Creating space(s) for social change.

We build community wealth and power through cooperative real estate, entrepreneurship programs, and access to capital for marginalized communities.

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Development

We build affordable mixed-use spaces for long-term residents, entrepreneurs, artists and activists. We also partner with other community-based developers and offer technical assistance and consulting services to develop projects through a community wealth-building lens.

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Community Ownership

We create community-owned real estate models. Features include permanent affordability of housing, resident control, collective decision-making, and taking housing off the speculative market.

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Integrated Capital Fund

Our fund, called Groundcover, uses non-extractive capital to invest in scaling up cooperative models that create a pathway for ownership for Black and other communities of color.

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Entrepreneurship & Real Estate Programming

Our programs support entrepreneurs of color looking to build sustainable wealth for their communities via structures like worker-owned cooperatives. We also work to help entrepreneurs acquire commercial real estate, with a focus on helping Black-owned businesses retain ownership in gentrifying neighborhoods.

 
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Ecosystem Organizing

We partner with other community-based organizations to transform the economic and political landscape, with the goal of building ‘solidarity economies’ with justice and equity-centered institutions.

A whole systems approach to development.

At The Guild, we’re focused on reimagining real estate development to build community wealth and resilience. Our entrepreneurship programs work synergistically with our real estate strategy by building and providing a pipeline of viable small businesses — businesses that are otherwise at the threat of being displaced — to our real estate projects. Our work is based on the idea that there is an alternative economic development model where more people, especially those marginalized and excluded from our current  systems, can own and govern more of the assets that make our communities vibrant.

Community self-determination, not gentrification.

In order to disrupt the status quo of real estate development, we need to shift power away from corporations, investors, and developers, who have no real stake in our neighborhoods, to everyday people instead. We are rooted in principles of Restorative Economics.

Learn about our first community-owned and stewarded property: 918 Dill Avenue.

The People’s Community Land Trust announces its newest acquisition…

379 ELM STREET

Looking to be part of a movement that reimagines real estate and community development?

Vision.

Real estate has long been a tool of white supremacy to oppress communities of color. In cities like Atlanta, “big development” has accelerated gentrification and displacement of Black communities. Large infrastructure projects meant to be economic engines only benefit new,  higher-income residents, while developers continue to build for investors rather than existing communities.

We’re building a collective vision that understands and acknowledges the foundational history of this industry and how real estate works in Atlanta.

Design & Development.

Under capitalism, every aspect of development is driven by finance's desire to reproduce safe havens for investment returns, rather than save havens for people. Our streets, neighborhoods, and cities are made homogenous by design. All aspects of our built environment come to be viewed as commodities, materials lose any character beyond the purely utilitarian, and even the language with which we think about the spaces we occupy are dominated by notions of quantity rather than quality. When ownership means choosing to own property at the expense of others, and renting means being subject to extraction, development becomes an inherent harm perpetuated against each other and our environment. We're building buildings that pull every lever against that harm.

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Operations.

Development pits us against one another as competitive economic actors, and separates us from each other in our daily lives. We're disempowered from taking control of the spaces we love, and are often forced to wait on maintenance which is strategically denied or deferred to suit capital owners.

Our vision for cooperatively controlled spaces is built on spaces of solidarity that reflect all our labor. Cooperative action is the promise of such solidarity in exchange for collective work by those willing to engage. To that end, we support tenants to create structures, policies and practices to encourage cooperative self-governance.