For 15 years, the Sustainable Economies Law Center has heard from housing justice partners in the East Bay that corporate land grabs and real estate speculation are destabilizing neighborhoods and driving racialized displacement. We have learned with our Indigenous partners that neighborhood gentrification is a form of colonialism—building on the original theft of Indigenous land that California and its system of private property was founded upon.

In this report, we equip policymakers and organizers with bold legal tools to fight back against the crisis of corporate land grabs. After surveying corporate housing speculation and related proposals, we outline our proposal for Richmond to ban all profit-seeking entities who would treat its homes and communities like an asset class. We then explain how our policy would address the current crisis and why it’s on solid legal footing.

Read the policy report here.