Our Mission

Richmond LAND’s mission is to build grassroots power for community-controlled land through community organizing, land acquisition, development, and stewardship of land and affordable housing for lasting community benefit.

What we are working towards

We envision healthy and thriving neighborhoods across Richmond and Contra Contra Costa County, where residents have secure housing and economic stability, community based organizations and small businesses can flourish, and the social and cultural fabric of the community is strengthened and sustained.

We envision a world where homegrown residents can mobilize to create, finance, control, and sustain affordable housing and community development projects that fulfill long standing community needs and aspirations.

We envision a world where equitable, responsible, and sustainable development comes through power-building and rooted stewardship that reject private development standards and pressures set by market forces.

We envision a living economy that centers housing and land-use around mutual benefit and collective ownership.

How we are getting there

Core Processes

Self-determination:

Is a starting point, a practice and a goal. We define this as the ability to have  control over the actions and destiny of oneself and one's community.  We affirm our intersectional ways of being in the world and believe in the self-determination of residents and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) that have been historically and systematically barred from access to community wealth-building processes. This includes the lack of autonomous decision making power or meaningful participation. Self-determination of homegrown residents leads to grassroots power.

Capacity Building:

In each stage of our work we build the capacity of homegrown residents to address challenges usually solved by outside “experts”.  Capacity building is the process by which individuals and groups obtain and refine skills, knowledge, tools, equipment, and other resources needed to move work and build power. Richmond LAND is committed to building the capacity of homegrown experts because we know long lasting solutions start from the roots.

Cultural Strategy:

Cultural power shapes cities. In order to build the cultural power of our communities engaged in public policy, funding decisions, financing, real estate, and development industries we use culture to shift culture. We engage storytelling, public events, arts, and organizing to center marginalized knowledge and ways of being, amplify our communities right to place and envision alternatives that reclaim land and housing. We strengthen connections, preserve culture, and sustain legacies.

GUIDING FRAMEWORK

Richmond LAND’s efforts are guided by the Just Transition, a vision-led, unifying and place-based set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy. Our understanding of the Just Transition is informed by intersectional Black feminist thought and decolonial praxis. Richmond LAND is responding to a call to action, to join a people-powered movement to change the way our systems work and serve everyday people. As our organization grows we will continue to iterate, refine, clarify, and evolve our values through programming, collective action, practices, and projects that can add further meaning and definition to our work.

For more on the Framework for a Just Transition visit here. For a Richmond specific version of this diagram, see here.

Where we came from…

In 2018, the founding board of Richmond Community-owned Development Enterprise (Richmond CDE) was formed. Richmond CDE built upon lessons learned from residents effort to win a community benefits agreement during the Berkeley Global Campus Initiative. In 2019, Richmond CDE changed its name to Richmond LAND and began creating and implementing the vision for community-controlled land and housing. By making a commitment to adopting the community land trust model for land acquisition and community development projects, Richmond LAND ensures that its power-building and visionary development efforts are rooted in perpetual affordability and long-term stewardship.