A nonprofit engages businesses and residents to create a sustainable community.

By Sally Kohn

By every measure, Buffalo, New York, is one of the poorest cities in the United States. In 2009, 28.8% of families in Buffalo lived below the official poverty line—meaning literally one in four people in Buffalo is desperately poor (since the official poverty line is set obscenely low) while at least as many are teetering on the edge. Buffalo, in other words, is perhaps the last place on earth you’d expect to find cutting-edge urban renewal programs – let alone ones that model the principles of corporate social responsibility.

But this was the vision of People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH), a grassroots organization in the heart of Buffalo that saw organizing residents as key to re-organizing the city’s economy. Many community organization groups mobilize people to demand action from government or business sector institutions. So does PUSH; but in addition, it organizes people to create their own institutions of economic power and opportunity. 

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Democratic enterprises that build community prosperity are gaining ground.

By Jeffrey Hollender

We have before us an incredible opportunity to transform our economy. The disastrous turn our fiscal health took in 2008 has forced us to really think about the way our country creates and distributes wealth. One positive outcome of the recession is a zeal and enthusiasm around the idea of community wealth building, a sustainable approach to building and developing successful, sustainable and vibrant local economies.

Community wealth building is premised on the idea of broadly-shared ownership that is locally-rooted and directed toward the common good. Ownership can take place in many different forms, chief among them:

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