Community Vision’s ownership strategy for combating displacement of small businesses and nonprofits in California
How can communities combat displacement and gentrification? By putting control and ownership of land and real estate in the hands of local residents, small businesses and local social services providers to transition from renters to owners of the spaces where they operate.
That’s the premise of Community Vision’s strategy for driving racial and economic justice through community ownership of land and real estate in California’s low-income and communities of color.
“We come from a place of understanding that real estate has been used as a significant tool in holding up systemic institutional racism,” says Catherine Howard of Community Vision, a community development financial institution, or CDFI, based in San Francisco.
“We’re really focused on the idea of land and real estate ownership because we know that ownership leads to permanency, and it is an anti-gentrification tool that builds power in communities — both political power and financial power.”
By financing community-based nonprofits and businesses to purchase and preserve land and develop real estate, Community Vision aims to drive wealth creation in California’s historically underserved and disinvested communities that are struggling under growing economic inequality. The community lender hopes to drive affordable housing, health care, education and other positive social outcomes that support sustainable economic growth.
A new report from the $130 million CDFI loan fund demonstrates how it is taking a more holistic approach to financing community ownership and development through the kind of projects it finances. That includes financing local small businesses, local health care facilities, arts and culture spaces and nonprofit organizations – especially those led by Black, Indigenous and people of color – to preserve ownership of their spaces.
Community Vision is a backer of Los Angeles-based Everytable’s Social Equity Franchise Fund, which provides financing for food entrepreneurs of color to open healthy food franchise stores (see, “With inclusive loans and business support, franchise ownership offers a path to wealth for entrepreneurs of color”).
“We talk a lot about gentrification and displacement of renters, but it’s true for small businesses and nonprofit tenants as well,” says Community Vision’s Nate Schaffran. “So how do you address rising costs of land and real estate and keep people and the institutions that people need in a community? They’re not separable.”
Community Vision has deployed close to $32 million in loans across 34 deals this year. Most of the loans went to minority-led community organizations that are developing and acquiring real estate to create locally-based services for their communities.
The CDFI says it has created or preserved close to 326,000 square feet of social purpose real estate and 207 affordable housing units.
One of the projects is the acquisition of a 3,000-square-foot vacant building in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood that is being rehabilitated into a youth development center. Community Vision provided a $7.6 million low-interest loan to United Playaz, the community-led youth development nonprofit behind the project. It also helped the organization secure a $535,000 acquisition grant from the city government of San Francisco.
“They’re a youth-serving, violence prevention nonprofit in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, which is home to a lot of the Filipino community who were forced off land elsewhere in the city, historically because of discrimination in residential lending and development,” Schaffran told ImpactAlpha. “The founder of the organization grew up locally, was justice-involved and gang affiliated as a youth, and came out of that experience wanting to really work with kids and do something different.”
Schaffran says Community Vision has been working with United Playaz for a long time, first to understand its financial position, and then to provide real estate consulting to structure the building’s acquisition in a way that keeps its ownership within the community. The youth center, which is expected to open in 2026, will become United Playaz’s headquarters and a community development hub for approximately 4,000 youths. The center will provide mentorship, academic support, violence prevention training to young people, as well as support for adults returning from incarceration.
In a separate project in northern California, Community Vision provided a $1.4 million loan to the Siskiyou County Economic Development Council, or SCEDC, which is redeveloping an old library in Yreka, a small city with a population just under 8,000 people.
“There’s been a lot of economic disruption in Yreka,” says Howard. “The community is really thinking about how do we have centralized economic development activities, and how do we do that while also restoring a historic building that has otherwise been sitting vacant in their community?”
The Carnegie Library building, which was built in 1915, will become SCEDC’s permanent headquarters. The space will include a business innovation and incubation center for local small businesses. A climate-focused program will help business owners develop climate-resilient strategies.
Pre-development
Community Vision is looking to deploy between $40 million and $50 million next year, with a focus on pre-development financing for community housing and real estate developers in its California Community-Owned Real Estate program, or CalCORE. The program, backed with grant capital from US Bank, was designed in partnership with local CDFI Genesis LA to provide training, consulting and financing to community development corporations, or CDCs, and community land trusts, or CLTs, that are emerging as real estate actors in their communities.
“We just kicked off our fourth CalCORE cohort. They’re looking at commercial corridors and how we are supporting nonprofit organizations and small businesses that are on the commercial corridors that may own buildings,” Howard told ImpactAlpha. “We’re really thinking holistically about those commercial corridors, focusing mostly on net-zero buildings and how we can provide low-cost, incentivized capital for folks that are thinking about net-zero real estate projects.”
Community Vision’s CalCORE portfolio includes organizations such as South Tower Community Land Trust, a Latino-led nonprofit looking to develop affordable housing in Fresno’s majority LGBTG+ South Tower neighborhood, which has a deep history of discriminatory housing policies that have locked many local residents out of homeownership.
Also in Fresno, Southwest Fresno Development Corporation, or SWFDC, is looking to revive the once thriving and majority-Black corridor of Southwest Fresno. Through homeownership counseling, down-payment assistance and credit-building workshops, the community-led organization is on a mission to help local renters become owners.
“Southwest Fresno is a historically Black community whose vibrant local economy was fueled by small businesses and young families. There were doctors, lawyers, policemen, and educators who lived here—it was a complete community,” says SWFDC’s Allysunn Walker.
With support from Community Vision, SWFDC has provided homebuying education and support to put more than 520 local renters on a pathway to homeownership. SWFDC is looking to build a community space that will serve as a small business hub and homeownership center.
The East Palo Alto Community Alliance and Neighborhood Development Corporation is seeking to acquire and rehabilitate properties for permanent affordable housing for low- to moderate-income families.
