like highly gentrified
cities and urban contexts, and it's really about fighting first
space in an environment of total financialization of land. So
(11:44):
it's really coming from the anti eviction movements, anti gentrification,
anti displacement, these tenants rights activists. It's a very activist
movement in the current contexts. And so the next question
really is here is what is a cultural land trust?
Speaker 4 (12:01):
What is a creative land trust.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
There's so many different terms that have been evolving to
describe the sort of adaptation of the.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
CLT model to cultural space.
Speaker 5 (12:13):
And so the first thing I want to say about
that is it's really really important that we don't lose
the C in CLT, that we don't lose community, because
if these things just become other forms of sort of
neoliberal real estate holding companies, that is not a community
land trust. So I want to say that c community
(12:33):
is really important. So cultural clts what I would call them,
would be nonprofit, community led organizations that hold land for
the purpose of creating and maintaining affordable community cultural space
and perpetuity. So some of the key features would be permanent.
So the idea is yet to decommodify these lands. Affordability
(12:56):
is really important, and long term stability so that ten
can secure long term leases, not like.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
These kind of commercial leases that so many artists are.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Dealing with that run out in five years and the
landlord quadruples the rent and you're effectively displaced. So reinvestment
of revenues back into the CLT, so into expansion, into capital, upkeep,
into all those kinds of things. Revenues are recycled back
into the community. These are typically play based, but then
(13:26):
for you know, an artist's cultural type of CLT, it
could also serve a kind of community like artists or
arts organizations. They're are community led, governed by a board
of directors. There should be a membership, there should be
some kind of representation. There should definitely be artist representation.
If you have a community land trust and artists aren't
(13:46):
on the board, you don't.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Have a community land trust.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Community and Cultural Spaces Trust is a City of Toronto's
first first community land.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
Trust for culture space.
Speaker 5 (13:56):
They were founded in twenty twenty two through this product
that was to redevelop an old school into a new
housing condo development and the community really fought to retain
some culture space through that process, and what they ended
up getting was actually a two million dollars settlement that
(14:16):
is now they're stewarding that asset.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
And then a recent development, the Community.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
Cultural Spaces Trust was able to actually purchase two condominium
units within this really interesting commercial artist led condominium building
called Young Place that was formally related to Artscape.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
There are definitely examples of cultural community land trusts outside
of Canada. The first that Erica can remember hearing about
is from San Francisco, called the Community Arts Stabilization Trust,
But in the chapter of the new book she shared
examples from all over the world.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
So Creative Land Trust len in UK developed by the
Mayor of London, funded through Arts Council and England and
Outset Contemporary Arts Fund, and that's really to support that
artists studio providers.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
In London.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
There's so many artists studio providers. It's an incredible ecology,
something that we don't have at all in Toronto we
have very few studio providers. So they have three projects
so far Alice Billings House, Walle Road Studios and Friar Park.
They're a really interesting organization, Artists Space Trust. I just
learned about them more recently, I guess last year while
(15:32):
I was writing this chapter. Developed in twenty ninety three
by Vital Arts and the Northern California celt Amazing organization
really focused on supporting low income artists and culture bearers
and really interested in transferring generational wealth from aging artists
who are maybe you know, house poor, aging in place,
(15:53):
who need support in their health, in their last years.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
And maybe end of life support.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
So the organization is working on that, like trying not
to lose those properties, but also trying to care for
people in their older years. It's incredible what they're doing,
so yeah, definitely check them out as well.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
After the break, we'll go to Oakland, where a cooperative
is taking these ideas into practice, buying back buildings and
restoring a historic jazz corridor. Welcome back. We've heard how
guaranteed income can stabilize artists and how cultural community land
(16:31):
trust can preserve space for the arts and artists. Now
we head to Oakland with Anniemacshiris of the East Bay
Permanent Real Estate Cooperative ANNIE is their investment in fundraising director.
Eb PREC, as they're called, is a multi stakeholder cooperative
which gives residents, workers, and community members direct ownership in
the spaces they're reclaiming.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, we are dedicated to reinvesting in frontline communities. The
way that we do that here in the Bay Area, California,
which is the one of the most expensive real estate
markets in the country, if not the most expensive, is
by creating permanently affordable community controlled land, housing and real
(17:11):
estate for communities of the front lines of gentrification and displacement.
And in particular that looks like here in the Bay Area, California,
primarily our bipoc community members are the ones who are
facing racialized displacement at much higher rates than our white residents.
(17:33):
We are not a community land trust, but we borrow
from the community land trust model and actually we're very
inspired by and work really closely in partnership with community
land trusts across the area. We actually created an entirely
new model called the permanent real Estate Cooperative. So we
create permanently affordable community controlled assets and are really putting
(17:54):
forward a creative solution to the worst of the real
estate and financial markets which are really decimating and extracting
from our communities. And so we develop these three mission
pillars that guide us in the day to day work
that we do. So land without landlords, we've seen that
there's an absence of local collective ownership, and there's also
(18:16):
an absence of the ability people to have control and
agency over the places that they live, work, and occupy.
And so we decommodify land and housing and create these
spaces where people can flourish as artists, as culture workers
in the way that they want to with their time.
Restorative economics, we are creating non extractive financial flows so
(18:38):
that people can invest directly into their communities, and so
we actually also work with funders and bring in financing
that also aligns with restorative economics, and that we specifically
support a solidarity economy where we can share resources and
have a co ownership and co stewardship of land and
housing and then heal people power. This one is a
(19:00):
really important one. We have learned really toxic power dynamics
through our colonialist systems, through our capitalist system that's based
on white supremacy, that's based on the genocide of native
peoples in this country, that's based on slavery, and so
we have to do a lot of work to unlearn
those toxic dynamics and those toxic ways of thinking and living,
(19:23):
and to relearn what it means to actually live in community,
what it means to live collectively and what it means
to steward and own collectively as well. So we do
a lot of workshops and support of our residents in
nonviolent communication, in community agreements, and just supporting the creation
of shared resources, whether those be the resources of the
(19:46):
physical assets themselves, the land itself, or a toolkit or
a spreadsheet that we can share to have transparency on
the finances of the collective assets that we're stewarding. We
also do a lot of this un learning, healing work
within our own democratically managed collective of fifteen staff that
manages the permanent real estate cooperative. The last piece of
(20:08):
an investment cooperative is we pool funding from everyday people
through this unique direct public offering that we offer, which
is that we can sell equity shares to non accredited
investors across the country, which means that we can finance
our model without the reliance on government support, without the
reliance on big philanthropy. We can bring every day people
(20:31):
in to invest directly into the solutions that we want
to have right here in our city. Today, we've housed
over fifty residents across the Bay Area, which is small
in the sense of the affordable housing space, but large
in the sense that all of these folks that live
in the housing that we've created are co stewards and
co owners of these properties. And we've raised a fifteen
(20:54):
million dollar fund to be able to purchase these properties,
rehab them, and support the thriving of these residents in
these spaces. And these residents are able to as artists,
as working artists are able to afford to live in
the Bay Area and continue to do the art that
they that they want to be doing, and that really
helps to create a thriving culture here across the Bay Area.
(21:16):
Our biggest flatship property that is directly tied to arts
and culture creation.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
This is a.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Jazz and blues corridor that has been decimated over decades
by the City of Oakland, by the forces of big
banks and predatory lenders, and by just neglect.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Over the years.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
The city really drove the bart stations through this neighborhood,
raised hundreds of houses and really decimated this corridor over
the last few decades. It has previously been Harlem of
the West. Really big blues and jazz names were there.
And we're thriving and so We're trying to bring this
corridor back to the thriving place that it was, in
(22:02):
particular for the black economy, for the thriving black economy
in West Oakland on the seven Street corridor. So we
purchased Esther's Orbit Room, this old jazz and blues bar
that had been the hub of that activity, and we
purchased the property next door, and we're looking to purchase
more properties in the corridor to be able to revitalize
the quarter for community benefit. We've been engaging our community
(22:25):
members in revitalizing this quarter for the past several years
and we are looking to reopen in the next year.
But just to give you a sense of what is
our model and what do these ownership groups look like.
We have six hundred owners. We had nearly six hundred owners,
and we were a multi stakeholder cooperative and that makes
us unique from a community land trust and that we're
(22:46):
not a nonprofit and we provide community benefit and financial
benefit to all of our different owner groups our resident owners,
investor owners, community owners, and staff owners. Not only do
we engage our multi stakeholder membership six hundred five members
strong who are all participating in our model and benefiting
from our model, but we're also engaging people across the
(23:06):
city and thinking about real estate and housing and land
in a very new way. And we've been able to
raise millions of dollars to be able to do this work.
It's not an easy feat because we're not receiving you know,
tibooical affordable housing developer grants and investments. We're really bringing
in community investments to support a community Latin community benefit
(23:28):
cooperative model. The more that we can show that these
are solutions that really work for people, and eventually maybe
the political tides will change and we can actually galvanize
the social support that we desperately need from the coffers
of government funding.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Next City show
about change making and their stories. Together we can spread
good ideas from one city to the next city. Thank
you for listening this week. Thank you to our guests
laura's Able of Springboard for the Arts, Erica Hennabury, urban
planner and contributor to the Rutlitch Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning,
and Annimikshiris of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative.
Today's episode was adapted from a webinar. To watch the
(24:19):
whole conversation, visit nexcity dot org slash webinars. Our audio
producer is Silvana Alcala. Our show producers Maggie Bowles. Our
executive producers Ryan Tillotson, and I'm Lucas Grinley, Executive director
for Next City. By the way, next City is a
news organization with a non profit model. If you like
what we're doing here, please consider pitching in to support
our work. Visit nexcity dot org slash membership to make
(24:40):
a donation. We'd love to hear any feedback from our listeners.
Please feel free to email us at info atnexcity dot
org and if you haven't already, subscribed to the show
on Apple, Spotify, Good Pods, or anywhere you listen to
your podcasts.
Strawt Media.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The more that we can show that these are solutions
that really work for people, and eventually maybe the political
tides will change and we can actually galvanize the social
support that we desperately need from the coffers of government funding.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
This is Lucas Griinley from Next City, a show about
change makers and their stories. Truth is, there are solutions
to the problems of pressing people in cities. If you're listening,
I hope it's because you want to spread good ideas
from one city to the next city. Everywhere you look,
the arts are threatened funding from the government. You're shrinking
at best, and meanwhile, gentrification and displacement isn't slowing down.
(00:45):
Cultural spaces are struggling, and artists risk being pushed out
of communities. So what can we do about it? To
help answer that, we're talking with three leaders working on
alternative models for sustainability in Minnesota, Laura's able of Springboard
for the Arts spent years testing guaranteed income for artists.
Then we'll turn to Toronto, where urban planner Erica Henninbury
(01:06):
shows how community land trust can protect cultural spaces. And finally,
an Oakland Anima Shiris of the East Bay Permanent Real
Estate Cooperative shares how her community is buying back buildings
and restoring a historic jazz corridor. Communities need spaces for art,
they need affordable places to live for the artists themselves.
And you can't support art without supporting artists, which is
why we'll start with Laura from Springboard.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I think traditionally urban planners community planners come to arts
and culture from the perspective of product or a project,
you know, a public art peace or a specific artists
designed project in their community. And of course those things
are really valuable and have all kinds of impacts on
(01:57):
community planning and on healthier communities. But I am more
interested in the idea that it is actually the presence
of creative people and the cultural opportunities that they create
in an ongoing way and for everyone that is this
essential building block of healthy communities. And I think that
(02:20):
presence of culture and creativity and specifically supporting creative people
is a really big part of creating community health, particularly
around social connection and social infrastructure. I think right now
we're for sure in a moment where we see how
essential it is for people to have relationships with their neighbors,
whether that is to lead to mutual aid or other
(02:42):
care networks like we need these local social connections and infrastructure,
and also specifically from a community planning lens, I think
the presence of creative people and cultural opportunity are a
huge part of steps we can take towards repair of
extraction and of damage that have been caused by previous
(03:05):
urban and community planning efforts. Particularly when you think about
things like redlining the interstate highway system and other kinds
of toxic infrastructure like trash burners, etc. A lot of
what is harmed in the process of those kind of projects,
at its root is about theft or.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Extraction of culture.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
So if we start from the perspective that it's creative
people that matter, then communities need strategies to support creative
people and to make sure they can live and stay
in the communities that they care about and have been
a part of making and building. And that's really what
led Springboard to guaranteed income and to the movement around
guaranteed income and direct cash support programs.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Springboard launched its program back in twenty twenty one and
has since grown to serve one hundred Minnesota artists with
five years of support. That makes it one of the
nation's longest running pilot prote for guaranteed income, which means
it's especially useful for researchers who are trying to show
whether this works.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
One of the reasons we came to this work was
really coming out of the pandemic and having done a
lot of emergency relief work and understanding at a really
deep level that artists are really often occupying a gray
area between small business owner and gig worker, and in
that gray area there is a lot of safety net
gap as there is for a lot of other people
(04:30):
in those categories, and really looking for strategies that felt
more systemic, you know, trying to move beyond emergency relief
into actual system change. So in early twenty twenty one,
alongside the City of Saint Paul and their citywide guaranteed
Income program, we stood up our Guaranteed Income Pilot, which
(04:51):
over time has now grown to be a pilot that
includes one hundred artists in half in Saint Paul in
our neighborhood here and half in the rural community where
Springboard is based in Ottertel County. And this following announced
that the total time period for our pilot is five years,
which makes Springboard's pilot one of the longest running guaranteed
income pilots in the country.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Not just for artists but for anyone. So now we are.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Four years in to this work, and one of the
things that I've really come to believe deeply in is
guaranteed income as a tool for repair and for specificity
in place. So in both of the communities that we
work in, you know, in Frogtown and Rondo, we are
rooted in the Rondo neighborhood, that is Saint Paul's historic
black neighborhood that was bisected by the Interstate Highway. So
(05:40):
there was a huge extraction and theft of wealth, generational
wealth and culture. And so thinking about supporting creative people
here has to come from that history. In Ottertel County,
these are communities that are undergoing tremendous economic transformation and
trying to make big economic changes and dealing with other
(06:00):
kinds of workforce issues, and also trying to figure out
how to be communities that are welcoming to newcomers, and
so thinking about how guaranteed income supporting creative people in
that context. Those contexts are different they have some connections,
but they also are important to kind of build in
(06:21):
to how you're designing the project. We're midway through this project,
but I can just say like part of this has
been so joyful because it really reinforces like just supporting
people with a safety net and with basic stability really
has this huge impact and benefit to the whole community
(06:42):
in terms of the work that artists are able to create,
and particularly the ways that they're able to create work
and want to create work for their own communities versus
based on what they think a funder or some other
gatekeeper wants them to do. One of my favorite things
(07:03):
about the whole movement around guaranteed income is that it
really roots policy change and policy advocacy in trying something first.
So rather than just seeing this as a policy advocacy strategy,
all of the work that's happening across the country is
really rooted in this idea of pilots to policy. So
we're part of a whole set of organizations and cities
(07:26):
that are trying to prove through research and through pilots
that this actually works and then translate that into policy advocacy.
So right now, Springboard is stewarding a statewide coalition in
Minnesota that's trying to pass a statewide guaranteed income in Minnesota,
and that's rooted in all of these organizations experiences of
(07:47):
actually delivering guaranteed income.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
And I think there's.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Something really powerful and important about saying like, we don't
have to wait to try these things. We can actually
do things that make a practical difference in people's lives
now and then use that to create greater policy or
system change.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
After the break, we'll hear how community land trust can
be adapted to safeguard cultural spaces, ensuring they stay in
community hands. Welcome back before the break. Laura is Able
from Springboard for the Arts showed us how guaranteed income
(08:23):
is giving artists stability and strengthening communities in Minnesota. Now
we go to Toronto, where urban planner Erica Hennibury says
the community land trust model is being used to protect
creative spaces and keep them in community hands. Hennibury contributed
a chapter on cultural land trust that you can find
in the new Rutledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning.
Speaker 5 (08:47):
I'm an urban planners is my second career. My first
vision arts and culture and primarily queer theater, and so
I'm coming from that perspective, that kind of lived experience
of creator and trying to find space and running a
theater company and things like that. So for the past
ten years have been really interested in community land trusts
(09:09):
and have been researching and exploring them, and recently really
trying to explore the sort of emerging form.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Of cultural land trusts.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Chapter four point five is the chapter that I wrote
cultural clts and as emerging as an emerging solution to
the artists space crisis. A CLT's aim is really to
provide permanent, affordable space. The space can be agriculture housing,
commercial space, community space, arts and culture space, and can
(09:40):
be anything in the green space, things like that. It
is a membership based organization and is governed governed by
the community, so the community members vote on an elected
board of directors. Typically, the lands owned by a CLT
are never resold. The whole idea is to take it
off of the market, to decommission its commodity status, and
(10:04):
to put it in Marxist terms, to transform from an
exchange value to a use value. The idea is to
expand and to use any revenue to purchase more land
and to get more space for people and to take
more and more land off the market. These organizations are
community serving and so what the community needs is what
(10:26):
the land.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Will be used for.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
And just this feels really important to talk about the
origins of the model, like this is really an African
American innovation. The first CLT was in nineteen sixty nine
in an Albany, Georgia, and it was called New Communities, Inc.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
And in nineteen.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
Seventy they acquired a five thousand acre piece of land.
Then into the nineteen eighties, land trust really transitioned into
more of residential formats, realizing that it was a way
to invest in disinvested in vacant properties and to bring
them to life and to give people affordable places to live.
(11:08):
And in the into the nineteen eighties it was really
often paired with coopses the kind of growth especially in Canada,
huge growth in the cooperative movement in Canada.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
So those two pieces.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Went together where the CLT would own the land and
the cooperative would manage the properties on the land. And
then the sort of new generation of a community land
trust is evolving into a context of like highly gentrified
cities and urban contexts, and it's really about fighting first
space in an environment of total financialization of land. So
(11:44):
it's really coming from the anti eviction movements, anti gentrification,
anti displacement, these tenants rights activists. It's a very activist
movement in the current contexts. And so the next question
really is here is what is a cultural land trust?
Speaker 4 (12:01):
What is a creative land trust.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
There's so many different terms that have been evolving to
describe the sort of adaptation of the.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
CLT model to cultural space.
Speaker 5 (12:13):
And so the first thing I want to say about
that is it's really really important that we don't lose
the C in CLT, that we don't lose community, because
if these things just become other forms of sort of
neoliberal real estate holding companies, that is not a community
land trust. So I want to say that c community
(12:33):
is really important. So cultural clts what I would call them,
would be nonprofit, community led organizations that hold land for
the purpose of creating and maintaining affordable community cultural space
and perpetuity. So some of the key features would be permanent.
So the idea is yet to decommodify these lands. Affordability
(12:56):
is really important, and long term stability so that ten
can secure long term leases, not like.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
These kind of commercial leases that so many artists are.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Dealing with that run out in five years and the
landlord quadruples the rent and you're effectively displaced. So reinvestment
of revenues back into the CLT, so into expansion, into capital, upkeep,
into all those kinds of things. Revenues are recycled back
into the community. These are typically play based, but then
(13:26):
for you know, an artist's cultural type of CLT, it
could also serve a kind of community like artists or
arts organizations. They're are community led, governed by a board
of directors. There should be a membership, there should be
some kind of representation. There should definitely be artist representation.
If you have a community land trust and artists aren't
(13:46):
on the board, you don't.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Have a community land trust.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Community and Cultural Spaces Trust is a City of Toronto's
first first community land.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
Trust for culture space.
Speaker 5 (13:56):
They were founded in twenty twenty two through this product
that was to redevelop an old school into a new
housing condo development and the community really fought to retain
some culture space through that process, and what they ended
up getting was actually a two million dollars settlement that
(14:16):
is now they're stewarding that asset.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
And then a recent development, the Community.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
Cultural Spaces Trust was able to actually purchase two condominium
units within this really interesting commercial artist led condominium building
called Young Place that was formally related to Artscape.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
There are definitely examples of cultural community land trusts outside
of Canada. The first that Erica can remember hearing about
is from San Francisco, called the Community Arts Stabilization Trust,
But in the chapter of the new book she shared
examples from all over the world.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
So Creative Land Trust len in UK developed by the
Mayor of London, funded through Arts Council and England and
Outset Contemporary Arts Fund, and that's really to support that
artists studio providers.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
In London.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
There's so many artists studio providers. It's an incredible ecology,
something that we don't have at all in Toronto we
have very few studio providers. So they have three projects
so far Alice Billings House, Walle Road Studios and Friar Park.
They're a really interesting organization, Artists Space Trust. I just
learned about them more recently, I guess last year while
(15:32):
I was writing this chapter. Developed in twenty ninety three
by Vital Arts and the Northern California celt Amazing organization
really focused on supporting low income artists and culture bearers
and really interested in transferring generational wealth from aging artists
who are maybe you know, house poor, aging in place,
(15:53):
who need support in their health, in their last years.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
And maybe end of life support.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
So the organization is working on that, like trying not
to lose those properties, but also trying to care for
people in their older years. It's incredible what they're doing,
so yeah, definitely check them out as well.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
After the break, we'll go to Oakland, where a cooperative
is taking these ideas into practice, buying back buildings and
restoring a historic jazz corridor. Welcome back. We've heard how
guaranteed income can stabilize artists and how cultural community land
(16:31):
trust can preserve space for the arts and artists. Now
we head to Oakland with Anniemacshiris of the East Bay
Permanent Real Estate Cooperative ANNIE is their investment in fundraising director.
Eb PREC, as they're called, is a multi stakeholder cooperative
which gives residents, workers, and community members direct ownership in
the spaces they're reclaiming.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, we are dedicated to reinvesting in frontline communities. The
way that we do that here in the Bay Area, California,
which is the one of the most expensive real estate
markets in the country, if not the most expensive, is
by creating permanently affordable community controlled land, housing and real
(17:11):
estate for communities of the front lines of gentrification and displacement.
And in particular that looks like here in the Bay Area, California,
primarily our bipoc community members are the ones who are
facing racialized displacement at much higher rates than our white residents.
(17:33):
We are not a community land trust, but we borrow
from the community land trust model and actually we're very
inspired by and work really closely in partnership with community
land trusts across the area. We actually created an entirely
new model called the permanent real Estate Cooperative. So we
create permanently affordable community controlled assets and are really putting
(17:54):
forward a creative solution to the worst of the real
estate and financial markets which are really decimating and extracting
from our communities. And so we develop these three mission
pillars that guide us in the day to day work
that we do. So land without landlords, we've seen that
there's an absence of local collective ownership, and there's also
(18:16):
an absence of the ability people to have control and
agency over the places that they live, work, and occupy.
And so we decommodify land and housing and create these
spaces where people can flourish as artists, as culture workers
in the way that they want to with their time.
Restorative economics, we are creating non extractive financial flows so
(18:38):
that people can invest directly into their communities, and so
we actually also work with funders and bring in financing
that also aligns with restorative economics, and that we specifically
support a solidarity economy where we can share resources and
have a co ownership and co stewardship of land and
housing and then heal people power. This one is a
(19:00):
really important one. We have learned really toxic power dynamics
through our colonialist systems, through our capitalist system that's based
on white supremacy, that's based on the genocide of native
peoples in this country, that's based on slavery, and so
we have to do a lot of work to unlearn
those toxic dynamics and those toxic ways of thinking and living,
(19:23):
and to relearn what it means to actually live in community,
what it means to live collectively and what it means
to steward and own collectively as well. So we do
a lot of workshops and support of our residents in
nonviolent communication, in community agreements, and just supporting the creation
of shared resources, whether those be the resources of the
(19:46):
physical assets themselves, the land itself, or a toolkit or
a spreadsheet that we can share to have transparency on
the finances of the collective assets that we're stewarding. We
also do a lot of this un learning, healing work
within our own democratically managed collective of fifteen staff that
manages the permanent real estate cooperative. The last piece of
(20:08):
an investment cooperative is we pool funding from everyday people
through this unique direct public offering that we offer, which
is that we can sell equity shares to non accredited
investors across the country, which means that we can finance
our model without the reliance on government support, without the
reliance on big philanthropy. We can bring every day people
(20:31):
in to invest directly into the solutions that we want
to have right here in our city. Today, we've housed
over fifty residents across the Bay Area, which is small
in the sense of the affordable housing space, but large
in the sense that all of these folks that live
in the housing that we've created are co stewards and
co owners of these properties. And we've raised a fifteen
(20:54):
million dollar fund to be able to purchase these properties,
rehab them, and support the thriving of these residents in
these spaces. And these residents are able to as artists,
as working artists are able to afford to live in
the Bay Area and continue to do the art that
they that they want to be doing, and that really
helps to create a thriving culture here across the Bay Area.
(21:16):
Our biggest flatship property that is directly tied to arts
and culture creation.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
This is a.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Jazz and blues corridor that has been decimated over decades
by the City of Oakland, by the forces of big
banks and predatory lenders, and by just neglect.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Over the years.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
The city really drove the bart stations through this neighborhood,
raised hundreds of houses and really decimated this corridor over
the last few decades. It has previously been Harlem of
the West. Really big blues and jazz names were there.
And we're thriving and so We're trying to bring this
corridor back to the thriving place that it was, in
(22:02):
particular for the black economy, for the thriving black economy
in West Oakland on the seven Street corridor. So we
purchased Esther's Orbit Room, this old jazz and blues bar
that had been the hub of that activity, and we
purchased the property next door, and we're looking to purchase
more properties in the corridor to be able to revitalize
the quarter for community benefit. We've been engaging our community
(22:25):
members in revitalizing this quarter for the past several years
and we are looking to reopen in the next year.
But just to give you a sense of what is
our model and what do these ownership groups look like.
We have six hundred owners. We had nearly six hundred owners,
and we were a multi stakeholder cooperative and that makes
us unique from a community land trust and that we're
(22:46):
not a nonprofit and we provide community benefit and financial
benefit to all of our different owner groups our resident owners,
investor owners, community owners, and staff owners. Not only do
we engage our multi stakeholder membership six hundred five members
strong who are all participating in our model and benefiting
from our model, but we're also engaging people across the
(23:06):
city and thinking about real estate and housing and land
in a very new way. And we've been able to
raise millions of dollars to be able to do this work.
It's not an easy feat because we're not receiving you know,
tibooical affordable housing developer grants and investments. We're really bringing
in community investments to support a community Latin community benefit
(23:28):
cooperative model. The more that we can show that these
are solutions that really work for people, and eventually maybe
the political tides will change and we can actually galvanize
the social support that we desperately need from the coffers
of government funding.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Next City show
about change making and their stories. Together we can spread
good ideas from one city to the next city. Thank
you for listening this week. Thank you to our guests
laura's Able of Springboard for the Arts, Erica Hennabury, urban
planner and contributor to the Rutlitch Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning,
and Annimikshiris of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative.
Today's episode was adapted from a webinar. To watch the
(24:19):
whole conversation, visit nexcity dot org slash webinars. Our audio
producer is Silvana Alcala. Our show producers Maggie Bowles. Our
executive producers Ryan Tillotson, and I'm Lucas Grinley, Executive director
for Next City. By the way, next City is a
news organization with a non profit model. If you like
what we're doing here, please consider pitching in to support
our work. Visit nexcity dot org slash membership to make
(24:40):
a donation. We'd love to hear any feedback from our listeners.
Please feel free to email us at info atnexcity dot
org and if you haven't already, subscribed to the show
on Apple, Spotify, Good Pods, or anywhere you listen to
your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.