We envision a world where every person has a home, and housing is a right rather than a commodity.

The Sustainable Economies Law Center's Housing Program prioritizes working alongside working class communities and communities of color – those who historically and currently have the least housing security – to develop legal structures and policy mechanisms that remove housing from the speculative marketplace and give communities control over land and housing resources. In particular, we promote cooperative housing, community land trusts, and other cooperative mechanisms for creating truly affordable, community controlled, and ecologically sustainable housing.

All human beings need economically sustainable housing options. However, the speculative marketplace drives many of society’s decisions about land and housing, converting housing into a financial asset rather than a place to call home and the foundation of community. Decades of public policy incentivizing private homeownership has, in fact, contributed to the growing racial wealth gap, and targeted disinvestment has made predominantly poor and working class communities vulnerable to displacement and gentrification. Throughout the world, tenants’ and landless people’s movements are vocalizing the essential unfairness of the fact that so many people must struggle to secure a place to physically exist, much less make a livelihood, on the planet.

We are “rethinking home,” because we want to challenge and transform many of the predominant models for housing ourselves by creating more cooperative and just alternatives.

Want more info about our Center's Housing work? Contact Jay Cumberland at [email protected]. Sign up below to get the latest updates about our work to build a world where every person has a home.