Community Equity Endowments: A New Form of Community Benefit

Stark disparities in wealth holding exist in the United States, created by long-standing public- and private-sector actions such as discrimination in hiring, redlining, Jim Crow laws, and race-restricted covenants that systematically denied communities of color access to income and wealth-building means and tools. Addressing these disparities will take solutions both large and small. An earlier brief in this series discussed mechanisms for community investment in real estate development projects that can provide new opportunities for wealth building. This brief articulates a new approach for equitable development: supporting underresourced neighborhoods through a vehicle for community benefit from profits derived from local real estate development.