1# Welcome to Building Community Wealth & the first days in Portland

This little blog will follow the journey of my Churchill Fellowship through Washington, Idaho (+ a tiny slice of Montana), Oregon and California. I’m meeting with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and Infrastructure Organisations that seek to create thriving places by empowering small businesses with financing and capacity building. I’ll be looking to find out their factors for success and also speak to funds that are including the community in decision making (so-called participatory investing).

 I want to explore:

• What is the impact of the funds on the local community?

• What are the conditions that make them successful?

The trip will be just under six weeks in total and due to the rural locations of many of the funds, we will be travelling by car. I say ‘we’ because my partner Mike is joining me on the trip as designated driver, which is excellent as there will be a lot of driving. Mike has just returned from working on anti-corruption initiatives in Ukraine for the UK Foreign Office and, miraculously, his decompression leave has meant I don’t have to navigate the US highways alone. 

Arriving in Portland, I was in complete disbelief that the trip was real. I had only found out that my application was successful 7 weeks previously. Now I was here, marvelling at yellow school buses and utterly disarmed at the boundless enthusiasm of those serving me refreshments.

Portland is a city of neighbourhoods and we were staying in Ann’s spare room in the Hawthorne neighbourhood, a bustling parade of bars, ‘pods’ of Thai and Mexican food, vintage shops and movie theatres that play second runs for $3.50. Ann is delightful and has signs all over the house with very specific instructions about not crushing cans and how to use the air purifiers in each room. I was hitting the ground running with the visits and before we even picked up the hire car, I hopped on a bus to the further eastern district of Portland to visit:

EAST PORTLAND COMMUNITY INVESTMENT TRUST investcit.com

I was meeting Olena from East Portland Community Investment Trust at their location ‘Plaza 122’. Before Olena arrives, I take a walk around the businesses in the Plaza which includes a busy hairdresser, a taxi company and the Somali American Council of Oregon. The tagline on the sign below Plaza 122 reads ‘moving from owing to owning’ because the Plaza is the first Community Investment Trust in the country. 

The project grew from work by the Mercy Corps Northwest CDFI by involving Portland residents through a human-centred design process. They were seeking to solve the challenge of what stops people living in disadvantaged communities from investing and growing wealth? And how to make investment both accessible and affordable. Plaza 122 was identified as the perfect location - group of shops and business premises that could be gradually handed over to community ownership through investment. Only the four zipcodes that surround the Plaza have the opportunity to invest, from as little as $10 to $100 they can grow their wealth and take a stake in their own community.

A key aspect of the model is to develop financial literacy within the local community and move from literacy to ‘financial action’ - the act of investing. Crucially, it is not a community share offer - or crowdfunding in order to acquire a building, rather an equity shift to move the ownership of the plaza into local hands. The impacts and the benefits spill over from local people volunteering more proactively into the community to the financial benefits of being able to put down payments on a house with consistency in investing. There are a mix of tenants including non-profit and for-profit organisations, which Olena explains is a key facet of the business model in order to diversify the income of the tenant occupancy. The benefits are also clear for the tenants as they have a predictable rent that allows them to make stable financial projections. 

CDFIs are uniquely placed to steward this model to encourage local ownership and investing, with the advantage of broadening their portfolios and directly reaching the community with a direct wealth-building initiative. I thought I would be framing my research around how investment decisions are made more participatory - but already the project is looking at how to build community wealth with local asset ownership. 

A stop off in Portland International Rose Test Garden

I then headed to the outskirts of Portland to a place called Sherwood to visit:

CASA OF OREGON casaoforegon.org

I had a wonderful conversation with Lisa about the role of social finance infrastructure: knowing and understanding your own role as an intermediary. Casa of Oregon started from the need of a lack of housing for farm workers. The organisation works with community organisations and individuals to build generational wealth for those who have been marginalised, specifically farmworkers and people of colour, through advocacy, asset building, organising, and affordable housing development. Casa are intermediaries that exist to take the riskiest part of any deal or bridge deals so that community ownership is made possible.

Although a human right, housing has become one of the most profit-driven and financialised sectors, where realtors will fight tooth and nail for legislation that runs in their favour. We spoke about the need for advocacy and taking advantage of an opportunity and where it presents itself. 

Learning about the benefits for some of the communities Casa of Oregon helps was quite moving. Lisa spoke about some of those helped by the housing coop have taken the opportunity to start a business and some have even given back by donating to further build the cooperatives that helped them. Lisa also very kindly sent me off with an entire box of donuts which set me up well for the weekend out camping in the forest. 

Thank you to Olena and Lisa for starting off this learning journey, next I’ll be in the Pacific Northwest Coast area next to Olympic National Park… 

Favourite food spot so far: Fullers Coffee, our first experience of the drip coffee diner.