By Jillian D’Onfro from The San Francisco Standard

Excerpt:

“We’re moving past top-down charity models where people take the crumbs that rich people will give them and instead are self-determining their own solutions and creating ecosystems where you can be fed by the community and give food to the community,” said Mohini Mookim, a lawyer with the Sustainable Economies Law Center, or SELC, which works with Poor.

By THALIA BEATY from AP News

Excerpt:

Often, mutual aid groups collect money and distribute it to people who need it or use it to buy things. Groups should consider how to handle those funds as sometimes they can be flagged as income by a payment processor. The Sustainable Economies Law Center has a guide that lays out multiple scenarios that mutual aid groups might encounter. Mohini Mookim, an attorney with the center, said rules around giving money with no strings attached are generally promising for mutual aid groups.

By Alison Chopel et al. from Nonprofit Quarterly

Excerpt:

The PREC model was developed via a collaboration between the People of Color Sustainable Housing Network and the Sustainable Economies Law Center with the intention to develop a way to acquire real estate that could be owned by the community; enable residents to stay in a region undergoing gentrification; create permanency, especially for activists and artists; and be financed by community members and accredited investors together with philanthropists. The result was a new organizational structure that aimed to remove real estate from the speculative market while fostering community stewardship and equity.

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)

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

by Michael Montalvo from Los Angeles Public Press

By Mike Diago from The Bittman Project

Podcast, Next Economy Living from LIFT Economy

Por Jesús Cruz Reyes  Economía Solidaria

By: Trebor Scholz, Anne-Pauline De Cler, Michelle Lee, Morshed Mannan, Stefano Tortorici Co-op News