By Alison Chopel et al. from Nonprofit Quarterly

By Natalie Orenstein from Oaklandside

Excerpt:

“The only reason why businesses like this could exist,” said Tobias Damm-Luhr, staff attorney at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, is because “people hoard land and housing. They create these artificial scarcities such that people who don’t have a home or any other option are forced to try to live in places where they have no legal right to live.” 

"When we prioritize somebody’s passive income over life, we have a problem."

Read the full article here.

(Originally published September 30, 2025)

We reached our fundraising goal!

More than 100 members of our community donated to Sustainable Economies Law Center during our August grassroots campaign! We raised just over $28,000 to support our work this year!  

IMAGE ID: A collage of Law Center staff and community members in playful and joyful poses, with rainbow watercolors bleeding through the background. The words “THANK YOU” are centered in the middle of the collage.

Earlier in August, my coworkers and I at the Sustainable Economies Law Center (the Law Center) had the opportunity to witness and celebrate the spiritual and legal unselling of Homefulness 1 through the signing of a first-of-its-kind liberation easement between POOR Magazine (the legal owner of Homefulness 1) and the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.

IMAGE ID: Kiki, a young child, walks on a cement path at Homefulness1. The path is painted in black lettering with community commitments to permanently unsell Homefulness 1. A diverse mix of people talk and commune in the background.

The ceremony included multi-nationed prayer and oral recounting of HERstories and truthtelling by each organization on the necessity and shared excitement for the liberation easement. After the signing, each witness present was invited to sign their names on the land to collectively hold POOR Magazine accountable for the promises made that day. I signed my name, followed by the short prayer “This Land Our Body” passed on to me by a Tewa elder.

🚨 BIG NEWS: California could finally legalize communal living! 🚨

The Housing Choice for All Act is here! A bold statewide proposal to remove outdated zoning restrictions that punish people for how they live and who they live with.

This legislation would end legal discrimination against non-family households, shared housing, and co-living communities by eliminating the distinction between “dwelling units” and “group housing”, and we’re proud to help lead the charge. Sign on to support here!

A group of twelve people of diverse ages, genders, and backgrounds pose together outdoors on a sunny day, smiling and relaxed. They are standing and kneeling on grass near trees, with a red woven blanket and bones in the foreground. A wooden garden structure and lush greenery are visible in the background, suggesting a communal or rural setting.

🚨 BIG NEWS: WOPA just dropped! 🚨

The Workers’ Opportunity to Purchase Act was officially introduced by San Francisco District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan — giving workers the first right to buy their workplace when it’s up for sale.

The Law Center's Intern Joy George makes a public comment at the SF Board of Supervisors

We’ve got some good and bad news to share about our work to pass Assembly Bill 746, the bill we’ve been working on with incarcerated folks that would incentivize the development of worker cooperatives inside of California prisons, and establish critical infrastructure to support an ecosystem of cooperatives owned and governed by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, as well as crime survivors. 

Law Center Staff Hope Williams and Hasmik Geghamyan with Leonard Brown, Kelly Groth, Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, and Malik Gover

In a ‘full-circle moment,’ lauded Arab bakery Reem’s returning to Oakland this fall
Reem’s will establish its flagship location in Jack London Square, with plans to open outposts on the horizon 

by Cecilia Seiter from Berkeleyside

Veryl and Vivi (2025)

This is a story of gratitude I owe towards Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) for catalyzing a healing journey reintegrating me into a larger web of life. I joined SELC back in August 2023. Though I had been infatuated with SELC for years, and in fact incorporated Janelle Orsi’s Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy book into my curriculum as a teaching fellow at the University of Baltimore, my decision to apply to work at SELC was primarily motivated by fear. A couple years before, I’d relocated from Baltimore to the Bay Area to begin working as a tenure-track law professor at Golden Gate University School of Law (GGU). By spring 2023, GGU was on the brink of financial collapse, and I needed an exit option. SELC’s open hiring announcement came at just the right time.

How do we structure our movements to get us to liberation? Can we protect our leaders by decentralizing leadership? What can we learn from the Black Panthers about cooperation, mutual aid, and mental health? These are some questions discussed in a recent panel: Serve the People - Cooperative Economies and Lessons from the Black Panthers. 

by Michael Montalvo from Los Angeles Public Press

The bill we’ve been working on with incarcerated individuals for the last year — AB 746 — was introduced by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D - Inglewood) on February 18, 2025. AB 746 would incentivize the development of worker cooperatives within California prisons and establish critical infrastructure to support an ecosystem of cooperatives owned and governed by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, as well as crime survivors. The bill has already passed unanimously out of both the Assembly Labor & Employment Committee and the Public Safety Committee, gained Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D–San Jose) as a co-author, and is now headed to the Appropriations Committee on May 22nd.

From Farmer to Land Relations Lawyer
and Other Updates

Before I became a lawyer, I was a full-time farmer. I had always dreamt of a world where my farming could be embedded into a larger vision of environmental justice based on  rematriation. Rematriation, as many of us have learned from Sogorea Te Land Trust’s definition, is not only a return of land, but more importantly, a return of sacred Indigenous relationships to the land. And it’s one based on Indigenous-women led work, which is meant to highlight the sanctity of nurturing life and connection. During my time as a farmer, a campaign for land access for young farmers was ramping up, and there was virtually no talk about how this campaign would advance rematriation. Instead, many folks envisioned a land access campaign that could take us back to the harsh homestead days, which was only made possible through the forceful removal of Indigenous people and Indigenous cosmologies. It paired well with small-scale farms, which was seen as the ideal mode of production. Homesteading was also the antithesis of Indigenous-women led work. It was a property system that saw survival in isolated self-sufficiency and patriarchy. I was so horrified with this vision that I decided to transition careers by becoming a lawyer to support farming embedded in rematriation and environmental justice. I needed to learn how to create the conduits for giving the Land Back, and, alongside others, learn how to change our relationships to land altogether. Since becoming a lawyer, I’ve refined my vision, though it hasn’t come exclusively through my legal training. A combination of organizing, research, and lots of listening has reshaped my vision, along with asking myself this question: What does intimacy mean when thinking about the land?

Back to the Land

I came to the land because I felt disconnected from my own sustenance. At that time, small-scale farming was the most accessible avenue for me to feel connected. It also felt like an obvious antidote to large-scale corporate farming, with its labor and environmental exploitation, and the feeling of alienation I felt towards my food. There’s an old idiom that says “the farmer’s footprint is the best fertilizer.” I had come to believe that I needed to live this idiom by focusing on a small-scale farm that I could travel, in its entirety, by foot. In a sense, I thought this is what connection to my sustenance meant. But as I began to feel a deeper sense of connection with the landscape beyond the four corners of the property, I started to believe that I could feel something more expansive. I traded my limited feeling of connection with the farm for a larger feeling of intimacy for and with the landscape.

(Background image in title banner drawn by the author)

“Tabi tabi po,” I mumbled to the Filipino forest spirits or “duende” around me as we walked down a dark trail on Isla Verde, Batangas City. I was walking with my two year old daughter and six other Filipino American delegates sent by the Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity (FACES) to the Philippines to learn about the campaign to protect the Verde Island Passage. During our five-day visit, we attended six listening sessions organized by Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ). 

“Tabi tabi po,” isn’t something I tend to say while hiking back home in California, but everyone around me was saying it, with an almost religious fervor. It felt too risky not to say it too. The path from our home base to our next meeting was dark, verdant, and overgrown with densely tangled foliage. This is the territory of the duende from whom we were asking for permission to pass. We ask permission by saying “tabi tabi po,” Tagalog for “excuse me.” 

A few hours before we walked down the dark trail on Isla Verde, our host, Ate Diane, gave me a red bracelet. With urgency, she told me I should wear it for “protection.” I learned that unlike most people, Ate Diane can see duendes. She said some of the duendes took a particular interest in my two year old daughter and as her mother, I needed protection. Rubbing my goosebumps away - because how spooky does that sound, right? -  I wore my new red bracelet and showed my respect by saying “tabi tabi po,” like everyone else.

Growing up in the Philippines, I was taught that duendes are fierce protectors of the land. If you honor their kinship, they can help you find food and water. If you disrespect them or their territory, they can make you sick. I have since learned that many Indigenous cultures ask permission from similar mythical beings.