The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EBPREC) is a people-of-color-led multi-stakeholder co-operative that supports Black, brown, and allied communities to cooperatively organize, finance, co-steward, and long-term asset manage land and housing in Oakland and the East Bay. The cooperative aims to re-imagine land and housing by building pathways to collective property ownership. This interview with the Oakland-based real estate cooperative’s Noni Session is the third in a series highlighting grassroots organizations working, or seeking to work, outside a reliance on wealthy donors.

What is the short term vision of EBPREC?

Our short-term goal is to bring in non-extractive capital that supports affordable and sustainable project outcomes. We then offer that capital to community members as stake in a collective ownership of land and housing for Black and brown Oaklanders. We offer the owners technical assistance to get their cooperatives running, build their governance systems, and plan and manage their housing and mixed use acquisitions.

How are you building community wealth?

First and foremost, we’re working on accumulating land and housing assets that are permanently protected and affordable. But we’re also re-tuning what folks understand as community wealth. Our concept of wealth extends into providing people with more than just tangible assets. We’re providing the intangibles of which they’ve been dispossessed: information, networks, power, resources for wider visions, and each other.

How does creating community controlled housing markets counter market forces that lead to housing injustice?

Instead of protesting in front of city hall, we have decided to become the market and the market actor. For instance, instead of competing with cash bidders when a house goes on the market, we are building community relationships so that when an owner wants to put their house on the market, they come to us first.

Read the full interview about tackling systemic housing inequality by Kayla Soren at Inequality.